GIOVANNI, AREN DARUT (Johannes Hispanus). - A medieval translator, often confused with G. of Seville (v.). His name is connected with the translation of Avicenna’s philosophical works, carried out in collaboration with Domingo Gundisalvo, around the middle of the 12th century, at Toledo.
He was a Jew, but there is no evidence that he became a Christian. Above all, the bold conjecture of Fr. Alonso, who makes him bishop of Segovia in 1149 and then of Toledo, where he is supposed to have died in 1166, as well as the author of the treatise De anima attributed by Albert the Great to Giovanni, archbishop of Toledo (Sum. theol., 2°, tr. 12, q. 73), seems entirely without foundation.
BIBL.: H. Bedoret, Les premières versions tolédans de philosophie, in Rev. néoscol. de philos., 41 (1938), pp. 390-91; A. G. Palencia, El arzobispo don Raimundo de Toledo, Barcellona 1942, p. 122; M. Alonso, Notas sobre los traductores tolédanos Domingo Gundisalvo y Juan Hispano, in al-Andalus, 8 (1943), pp. 155-188; G. Théry, Tolède grande ville de la renaissance médiévale, Orano 1944, pp. 127-40. Bruno Nardi