Jacob of Venice

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Jacob of Venice ( bl. After 1125 ; † after 1147 ) was a Venetian cleric and canon lawyer . He gained fame primarily for his translations of Aristotle into Latin . Seven centuries after Boethius, he was one of the first to translate works of the philosopher from ancient Greek directly into Latin.

biography

Little is known about Jacob of Venice. He called himself Iacobus Veneticus Graecus and, in addition to Latin, mastered Middle Greek , although it is not known whether he grew up as a Greek in Venice or as a Venetian in Constantinople .

With Robert von Torigni , abbot of Mont Saint-Michel (1154–1186), he appears as “Jacob, cleric from Venice” ( Jacobus clericus de venecia ), which “can mean that he never holds an important position in the ecclesiastical hierarchy and that he was probably never ordained . "

Together with the lawyer and translator Burgundio of Pisa and the poet and philologist Moses von Bergamo , he is said to have taken part in the theological debate between Bishop Anselm von Havelberg and the Orthodox Archbishop Nicetas of Nicomedia , which was publicly held in Pisan on April 3, 1136 Quarter was held in Constantinople.

A letter has survived from his time as a canon in which he gave Moses von Vercelli , the Archbishop of Ravenna , advice on the order of precedence over the Archbishop of Milan . The dispute was initiated by Pope Eugene III. settled at the Council of Cremona in 1148.

Translations by Aristotle

Charles V orders Aristotle's translation. Illumination from the prologue of politics, economics, ethics by Aristotle

Jakob is best known as the authoritative translator of Aristotle from ancient Greek into Latin in the 12th century . Numerous copies that have survived from the 13th century bear the reference to translatio Jacobi . The first Greek-Latin translations of the Physica , the Metaphysica (Book I to Book IV, 4, 1007a31) and the De anima are ascribed to him . The translation of parts of the Parva naturalia is also assigned to him (in particular the translatio vetus of the De morte et vita , the De memoria , the De juventute and the De respiratione ), as well as the new text versions of the Topica already translated by Boethius , De sophisticis elenchis ( Fragments), the Analytica priora and posteriora (the translations of the latter are widespread throughout the Middle Ages: 275 known manuscripts come from him, compared with only eight from the three other known translators). Fragments of a commentary on the elenchis and the Analytica posteriora are also associated with his name .

A preface to the Latin translation of the Analytica posteriora from the middle of the 12th century shows that the translations of Jacob of Venice were known to the so-called "Masters of France" (possibly from Chartres or Paris ) at that time and were often used by them even though they were supposedly "covered in darkness". Even John of Salisbury (1115-1180), the last of the translations knew Jacob of Venice. He resorted to the translation of the Analytica posteriora in his work Metalogicon (1159). In a letter to Richard, Archdeacon of Coutances , he asked him to make copies of Aristotle's works that he had in his possession. To do this, he asked for explanations of places where the text was difficult to read because he mistrusted Jakob's translations. Indeed, it now appears that Jacob of Venice had some gaps in knowledge of certain grammatical rules of ancient Greek and of Greek mythology. Another difficulty is that his translation style was very literal and very close to the Greek syntax: if a word had no exact equivalent in Latin, he simply took it over and introduced a new definition. In this way, the philosophical vocabulary was expanded to include many new technical terms.

The role of the Mont Saint-Michel Abbey in the dissemination of translations by Jacob of Venice

The abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel Robert von Torigni (1110–1186) reports in an addendum to a copy of his chronicle that Jacob of Venice is said to have made translations between 1128 and 1129. The entry comes either directly from him or from one of his writers. The copy was made after he was elected abbot in 1154 and before 1169. It is not known when and from where Robert von Torigni obtained this information. According to a hypothesis by Coloman Viola, he received them from French theologians ("the French masters") who may already be familiar with the translations. Possible would be B. the archdeacon Richard de Coutances, who was himself in contact with John of Salisbury. Or he received it at the Council of Tours in 1163, at the time when Jacob of Venice was already known in papal circles.

