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The Toledo School of Translators: Myth or Reality?

Publicado por Carlos de Ayala Martínez el

In Toledo it was possible to come into contact with works from the Arabic tradition that could be translated with some ease into Latin and, later, into Castilian Romance. This was a source of attraction for intellectuals of Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin, who saw it as a way of recovering a rich wealth of information

Carlos de Ayala Martínez
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Miniature of the Book of the Games of Alfonso X. Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, ms. T-I-6, f. 1v.

Spanish version

We can approach this complex subject by trying to answer a series of questions that we may have asked ourselves at some point. The first of these is the most elementary: was there really a School of Translators in Toledo in the Middle Ages? Of course, if by ‘school’ we mean a stable, regulated corporation or institution, the Toledo School of Translators never existed. The term, in fact, is an invention of the 19th century and therefore it is not possible to document it in the Middle Ages. The term was born outside Spain. It was at the beginning of that century, specifically in 1819, that a French historian and Orientalist, Amable Jourdain, began to speak of a «college of translators» operating in Toledo. Later, in 1874, a German philologist, Valentin Rose, began to popularise the expression «Toledo School of Translators». The expression was successful in Spain, where from that time onwards it was widely used, although it was criticised as early as the mid-20th century by scholars of the stature of the philologist Menéndez Pidal, the historian Sánchez Albornoz and the Arabist Juan Vernet.

To the first question, therefore, we must answer ‘no’. But if there was no School of Translators in Toledo, what was there then? What is it that moved the two nineteenth-century scholars mentioned to speak of it as existing? From the middle of the 12th century until well into the 13th century, what took place was an unregulated process of translations of Arabic works on science and philosophy with contents from their own tradition and also from the classical tradition incorporated into it, initially under the patronage of the archbishops of Toledo, and later of King Alfonso X. This work was of extraordinary interest because until that time knowledge of the classical legacy in the West was limited to a few outstanding works by Plato and Aristotle and some fragments compiled by Cassiodorus and Boethius in the 6th century, by Isidore in the 7th, by Bede the Venerable in the 8th and by Alcuin of York around the year 800.

Miniature of Las Cantigas de Santa María, by Alfonso X. Codex of Florence, BNCF, Banco Rari 20, f. 101r.

What took place at Toledo, then, was the beginning of a new flow to the West of the classical scientific-philosophical tradition compiled by the Arabs, which was joined by the scientific-philosophical tradition of Arab origin itself. And it is this, in large part, that made possible what a hundred years ago, the father of American medievalism, Harvard professor and advisor to President Wilson, Charles Homer Haskins, called the «Twelfth Century Renaissance», which like all cultural reform movements sought nothing more than a return to reliable sources, that is, to the authority of the classics, in this particular case, reinforced by the imposing cultural tradition coming from the Islamic world, which in turn, had taken on the classical legacy.

Why Toledo?

This is the next question we must ask ourselves: were there no other cultural centres capable of channelling the legacy of Antiquity preserved and enriched in the Islamic world? Certainly. Think, for example, of the Catalan monastery of Ripoll where in the 10th century Gerbert of Aurillac, the future Pope Sylvester II, obtained Latin translations of scientific treatises on the astrolabe from the East. Or think of the Monte-Cassino monastery in southern Italy, where a century later, the translations of Constantine the African brought the medical science cultivated by the Arabs up to date in the West.

But none of this is comparable to the intensity of the cultural transfer that can be detected in Toledo from the mid-12th century onwards. When this work began to be documented, the city had been in Christian hands for less than a century. Alfonso VI had conquered it in 1085 after the political fragmentation of the Caliphate of Córdoba had weakened al-Andalus to such an extent that the Christian kings were able to take over a significant part of its territory.

Miniature of Las Cantigas de Santa María, by Alfonso X. Codex Rico, Biblioteca de El Escorial, ms. T-I-1, f. 83r.

Toledo, like other important Andalusi cities such as Badajoz, Zaragoza and Seville, shared in the cultural splendour of the old capital of the Caliphate, Cordoba, where it was said with considerable exaggeration that the library of al-Hakam II had 400,000 volumes, many of which were imported. Toledo, of course, did not reach the cultural level of Córdoba, but unlike other Andalusi cities, it retained a large Arabic-speaking population long after the conquest. It is estimated that the population of 12th-century Christian Toledo may have numbered around 30,000 inhabitants who were organised into just over 30 collaciones or neighbourhoods associated with parishes, almost a third of which were occupied by Arabic-speakers. A good part of them were Christians of Andalusi origin, who began to be called «Mozarabs» —Muztabares— as a result of the Christian occupation; we are talking about some 6,000 Christians. To these should be added some 4,000 Jews, also of Andalusi origin. All of them, therefore, were Arabic-speaking, but also knew Latin.

This circumstance is very important for understanding what happened: in Toledo it was possible to come into contact with works from the Arabic tradition that could be translated with some ease into Latin and, later, into Castilian Romance. This attracted scholars of Hispanic and extra-Peninsular origin who saw it as a way of recovering a wealth of information that the fluid and historical relationship between al-Andalus and the Arab East, which had never been interrupted, had fostered.

