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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century: a bibliographical approach

to Renaissance philosophy
Author(s): Jill Kraye
Source: Renaissance Studies , JUNE 1995, Vol. 9, No. 2, Incunabula: Books, Texts and
Owners (JUNE 1995), pp. 189-211
Published by: Wiley

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Renaissance Studies Vol. 9 No. 2

The printing history of Aristotle in the


fifteenth century: a bibliographical
approach to Renaissance philosophy
Jill Kraye

When I was asked to speak at the Bodleian Library conference on 'In


cunabula: Books, Texts, Owners', I had no trouble deciding on a topic.
As a historian of Renaissance philosophy, I was well aware that Aristotle
had held a commanding position in the fifteenth century, and indeed
well beyond; and that this predominance was reflected in the enormous
volume and variety of incunable editions of his works. Although the
printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century was consequently a
huge subject, I knew that some of the finest scholars in my field - Lorenzo
Minio-Paluello, Eugenio Garin, F. Edward Cranz and above all Charles
Schmitt - had laid the groundwork for such a study.1 Equally, if not more
importantly, I was relying on the fact that Aristotle begins with an 'A',
and that therefore the awkward bibliographical problems would by now
have been sorted out in modern incunable catalogues, virtually all of
which, including the new Bodleian catalogue, have at least covered the
first letter of the alphabet.2 With the bibliographical preliminaries out of
the way, I assumed that I would be able to concentrate on analysing the
data from the perspective of the history of Renaissance philosophy.
This proved to be a naive assumption, as I discovered when I tried to
find the answer to a fundamental and seemingly straightforward ques
tion: how many editions of Aristotle were printed in the fifteenth century?
On the face of it, all I needed to do was to count the number of entries

1 Among the relevant works by these authors are: L. Minio-Paluello, Opuscula: The Latin
Aristotle (Amsterdam, 1972); E. Garin, 'Le traduzioni umanistiche di Aristotele nel secolo XV', Atti
e memorie dell'Accademia fiorentina discienze morali 'La Colombaria', 16 (1947-50), 55-104; F. E.
Cranz, 'The publishing history of the Aristotle commentaries of Thomas Aquinas', Traditio, 34
(1978), 157-92; C. B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass., 1983). For the six
teenth century there is, of course, F. E. Cranz, A Bibliography of Aristotle Editions 1501-1600, 2nd
edn with addenda and revisions by C. B. Schmitt, Bibliotheca Bibliographica Aureliana, 38*
(Baden-Baden, 1984).
2 The Biblioteca Ambrosiana catalogue is an example of an enterprise that expired before
reaching 'B': Gli incunaboli dell'Ambrosiana (Vicenza, 1972), I. Though most modern incunable
catalogues follow alphabetical order, J. Walsh, A Catalogue of the Fifteenth-Century Printed Books
in the Harvard University Library (Binghamton, 1991- ) is arranged in Proctor order, that is,
according to the chronological spread of printing from town to town within individual countries,
beginning, of course, with Germany.

© 199.5 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Oxford University Press

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190 Till Krave

under Aristotle in the G


yet in the Incunable Sh
database, in which reco
the computer. After su
to be printed after 150
Aristotelian,4 I came up
near the actual total of f
place, not all editions of
Francesco Filelfo's tran
Alexandrum, for instanc
but always in editions o
Latin version of the Mag
Aristotle,6 but it was als
tions from the Greek
catalogued under Niceph
the volume.7 Valla's ve
translation, made its on
collection." No other Latin translations of the Poetics or of the Rhetorica
ad Alexandrum were published in the incunable period,9 and both texts
were left out of the Greek Aldine Aristotle.10 This means that anyone who
looks under Aristotle as a heading in GW or ISTC, assuming - as many
people do - that this represents a complete record of Aristotle editions,

