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  • Twelfth-century Cosmography, the De secretis philosophie, and Māshā’allāh (Attr. to), Liber de Orbe
  • Barbara Obrist

The Liber de orbe, attributed to Māshā’allāh (fl. 762–ca. 815) in the list of Gerard of Cremona’s translations, 1 stands out as one of the few identifiable sources for the indirect knowledge of Peripatetic physics and cosmology at the very time Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy themselves were translated into Latin, from the 1130s onward. 2 This physics is expounded in an opening series of chapters on the bodily constitution of the universe, while the central section of the treatise covers astronomical subjects, and the remaining parts deal with meteorology and the vegetal realm. Assuming that Gerard of Cremona’s translation of the Liber de orbe corresponds to the twenty-seven chapter version that circulated especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 3 it was, however, not this version, but a forty-chapter expansion thereof that became influential as early as the 1140s. It may have originated in Spain, as indicated, among others, by a reference to the difference of visibility of a [End Page 235] lunar eclipse between Spain and Mecca. 4 Unlike the twenty-seven chapter Liber de orbe, 5 this expanded and also partly modified text remains in manuscript, and none of the three copies known so far gives a title or mentions Māshā’allāh as an author. Instead, the thirteenth-century witness that is now in New York attributes the work to an Alcantarus: Explicit liber Alcantari Caldeorum philosophi. 6 While no Arabic original of the twenty-seven chapter Liber de orbe has come to light yet, Taro Mimura of the University of Manchester recently identified a manuscript that partly corresponds to the forty-chapter Latin text, as well as a shorter version thereof. 7

The Dragmaticon philosophiae, written by William of Conches between 1147 and 1149 at the court of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, represents a first as well as precisely datable testimony to the circulation of the long version of the Liber de orbe. From it, William adapted, above all, astronomical chapters on the movements of Saturn and chapters proving the sphericity of the earth, 8 while rejecting [End Page 236] its theory of a fifth, inalterable celestial element. 9 Yet in this ultimate work of his he adopted the Peripatetic theory of local movement together with its sharp distinction between the rectilinear natural movement of infralunar elementary bodies and the circular movement of the celestial element, possibly relying at least in part on the Liber de orbe. 10

To William of Conches’s testimony of an early circulation of the long version of the Liber de orbe can be added that of another twelfth-century document, which has variously been entitled both in manuscripts and by historians Apex phisice and Tractatus compendiosus de philosophia et eius secretis. In the present article, preference will be given to the short version of the second title, De secretis philosophie. 11 The impact the Liber de orbe had on the anonymous author of this rather extensive work is of a very different nature than the one on William of Conches. While the philosopher from Conches was interested in its astronomy, which he integrated into the Platonic cosmological frame of the Latin school tradition, the author of De secretis philosophie unconditionally adopts both the Peripatetic heavenly and the corresponding infralunar physics of the Liber de orbe. 12 By contrast, his knowledge of, or interest in, astronomy is extremely limited and derived almost exclusively from the Liber de orbe.

So far, De secretis philosophie has not prompted any more in-depth research than the long version of the Liber de orbe, despite the fact that, unlike the latter, it is available in a printed transcription. 13 In all likelihood, De secretis philosophie originated at least in part in the context of a Norman court, albeit not in Normandy, as is the case with William of Conches’s Dragmaticon philosophiae, but in southern Italy. Indeed, book 2 addresses a “Domine Roberte, dei gratia cancellari regis Ytalie,” 14 and [End Page 237] this Robert can hardly have been anybody...

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