Iacobus Veneticus Grecus: Canonist and Translator of Aristotle

Abstract

James the Venetian and Greek is slowly emerging from the darkness which has shrouded his name and personality for seven centuries. He now appears as a learned canonist who would be called upon to give advice on important matters, and as the most active and successful pioneer of Latin Aristotelianism in the tweltfh century. He was probably the first to translate into Latin Aristotle's Physics, De anima, Metaphysics, and parts of the Parva Naturalia; he translated anew, after Boethius, the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topics, and the Sophistici Elenchi; some commentaries on this latter group of works were either written or translated by him; he also rendered into Latin a prologue to the Physics. Ten generations of Latin-speaking scholars and philosophers read the Posterior Analytics almost exclusively in his translation; his versions of the Physics, De anima, three books of the Metaphysics, and some of the Parva Naturalia held the ground almost unchanged for more than a century, and, not substantially revised, for two more centuries. Our philosophical language owes to him many of its technical terms. Hardly anything is known of the circumstances of his life, and only vague hypotheses may be formulated on his possible connections with other learned men of his time, particularly with John of Salisbury. It may well be that his interests developed in the atmosphere of Constantinople, saturated with Aristotelian studies, in or around the university where the pupils of another Graeco-Italian philosopher, Ioannes Italos, were keeping alive and renewing the traditions of the fifth and sixth-century commentators of Aristotle.