GUNDISALVI, Domenico (Gundissalinus). — Spanish philosopher, archdeacon of Segovia, living at the court of the archbishop of Toledo from 1150.
He translated works from Arabic, together with John of Spain (v. GIOVANNI ABEN DAHUT), according to a method mentioned in the accompanying letter of the translation of Avicenna’s De anima to the archbishop of Toledo: John of Spain translated the Arabic word for word into Castilian or Spanish, and G. translated word for word the Castilian into Latin: “me (John of Spain) singula verba vulgariter (that is, in Castilian) proferente et Dominico archidiacono singula in latinum convertente ex arabico translatum.” In this way G. translated works by al-Farabi, al-Ghazali, Avicebron (of the translation of Avicebron’s Fons vitae [Ibn Gabirol] an excellent edition by C. Baeumker, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philos. des Mittellat., I [1891], fasc. II, 111, IV, II). G. was therefore a means of union between the Eastern and Western worlds, which came into contact in recently Christian-conquered Toledo.
But G. contributed to their mutual contacts not only as a translator, but also with personal works, albeit of a popularizing nature. The following are noteworthy: De processione mundi (ed. by M. Menéndez y Pelayo, in Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, I, Madrid 1880, pp. 691-711; ed. by G. Bulow in Beiträge, cit., 24 [1925]); De Unitate (ed. by P. Correns, ibid., I [1891]); De divisione philosophiae (ed. by L. Baur, ibid., 4 [1903]); De anima (partial ed. by A. Löwenthal, Königsberg 1890); De immortalitate animae (ed. by G. Bulow in Beiträge cit., 2 [1897]). Probably this last work is by G. of Auvergne (cf. A. Masnovo, Da Giuglielmo d'Auvergne a s. Tommaso d'Aquino, III, Milano 1945, p. 119-23).
The Eastern world, under the influence of Neoplatonic thought, represented the origin of things from the One through emanationist intermediaries. G., while insisting on the origin of things from God, spoke to the medieval Latin Christian world of a creationist intermediary system: hence arose problems about the possibility, if not the reality, of creation by creatures, both as instrumental and as principal cause. G.’s position, though not strictly in conformity with Christian dogma, brought Eastern and Western thought closer together on the Christianizing platform of the De causis, originally written in Arabic, perhaps by his colleague John of Spain, later translated into Latin in the second half of the 12th century by Gerard of Cremona (another man of the Toledan environment), and commented upon by the most authoritative representatives of medieval Christian thought (cf. A. Masnovo, loc. cit., pp. 1-28).
The work of Toledo, and in particular of G., cannot have been without effect on the Eastern world, since in 1300 the treatise De anima received two (albeit partial) Hebrew translations by two Jewish scholars, Gershon ben Solomon and Hillel of Verona (as is shown by a note by J. Teicher presented by C. A. Nallino to the Accademia nazionale dei Lincei).