Medieval Jewish-Islamic science (Medicine); medieval Arabic-Hebrew medical terminology

This article presents a brief analysis of the ways in which women’s health care was understood by medieval Jews, as well as how this sphere of medical activity was learned, practised and disseminated among western Jewish communities during the Middle Ages. It examines the paths of transmission and reception of theories and notions of female physiology, health and disease within the Hebrew medical corpus, and analyses the influence of the Arabic and Latin traditions in this process. In connection with the understanding of women’s health care, it pays some attention to adornment and decoration of the body, as part of the technology that focused on intervening in the functioning of the body. It also discusses succinctly the process through which medical ideas and concepts, as well as healing practices, were received, and integrated or refused, by Jews.

This volume which completes the edition of the Arabic text of the Medical Aphorisms covers the following central subjects: the specific properties of medicines (treatise 22), the differences between well-known diseases and the elucidation of medical technical terms (treatise 23), medical curiosities and rare occurrences (treatise 24), and doubts about Galen’s words (treatise 25). Further volumes with the Hebrew translations (by Nathan ha-Me’ati and Zerahyah Hen) of the Medical Aphorisms and an Arabic-Hebrew-Hebrew-English glossary are forthcoming.
The ISBN is 9780842528764.

This paper was read on June 6th 2018 at the Museo delle Religioni 'Raffaele Pettazzoni" during the Congress “Religioni e Medicina. Dall’Antichità all’Età Contemporanea” ( 5 - 9 giugno. 2018).
The paper discusses several medical items in Nachmanides's writings and examines the possibility that Nachmanides himself was a physician. After having sketched the way of becoming a physician in Middle Age Iberia, I expounded what Nachmanides writes about the medical art and its relationship with the faith, the ginecology, the embriology, the bites and the food and the medical ethycs as well.

The Voynich Manuscript was written in the 15th century, and so far to date, no other example, in this form of writing exists in the world. My theory is that it is written in the language of the Khazars, who were believed to be Turkic Jews, living in Greece, and whose written language disappeared around the 13th – 14th centuries. Since it is said that there were no mistakes in the manuscripts writing, I hypothesize that it was possibly hand copied from a previously older version.  Since translating the first page, it was revealed that the person writing was exiled in Greece... now we can identify the plants and what is revealed in medieval medical usage of them. Many of these plants have very disturbing content, so please read at your discretion.

On Hemorrhoids was written for a young man of noble family who was seeking a regimen to deal with this problem. While it is not the first monograph on the subject. Maimonides’ work bears his personal stamp with its emphasis on dietetics, which plays a primary role in so many of his works. He treats the diease of hemorrhoids cautiously, reluctant to resort to more drastic measures such as bleeding and surgery; warns against surgery if the underlying causes of the disease have not been treated; and insists on his personal attendance if the more drastic treatments become necessary. His monograph was very popular during the Middle Ages,  copied in Judeo-Arabic as well as translated into Hebrew and Latin. Giovanni da Capua’s Latin translation was an important source for the discussion of hemorrhoids in Guy de Chauliac’s Inventarium sive Chirurgia Magna

On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs was written in the year 1199 at the request of al-Qadi al-Fadil, the famous counselor and secretary to Saladin. While the subject of poisons and antidotes was often addressed in medieval Arabic medical literature, al-Qadi al-Fadil wanted something a little different — a layman’s handbook of easily obtained antidotes and first aid for victims who might otherwise die before a physician could attend them. Maimonides’ resulting treatise mined the existing literature, his own experience, and the experience of others. It proved very popular and highly influential in both Jewish and non-Jewish circles, being translated at least twice into Hebrew and three times into Latin and quoted by many medieval scholars in their own writings