3 Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Leipzig, 1926), II, 552-669 (nos. 2334-2498). See Cranz and
Schmitt, Bibliography, XI ('Introduction to the Original Edition'): 'The printing history of the fif
teenth century, for editions and translations [of Aristotle], is now to be found in the Gesamtkatalog
der Wiegendrucke.'
* For instance, GW places the Parva logicalia - a much amplified version of the final section of
Peter of Spain's Summulae logicales - under Aristotle (nos. 2394-5); this mistake has been corrected
in ISTC. GW also originally catalogued Leonardo Bruni's Isagogicon moralis disciplinae as a
translation of the Eudemian Ethics, though this is now corrected under Bruni, resulting in double
entries (GW 2384-6 = 5614, 5616-17).
3 It appears in the following editions of Filelfo's Orationes et opuscula: Milan, 1483-4
(H 12919*); Brescia, 1488 (H 12922*); Venice, 1491 (HC 12923*); Venice, 1492 (HC 12924*);
Venice, 1496 (HC 12925*); Basle, not after 1498 (HC 12918*). I will normally give the GW number
for incunable editions cited in this article; but for those editions not yet covered by GW, I will use the
numbers assigned to them either by Hain (H): L. Hain, Repertorium bibliographicum ... (2 vols.,
Stuttgart and Paris, 1826-38); Hain-Copinger (HC): W. A. Copinger, Supplement to Hain's Reper
torium bibliographicum (London, 1895), pt I; or Copinger (C): W. A. Copinger, Supplement to
Hain's Repertorium bibliographicum (2 vols, and addenda, London, 1898-1902), pt II.
6 Aristotle, Opera (Venice, 1496: GW 2341); Aristotle, Decern librorum moralium très conver
siones . . . (Paris, 1497: GW 2359). The Greek text is printed in volume V of the Aldine Aristotle
(Venice, 1498: GW 2334).
' Nicephorus Blemmydes, Logica . . . (Venice, 1498: HC 11748*).
' His translation of De caelo was also printed in this volume. See Minio-Paluello, Opuscula,
483-500, at p. 494.
9 Herman the German's Latin version of Averroes' commentary on the Poetics was, however,
printed in Aristotle, Rhetorica (Venice, 1481: GW 2478); and Johannes Argyropulos' translation of
the prefatory letter of Aristotle to Alexander from the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum was included in
Aristotle, Opera (Venice, 1496: GW 2341).
10 The Greek texts of the Poetics and Rhetorica ad Alexandrum were first printed in the Aldine
Rhetores graeci (Venice, 1508).

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The hunting history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 191

will get the mistaken impression that there were no fifteenth-century


printings of either of these treatises.
It is possible to get round this difficulty by consulting those incunable
catalogues which - with varying degrees of thoroughness and consistency
- make use of cross-referencing. '1 The new Bodleian catalogue will in
stead have an analytical author index, but this will not be compiled until
they have finished their work on the entire collection. A more efficient
method than this piecemeal approach is to search ISTC on-line, asking
for all occurrences of the word 'Aristotle'. This is a particularly conve
nient procedure if, like me, you happen to be married to an editor of
ISTC; for the less fortunate, it can be accomplished through any library
that has a subscription to BLAISE; and in the near future the database
will be available on CD-ROM. An ISTC search made in the first half of
1994 produced a rather daunting list of 535 records. Many of these (such
as works ascribed to the 'Printer of Aristotle . . .', etc.) can be quickly
weeded out, but others are more problematic; for, apart from picking up
items like the Valla translation of the Poetics, the search located treatises
dealing with Aristotelian philosophy, as well as commentaries on the
works of Aristotle. While the former can be eliminated, since they almost
never contain texts, the latter cannot, because commentaries are often
accompanied by the text of the work which they comment upon.12 Trying
to discover which Aristotelian commentaries were printed together
with texts, and if so, in which Latin translations, leads one into a
bibliographical wilderness, where signposts are few and far between and a
decent map is nowhere to be found.
To give some idea of the scale of the problem, the ISTC Aristotle
search turned up 282 works which, by their titles, could be plausibly iden
tified as commentaries - a considerably larger number than the 157 items
listed under Aristotle himself. Of the 282 commentaries, twenty-seven
were said to be accompanied by texts (although the translations were not
always specified) and three were described as sine textu. The records for
the remaining 252 commentaries gave no indication as to whether they
were printed with lemmata only or with the complete text. Absence of in
formation about a text by no means indicates that the text itself is absent.
The best modern incunable catalogues describe in detail all the works
printed in a volume and identify which translations are used;13 but others

" Even those catalogues which attempt to follow a consistent policy of cross-referencing some
times leave gaps: Bibliothèque nationale: Catalogue des incunables (CIBN) (Paris, 1981- ), for
example, does not cross-reference editions of Filelfo's Orationes et opuscula (P—323-7) under
Aristotle, even though they all contain his translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Rhetorica ad
Alexandrum: see n. 5 above.
12 Commentaries which do not include some form of Aristotle's name in the title (e.g. Expositio in
libros Posteriorum) will not be picked up by such a search unless the cataloguers have inserted it.
13 These include: CIBN; D. Hillard, Catalogues régionaux des incunables des bibliothèques
publiques de France (Paris, 1989), VI: Bibliothèque Mazarine; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek In

