Note 384 — BOOK VII THE MONGOL EMPIRES OF THE LAND WAYS AND THE NEW EMPIRES OF THE SEA WAYS (continued 2)

Aristotle’s Organon, or logic, had always been in part known to the West and was known as a whole after about 1130. In the thirteenth century the rest of his writings became known, in two ways. One way was that of direct translation from the Greek into Latin: it was in this way that St. Thomas Aquinas knew the Ethics and the Politics (the latter translated about 1260 by William of Moerbeke, Archbishop of Corinth in the Latin Empire of Constantinople started under Baldwin of Flanders in 1204, and a Fleming himself). The other way was that of indirect translation, that is to say, of translations of Arabic paraphrases of, or commentaries on, the works of Aristotle, such as had been made by Averroes and by Avicenna before him. It was Aristotle’s Physics and (I think) Metaphysics that first became known in this way. In this latter way the West received a version of Aristotle which, like Bottom the Weaver, was strangely “translated.” Sometimes translations were made direct from Arabic into Latin; sometimes they were made first into Hebrew, and then new translations were made from Hebrew into Latin. As the Arabic version of Aristotle was not always itself direct, but sometimes made from Syriac versions of the Greek, confusion became confounded. The Latin translations of the Arabic Aristotle sometimes contained not translation, but transliteration of Arabic words or sentences; and Roger Bacon very naturally objected to their unintelligibility. What is more, Aristotle’s views, as well as his words, were transmogrified in the process. But the important thing is that for Aristotle’s Organon, Ethics, and Politics there were direct translations from the Greek. (See Sandys’ History of Classical Scholarship and Renan’s Averroes et l’Averroisme.)—E. B.