The medical compendium entitled Zād al-musāfir wa-qūt al-ḥāḍir (Provisions for the Traveller and Nourishment for the Sedentary) and compiled by Ibn al-Jazzār from Qayrawān in the tenth century is one of the most influential handbooks in the history of western medicine. In the eleventh century, Constantine the African translated it into Latin; this translation was the basis for several commentaries compiled from the twelfth century on. The text was also translated into Byzantine Greek and three times into medieval Hebrew. The present volume includes a new critical edition of the Arabic text of books I and II along with an annotated English translation, as well as critical editions of Constantine’s Viaticum and the Hebrew versions by Ibn Tibbon, Abraham ben Isaac, and Do’eg ha-Edomi. Book I is dedicated to aetiology and practical treatment of diseases of the head starting “a capite” with afflictions of the hair and the scalp. Other chapters include headache, vertigo, phrenitis, etc. The most interesting chapter is certainly that on lovesickness. Book II deals with the face and diseases of its organs, such as the eyes, the ears, the nose, and the mouth. For further information, see https://brill.com/view/title/55243?rskey=z0nJAi&result=2

E-Book (PDF) ISBN: 978-90-04-50030-3
Hardcover ISBN: 978-90-04-50029-7
219,00 €, 264,00 $

Nelle enciclopedie di alcuni medici arabi di Baghdad si trova il prototipo dei ravioli, tradotto nel Duecento a Venezia da Giambonino da Cremona nel suo "Liber de ferculis et condimentis". E’ il "sambusuch", sfoglia di pasta riempita con un trito speziato di carni (ma esistente anche nella versione “dolce”), diffusa ancor’oggi tra Iran e Arabia Saudita.

The subject of this article is an eight-page manuscript preserved in the Cairo Genizah (Ms. Cambridge T-S K14.14), which we identified as a fragment of a mid-15th century copy of Abraham Avigdor's Hebrew translation of Gerard de Solo's Practica super nono Almansoris. Besides the edition and translation of the fragment, we discuss the historical and textual background of Abraham Avigdor's work. A special focus of the article lies in the extensive use of Latin and, in particular, Old Occitan medical terminology in Avigdor's text, as evidenced in the fragment. This issue is discussed against the background of the Jewish-Christian contact and collaboration that took place in the medical centers of Southern France during the 14th century.

Everyone has a theory about the Voynich Manuscript… so here is mine.
The Voynich Manuscript was written in the 15th century, and so far to date, no other example, in this form of writing exists in the world. My theory is that it is written in the language of the Khazars, who were Turkic Jews, and whose written language disappeared around the 13th – 14th centuries. Since it is said that there were no mistakes in the manuscripts writing, I hypothesize that it was possibly hand copied from a previously older version.
Back to the Language itself, it is not written in code. By using a simple letter exchange method, you can convert to English letters and then phonetically utilize the Hebrew language to give key root words in an agglutinative language. I first discovered that the He and Cheth, Hebrew letters were very similar to two of the Voynich characters in the manuscript, and from there plugged them into page 14 and worked slowly discovering the alphabet in use.
An agglutinative language combines morphemes to create a new word that still contains the original root words, for example: Some words are quite plain Like ‘achur’ for West, but you have to break down others ‘spquzr’ is “spq” means  entrance + “zr” means to vex awake, hence the word East.
We have similar words in the English language, remember learning about compound words in school.  An example of this in English would be ‘firetruck’.  We all know what a fire truck is, but if you were to decipher from another language you would think it was a ‘truck on fire’. The process works in the Voynich the same way, and changes will be made when new information comes to light, but this is a start in actually being able to interpret and understand what someone wrote, in the “book that cannot be read”.
When deciphering, the language comes out garbled… so first we will use our English language skills to guess and create a more readable understanding of the words, then I’ll show the agglutinative version, and last show how it was phonetically translated.  Any _______ are areas where I could not make out the letters due to erosion, blurry, or just plain missing. Notes on translation pages are just part of my research and theory.
I do hope you enjoy the last paragraph of the Voynich manuscript. I feel this paragraph is the most important as it seems to speak of a Jewish Diaspora and is very revealing.
Monica Yokubinas

The main subjects covered by Maimonides in this volume are: women’s diseases, general regimen of health, physical exercise, bathing, foods, beverages and their consumption (treatises 16-20). Treatise 21 gives a detailed account of ingredients that are harmful or therapeutic, and a list of  265 easily available drugs with their degrees of heat or cold. Maimonides’ main source for these drugs which every physician should know by heart is  Ibn Wāfid’s K. al-adwiya al-mufrada.