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192 Jill Kraye
give only author and title, which,
taries, is insufficient.14
Further problems arise from the w
have traditionally been catalogued.
editions of a commentary to prov
printed the entire Aristotelian text.1
that the same work is catalogued in
mentator when it is printed with lem
it contains the complete text." Tho
appeared in print accompanied by
Take, for example, the commentar
Thomist, Johannes Versor.17 His
pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomics were
accompanied by the standard medie
for the Politics and Durandus of Alv
GW, incunable catalogues all treat
Yet Versor's quaestiones on the Ni
printed twice, each time accompan
Robert Grosseteste, are always cat
count as Aristotle editions.19 But,
the Ethics by Johannes Buridanus an
printed twice, each time with the Gr

kunabelkatalog. BSB-Ink (Wiesbaden, 1988- ); V. Sack, Die Inkunabeln der Univer


sitätsbibliothek und anderer öffentlicher Sammlungen in Freiburg im Breisgau und Umgebung
(3 vols., Wiesbaden, 1985).
14 These problems cannot be solved by the catalogue of a single library, however thoroughly and
intelligently it deals with its Aristotle holdings; what Charles Schmitt noted in relation to the six
teenth century (Cranz and Schmitt, Bibliography, vu) is equally true of the incunable period: no
collection contains more than a third of the total number of editions and commentaries.
15 See, e.g., the list of printed editions of Thomas Aquinas' Aristotle commentaries in Cranz,
'Publishing history', 182-92, where this pattern is found in virtually all the commentaries. See also
Walter Burley's Expositio in Aristotelis Physica: the first edition (Padua, 1476: GW 5774) has lem
mata only, while the second (Venice, 1482: GW 5775) contains the full text; and Johannes Versor's -
Quaestiones super Metaphysicam Aristotelis: the first two editions (Toulouse, about 1479-82: C
6184*; Cologne, c. 1485: H 16050*) use lemmata only, but the third edition (Cologne, about
1493-4: HC 16051*) is cum textu.
16 In ISTC, for example, the 1478 Barcelona edition of Thomas Aquinas' commentary on the
Politics (H 1514b), which provides lemmata only, is listed under Thomas; while the editions of the
same work printed in Rome, 1492 (GW 2448) and Venice, 1500 (H 1516*), which contain Leonardo
Bruni's translation of the Politics, are placed under Aristotle.
17 On Versor, see C. H. Lohr, 'Medieval Latin Aristotle commentaries. Authors: Johannes de
Kanthi - Myngodus', Traditio, 27 (1971), 251-351, at pp. 290-9; The Cambridge History of
Renaissance Philosophy, ed. C. B. Schmitt et al. (Cambridge, 1988), 839.
18 Aristotle, Libri Politicorum cum commento . . . fohannis Versoris (Cologne, 1492: GW 2444;
Cologne, 1497: GW 2445); Aristotle, Liber Yconomicorum . . . cum commento . . .fohanni
Versoris (Cologne, c. 1491: GW 2431; Cologne, c. 1495: GW 2432). Hain, however, placed GW 2444
under Aristotle (H 1769*) but GW 2445, which he had not personally inspected, under Versor
(H 16056).
19 J. Versor, Questiones super libros Ethicorum Arestotelis . . . (Cologne, 1491: H 16053*;
Cologne, 1494: H 16054*).

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 193

not as commentaries, but rather as Aristotle editions.20 Is there some


arcane logic in all this, which can only be understood by incunabulists? Or
is it merely that past cataloguing practices have been followed for the sake
of continuity, without considering the needs of present-day users?21
The situation is not much better for the sixteenth century. Although
The Bibliography of Aristotle Editions 1501-1600, compiled by Edward
Cranz and vastly enlarged in the second edition by Charles Schmitt, does,
where possible, identify translations, it generally excludes commentaries,
even when these are known to contain texts; the policy is, however, to in
clude commentaries when 'the title page gives primary emphasis to the
Aristotelian text' rather than to the commentary. In practice, as Schmitt
himself admits, it is very difficult to make such distinctions,22 and for
fifteenth-century books, it is virtually impossible. The only way to
straighten out the confusion and inconsistency is to do a comprehensive
survey of Aristotelian incunabula, along the lines of the recent census of
Vergil editions, produced by the ISTC team and published by the
Bibliographical Society.23 Such a survey should include all commentaries
accompanied by texts, as well as all works by Aristotle that appear in non
Aristotelian collections. If this were done, the figure of 157 would, I
believe, increase substantially, perhaps by as much as a 100 editions; and
that might well modify our view of the printing history of Aristotle in the
fifteenth century.
The relevance of all this to the potential value of any bibliographical
approach to Renaissance philosophy is obvious. One issue which readily
lends itself to such an approach is the relationship between the new
humanist translations of Aristotle and the old medieval ones. Yet until we
know for certain how many incunable editions of Aristotle were actually
printed, and in which translations, it is impossible to make any precise or
definite statements about the number of medieval as opposed to

