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Theodore of Antioch (philosopher)

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The name of Theodore underlined in the prologue of his translation De scientia venandi per aves, from Beinecke MS 446

Theodore of Antioch (fl. 1226–1243) was a Syrian Orthodox philosopher, physician and astrologer from Antioch who served Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, as a scholar and diplomat from about 1230 until his death.

Theodore was knowledgeable in Arabic, Syriac and Latin, having studied in both Christian and Islamic milieus in Antioch, Mosul and Baghdad. He served the Seljuk sultanate of Rum and the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia for a time in the 1220s, but found greater success in the service of Frederick, primarily in Italy, where the emperor rewarded him with lands.

Theodore cast a horoscope for Frederick on at least one occasion; engaged in public debate with Dominican philosophers; prepared therapeutic concoctions for the emperor and for his friends; and wrote diplomatic correspondence in Arabic for the emperor. He corresponded with Piero della Vigna about the latter's health and with Leonardo Fibonacci about mathematics. He made several Latin translations from Arabic, including some of Averroes' commentary on Aristotle and the De scientia venandi per aves, a book about falconry. His longest original work and othe only one to survive is a treatise on health addressed to the emperor.

According to Bar Hebraeus, when Theodore tried to quite Frederick's service without leave and was nearly found out, he committed suicide by poison. His fame was such that he appears in several fictionalizing works from later in the 13th century as a conduit of knowledge from East to West.

Life

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Antioch, Mosul, Baghdad

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Theodore was born in Antioch, the capital of the Principality of Antioch, probably in the 1190s.[1][2] He was Syrian Orthodox, but of his family background nothing is known.[2] The only source on his early life and education is Bar Hebraeus's Mukhtaṣar taʾrīkh al-duwal, where he is called "the wise Theodore" (al-ḥakīm Thādhūrī).[3]

Theodore learned Syriac and Latin in Antioch, where he also studied ancient Greek philosophy. He later moved to Mosul, where he studied under the Muslim scholar Kamal al-Din ibn Yunus [fr][a] the works of al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Euclid and Ptolemy. He returned to Antioch for a time before going back to Mosul. He later studied medicine in Baghdad.[5] He probably finished his education about 1220.[1] He may have taught for a time in Jerusalem, where the Melkite scholar Ya'qub ibn Saqlan studied under him,[2] but Bar Hebraeus' chronology on this point is not reliable and he may have conflated two Theodores.[6]

Theodore served Kayqubad I, sultan of Rum (r. 1219–1237),[2] "but he found him strange and did not become close to him", in the words of Bar Hebraeus.[7] He then moved to the court of Constantine of Baberon, regent (r. 1221–1226)[2] for Queen Isabella of Armenia and father of King Hethum I, "but he did not enjoy their company".[8] He left Armenia with an envoy from the Emperor Frederick sometime before 1230.[2] The most likely occasion for an otherwise unrecorded embassy from Frederick to Armenia is during the preparations for the Sixth Crusade (1228–1229).[9]

Court of Frederick II

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The only sources for Theodore's career at Frederick's court are Latin writings from the West, although Bar Hebraeus records that Frederick gave him a fief in Sicily called Kamaha.[1][2] One act of Frederick's refers to the place called Santa Cristina and the village of Prancanica as having been granted to Theodore for life.[1]

In the Latin sources, Theodore is frequently given the title magister (master). He is also called imperialis philosophus (imperial philosopher), an unprecedented court title in the West, but one with parallels in the Islamic world.[2] Western sources almost always call Theodore a philosopher (philosophus). This is the term Theodore uses to describe himself and it is the term the emperor uses to describe him.[10] Bar Hebraeus also calls him a ḥakīm and failasūf, two Arabic terms meaning 'philosopher'.[11]

In practice, Theodore served Frederick as a physician, astrologer, diplomat and amanuensis for diplomatic correspondence in Arabic.[12][13] According to a late source, the chronicle of Antonio Godi, Frederick had his horoscope cast after the siege of Vicenza in 1236. The astrologer in question may have been Theodore.[14][15] According to Étienne de Salagnac, Theodore stumped several Dominicans with philosophical arguments in Frederick's camp at the siege of Brescia in 1238 before Roland of Cremona showed up and defeated him in a debate.[16] Another of Theodore's detractors, Rolandino of Padua, claims that in Padua in 1239 Theodore cast the emperor's horoscope standing atop a tower and using an astrolabe.[16][17] According to Rolandino, who critiques his astrological knowledge, he predicted that Frederick would emerge victorious from his latest conflict.[16][18] Rolandino is the only source to describe Theodore explicitly as an astrologer.[10] Nevertheless, several scholars have seen him as Michael Scot's successor as court astrologer.[18][19]