Also up for discussion is whether the place where Robert von Torigni added the addendum to his chronicle (between 1128 and 1129) really corresponds to the date on which Jacob of Venice made his translations (or at least part of them). Lorenzo Minio Paluello believes that this passage was simply the next best free gap in the manuscript. Coloman Viola, on the other hand, refers to a similar addendum found in a translation of John of Damascus by Pope Eugenius, the timing of which turned out to be correct, and believes that this could also be the case for Jacob of Venice.

The collection of the library of Mont Saint-Michel (today Scriptorial d'Avranches ) has two manuscripts that contain the oldest known copies of the translations mostly attributed to Jacob of Venice. The first manuscript (Ms. 221) was copied in the scriptorium of Mont Saint-Michel, the other (Ms. 232) in the north of France. Both are dated to the second half of the 12th century , that is to the time of Robert von Torigni, who, as it seems, played a “pioneering role in the spread of new Aristotelian literature”.

Jacob of Venice and the Aristotle translations he created, together with other anonymous authors from Mont Saint-Michel, play a central role in the book Aristotle on Mont Saint-Michel (2008) by the medievalist Sylvain Gouguenheim . Gouguenheim questioned the role of Muslims and Arabs in transmitting ancient Greek texts and science to the Latin West. The publication had sparked a violent controversy in the French media, in the context of the “ clash of cultures ” about the “Christian roots of the West”. The publication was heavily criticized by various medievalists. There are none for the claims made by Gouguenheim, namely that Jacob of Venice visited Mont Saint-Michel or made the translations there (some manuscripts that Gougenheim assigned to Jacob of Venice are in fact copies from Burgundio of Pisa) scientific evidence.

literature

  • David Bloch: James of Venice and the Posterior Analytics. Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen Age Grec et Latin, 2008, pp. 37-50. (English)
  • Sten Ebbesen: Jacobus Veneticus on the Posterior Analytics and Some Early Thirteenth-century Oxford Masters on the Elenchi. In: Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen Âge grec et latin 2. 1–9, 1977. (English)
  • Sten Ebbesen: Commentators and Commentaries on Aristotle's Sophistici Elenchi: A Study of Post-Aristotelian Ancient and Medieval Writings on Fallacies. Layde, Brill (Corpus Latinum Commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum 7 / 1-3), 1981, vol. I, p. 71ff. (English)
  • Sten Ebbesen: Jacques de Venise. In: Max Lejbowicz (Ed.): L'Islam en terres chrétiennes science et idéologie. Presses universitaires du septentrion, 2009, ISBN 978-2-7574-0088-3 , pp. 115-132.
  • Sylvain Gouguenheim: Aristotle on Mont Saint-Michel: The Greek roots of the Christian West. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-23221-5 .
  • Lorenzo Minio-Paluello: Iacobus Veneticus Grecus: Canonist and Translator of Aristotle. Traditio 8, 1952, pp. 265-304. (English)
  • Lorenzo Minio-Paluello: Giacomo Veneto e l'Aristotelismo latino. Venezia e l'Oriente fra tardo Medioevo e Rinascimento, Florence 1966, pp. 53-74. (Italian)
  • Thomas Ricklin: The <Physica> and the <Liber de causis> in the 12th century. Two studies. Universitätsverlag (Dokimion, 17), Freiburg 1995.
  • Coloman Viola: Aristote au Mont Saint Michel. In: Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel II: Vie montoise et rayonnement intellectuel. Bibliothèque d'Histoire et d'Archéologie Chrétiennes, P. Lethielleux, Paris 1967, pp. 289-312. (French)
  • Coloman Viola: L'Abbaye du Mont Saint-Michel et la preparation intellectuelle du grand siècle. Conference of September 8, 1970 (French)