20 Aristotle, Text us Et hic orum ad Nicomac hum . . . cum familiarissimo comment ario in eundem
et compendiosis questionibus ac dubiis ... ad mentem . . . Martini Magistri et Johannis Buridani. . .
(Paris, c. 1491-6: GW 2377; Paris, 1500: GW 2378). For the dating of GW 2377 see Aristotle,
L'Ethique à Nicomaque, introd., trans, and comment, by R. A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif (Louvain
and Paris, 1970), i.l, 143-4 n. 171.CIBN, I, 124, takes GW 2378 to be a post-incunable, dating it to
c. 1505 from the state of the publisher's device, though the colophon reads 'vi. kal. octobris
M.CCCC'. Another example of commentaries which are always catalogued under Aristotle are those
of Nicole Oresme on the Ethics and Politics, which were printed together with his own French
translations of these texts: Le livre d'Ethiques d'Aristote (Paris, 1488: GW 2381); and Le lime de
Politiques d'Aristote (Paris, 1489: GW 2449).
21 The scholarly problems which can arise from such practices are well illustrated by Pietro
d'Abano's commentary on the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems. It was printed twice in the Fifteenth
century, each time along with the medieval translation of Bartholomaeus of Messina - a version that
does not appear elsewhere in print in the fifteenth century. The fact that there is an incunable edi
tion of this translation is by no means apparent, since the work is standardly catalogued under the
commentator: Petrus de Abano, Expositio problematum Aristotelis (Mantua, 1475: H 16*; Venice,
1482: HC 17*); CIBN, however, places both editions under Aristotle (A —552-3).
22 Cranz and Schmitt, Bibliography, vm, n. 9 ('Introduction to the Revised Edition').
23 Vergil: A Census of Printed Editions 1469-1500, ed. Martin Davies and John Goldfinch, Occa
sional Papers of the Bibliographical Society, 7 (London, 1992).

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194 Jill Kr aye
humanist versions that got into print
sent state of our knowledge, there is
tables or pie-charts. It is neverthel
general observations and impression
modification when we have a more co
Aristotle editions.
Some humanist translations seem to have enjoyed remarkable success,
completely overtaking their medieval competitors. Leonardo Bruni's
elegant Latin version of the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomics is a well
known example: both in manuscript and in print, it far outstripped the
thirteenth-century translation of Durandus.24 But some of the older ver
sions turned out to have considerable staying power. The most striking
case is the Organon. Scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages had
studied Aristotelian logic in translations by Boethius and James of
Venice.25 The evidence provided by incunabula points to a continuation
of that tradition. Although the new translations made by the Byzantine
émigré Johannes Argyropulos of the Categories, On Interpretation, the
Prior and Posterior Analytics and Porphyry's Isagoge did get into print,
they made almost no dent in the popularity of the medieval versions.26
This bibliographical data corroborates what is known from other sources
about the cultural politics of philosophy in the late fifteenth century:
logic in this period remained a stronghold of the scholastics, largely im
mune both to criticisms by humanists and to their attempts to take it

For most other Aristotelian works, the situation is not so clear-cut.


Although the Nicomachean Ethics was a text of particular interest to
humanists, the two fifteenth-century translations which reached print -

24 See J. Soudek, 'Leonardo Bruni and his public: a statistical and interpretative study of his an
notated Latin version of the (pseudo) Aristotelian Economics', Stud Mediev R, 5 (1968), 51-136,
esp. the census of printed editions, 135-6; see also his 'The genesis and tradition of Leonardo Bruni's
annotated Latin version of the (pseudo ) Aristotelian Economics', Scriptorium, 12 (1958), 260-8.
" Boethius translated De interpretatione, Prior Analytics, De sophisticis elenchis, Topics and
Porphyry's Isagoge-, the Posterior Analytics was translated by James of Venice; see B. G. Dod,
'Aristoteles latinus', in The Cambridge History of Late Medieval Philosophy, ed. N. Kretzmann et
al. (Cambridge, 1982), 45-79, at pp. 53-5. The translation of the Categories attributed to Boethius
is now regarded as anonymous: Minio-Paluello, Opuscula, 1-39.
26 The only edition to print these texts is: Aristotle, Opera (Venice, 1496: GW 2341); in addition,
Argyropulos' version of the Posterior Analytics was used in Aristotle, Libri Posteriorum resoluti
vorum . . . (Rome, c. 1480: GW 2417), published by Oliverius Servius, who also had printed an
edition of Argyropulos' translation of the Physics: Libri Auscultationis de natura (Rome, 1481-4:
GW 2442); Servius, however, had nothing against Boethius: he published an edition of Boethius'
Topics, along with the Topics of Cicero, accompanied by Boethius' commentary (Rome, 1484: GW
4587).
27 See E. J. Ashworth, 'Traditional logic', in Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy,
143-72; and her Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period (Dordrecht and Boston, Mass.,
1974). For critiques by humanists of scholastic logic and their attempts to reform the discipline see,
e.g., Lorenzo Valla, Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, ed. G. Zippel (2 vols., Padua, 1982); and
Angelo Poliziano, Lamia: Praelectio in Priora Aristotelis analytica, ed. A. Wesseling (Leiden, 1986).

