Alfred of Shareshel

ALFREDO of SHARESHEL. - Also called Anglico, he was a leading figure in the philosophical-scientific movement of medieval neo-humanism. He made translations from Arabic and knew Greek well, as is evident from some of his quotations from Aristotle; a commentary on the four books of the «Meteorology» (Pelzer) and a work of glosses on the De Anima and the Parva naturalia have also been attributed to him. His principal work is the De motu cordis, a summa of medieval physiology, composed around 1210: it is dedicated to Alessandro Neckam and, after a partial edition by C. S. Barach (Innsbruck 1878), was published in its entirety with unsurpassed expertise by Baeumker in his Beiträge (vol. XXIII, 1-11, Munich 1923). The doctrine is for the most part neo-Platonic in inspiration; nevertheless, notable Aristotelian elements may be observed in it, for example the double definition of the soul (col. 1) and the central function assigned to the heart in the economy of vital needs. He is credited with having enabled science in the Latin West, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, to pass from the mathematical and astronomical phase to that of the predominance of physics and metaphysics.