Preface

It is my pleasure to offer to the reader this edition of the Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Medical Aphorisms by Nathan Ben Eliezer ha-Meʾati, who was active as a translator of scientific, mainly medical works from Arabic into Hebrew in the city of Rome in the late thirteenth century. Nathan is above all known for his translation of Ibn Sīnā’s K. al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb, which he completed in 1279. While we do not know exactly when he translated Maimonidesʼ Medical Aphorisms, it was probably shortly after the translation prepared by his colleague and fellow citizen Zeraḥyah ben Isaac ben Sheʾaltiel Ḥen, who finished his translation in 1277. Nathan possibly considered Zeraḥyah’s translation to be of inferior quality and hard to consult for the general reader, as it was primarily intended for an Italian public with its close adherence to the Arabic and many Italian and/or Latin loanwords. It seems that history proved Nathan to be right, as Zeraḥyah’s translation survives in seventeen MSS and was only copied in non-Sephardic scripts, ten of which were done in Italian script. This means that his translation was mostly distributed in Italy. Nathan’s translation, on the other hand, survives in not less than twenty-two MSS, seventeen of them written in Sephardic or Provençal script, which means that they were mostly distributed in Spain and Southern France. The variant readings preserved in some of these MSS suggest that at a certain moment (possibly when he had access to better Arabic MSS), Nathan prepared a revision of the earlier translation. Nathan’s translation has been edited in the past, for the first time in Lemberg in 1834, which was reprinted in Vilna in 1888. However, this edition is—as stated by Suessmann Muntner—corrupt and defective beyond recognition. Muntner himself undertook a new edition which he based on MS Paris, BN, héb. 1173. Unfortunately, however, this manuscript suffers from many mistakes and corruptions as I showed in the supplements to the editions of the Arabic text of the Medical Aphorisms.
This new edition is part of a project to critically edit Maimonides’ medical works that have not been edited at all or have been edited in unreliable editions. The project started in 1995 at the University College London with the support of the Wellcome Trust and was continued at the University of Cologne with the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It resulted in the publication of critical editions of Maimonides’ On Asthma (2 vols.), Medical Aphorisms (5 vols.), On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs, On Hemorrhoids, On Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art, On Coitus, On the Regimen of Health, On the Elucidation of Some Symptoms and the Response to Them, and Commentary on Hippocratesʼ Aphorisms. The first ten volumes in the series were published by the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative at Brigham Young’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. From On Coitus on, the publication is continued by E.J. Brill, Leiden.

FRANCO SÁNCHEZ, Francisco; CABELLO GARCÍA, María Sol. Muḥammad Aš-Šafra: el médico y su época. Alicante : Universidad de Alicante, 1990. ISBN 84-86809-95-9, 170 p.  |
Resumen: La figura del médico Muḥammad Aš-Šafra Al-Qirbilyanī representa las contradicciones y dualidades del final del siglo XIII y la primera mitad del siglo XIV en que vivió; originario del señorío musulmán de Crevillente (en la provincia de Alicante), se inició en el uso de la medicina popular con su padre para luego estudiar con un médico cristiano en Valencia, y con otros importantes sabios musulmanes en Granada; fue primeramente farmacólogo, aunque será conocido sobre todo por su obra como cirujano; fue médico popular y al mismo tiempo servirá durante largos años al sultán granadino Naṣr, habitando con él en Guadix. | Abstract: The figure of the physician Muḥammad Aš-Šafra Al-Qirbilyanī represents the contradictions and dualities of the end of the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century in which he lived; originally from the Muslim seigniory of Crevillente (in the province of Alicante), he was initiated in the use of popular medicine by his father and later studied with a Christian physician in Valencia, and with other important Muslim scholars in Granada; He was first of all a pharmacologist, although he will be known above all for his work as a surgeon; he was a popular doctor and at the same time he served the Granada sultan Naṣr for many years, living with him in Guadix  | 
Download: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/7498

