(17) The Mediaeval Mind, Vol.  I, p. 280.

The Graeco-Arabic learning passed into Europe through two sources.  As I have already mentioned, Constantinus Africanus, a North African Christian monk, widely travelled and learned in languages, came to Salernum and translated many works from Arabic into Latin, particularly those of Hippocrates and Galen.  The “Pantegni” of the latter became one of the most popular text-books of the Middle Ages.  A long list of other works which he translated is given by Steinschneider.(17a) It is not unlikely that Arabic medicine had already found its way to Salernum before the time of Constantine, but the influence of his translations upon the later Middle Ages was very great.

     (17a) Steinschneider:  Virchow’s Arch., Berl., 1867, xxxvii, 351.

The second was a more important source through the Latin translators in Spain, particularly in Toledo, where, from the middle of the twelfth till the middle of the thirteenth century, an extraordinary number of Arabic works in philosophy, mathematics and astronomy were translated.  Among the translators, Gerard of Cremona is prominent, and has been called the “Father of Translators.”  He was one of the brightest intelligences of the Middle Ages, and did a work of the first importance to science, through the extraordinary variety of material he put in circulation.  Translations, not only of the medical writers, but of an indiscriminate crowd of authors in philosophy and general literature, came from his pen.  He furnished one of the first translations of the famous “Almagest” of Ptolemy, which opened the eyes of his contemporaries to the value of the Alexandrian astronomy.(18) Leclerc gives a list of seventy-one works from his hand.

     (18) For an account of that remarkable work see German
     translation by Manitius, Leipzig, 1912.

Many of the translators of the period were Jews, and many of the works were translated from Hebrew into Latin.  For years Arabic had been the learned language of the Jews, and in a large measure it was through them that the Arabic knowledge and the translations passed into South and Central Europe.

The Arab writer whose influence on mediaeval thought was the most profound was Averroes, the great commentator on Aristotle.

THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES

The most striking intellectual phenomenon of the thirteenth century is the rise of the universities.  The story of their foundation is fully stated in Rashdall’s great work (Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1895).  Monastic and collegiate schools, seats of learning like Salernum, student guilds as at Bologna, had tried to meet the educational needs of the age.  The word “university” literally means an association, and was not at first restricted to learned bodies.  The origin appears to have been in certain guilds of students formed for