with suspect and vaguely atheistic ideas, nevertheless the Arabphilosopher was studied with great attention and respect by perfectly orthodox figures like St Thomas Aquinas and Dante. In his massive theological treatise,
Summa contra Gentiles
, Aquinas proposed to use reason rather than scripture to convert theunbelieving and Averroes was cited 50 3 times in the course of the
Summa
âs arguments. (Impressive although this was, it is doubtful whether a single infidel has ever been converted by wading through Aquinasâs Latin.) In the
Summa
, chapter 6 of book 5 dealt with Islam. Predictably Aquinas presented Muhammad as the founder of a heresy who cunningly made use of both truth and falsity. Muhammad delivered his message first to âmen not learned in divine method⦠but bestial people living in desertsâ. 37 Although Averroism was for a while the rage among high-flying scholastics, from the mid-fourteenth century onwards it was on the wane and, more generally, there was a steep decline in Arabic studies. In the fifteenth century, as we shall see, several leading humanist thinkers went out of their way to express doubts about the reliability or value of studying Greek philosophy via what were usually inelegant and inaccurate Arabic translations. A great deal of Aristotle and his Arab commentators had been badly translated into barbarous Latin of a sort that made the fastidious Latin stylists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries wince. After Averroes had been rendered into Latin, there were no important translations from Arabic until the seventeenth century.
THE CRUSADERS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
Most of the translation work was done in Spain and, to a lesser extent, in Sicily. It might have been thought that the establishment of the Crusader principalities in the eastern Mediterranean in the twelfth century might have served as a channel of cultural influence that would have allowed Franks or Westerners to become more familiar with Arabic and Islamic high culture. However, scholars tended not to go on Crusades or settle in the East and a Paris-trained intellectual, like William Archbishop of Tyre, was a rarity. The twelfth-century scientific translator Adelard of Bath also seems to have visited Crusader Syria, though there is no evidence about what he did there. It was also the case that, unless the Franks had chosen to interest themselves in the study of the Qurâan and the orally transmitted traditions concerning the Prophet Muhammad and his contemporaries, therewas probably not so very much they could have learned from their Muslim subjects and neighbours in the twelfth century. The places that the Crusaders had conquered in Syria and Palestine were small towns that traded in soap, leather and glass. These places were intellectual backwaters and a long way from the great Islamic cultural centres of Baghdad or Isfahan. The last great age of cultural efflorescence in Syria had taken place under the Hamdanid princes in Aleppo in the tenth century. The famous poets al-Mutanabbi and Abu Tammam, the philosopher al-Farabi, the preacher Ibn Nubata and many others had flourished under the benign patronage of this great Arab dynasty. By the 1090 s, Syria and Palestine boasted no philosophers, scientists, poets or historians of any real eminence or originality. Doubtless the cultural decline was exacerbated by the coming of the Crusaders, as the latter killed scholars and either destroyed libraries or redistributed their contents. (We know that they ransomed the Arabic books looted in Jerusalem to the Fatimid garrison in Ascalon.)
Proximity to the Muslims in Palestine and Syria did not at first encourage any understanding of Islam. In his early twelfth-century chronicle of the First Crusade,
Gesta Dei per Francos
, Guibert of Nogent, when he came to write about the career of Muhammad, observed that âit is safe to speak evil of one whose malignity exceeds whatever ill can be spokenâ. In other words,
Summa contra Gentiles
, Aquinas proposed to use reason rather than scripture to convert theunbelieving and Averroes was cited 50 3 times in the course of the
Summa
âs arguments. (Impressive although this was, it is doubtful whether a single infidel has ever been converted by wading through Aquinasâs Latin.) In the
Summa
, chapter 6 of book 5 dealt with Islam. Predictably Aquinas presented Muhammad as the founder of a heresy who cunningly made use of both truth and falsity. Muhammad delivered his message first to âmen not learned in divine method⦠but bestial people living in desertsâ. 37 Although Averroism was for a while the rage among high-flying scholastics, from the mid-fourteenth century onwards it was on the wane and, more generally, there was a steep decline in Arabic studies. In the fifteenth century, as we shall see, several leading humanist thinkers went out of their way to express doubts about the reliability or value of studying Greek philosophy via what were usually inelegant and inaccurate Arabic translations. A great deal of Aristotle and his Arab commentators had been badly translated into barbarous Latin of a sort that made the fastidious Latin stylists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries wince. After Averroes had been rendered into Latin, there were no important translations from Arabic until the seventeenth century.
THE CRUSADERS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
Most of the translation work was done in Spain and, to a lesser extent, in Sicily. It might have been thought that the establishment of the Crusader principalities in the eastern Mediterranean in the twelfth century might have served as a channel of cultural influence that would have allowed Franks or Westerners to become more familiar with Arabic and Islamic high culture. However, scholars tended not to go on Crusades or settle in the East and a Paris-trained intellectual, like William Archbishop of Tyre, was a rarity. The twelfth-century scientific translator Adelard of Bath also seems to have visited Crusader Syria, though there is no evidence about what he did there. It was also the case that, unless the Franks had chosen to interest themselves in the study of the Qurâan and the orally transmitted traditions concerning the Prophet Muhammad and his contemporaries, therewas probably not so very much they could have learned from their Muslim subjects and neighbours in the twelfth century. The places that the Crusaders had conquered in Syria and Palestine were small towns that traded in soap, leather and glass. These places were intellectual backwaters and a long way from the great Islamic cultural centres of Baghdad or Isfahan. The last great age of cultural efflorescence in Syria had taken place under the Hamdanid princes in Aleppo in the tenth century. The famous poets al-Mutanabbi and Abu Tammam, the philosopher al-Farabi, the preacher Ibn Nubata and many others had flourished under the benign patronage of this great Arab dynasty. By the 1090 s, Syria and Palestine boasted no philosophers, scientists, poets or historians of any real eminence or originality. Doubtless the cultural decline was exacerbated by the coming of the Crusaders, as the latter killed scholars and either destroyed libraries or redistributed their contents. (We know that they ransomed the Arabic books looted in Jerusalem to the Fatimid garrison in Ascalon.)
Proximity to the Muslims in Palestine and Syria did not at first encourage any understanding of Islam. In his early twelfth-century chronicle of the First Crusade,
Gesta Dei per Francos
, Guibert of Nogent, when he came to write about the career of Muhammad, observed that âit is safe to speak evil of one whose malignity exceeds whatever ill can be spokenâ. In other words,
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