Preface

I am happy to offer to the reader this edition of the Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Medical Aphorisms by Zeraḥyah ben Isaac ben Sheʾaltiel Ḥen, also known as Zeraḥyah Gracian. Born in Barcelona, he emigrated at a later date to Italy where he was active in Rome between the years 1277–91 as a teacher of philosophy, commentator of the Bible, and translator. In this capacity, he translated major works in the field of medieval philosophy, such as Aristotle’s De anima, the commentaries of Averroes on Aristotle’s Physica and Metaphysica, and Themistius’ Paraphrase of Aristotle’s De caelo. These translations might have been intended as a sort of Hebrew adaptation of the contents of the Latin Corpus Aristotelicum diffused in Europe from 1250 onwards. As to medical compositions, he translated works by Galen, Ibn Sīnā’s K. al-Qānūn fi al-ṭibb, bks. 1–2, and several works from the hand of Maimonides. These works include: On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs; On Coitus; Commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms; On Hemorrhoids; On the Regimen of Health; and his Medical Aphorisms. His intention with these translations may have been to provide Italian Jewish physicians with a corpus of medical works in Hebrew parallel to the Latin translations of Greek and Arabic medical works. This intention is also clear from the insertion of many loanwords in Latin and/or Italian as they feature in his translation of the Medical Aphorisms that was copied in sixteen manuscripts, most of them in Italian script. Zeraḥyah’s translation has not been edited so far, with the exception of aphorisms 25.59–68, which were edited by Moritz Steinschneider on the basis of MSS Berlin, Preußische Staatsbibliothek, Or. Qu. 512, and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, hebr. 111, and of the entire treatise 25, which was edited by Suessman Muntner on the basis of the latter manuscript.
This edition is part of a project to critically edit Maimonides’ medical works that have not been edited at all or have been edited in unreliable editions. The project started in 1995 at the University College London with the support of the Wellcome Trust and was continued at the University of Cologne with the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It resulted in the publication of critical editions of Maimonides’ On Asthma (2 vols.); Medical Aphorisms (5 vols.); On Poisons and the Protection against Lethal Drugs; On Hemorrhoids; On Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art; On Coitus; On the Regimen of Health; On the Elucidation of Some Symptoms and the Response to Them; and Commentary on Hippocratesʼ Aphorisms. The first ten volumes in the series were published by the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative at Brigham Young’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. From On Coitus on, the publication is continued by E.J. Brill, Leiden.

The terminology in medieval Hebrew medical literature (original works and translations) has been sorely neglected by modern research. Medical terminology is virtually missing from the standard dictionaries of the Hebrew language, including Ha-Millon he-ḥadash, composed by Abraham Even-Shoshan. Ben-Yehuda’s dictionary is the only one that contains a significant number of medical terms. Unfortunately, Ben-Yehuda’s use of the medieval medical texts listed in the dictionary’s introduction is inconsistent at best. The only dictionary exclusively devoted to medical terms, both medieval and modern, is that by A.M. Masie, entitled Dictionary of Medicine and Allied Sciences. However, like the dictionary by Ben-Yehuda, it only makes occasional use of the sources registered in the introduction and only rarely differentiates between the various medieval translators. Further, since Masie’s work is alphabetized according to the Latin or English term, it cannot be consulted for Hebrew terms. The Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, which is currently being created by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, has not been taken into account consistently as it is not a dictionary in the proper sense of the word. Moreover, consultation of this resource suggests that it is generally deficient in medieval medical terminology. The Bar Ilan Responsa Project has also been excluded as a source, despite the fact that it contains a larger number of medieval medical terms than the Historical Dictionary. The present dictionary has two major objectives: 1) to map the medical terminology featured in medieval Hebrew medical works, in order to facilitate study of medical terms, especially those terms that do not appear in the existing dictionaries, and terms that are inadequately represented. 2) to identify the medical terminology used by specific authors and translators, to enable the identification of anonymous medical material.

The Sefer Almansur contains a pharmacopeia of about 250 medicinal ingredients with their Arabic names (in Hebrew characters), their Romance (Old Occitan) and occasionally Hebrew equivalents. The pharmacopeia, which describes the properties and therapeutical uses of simple drugs featured at the end of Book Three of the Sefer Almansur. This work was translated into Hebrew from the Arabic Kitāb al-Manṣūrī (written by al-Rāzī) by Shem Tov ben Isaac of Tortosa, who worked in Marseille in the 13th century.

