Note 629 — PART IV PROBABILITY OF THE TRANSMISSION OF ISLAMIC MODELS TO CHRISTIAN EUROPE AND PARTICULARLY TO DANTE

A knowledge of Islamic lore may have been transmitted to Dante by a learned Rabbi, such as Emmanuel Ben Salomo, of the Zifroni family, a poet and philosopher of Rome and a friend of Dante; or Hillel of Verona. [The importance in this connection of the Italian Rabbis, who were perhaps better informed of the Moslem sources than the Christians of Dante’s time, has lately been pointed out by Beck, in Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie (Berlin, 1921, vol. XLI, p. 472) and Van Tieghem, in Revue de Littérature Comparée (Paris, April/June, 1922, p. 324). Other critics of the thesis have suggested further likely channels of communication. Thus, Cabaton, in Revue de l’Histoire des Religions (Paris, 1920, p. 19) recalls the fact that Dante’s friend, the poet Guido Cavalcanti, had visited Spain on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Nallino, in Rivista degli Studi Orientali (Rome, 1921, vol. VIII, 4, p. 808), mentions the following as likely means of contact between Dante and Islam: The captive Moslems of all ranks of society living in Tuscany, and particularly at Pisa; or, the Italian troubadours who flocked to the Court of Alphonso the Wise; or, again, the innumerable Italian traders who came and went between Italy and Spain and the Moslem ports of Africa and the East. He adds: “If the Pisan merchant Leonardo Fibonacci could acquire in the Aduanas of the Moslem ports the knowledge of Algebra that he introduced into Europe early in the 13th century; and if other, nameless, travellers could be the bearers of the popular Oriental tales that later passed into Italian literature; is it unlikely that among other fantastic tales the legendary story of Mahomet should be thus transmitted, a story that was in perfect keeping with the mentality of the people in mediæval Europe?” Finally, the critic Gabrieli, on pp. 55-61 of his pamphlet, “Intorno alle fonti orientali della Divina Commedia,” in Arcadia, III (Rome, 1919), though generally adverse to the theory, makes two interesting suggestions. As possible means of transmission he names the Spanish Franciscan Lull and the Florentine Dominican Ricoldo de Monte Croce. Lull, who had a vast knowledge of Islamic culture and knew and imitated the doctrines of Ibn Arabi, repeatedly visited Italy between 1287 and 1296, residing two whole years in Rome as well as in Genoa, Pisa, and Naples. Even more likely appears the intervention of Ricoldo, who lived in the East from 1288 to 1301, preaching the Gospel in Syria, Persia and Turkestan, whence he returned to the Monastery of Santa Maria Novella at Florence and there died in 1320, at the age of 74. In Chapter XIV of his famous work Contra legem sarracenorum, or Improbatio Alchorani, he treats of the legend of the Miraj. Dante is known to have had dealings with the Dominican friars of Santa Maria Novella; indeed, it appears that during his youth he attended their cloister schools, where letters and sciences were also taught to laymen.—Note added since the publication of the Spanish original.]