In December 1239, Frederick put a ship at Pisa at Theodore's service. The latter was returning from a trip abroad, perhaps on diplomatic business.[20] In February 1240, Frederick sent him blank documents with his seal so that he could write accreditations in Arabic for two ambassadors to the king of Tunis, Abu Zakariya Yahya, to discuss the matter of the king's detained nephew, Abd al-Aziz.[20][19] That same month he requested syrups and "violet sugar" or "sugar of violet" from Theodore, seemingly for therapeutic purposes.[21] Petrus Hispanus, the author of the ophthalmological work Liber de oculo, claims Theodore as his teacher and as "the emperor's physician".[22] A document of March 1243 records the holding of a vineyard in Messina by Theodore, "the emperor's philosopher".[17]

Theodore was dead by November 1250, when Frederick granted his lands to others.[23] Bar Hebraeus gives an account his death. Theodore, having pined for his homeland for many years, boarded a ship for Acre without imperial permission.[24] When a stormed forced the ship into a port where Frederick was staying, he took poison out of shame "because the king would not have allowed someone like him to be killed".[11]

Works

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Theodore was in contact with the mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci, who called him "the supreme philosopher of the imperial court".[25] Fibonacci attached two letters addressed to Theodore to the end of his Flos and Liber quadratorum.[17] In one of them, he correctly solves a mathematical problem posed to him by Theodore. For what integer values of x, y and z is each of the following sums the square of an integer:[1]

The same problem is found in a work by Theodore's teacher, Ibn Yunus.[26]

Epistola Theodori philosophi ad imperatorem Fridericum

A letter from Theodore to Piero della Vigna and Piero's response are preserved in a collection of Piero's letters. In his letter, Theodore informs the ill Piero that he is sending him "violet sugar".[27]

From Arabic into Latin he translated Averroes' introduction to his larger commentary on Aristotle's Physics for the scholars of the University of Padua, possibly during his stay in Padua in 1239.[13][17] He also translated a treatise on falconry, known under the Latin title De scientia venandi per aves. The emperor revised his translation during the siege of Faenza in 1240–1241.[27][28] He may be the translator of another work on falconry, the Ghatrif.[17]

Theodore's only original work to survive ouside of his regular correspondence is his Epistola Theodori philosophi ad imperatorem Fridericum, a treatise on a healthy regimen addressed to the emperor.[13] Its date is uncertain.[17] Its modern editor, Karl Sudhoff, praised its learning and style as preeminent among contemporary medical works.[29] It relies heavily on the Secretum secretorum,[b] a copy of which Theodore knows that the emperor owns, but diverges from its recommendations in certain respects.[12][20]

Fictions

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The false letter of al-Kindi to Theodore

Theodore appears as a minor figure in the prologue of the Book of Sydrac, a 13th-century French philosophical novel that purports to be a translation of an ancient text.[27][31] Theodore's name is spelled Todre (or Codre) and he is called a philosophe.[27][12][32] The prologue claims that Todre, who was in Frederick's service, acquired through bribery a copy of the book and sent it to the Latin patriarch of Antioch, Obert (probably Alberto Rizzato).[27][31] The identification of Todre with Bar Hebraeus' Thādhūrī was already made by Moritz Steinschneider in 1886.[33] It cannot be excluded that some truth lies behind the references to Theodore and Alberto in an otherwise fictional frame story.[31] It is the only Western source that describes Theodore as coming from Antioch.[2][10]

Theodore is mentioned in the astrological compendium Liber novem iudicum, which claims that "the Great Caliph sent Master Theodore to the same Emperor Frederick."[34] Although Theodore cannot have had any connection with the sending of an Arabic version of Liber novem iudicum to Frederick, it is possible that the claim reflects the fact that Theodore was sent to Frederick as part of a diplomatic exchange.[9]

Theodore is the addressee of a fictional letter from al-Kindi that includes legends about Alexander the Great in Central Asia. While chronological impossible and clearly invented, the letter "may have reflected a belief that Theodore ... continued to receive missives from oriental sages" while in Europe.[35]