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Roger Aubert: Jacques de Venise. In: Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie Écclésiastique. Vol. XXVI. (Iriberri - Jean E.), Paris 1997, ISBN 2-7063-0202-X , Col. 765-6.
  2. ^ Lorenzo Minio-Paluello: Iacobus Veneticus Grecus. 1952, p. 269.
  3. ^ Lorenzo Minio-Paluello: Iacobus Veneticus Grecus. 1952, pp. 272-274.
  4. ↑ Sten Ebbesen: Jacques de Venise. 2009, p. 188.
  5. ↑ a b c Coloman Viola: L'Abbaye du Mont Saint-Michel et la preparation intellectuelle du grand siècle. 1970.
  6. ^ A b Steven J. Livesey: James of Venice. In: Medieval science, technology, and medicine: an encyclopedia. Routledge, 2005.
  7. ↑ Translatio Boetii apud nos integra non invenitur et id ipsum quod de ea reperitur vitio corruptionis obfuscatur. Translationem vero Iacobi obscuritatis tenebris involvi silentio suo peribent Francie magistri qui, quamquam illam translationem et commentarios ab eodem Iacobo translatos habent, tamen notitiam illius libri non audent profiteri. - Manuscript No. 17.14 in the Chapter Library of Toledo.
  8. ^ Charles Burnett: The Introduction of Aristotle's Natural Philosophy in Great Britain. In: Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages. Turnhout, Brepols 1996, pp. 21-50.
  9. ↑ Jacobus clericus de venecia transtulit de greco in latinum quosdam libros aristotilis et commentatus. est. scilicet topica. analyticos priores et posteriores, et elencos, quamvis antiquior translatio super eosdem libros haberetur.
  10. ↑ Chronique de Robert de Torigni, abbé du Mont Saint-Michel. Ed. Léopold Delisle, Rouen, Le Brument, 1872-3, p. 114. This copy is now the manuscript ms. 159 of the Bibliothèque d'Avranches.
  11. ↑ a b c d Coloman Viola: Aristote au Mont Saint Michel. 1967, pp. 289-312.
  12. ^ Lorenzo Minio-Paluello: Iacobus Veneticus Grecus. 1952, pp. 270-271.
  13. ↑ De Anima. ms. Avranches 221, fol. 2-21 v ° (AL, 401.1); Metaphysica vetustissima. ms. Avranches 232, fol. 201-225 v ° (AL, 408.14) '; De Memoria. ms. Avranches 221, fol. 21 v ° -24 (AL, 401.2); Physica (Translatio vetus). ms. Avranches 221, fol. 25-86 v ° (AL, 401.3)
  14. ↑ Max Lejbowicz: L'Islam en terres chrétiennes science et idéologie. Presses universitaires du septentrion, 2009.
  15. ↑ Jérôme Cordelier: Les mystères du Mont-Saint-Michel. (No longer available online.) In: Le Point No. 1872. July 31, 2008, p. 44 , archived from the original on June 21, 2013 ; Retrieved November 17, 2012 (French). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lepoint.fr
  16. ^ Louis-Jacques Battalion: Sur Aristote et le Mont-Saint-Michel-Notes de lecture. In: Max Lejbowicz (Ed.): L'Islam en terres chrétiennes science et idéologie. Presses universitaires du septentrion, 2009, p. 112.
  17. ^ Louis-Jacques Battalion: Sur Aristote et le Mont-Saint-Michel-Notes de lecture. In: Max Lejbowicz (Ed.): L'Islam en terres chrétiennes science et idéologie. Presses universitaires du septentrion, 2009, p. 107.
  18. ^ Louis-Jacques Battalion: Sur Aristote et le Mont-Saint-Michel-Notes de lecture. In: Max Lejbowicz (Ed.): L'Islam en terres chrétiennes science et idéologie. Presses universitaires du septentrion, 2009, p. 113.
personal data
SURNAME Jacob of Venice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Venetian cleric and canon lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH before 1125
DATE OF DEATH after 1147