Toledo, an Intellectual Target and a Source of Suspicion

Toledo thus became a pole of attraction, but also of suspicion outside the Peninsula. Suspicion because the scientific-philosophical knowledge compiled or originating in the Arab-Islamic tradition was considered diabolical by at least part of the Western Christian intelligentsia. A Cistercian monk from the abbey of Froidmont in northern France, a certain Helinando, an expert in classical authorities and also in patristics, who taught at the General Studium or University of Toulouse, wrote in 1231:

«Clergymen go to Paris to study the arts, to Orleans to study authors, to Bologna the codes, to Salerno the medicaments, to Toledo the devils… and nowhere the good customs».

But this fame also persisted in popular Hispanic culture without any misgivings being expressed. Let us think of the famous tale of Count Lucanor, in which Don Juan Manuel tells us of a dean of Santiago who went to Toledo to be taught science by an expert in necromancy, Master Yllán. It is curious that Don Juan Manuel refers to the necromancer casually and without a hint of condemnation. The moral of the story, rather, is that don Yllán, thanks to magic, exposed the greedy and ungrateful attitude of the dean, who is the only one to be condemned. All, as I say, very naturally.

Toledo thus became the centre of knowledge from the Islamic world, a knowledge that some people wanted to bring to light and others directly condemned or simply, like Don Juan Manuel, noted. Let us look at those who wanted to reveal it.

Protagonists and the Media: Controversial Purpose?

When did they do it, who were they, and what help did they have? This is the next complex question we are going to try to answer. The origins of Toledo’s cultural activity are traditionally associated with its second archbishop after the conquest, Raymond of Salvetat (1125-1152), a cultivated man from Cluny of Frankish origin concerned with theological questions, and the dedicatee of the translation of a short philosophical work by a ninth-century Arab scholar of Christian origin, Qusṭā ibn Lūqā, on the subtle difference between the spirit and the soul.

This led to the contemporary belief that Archbishop Raimundo promoted a system of patronage to generate the translations demanded by restless scholars such as himself. It was even thought that this initiative was related to the contemporary visit to the Peninsula of Peter the Venerable, who sought works and translators in the kingdom of Castile in order to develop his project of translating the Qur’an and other Arabic works for the purpose of polemic against Islam.

But this obsession with the West’s interest in Islam as a source of weapons to fight against it was certainly not in the mind of Archbishop Raymond, who could hardly fight against Islam with a treatise on the nature of the soul. No, the cultural activity that was then beginning to be glimpsed in Toledo had nothing to do with polemical aims and everything to do with a concern derived from the awareness that, without the help of the Arab-Islamic tradition, the West would be culturally paralysed.

Miniature of Las Cantigas de Santa María, by Alfonso X. Codex Rico, Biblioteca de El Escorial, ms. T-I-1, f. 212r.

This is the key to understanding the phenomenon of Toledo and its translations, an activity that must be clearly associated with the patronage of the archbishop and church of Toledo from the days of Raymond’s successor, the archbishop, also of Frankish origin, John of Castellmorum (1152-1166). During his pontificate, a treatise by Avicenna on the soul was translated, and together with translators with Arabic names, two key figures appeared in the second half of the 12th century: the Castilian Domingo Gonzálvez and, above all, the Italian Gerard of Cremona, who translated more than 70 Arabic works on medicine, mathematics and astronomy, of which he was personally a great connoisseur.

We find scholars attracted to Toledo from outside the Peninsula, something that would be characteristic of the cultural movement sponsored by the Church of Toledo from that time onwards. These scholars were enabled to remain in Toledo and to support themselves financially through the granting of canonries. Many translators of Toledan origin, from other parts of the Peninsula and beyond, signed as canons the documents of the archiepiscopal chancery during this initial phase of cultural activity, during the second half of the 12th century. This is the first of three phases of its development that may be distinguished.

Don Rodrigo’s Moment

The second of these is associated with the extraordinary intellectual figure of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, who governed the diocese throughout the first half of the 13th century. To him we owe the commission to Canon Marcos de Toledo of a new Latin version of the Qur’an and the translation of a theological work attributed to Ibn Tūmart, the celebrated Maghrebi reformer who laid the foundations of the Almohad empire. Once again, the interpretative weight of the historiographical tradition sees this as a new chapter in the offensive, in this case ideological, against Islam. But there is evidence that points in another direction: the need for the archbishop to rely on the religious proposals of his political adversaries in order to strengthen his own theological discourse.

This is a complex subject that we will not go into here, but it is worth pointing out that it was once again the intellectual restlessness, in this case of the archbishop himself, who was also the first Western Christian to write a History of the Arabs, that led him to produce translations in which he tried to find cultural keys to the Islamic world, capable of unblocking the impasse that Christian scholasticism had reached.

Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada before the IV Lateran Council. Miniature of ms. Vitr/15/5, f. 22r de la Biblioteca Nacional de España.

