De Cordoue à Byzance

Abstract

The editing of three anonymous Greek texts preserved in theParisinus Suppl. gr.643 allows us to clarify certain ideas on the transmission of knowledge in the Mediterranean during the second half of the 13th century. These texts – an introduction to thePhysicsof Aristotle, one toDe generatione et corruptioneand a page ofMedical Problems– are in fact translations from Latin probably made at Salerno at the end of the Norman period or at the beginning of the Angevin dynasty. They allow us to establish the influence of the Parisian Faculty of Arts on the Sicilian intellectual milieu of the period and to illustrate how, whilst remaining true to its medical vocation, the University of Salerno evolved nonetheless towards a model of general education in the Arts. Finally these texts reveal the considerable influence – both philological and doctrinal – of Arabic learning on the Aristotelian teaching of their author. This very fact, combined with the presence of theParisinusin Byzantium, in an environment of advanced philological learning, a few decades after its composition, leads us to question our understanding of the Palaeologan Renaissance as well as its independence with regard to the Arabo-latin scholarly tradition of the 13th century.