Petrus Alfonsi

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Petrus Alfonsi

Petrus Alfonsi (also Petrus Alfunsis , Aldefonsi ; * before 1075 in Spain, † after 1130 in Spain) was a Spanish doctor and the author of the Disciplina clericalis .

Its original Jewish name was Moses or Moses Sephardi . According to his own statements, he was initially a rabbi and after his baptism on June 29, 1106 in the Huesca Cathedral (presumably also his place of birth), he took the Christian name Petrus Alfonsi, taking the name of his godfather, King Alfons I von, after the name of the Prince of the Apostles Aragón , whose personal physician he may have been, added.

Between 1110 and 1116 at the latest he went from Spain to England for a few years and then he was in France, as is evident from his Epistola ad peripateticos in Francia (around 1116), in which he advises students in France to study the superior Arabic literature on astronomy instead of using their traditional Latin textbooks and promoting the study of astronomy and astrology in general. He had been taught the Hebrew and Arabic traditions and was familiar with the Talmud and Arabic works in philosophy, medicine and astronomy. He was influential as evidenced by the fact that 160 manuscripts of his works have survived. According to one of the manuscripts, he was for a time the personal physician of Henry I in England. In 1121 he is attested again at the court of Alfonso I.

He wrote scientific and theological writings, including the Dialogi contra Judaeus , a fictional conversation between a Christian and a Jew (his former Jewish self Moses and his later Christian self Peter ), which deals with the relationship between the two religions and in doing so opposes the Talmud turns and makes this ridiculous as contradicting the Arab-Greek science and especially astronomy. Both Judaism (in the form of Talmudic teachings) and Islam are rejected as incompatible with the sciences, in contrast to Christianity. The Dialogi was one of the most widespread anti-Jewish texts in the Latin Middle Ages with 65 known manuscripts and influenced, among others, Petrus Venerabilis , Joachim von Fiore , Vincent von Beauvais . He also expresses his conviction that only exploring nature leads to knowledge of God.

His most famous work, however, is the Disciplina clericalis , written around 1115 . It is a collection of short novella-like stories, legends and fables , which, in conjunction with sentences and father-son dialogues, are intended to illustrate human behavior. They are the oldest surviving Latin Exempla collection from the Middle Ages, were influential in European literature (such as Bocaccio, Chaucer) and also spread narrative motifs from the Orient. Recently, because of their rather simple Latin, these short stories have found their way into Latin lessons at German grammar schools in an adapted form , where they can be used as initial reading or transitional reading after completing textbook work .

The identification with Peter of Toledo, who was involved in the translation of the Koran on behalf of Petrus Venerabilis together with Robert von Ketton (completed in 1143), is rejected by James Kritzeck.

He was one of the first to bring Arabic knowledge to England, where he had disciples such as Adelard of Bath and Walcher of Malvern . He wrote a translation of the Zij al-Sindhind by al-Chwarizmi in the form of astronomical tables (incorrect and later revised by Adelard von Bath). It can be dated 1116.

His teacher-student dialogue Humanum proficuum is lost (he is quoted in 1208 by Peter of Cornwall).

literature

  • Petri Alfonsi Dialogus . Critical edition with German translation. Edited by Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Darko Senekovic, Thomas Ziegler, translated by Peter Stotz, Firenze: SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo 2018. ISBN 978-88-8450-861-4 .
  • Pietro Alfonsi: The art of living sensibly. disciplina clericalis. Shown and translated from Latin by Eberhard Hermes. Artemis, Zurich et al. 1970, DNB 454563426 . ( The Library of the Orient )
  • Cristiano Leone (ed.); Pietro Alfonsi: Disciplina clericalis. Sapienza orientale e scuola delle novelle. Laura Minervini (foreword). Salerno Editrice, Rome 2010, ISBN 978-88-8402-689-7 .
  • Cristiano Leone (ed.); Pietro Alfonsi: Alphunsus de Arabicis eventibus. Studio ed edizione critica. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome 2011, ISBN 978-88-218-1039-1 . (Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Anno CDVIII-Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. Memorie Series IX - Volume XXVIII - Fascicolo 2)
  • N. Höhl: Petrus Alfonsi. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 6 (2002) Col. 1960 f. (and J. Stohlmann in the 1999 edition)
  • Helmut Quack (ed.): The thief on the moonbeam - Latin stories from East and West. Buchner, Bamberg 1999, ISBN 3-7661-5215-7 . (= Transit, issue 5)
  • Thomas Ricklin: The "Dialogus" of Petrus Alfonsi. An approximation . In: Klaus Jacobi (Ed.): Reading conversations. Philosophical dialogues in the Middle Ages. Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-8233-5425-6 , pp. 139-155.
  • Charles Julian Bishko: Peter the Venerable's Journey to Spain. In: Studia Anselmiana. 40 (1956).
  • John Tolan: Petrus Alfonsi and his medieval readers , Gainesville: University Press of Florida 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information on the life data according to J. Stohlmann, article Petrus Alfonsi in the Lexicon of the Middle Ages
  2. ^ Foreword in his Dialogi
  3. ^ English translation in John Tolan: Petrus Alfonsi and his medieval readers , 1993
  4. Jump up ↑ John Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi, Encyclopedia of Islam, Brill, 2nd edition 2012, online edition
  5. ↑ Stohlmann, Article Petrus Alfonsi, Lexicon of the Middle Ages
  6. ^ Based on Stohlmann, Lexikon des Mittelalters, dated around 1110 to 1120, with 63 known manuscripts.
  7. ↑ Jürgen Stohlmann, Orient-Motive in der Latin Exempla-Literatur of the 12th and 13th centuries, in: Albert Zimmermann, Ingrid Craemer-Ruegenberg (Ed.), Orientalische Kultur und Europäische Mittelalter, De Gruyter 1985, p. 126
  8. ↑ Nicolas Gasoline (Ed.): Contributions to the cultural history of Judaism and the history of medicine, Volume 1, Nicolas Gasoline Foundation, Frankfurt / Main 2009, p. 121.
  9. ↑ James Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam, Princeton UP, 1964, p. 56
personal data
SURNAME Petrus Alfonsi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Petrus Alfunsis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish doctor and astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH 11th century
DATE OF DEATH 12th Century