The great intellectual capacity of Marcos de Toledo was not limited to providing material for the archbishop’s theological speculation. He himself was very interested in medical science, to which he devoted much of his translating activity, protected by his status as a salaried employee of the Church of Toledo. He himself recounted that, as he knew Arabic, it was his fellow medical students at a university of which he does not give the name who encouraged him to provide them with the knowledge of Galen transmitted by the Arabs, and that it was this, in the end, which prompted him to work in Toledo. In other words, he was attracted to a city where it was possible to find the works of the classics in Arabic and where he had the means to do so. But Jiménez de Rada favoured not only scholars of Hispanic origin like Marcos. Some foreigners were also favoured. This is the case of the well-known Michael Scotus, a Scotsman, who worked in Toledo translating scientific works and probably also a good part of Averroist thought. His extraordinary worth led to his appointment in his last years asan astrologer and physician in the service of Emperor Frederick II. In a way, Dante would make him pay for his time in Toledo by condemning him to the Inferno of his Divine Comedy as an impenitent necromancer and fortune-teller.

The Toledo of Archbishop Don Rodrigo attracted another interesting figure of extra-Peninsular origin, Hermann the German. He arrived in the Castilian capital more than twenty years after Michael Scotus, in the last stage of Jiménez de Rada’s life. The fruit of his intense work as a translator from Arabic into Latin was Averroes’ commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, as well as other works by Avicenna and al-Fārābī.

The Decisive Role of Alfonso X

Thus Hermann the German brought the second stage of Toledo’s intense cultural activity to a close, giving way to the third and definitive stage that would be led by Alfonso X in the second half of the 13th century. With him, patronage passed from the Church in Toledo to the royal court itself, that of a monarch who had been born in Toledo and who was closely linked to this historic city for a good part of his life. This institutionalisation of translation activity is directly related to the role that culture played in the Wise King’s own programme of government. For the king, wisdom was the capital that united him to God and enabled him to govern his subjects in harmony in the name of that same God. The Alphonsine Scriptorium became an authentic office of the government of the kingdom, an office that transmitted the ancestral classical and Arabic knowledge in the vulgar language that a good part of his subjects could understand: Castilian. Dissemination outside his kingdoms was another matter, which was certainly difficult, which confirms the political nature of the decision. Thus, the Romance language, into which Arabic works were translated, became the new vehicle of science, although without completely displacing Latin. Institutionalisation and Castilianisation were Alfonso X’s great contributions to the cultural impulse of Toledo.

Alfonso X in a miniature of Las Cantigas de Santa María. Biblioteca de El Escorial, ms. T-I-1, f. 5r.

However, not all the cultural activity of the Wise King is directly related to the task of transmitting the classical and Islamic cultural legacy. What specifically did Alfonso X have translated in his Scriptorium? At this point it is essential to refer to the astronomical-astrological work of Greco-Arabic origin. The scholars of the time attached great importance to the guiding influence of the stars on the whole of nature, and therefore also on mankind and its destiny. For a king as jealous of his power as Alfonso X, it could be a weapon of political control. We do not know if there is any truth in the late record according to which the Wise King executed his brother Fadrique as a result of a prediction that the infant would in future prove traitor to the king.

This is not the place for an inevitably tedious enumeration of the many works translated and, it should be noted, completed and updated by the king’s collaborators, a total of fifteen scholars, five of them Jews, seven from outside the Iberian Peninsula, three Hispanics and only one Muslim convert to Christianity, the famous Bernard the Arab. The leading role played by Jewish participants in this enterprise is decisive. It is enough to mention the three great compilations and miscellaneous collections of astronomy and astrology: the Picatrix, on talismanic magic, an original work by the Andalusi Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī (d. 964), the Book of the Knowledge of Astrology, and the well-known Lapidario on the properties of stones.

How Were Translations Carried Out?

But we still have to answer one last question: what was the translation protocol from the beginning of this activity in the 12th century? We will answer this question very briefly. It is generally accepted by most specialists that the usual technique of direct translations from Arabic into Latin consisted of an Arabic speaker translating directly and orally from Arabic into vulgar Romance. At the same time, a cleric translated the oral translation into written Latin. The latter was the result that was preserved.

The novelty introduced by Alfonso X, as we have indicated, is that the oral version in the vulgar language made from the original Arabic was now converted into a written Castilian version, which could probably be, in its turn, translated into Latin. But the latter may not have been a frequent occurrence because it is not very common that both versions, Romance and Latin, survive of the same Arabic original.

In Conclusion

Let’s stick to four key ideas:

  • There was never a proper Toledo School of Translators.
  • During the second half of the 12th century and the first decades of the 13th century, with its centre in Toledo and under the patronage of its archbishops, an intense work of cultural transmission took place that allowed the so-called «Cultural Renaissance of the 12th century» to be nourished by the classical-Arabic legacy that had been largely short-circuited until then.
  • This work has nothing to do, therefore, with polemical responses to the Islamic world.
  • Alfonso X would be responsible for the institutionalisation not of a school of translators but of an activity to which he gave the political stamp and intentionality that he imposed on all the work coming out of his Scriptorium.

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