This consilium was, like the first one, entitled On the Regimen of Health, composed by Maimonides at the request of al-Malik al-Afḍal, Saladin’s eldest son. Possibly because al-Afḍal had not adopted the lifestyle and diet recommended by Maimonides in his first consilium, he continued to suffer from a number of afflictions, amongst them hemorrhoids, depression, constipation, and possibly a heart condition. Although we do not know the exact date of its composition, it was written after On the Regimen of Health as this last work is quoted several times, at a time when Maimonides was old and weak and thus unable to attend to al-Afḍal personally. It is thus probable that it was written not long before the year 1204, when he died, and after 1200, when al-Afḍal was deposed from the regency and banished from Egypt permanently. The original title of the work is unknown and actually it is doutbtful whether it had a title at all. The Arabic title: Maqāla fī bayān ba‘ḍi l-a‘rāḍ wa-l-jawāb ‘anhā only features in MS Bodleian, Hunt. 427, written in a later hand at the top of folio 80b, while at the top of fol. 1a, in the table of contents a later hand has written: Wa-lahu risāla fī bayān ba‘ḍi l-a‘rāḍ wa-jawābiha. The anonymous Hebrew translation, MS Jerusalem Heb. 80 3941 introduces the text as: מאמר ההכרעה הידידיי אחר לרבי משה זצ''ל (The Treatise of Decision; Another Work, offered in a spirit of friendship, by Rabbi Moses, may the memory of the righteous be blessed). The same title recurs in MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Or. qu. 545, fol. 62b, at the end of On the Regimen of Health: יבוא אחר זה המאמר ההכרעה שיש לי בספר אחר... (This is to be followed by the “Book of Decision” which I have in another volume). And in MS Berlin Or. qu. 836, which contains a small selection from the treatise, the text is introduced with: תשובות הרמב''ם ז''ל גדולי התועלת על שאלות פרטיות נשאלו ממנו מאת אחד המלכים להכריע בין דעות הרופאים שהיו נחלקים בהם (Responses of Maimonides of great benefit to private questions posed to him by a certain king, so that he should decide between conflicting opinions of the doctors). In the Latin tradition this consilium by Maimonides was known as “De causis accidentium” following the translation by John de Capua, and it became generally known by this title and the corresponding English translation “On the Causes of Symptoms”.
Contrary to On the Regimen of Health, the first consilium composed by Maimonides for af-Afḍal, this second one did not enjoy great popularity in Jewish circles, as we only have one Arabic manuscript written in Hebrew characters, namely Paris BN hébr. 1202, one anonymous Hebrew translation which only survives in the Jerusalem manuscript mentioned above, and another anonymous translation only surviving in fragments in MS Berlin Or. qu. 836. As early as the fifteenth century the text seems to have been exceedingly rare and sunken into oblivion, as the scribe of the fragmentary Hebrew manuscript Or. 836 exclaims: “See, this is all I found of the great Rabbi, Rabbi Moses, of blessed memory: I looked for more but could not find it.” A possible reason for the obscurity of this consilium is that unlike On the Regimen of Health it is not a general health guide intended for both the noble patient as well as a more general public, for it is a letter which only addresses the individual special complaints of al-Afḍal and the recommendations made by other physicians for his treatment.
The Arabic text of this consilium has been edited in the past by Hermann Kroner on the basis of two Arabic manuscripts, namely Bodl., Poc. 313 (in Arabic letters) and Bodl. Poc. 280 (in Hebrew letters). However, his edition suffers from mistakes and incorrect readings, which can be partly explained by the defective state of MS Bodl. Poc. 313, which was the only complete manuscript he had access to and was thus used by him for establishing the basic text. Kroner’s edition has been reproduced by Martin Plessner in Leibowitz-Marcus, Moses Maimonides on the Causes of Symptoms, with a few corrections of the corrupt basic text. This “edition” is thus still based on the corrupt Poc. 313 manuscript, although Plessner recognised the need for a complete revision and revised critical apparatus. The anonymous Hebrew translation, MS Jerusalem Heb. 80 3941 has been reproduced by Leibowitz-Marcus  in a facsimile edition whereby only some of the numerous corruptions and mistakes have been corrected in the critical apparatus. The second fragmentary anonymous Hebrew translation, MS Berlin, Or. qu 836, was edited by Kroner as part of his edition of the Arabic text, but suffers from several editorial mistakes.
Beside these editions of the Arabic and Hebrew text, Kroner provided a German translation of the same work. A new German translation was published by Süssman Muntner, who also translated the work into Hebrew. Muntner’s Hebrew translation and the edition by Leibowitz-Marcus were the basis for the English translation produced by Rosner. An English translation based on all the extant Arabic manuscripts and also consulting the anonymous Hebrew translation, MS Berlin, and the Latin translation was made by Bar Sela, Hoff and Faris. This translation has been reproduced by Leibowitz-Marcus. As this translation is generally accurate, and only suffers from occasional mistakes and omissions, I have consulted it extensively for my own translation, for which opportunity I am very grateful.