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 195

one by Bruni, the other by Argyropulos28 - did not overshadow the ver
sion of Grosseteste: all three translations regularly appear in printed
editions.29 Nor did the different versions necessarily appeal to different
audiences. In the 1476 Louvain edition of the Ethics, the translations of
Grosseteste and Bruni are printed in parallel double columns.30 The
overlap, in terms of interest, between the three translations is well il
lustrated by a Paris edition of the Ethics, printed in the 1490s. This
volume, which was mentioned above,31 gives the Grosseteste version, in
conjunction with quaestiones by Buridanus and Magistri, as well as an
anonymous literal commentary - a typical scholastic product, in other
words. But at the end, the editor, Claude Félix, adds a table of the
Aristotelian virtues and vices (fig. 1), in which is set out not only the
ethical terminology used in the antiqua translatio of Grosseteste, but also
that employed in the versions of Bruni and Argyropulos - even though
those translations are not printed in the volume itself. The vocabulary of
the humanist versions may have been used to gloss the transliterations
from the Greek found in Grosseteste's translation: scurrilitas, comitas and
rusticitas being far more comprehensible to a Greekless reader than
bomolochia, eutrapelia and agrikia (or agrilria as the 'k'-less printer
presents it). It was from this edition that Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples took
over the text of the Grosseteste version which he printed in his own edition
of the Ethics, published in 1497. Lefèvre also included in this volume the
translations of Argyropulos and Bruni; and it may well be that he got the
idea of printing all three versions from this table he encountered in the
earlier edition.32
Printing more than one translation of the same Aristotelian text was
not uncommon in the fifteenth century. The standard format for printed
editions of De anima, De caelo, the Physics, the Metaphysics or book IV
of the Meteorology accompanied by the commentaries of Averroes was to
give a passage first in William of Moerbeke's translation from the Greek,
then in Michael Scot's earlier version, made from the Arabic, followed by
Scot's translation of Averroes' commentary on that passage.33 In the case

28 The Nicomac heart Ethics was also translated by the humanist Giannozzo Manetti, but his
version remained in manuscript: Garin, 'Traduzioni umanistiche', 71-2.
29 There were at least nine printings of the Grosseteste version, seven of the Bruni and six of the
Argyropulos. For the reasons stated above, these figures should be regarded as provisional.
30 Aristotle, Ethica ad Nicomachum (Louvain, 1476: GW 2360). See also Aristotle, Economi
corum libri duo sub gemina translatione (Leipzig, c. 1494: GW 2437; Leipzig, c. 1499: GW 2438;
Leipzig, c. 1499: GW 2439), in which the Latin versions of the Oeconomics by Bruni and Durandus
are printed in alternating gobbets, rather than in parallel columns.
31 See n. 20 above.
32 Aristotle, Decern librorum moralium Aristotelis très conversiones . . . (Paris, 1497: GW 2359).
On this edition see Aristotle, Ethique, ed. Gauthier and Jolif, i.l, 143-4.
33 See the following editions of Aristotle's Opera: Venice, 1483 (GW 2337-8); Venice, 1489 (GW
2339); Venice, 1495-6 (GW 2340); and the following editions of individual texts, all published by
Laurentius Canozius: De anima (Padua, 1472: GW 2349); De caelo (Padua, 1473: GW 2357);
Metaphysics (Padua, 1473: GW 2419); Physics (Padua, c. 1472-5: GW 2443); on the Canozius edi

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196 Jill Kr aye

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Fig. 1 Aristotle, Textus Ethicorum ad Nicom


(Bodleian Library shelfmark: M 8.18 (2) Jur.)

