Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers by John Tolan (review)

78BOOK REVIEWS degenerates to an anti-Western and a pro-Turkish propaganda. It may very well express the personal opinion and the highly biased views of its author, but it has nothing to offer to the scholar, the historian, the educated average reader, the undergraduate, or the graduate student. Spiridonakis has failed to take advantage of authoritative modern scholarly works; he has carried out no original research ofhis own; he has not even consulted the primary sources; and he is guilty of making factual errors. The less said about this pamphlet, the better. Mr. Spiridonakis is to be congratulated for having successfully seen his work through the readers of the Institute of Balkan Studies. Unfortunately, it is the sad duty of this reviewer to report that the work in question has so many short-comings that it cannot be recommended to any intelligent reader. It is a subjective pamphlet, amounting to a polemic, that contributes nothing to our knowledge of medieval history. Marios Phiuppides University ofMassachusetts, Amherst Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. By John Tolan. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 1993- Pp. xvi, 288. «34.95.) Few details are known of the life of Petrus Alfonsi, a convert from Judaism, who after emigrating from Spain entered the service of Henry I of England and later settled in France. Nevertheless Alfonsi played a major role in introducing Latin Christianity to the philosophical and scientific wisdom of the Islamic world. Alfonsi typified the interplay of faith and reason in twelfth-century Europe. His Dialogi contra Iudaeos argued that Judaism was at odds with reason and that many stories in the Talmud were ridiculous. While providing his readers with an accurate summation of Muslim doctrine, he condemned Islam in the strongest terms, describing Muhammad as a false prophet and his religion as wholly irrational and superstitious. Christianity was preferable to bothJudaism and Islam, because its doctrines (including the Trinity) were in harmony with reason. Alfonsi digressed at some length to discuss Arabic science, arguing for example that the world was round, not flat. His translation and adaptation of al-Khwarizmi's astronomical tables, however, was full of errors. Tolan makes the point that Alfonsi's conclusions were not grounded on experimentation and observation, but were deduced from certain fundamental premises. Alfonsi's other great work, theDisciplina clericalis, is a collection of thirtyfour fables drawn from oriental sources, intended to explicate moral principles presented by the teacher or philosopher to his pupil. Alfonsi's purpose was clearly didactic, even though he included some humorous or bawdy tales. BOOK REVIEWS79 Aside from the careful summary of Alfonsi's main ideas, Tolan's book is especially valuable because he demonstrates how later generations used Alfonsi as an authority. The number of surviving manuscripts (about 160) of the Dialogi and the Disciplina clericalis testifies to Alfonsi's popularity especially in England and northern France. The Victorines found Alfonsi's ideas on Judaism helpful for their exegesis of the Old Testament. Others, such as Roger Bacon, were attracted by his scientific contributions. Most, however, found in his Dialogi an arsenal of anti-Jewish and anti-Islamic arguments and shaped his work to their own purposes. Vincent of Beauvais, for example, eliminated the dialogue form and turned the Dialogi into a straightforward attack on Judaism. In like manner Jacques de Vitry recounted many of the stories in the Disciplina clericalis. Tolan provides us with the first Latin edition and English translation of Alfonsi's Epístola ad Peripatéticos, a treatise chastising French scholars for their smug refusal to receive the more up-to-date scientific knowledge that he was prepared to impart. A descriptive catalogue of extant manuscripts of the Dialogi and the Disciplina clericalis and a discussion of other works attributed to Alfonsi are included in the appendices. Illustrations of Alfonsi's map of the world, the orbit of the sun, and the climates are noteworthy. Despite some repetition, Tolan's study places Petrus Alfonsi firmly in our perspective as an essential intellectual connection between the Islamic and Christian worlds of the twelfth century. Joseph F. O'Callaghan Fordham University The Language of Sex. Five Voices from Northern France around 1200. By John W. Baldwin. [The...