Abstract

Several parts of Avicenna’s major philosophical encyclopedia al-Shifa’ were translated into Latin, mainly in Toledo at the end of the twelfth century and in Burgos at the end of the thirteenth century. In addition, a partial translation of his medical treatise On Cardiac Drugs was incorporated into the translation of the De anima. Not without philosophical significance was also the translation by Gerard of Cremona of Avicenna’s major medical encyclopedia, that is, Canon of Medicine. Finally, Michael Scot offered the translation of an abbreviated version of the On Animals. It was only in the Renaissance that the physician Andreas Alpago elaborated the translation of a few minor philosophical treatises. A major event in the Renaissance was the Venice 1508 edition of Avicenna’s Opera philosophica. The Avicenna Latinus includes also several pseudepi-graphical writings, the attribution of which to Avicenna had sometimes originated in the Latin tradition, but not always. The spread of the Toledan translations had a major impact on the Scholastic thought ofthe thirteenth century and later on. First the De anima, later also the Metaphysics, received great attention and influenced in several respects a wide range of thinkers. Although one cannot speak in the proper sense of any real current of Avicennism, one could say that in some sense William of Auvergne incorporates a Latin Avicennism, while different Scholastics adhere to an Avicennized Augustinianism. Gundissalinus and Denys of Ryckel (Dionysius Cartusiensis), in their turn, propose a kind of respectively Avicennized Boethianism and Avicennized Dionysianism. But whatever the case, Avicenna constituted undoubtedly for all Scholastics an important ‘‘auctoritas’’ and through them had an everlasting effect on the history of western thought.