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 197

oi the Nicomachean Ethics, the Latin version oi Averroes middle com


mentary was made by Herman the German (Hermannus Alemannus); his
version of the Aristotelian text, translated from the Arabic, is embedded
in the commentary in the form of lemmata. When this commentary was
printed, Herman's lemmata were preserved; but readers were also give
the translation of either Grosseteste or Bruni, both based on the original
Greek.34 The reason behind this practice was that while it was easier t
understand Averroes in conjunction with a translation made from th
Arabic text which he himself had used, philosophers had long been a
customed to reading Aristotle in the more accurate versions made from
the Greek. Printing both translations satisfied both needs.
A somewhat different practice evolved in relation to the Aristotle com
mentaries of Thomas Aquinas, which were based, of course, on medieval
translations, mostly those of his fellow Dominican, William of Moerbeke
In the fifteenth century, when the new versions of the Ethics and Politics
by Bruni began to be fashionable, some scribes abandoned the mediev
translations and copied Thomas' commentaries together with the new
humanist versions. This manuscript tradition was carried over into print
Juan Ferrer's 1478 editions of Thomas' commentaries on the Politics and
Ethics give lemmata from the medieval translations of Moerbeke and
Grosseteste respectively but also from the Bruni versions;35 and Ludovic
de Valentia, who was responsible for the 1492 Rome edition of the
Politics commentary, not only printed Bruni's complete translation of th
text but also modified Thomas' scholastic Latin in order to make it more
compatible with the new humanist version.36 A similar fate befell the

tions see F. E. Cranz, 'Latin editions of Aristotle accompanied by the commentaries of Averroes', in
Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. E. P.
Mahoney (Leiden, 1976), 116-28. On Michael Scot, see Dod, 'Aristoteles latinus', 58-9; Dictionary
of Scientific Biography, ed. C. Gillispie (New York, 1974), IX, 361-5; and L. Thorndike, Michael
Scot (London and Edinburgh, 1965). On William of Moerbeke see Guillaume de Moerbeke: recueil
d'études à l'occasion du 700e anniversaire de sa mort (1286), ed. J. Brams and W. Vanhamel
(Louvain, 1989), esp. pp. 319-49; Dod, 'Aristoteles latinus', 62-4; and Dictionary of Scientific
Biography, ix, 434-40.
34 Of the three fifteenth-century editions of Aristotle's Opera accompanied by Averroes' commen
taries, the Grosseteste translation is printed in Venice, 1483 (GW 2337-8); the Bruni version in
Venice, 1489 (GW 2339) and Venice, 1495-6 (GW 2340). On Herman's version of the commentary
see Dod, 'Aristoteles latinus', 59-60; Aristoteles latinus, ed. G. Lacombe (Rome, 1939), i.l: Codices,
110-11; and S. Gomez Nogales, 'Bibliograffa sobre las obras de Averroes', in Multiple Averroes.
Actes du Colloque international organisé à l'occasion du 850e anniversaire de la naissance
d'Averroès, Paris . . . 1976 (Paris, 1978), 351-87, at pp. 380-1.
35 Thomas Aquinas, Comment um in libros Politicorum Aristotelis, ed. J. Ferrer (Barcelona,
1478: H 1514b); Thomas Aquinas, Commentum in libros Ethicorum Aristotelis, ed. J. Ferrer
(Barcelona, 1478: H 1514a).
36 Thomas Aquinas, Commentarii in libros octo Politicorum Aristotelis, ed. L. Valentia (Rome,
1492: GW 2448); this edition was reprinted in Venice, 1500 (H 1516*). See Martinus Nimireus' letter
to Ludovicus de Valentia (sigs. I7V-8V, at I8r): 'commutatis . . . paucis quibusdam verbis quae prop
ter novam Leonardi translationem necessarium erat . . . commentaria ipsa Aristotelis sermoni vel
ipsius Leonardi Aretini traductioni coaptata librariis imprimenda tradidisti'; see also Cranz,
'Publishing history', 169-73.

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198 JillKraye
commentary on the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomics written by
Petrarch's friend Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro - in reality, a para
phrase and expansion of an earlier commentary by Albert of Saxony.
Although the commentary was based on the old Durandus version
of the Oeconomics, it was printed around 1495 to accompany Bruni's
translation.37
One noticeable difference between editions of medieval and
Renaissance versions of Aristotle is that the new humanist translators are
usually identified, either on the title-page or the table of contents or the
colophon,38 whereas the medieval translators remain anonymously hid
den behind headings such as antiqua conversio or vetus translatio.39 On
rare occasions Boethius, the last of the ancients, received some recogni
tion.40 But as far as I have been able to establish, none of the medieval
translators is mentioned in any fifteenth-century Aristotle edition or com
mentary. The one exception is Henricus Krosbein, to whom the antiqua
translatio of the Nicomachean Ethics is attributed in two incunable
editions.41 Not only, however, did Krosbein fail to translate any w

