Appendix III

PETER OF ABANO, ABRAHAM ABEN EZRA, AND HENRY BATE

The French translation from the Hebrew of astrological treatises by Abraham Aben Ezra is preserved in BN, fonds de Sorbonne, 1825. I have not seen the MS but infer from the description in HL XXI, 500-3 that it includes only five of Abraham’s treatises, The Beginning of Wisdom, Nativities, Revolutions, Elections, and Interrogations. At the close of The Beginning of Wisdom we are told that it was written down by Obers de Montdidier from the dictation of Hagins the Jew in the house of Sire Henri Bate at Malines and finished December 22, 1273.

One MS of Peter of Abano’s version, BN supplem. lat. 151, is partially described in HL 21, 501. Others which I have examined are BN 7336, BN 7438, Canon. Misc. 190. I have seen various other MSS noted in catalogues and elsewhere, but such notices seldom seem to give a full and accurate list of the treatises. They were printed in 1507 by Peter Liechtenstein as noted in Appendix II. All copies which I have seen contain at the close of the first treatise, the Liber Introductorius or Beginning of Wisdom, the passage, of which HL 21, 501 has already quoted the Latin, stating that when Peter of Abano the Paduan found this work “in Gallic idiom, through the unskilfulness of the translator from the Hebrew defective in many ways, corrupt, and sometimes poorly arranged and failing to make sense, as far as he could he brought it back in the Latin tongue to Abraham’s original meaning.” The date is then given as 1293. Peter is also usually named as the translator at the beginning or end of the other treatises.

In the Latin versions of Abraham’s astrological treatises besides the five named by the Histoire Littéraire are found the Liber rationum, the Liber luminarium et de cognitione diei cretici, and Tractatus particulares, which are really three treatises, namely: (1) “Incipit alius tractatus particulare. Incipit tractatus de partibus horarum in interrogationibus”; (2) “Tractatus in tredecim manieribus planetarum”; and (3) “Tractatus de significationibus planetarum in duodecim domibus Abrahe.” The De consuetudinibus in judiciis astrorum et est centiloquium Bethen, which occurs in the midst of Abraham’s treatises in the MSS, is probably not by him and is placed last in the 1507 edition. The Tractatus particulares are not included by Steinschneider in his list of Abraham’s astrological writings.

While in general the Latin translation of Abraham’s astrological treatises is ascribed to Peter, in all the editions and manuscripts that I have seen, one of them, entitled De mundo vel seculo and dealing with conjunctions and revolutions, is ascribed to Henry Bate, the same under whose patronage the French translations were made. It would therefore seem that Peter found Henry Bate’s own Latin translation of 1281 more satisfactory than the French translation made at Bate’s house in 1273, and did not attempt to revise it. In some manuscripts Bate is also credited with a Latin translation of The Beginning of Wisdom or Liber introductorius, made in 1292.

This Henry Bate was called by Pico della Mirandola “a disciple of Albertus Magnus.” In 1274 at Malines and in fulfilment of a promise made to William of Moerbeke, the noted translator of the Dominican Order and at that time papal chaplain and penitentiary, when they were together in Lyons, Bate composed a treatise on the astrolabe. Later Bate also wrote an account of his own horoscope and destiny. It gives the year of his birth as 1244. He was a canon, doctor of theology, and university professor; and seems to have spent his life mainly at Malines, Liège, and Paris. He also wrote on errors in the Alfonsine astronomical tables. Another unpublished work of his is entitled Speculum divinorum et quorundam naturalium.

There were also Latin versions of other astronomical and astrological works by Abraham than those translated by Bate or Peter. One cannot, however, be sure that “Abraham Judaeus” always refers to Abraham Avenezra, as there was a translator or translators of the thirteenth century by that name. Simon Cordo of Genoa was assisted in his Latin translation of the medical works of Serapion by an Abraham Judaeus of Tortosa; and Alfonso X of Castile employed a Jew named Abraham in astronomical translation from Arabic into Spanish. An Abraham Iudeus of Barcelona translated Haly on Elections from Arabic into Latin, and was perhaps the same as Abraham Bar Chasdai, a rabbi of Barcelona who translated the supposititious Aristotelian work De pomo from Arabic into Hebrew, after which Manfred, the illegitimate son of Emperor Frederick II, translated it or had it translated from Hebrew into Latin.