Notes

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  1. ^ During the Sixth Crusade, Frederick II sent questions to Sultan al-Kamil and the sultan passed them on to Ibn Yunus.[4]
  2. ^ The Secretum was translated from Arabic in Antioch by Philip of Tripoli sometime before 1230. The earliest citation of this translation in Europe is in the writings of Michael Scot and it probably arrived at Frederick's court in the period 1228–1235.[30]

References

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Citations

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  1. ^ a b c d e Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 167.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Minervini 2019.
  3. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 165.
  4. ^ Burnett 2016, pp. 230–231.
  5. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, pp. 165–166.
  6. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, pp. 172–173.
  7. ^ Burnett 2016, pp. 228 and 231–232.
  8. ^ Burnett 2016, pp. 228 and 232–233.
  9. ^ a b Burnett 2016, p. 233.
  10. ^ a b c Burnett 2016, p. 227.
  11. ^ a b Burnett 2016, p. 229.
  12. ^ a b c Van Cleve 1972, p. 310.
  13. ^ a b c Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 168.
  14. ^ Huillard-Bréholles 1859, p. DXXXI.
  15. ^ Burnett 2016, p. 227 n7.
  16. ^ a b c Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 171.
  17. ^ a b c d e f Burnett 2016, p. 226.
  18. ^ a b Haskins 1922, p. 673.
  19. ^ a b Abulafia 1988, p. 263.
  20. ^ a b c Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 169.
  21. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 170; Van Cleve 1972, p. 310: zucaro violaceo.
  22. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 168: medicus imperatoris.
  23. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 172, suggest that he died several years earlier, but Minervini 2019 believes that he died in 1249 or 1250.
  24. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 172.
  25. ^ Van Cleve 1972, p. 310; Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 167: imperialis aule sume phylosophe.
  26. ^ Burnett 2016, p. 231.
  27. ^ a b c d e Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 170.
  28. ^ Van Cleve 1972, pp. 310, 312.
  29. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 168, citing Sudhoff 1915.
  30. ^ Burnett 2016, p. 230.
  31. ^ a b c Burnett 2016, pp. 227–228.
  32. ^ Minervini 2019 gives the spelling Thodre le phillosophe. Haskins 1922, p. 673, spells it Todre li phylosophes.
  33. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, p. 173.
  34. ^ Burnett 1984, p. 155.
  35. ^ Kedar & Kohlberg 2013, pp. 170–171.

Bibliography

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  • Abulafia, David (1988). Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor. Allen Lane.
  • Burnett, Charles F. S. (1984). "An Apocryphal Letter from the Arabic Philosopher al-Kindi to Theodore, Frederick II's Astrologer, Concerning Gog and Magog, the Enclosed Nations, and the Scourge of the Mongols". Viator. 15: 151–167. doi:10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301438.
  • Burnett, Charles F. S. (2016). "Master Theodore, Frederick II's Philosopher". Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context. Variorum Collected Studies Series. Routledge. pp. 225–285. [Originally published in Federico II e le Nuove Culture: Atti del XXXI Convegno Storico Internazionale, Todi, 9–12 ottobre, 1994 (Spoleto: 1995).]
  • Haskins, Charles H. (1922). "Science at the Court of the Emperor Frederick II". The American Historical Review. 27 (4): 669–694. JSTOR 1837535.
  • Huillard-Bréholles, Jean Louis Alphonse (1859). Historia diplomatica Friderici Secundi: preface et introduction. Paris.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Kedar, Benjamin Z.; Kohlberg, Etan (2013) [1997]. "The Intercultural Career of Theodore of Antioch". In Benjamin Arbel (ed.). Intercultural Contacts in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of David Jacoby. Routledge. pp. 164–176.
  • Minervini, Laura (2019). "Teodoro di Antiochia". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 95: Taranto–Togni (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
  • Minervini, Laura (2005). "Teodoro di Antiochia". Enciclopeda Federiciana. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.
  • Sudhoff, Karl (1915). "Ein diätetischer Brief an Kaiser Friedrich II. von seinem Hofphilosophen Magister Theodorus". Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin. 9 (1): 1–9. JSTOR 20773110.
  • Van Cleve, Thomas C. (1972). The Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Immutator Mundi. Clarendon Press.
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