This presentation has been read on June 6 at the Convegno "“Religioni e Medicina. Dall’Antichità all’Età Contemporanea” (Velletri dal 5 al 9 giugno 2018) at the Museo delle Religioni “Raffaele Pettazzoni”.

I have discussed against the background of the history of Medieval medicine the medical items being in Nachmanides' writings (concerning the ginecology, the food, the bites of animals and so on) and the possibility that Nachmnides himself was a physician (part time or full time). I have discussed at lenght how Nachmanides saw the relationship between the medicine, the Jewish faith and the task of the physician.

This article concerns medico-botanical synonym lists compiled by Jews in  the  period  from  the  13th  to  the  15th  centuries.  More  particularly,  the  article  presents, for the first time, an overview of such lists containing lexical material in  Catalan  written  in  Hebrew  letters.  After  a  summary  of  Jewish  medicine  and  the  translation  activities  of  Jews  in  Catalonia  and  Aragon,  the  article  first  deals  with  the  state  of  research  in  the  field  of  medical  glossaries  and  synonym  lists  in Hebrew script, mentioning all glossaries and lists known to date that contain lexical items in Catalan. These appear in the context of Arabic medico- botanical terms, which provide the lemmas or appear as equivalents to the Catalan or other Romance  or  Latin  terms.  The  reason  for  the  existence  of  this  kind  of  list  is  that  the Jews continued to study and practice Arabic medicine even after having left Al-Andalus. The main part of the article is dedicated to the Arabic-Catalan glossary  of  Ms.  Parma,  Biblioteca  Palatina  2279  (ff.  280v–286r),  of  which  the  first  20 entries are edited and commented upon with respect to the lexical items contained therein. The article finishes with a summary and some perspectives.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~mhgreen/healthanddisease2012/index.html
“Health and Disease in the Middle Ages” was a five-week Seminar for College and University Teachers held June 24-July 28, 2012, in London, England. Based at the Wellcome Library—the world's premier research center for medical history—this Seminar gathered scholars from across the disciplines interested in questions of health, disease, and disability in medieval Europe. Support for this Seminar came from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS).

We explored how the new scientific technologies of identifying pathogens (particularly leprosy and plague) could inform traditional, humanistic methods (historical, literary, art historical, and linguistic) of understanding cultural responses to disease and disability. Reciprocally, we also explored how traditional, humanistic studies of medieval medicine could inform modern scientific studies of disease, which were developing at a rapid pace thanks to new methods of DNA retrieval and analysis.

Special emphasis wasmplaced on assisting participants with independent research projects relating to the History of Medicine, especially—but not restricted to—those based on unpublished primary sources.

The present book reveals the riches of the earliest known astrological autobiography, authored by Henry Bate of Mechelen (1246–after 1310). Exploiting all resources of contemporary astrological science, Bate conducts in his Nativitas a profound self-analysis, revealing the peculiarities of his character and personality at a crucial moment of his life (1280). The result is an extraordinarily detailed and penetrating attempt to decode the fate of one’s own life and its idiosyncrasies. The Astrological Autobiography of a Medieval Philosopher offers the first critical edition of Bate’s Nativitas. An extensive introduction presents Bate’s life and work and sheds new light on the reception and use of Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew texts among scholars in Paris at the end of the 13th century. The book thus provides a major new resource for scholars working on medieval science, autobiography, and notions of personhood and individuality.