37 Aristotle, Liber economice . . . cum expositione accomodatissima Dionisii Burgensis


(Toulouse, c. 1495: GW 2436). See Soudek, 'Bruni and his public', p. 90.
38 For Bruni's translation of the Nicomachean Ethics see, e.g., the Sweynheym and Pann
edition (Rome, 1473; GW 2368), sig. i7v: 'Aristotelis . . . libri Ethicorum decern de moribus
clarissimum et eloquentissimum virum Leonardum Aretinum e greco in latinum traducti finiu
feliciter'; the edition of Bologna, c. 1475 (GW 2369), sig. alr: 'Aristotelis Ethycorum liber
Leonardo Aretino traductus primus incipit'; and the 1479 Oxford edition (GW 2373), sig. y
'Explicit textus Ethicorum Aristotelis per Leonardum Aretinum lucidissime translatus corr
simeque'; see also the table of contents in Aristotle, Opera (Venice, 1489: GW 2339), pt v,
nnn4r: 'Ethica Aristotelis secundum translationem Leonardi Arretini . . .' For Argyropulos see, e
the Rome, 1481-4 edition of his translation of the Physics (GW 2442), sig. alr: 'Aristotelis
Auscultationis de natura, quos Ioannes Argyropylus Byzantius traduxit'.
39 See, e.g., the title-page of Lefèvre's edition of the Ethics, containing the translation
Argyropulos, Bruni and Grosseteste: Decern librorum moralium Aristotelis très conversiones: pr
Argyropili Byzantii; secunda Leonardi Aretini; tertia vero antiqua (Paris, 1496; GW 2359); see
the dual edition published in Louvain, 1476 (GW 2360): Grossteste's version is labelled 'v
translatio' and Bruni's 'nova', but the latter is identified in the colophon (sig. ql2r): 'Finit te
Ethicorum Aristotilis secundum Leonardi Aretini interpretationem'.
40 See, e.g., Sixtus Riessinger's edition of the Organon (Naples, c. 1473-4; GW 2390), sig. a
'Anicii Manli Severini Boecii viri clarissimi traductio Ysagogarum M. Porphirii . . .'; sig. f2r: 'A
Manli Severini Boetii viri clarissimi . . . editio prima super Cathegorias Aristotelis, a se verbum
verbo translatas e greco in latinum'. This edition also contains an interesting life of Aristotle
flr_v): 'Aristotelis vita et quedam eius dicta annotatione dignissima ex libris Laertii Leona
Arretini et Tortelli excerpta', a somewhat misleading title, since the anonymous compiler did no
fact, use Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers V ('Life of Aristotle'), but rather W
Burley's fourteenth-century De vita et moribus philosophorum, ed. H. Knust (Tübingen, 18
234-50 (cap. 53: 'Aristotiles'), which was partially based on Diogenes Laertius and which refers to
Lives (p. 250); nor did he consult Leonardo Bruni's Vita Aristotelis - see L. Bruni, Humanist
philosophische Schriften, ed. H. Baron (Leipzig, 1928), 41-9 - but instead copied the entry
'Aristoteles' in Giovanni Tortelli's De orthographia (Rome, 1471; HC 15563), sigs. L5v-6r, wh
cites and relies heavily on Bruni's work; the compiler did, however, leave out Tortelli's referenc
Bruni as 'conterraneus meus' (they were both from Arezzo).
41 Aristotle, Textus Ethicorum ad Nicomachum iuxta antiquam translationem . . . (Paris
1491-6: GW 2377), sig. X2V: 'Finit liber Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum interprète (ut n
nulli astruunt) Fratre Henrico Krosbein Ordinis Fratrum Predicatorum quem et omnes te

