ABSTRACT
The translators of the “House of Science” at Baghdad whose work is of capital importance in the history of medicine, have been dealt with elsewhere in this volume; the introduction of these Arabized works to Spain and their subsequent translation into Latin, principally by the society of translators at Toledo, forms but the next step in the history of Hellenism through the circuitous Arabian route, as opposed to the direct or Byzantine route which, commencing after the year a.d. 1204, gradually displaced the Arabized Greek writings as derived from the great translating centre at Toledo. These Toledan Latin translations, 1 despite the fact that they were in the main none too accurately translated, as will be presently shown, were the sources of the High Scholastics Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas; the fact of these translations being three or four removes from the original Greek texts, having passed through Syriac and Arabic versions, is explanatory of the errors and misunderstandings of these great mediaeval thinkers.
