Gerard of Cremona

GERARD OF CREMONA. - Medieval translator, b. at Cremona in 1114, d. in 1187. He translated scientific and philosophical works from Arabic into Latin and was one of the first and most effective agents of the progressive contact of the Latin Middle Ages with Arab, Hebrew and Greek culture. After completing his early studies in his homeland, he went very young to Toledo and there carried on his activity, first as a disciple, then as a collaborator, and finally as the principal representative of the famous school of translators promoted by Archbishop Raymond.

Among the 70 and more works, philosophical, scientific and mathematical, translated by G., of capital importance for the development of medieval philosophy are Aristotle's Physica, the De coelo et mundo, the first three books of the Meteora (the fourth had already been translated from the Greek by Henry Aristippus, d. 1162), the De gener. et corr., the Anal. post. with the commentary of Themistius, the pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de causis (an Arabic compilation drawn from the Elementatio theologica of Proclus). Constitutive elements of medieval science itself are the translations of Avicenna's Canon medicinae, of Euclid's Elements, of Ptolemy's Almagest (already translated from the Greek, in Sicily, around 1160, whereas G.'s version was completed in 1175). He also translated writings of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Galen, al-Kindi, al-Fārābī, Isaac Israeli, etc.

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