_Fons Vitae_ of Avicebron, and of
several Aristotelian treatises. The working translators were converted
Jews, the best-known among them being Joannes Avendeath. With this
effort began the chief translating epoch for Arabic works. Avicenna's
_Canon of Medicine_ was first translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona
(d. 1187), to whom versions of other medical and astronomical works are
due. The movement towards introducing Arabian science and philosophy
into Europe, however, culminated under the patronage of the emperor
Frederick II. (1212-1250). Partly from superiority to the narrowness of
his age, and partly in the interest of his struggle with the Papacy,
this _Malleus ecclesiae Romanae_ drew to his court those savants whose
pursuits were discouraged by the church, and especially students in the
forbidden lore of the Arabians. He is said to have pensioned Jews for
purposes of translation. One of the scholars to whom Frederick gave a
welcome was Michael Scot, the first translator of Averroes. Scot had
sojourned at Toledo about 1217, and had accomplished the versions of
several astronomical and physical treatises, mainly, if we believe Roger
Bacon, by the labours of a Jew named Andrew. But Bacon is apparently
hypercritical in his estimate of the translators from the Arabic.
Another protege of Frederick's was Hermann the German (Alemannus), who,
between the years 1243 and 1256, translated amongst other things a
paraphrase of al-Farabi on the _Rhetoric_, and of Averroes on the
_Poetics_ and _Ethics_ of Aristotle. Jewish scholars held an honourable
place in transmitting the Arabian commentators to the schoolmen. It was
amongst them, especially in Maimonides, that Aristotelianism found
refuge after the light of philosophy was extinguished in Islam; and the
Jewish family of the Ben-Tibbon were mainly instrumental in making
Averroes known to southern France.

See S. Munk, _Melanges de philosophie juive et arabe_ (Paris, 1859);
E. Renan, _De Philosophia Peripatetica apud Syros_ (1852), and
_Averroes et l'Averroisme_ (Paris, 3rd ed., 1867); Am. Jourdain,
_Recherches critiques sur l'age et l'origine des traductions latines
d'Aristote_ (Paris, 2^me ed., 1843); B. Haureau, _Philosophie
scolastique_ (Paris, 1850), tome i. p. 359; E. Vacherot, _Ecole
d'Alexandrie_ (1846-1851), tome iii. p. 85; Schmolders, _Documenta
philosophiae Arabum_ (Bonn, 1836), and _Essai sur les ecoles
philosophiques chez les Arabes_ (Paris,