Two leaves from William of Moerbeke’s crucial translation of Aristotle’s Politics from Greek into Latin, an important step in the recovery of this rare text by Western European society

William of Moerbeke, Politica, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum; France (probably south), or perhaps Spain, second half of the thirteenth century

The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC.) stands like a colossus at the gates of medieval (and modern) thought. The rediscovery of the works of Aristotle were made in the wake of the Crusades, and their various translations into Latin made from Arabic copies of the texts, often through Hebrew intermediary versions, and to a lesser extent Greek. Only scraps of his work on logic had continued to be copied in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, but he enjoyed great success in the Muslim world, falling under their wing during their westward expansion into previously Greek speaking regions in the seventh and eighth centuries. The push of French control into Muslim Spain, Norman control into Sicily, and the Crusades in the Near East and the resulting Christian kingdoms there, brought Europeans face-to-face with this literary corpus they had lost.

The resulting Latin texts revolutionized Western thinking, and lead to the scholastic movement that took teaching away from the traditional centers such as the monastery and Cathedral school, and within a few decades necessitated the foundation of designated centres of learning – or universities, as we now call them.

Among the great translations of Aristotle’s works, his work on politics stands out. It was unknown in the Arabic world, and was sourced from Greek manuscripts in Byzantium. The first translator was a Flemish Dominican named William of Moerbeke (d. 1286), who appears to have worked in Nicea and Thebes on a complete translation of the works of Aristotle on a commission from Thomas Aquinas himself. He translated the ‘Politics’ around 1260, initially from an incomplete manuscript that ended partway through book II, and then in two subsequent versions once complete manuscripts of the Greek originals could be sought. These translations opened it up to scholarly debate and enclosing it within the new university canon.

[France (probably south), or perhaps Spain, second half of the thirteenth century], Two large leaves, each with double column of 41 lines of tiny university script, capitals touched in red, paragraph marks in red and dark blue, running titles in capitals alternately in same colours (were legible here reading ‘POL’ and ‘L II’ for text title and ‘book II’), two initials in red and dark blue with contrasting penwork, recovered from reuse in a binding and hence with concomitant wear, including stained and less legible areas, overall in presentable condition, 354 mm x 257 mm.

The text here includes parts of book II, chs. 6-8. It challenges the political regime described by Plato in his Republic, showing that communal ownership could weaken society, before moving on to criticise Phaleas of Chalcedon’s equally radical ideas about equal distribution of property within society, and Hippodamus’ more idealised ideas in the same vein.

The parent codex of this leaf played its part in the early parts of this movement. It is written in a distinctive tiny and squat script, known as ‘pearl’ or ‘university’ script, with numerous abbreviations, all of these features intended to maximise the amount of text on the costly vellum page, and ensure that the resources used could be stretched as far as possible in the textbook produced. In addition, the numerous tiny interlinear and marginal contemporary and near-contemporary glosses show the book’s continuing use in that university setting, as the original owner added his owns notes and explanatory additions, just as students today fill the margins of their textbooks.

It must be noted that the parent manuscript of these two leaves was probably written within the lifetime of the author, in the first decades of the copying of the text. To hold this leaf, is to hold a last relic of a book written within decades of the rediscovery of this Aristotelian text by Europeans, perhaps while the translator was still alive. In its time the parent book of these leaves was a cutting edge tool of new and exciting, and perhaps even frightening, learning.

Provenance: Recovered from reuse in the binding of a sixteenth-century Iberian printed book. The parent volume may have been acquired in a French university setting such as Montpellier, and then carried back to the Iberian peninsula by its original owner returning home after their studies, or may in fact be Iberian in origin.