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 199

of Aristotle, he never even existed: he is the product of the muddled


imagination of an early fifteenth-century Dominican, Johannes Nider,
who seems to have confused Johannes Krosbein, a Thomist author of
Aristotelian compendia, with William of Moerbeke, the most prolific of
medieval Aristotelian translators, who may have been responsible for the
revised version of Grosseteste's translation of the Ethics; how the name
Johannes got transformed into Henricus is anybody's guess.42 It is not that
publishers deliberately left out the names of the genuine medieval
translators of Aristotle, but simply that these names, dating from the
twelfth or thirteenth centuries, had been lost in the mists of time, only
very rarely, if at all, appearing in the manuscript tradition. The
humanists, by contrast, were alive and well, or at any rate had flourished
in living memory. Furthermore, they wrote prefaces and dedications to
rich and powerful patrons: Bruni to Cosimo de' Medici, Martin V and
Eugenius IV;43 Argyropulos to Cosimo de' Medici;44 and the Byzantine
scholar Theodore Gaza to Sixtus IV.45 These letters were often printed
with the new humanist translations, and no doubt helped to give them an
authoritative air, making them in consequence more marketable.
The medieval translations, which had been used as textbooks for two
centuries and which were aimed largely at a captive audience of univer
sity lecturers and students, were not in need of puffs from editors or
publishers - at any rate, they got none in incunable editions. The new
humanist versions, on the other hand, had their praises sung in editorial
prefaces and epigrams, usually in much the same terms that the
humanists themselves employed to promote their own efforts and
downgrade those of their medieval predecessors. Wolfgang Mosnauer, in
his edition of De anima, published in Venice around 1500, proudly an

eiusdem Philosophi traduxisse dicunt'; also in the reprint of this edition (Paris, c. 1500-5: GW 2378),
fol. 121".
42 See A. Pelzer, Etudes d'histoire littéraire sur la scolastique médiévale, ed. A. Pattin and E. Van
de Vyer (Louvain and Paris, 1964), 178-83. On Johannes Krosbein, see Lohr, 'Medieval Latin
Aristotle commentaries: Johannes de Kanthi - Myngodus', 253-4. The antiqua translatio was first
attributed to Grosseteste by Amable Jourdain, Recherches critiques sur l'âge et l'origine des traduc
tions latines d'Aristote (Paris, 1843; reprinted New York, 1974), 59-64.
45 For Bruni's dedication of his Nicomachean Ethics translation to Martin V (Schriften, 75-6) see
the editions of Strasbourg, c. 1469 (GW 2367), Oxford, 1479 (GW 2373) and Zaragoza, 1492 (GW
2374); for his dedication of his Politics translation to Eugenius IV (Schriften, 70-3) see the edition
printed in Valencia, not after 1474 (GW 2370); for his dedication of his commented translation of
the Oeconomics to Cosimo de' Medici see the editions of Cologne, c. 1475 (GW 2434), Venice, c.
1471 (GW 2435) and the Venice, 1489 edition of the Opera (GW 2339).
44 His dedication to Cosimo de' Medici is found in the following editions of his translation of the
Nicomachean Ethics: Florence, c. 1480 (GW 2361), Paris, 1488/9 (GW 2362), Rome, 1492 (GW
2363), Paris, 1493 (GW 2364); Poitiers, not after 1496 (GW 2365) and Paris, 1500 (GW 2366).
45 His dedication of his translation of De animalibus to Sixtus IV appears in the following editions:
Venice, 1492 (GW 2351); Venice, c. 1495 (GW 2352); Venice, 1498 (GW 2353). See also the dedica
tion of the printed edition of Gaza's translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata (Rome, 1475:
GW 2453) to Sixtus IV, which was written by Nicolaus Gupalatinus, who acted as Gaza's scribe and
who saw the work through the press; on this dedication see M. A. Rouse and R. H. Rouse, 'Nicolaus
Gupalatinus and the arrival of print in Italy', Bibliofilta, 88 (1986), 221-51, at pp. 233-5.

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200 Jill Kraye
nounced that the text he was pre
with barbaric riddles, but rather
equally skilled in Greek and Latin
soul not in obscure circumlocutions
prefatory letter to the 1496 editi
Venice by Benedictus Fontana, Argy
restored the Latin Aristotle to
elegance.47 These comments show
were in disguising Aristotle's often
This 1496 Venice edition prints
works made by Argyropulos - th
anima, the Nicomachean Ethics and
pride of place in the table of cont
also found in the volume: the ve
Oeconomics and by Giorgio Valla
humanist reworking by Ermolao Ba
Latin logical treatise falsely ascri
larly treated as part of the Organon
fifteenth-century printing of Barb
intended to demonstrate that ev
scholastic logic could be rendered in

46 Aristotle, Très De anima libri, ed. W. Mosn


tum scilicet non veterem et barbare enigmata b
viri Joannis Argyropyli Constantinopolitani, tu
in romanum sermonem traductum, qui tanti p
ambagibus, sed luce clarissima resolvit . . see
Aristotelis librorum De anima translationem'):
Barbarie: paucis ante legendus erat. / At studio
barbara verba sonis . . .'In his dedicatory prefa
Gupalatinus claims that, thanks to the efforts
videatur.' For a characteristic example of the
dismissive attitude towards their medieval pred
Ethics, in Schriften, ed. Baron, 76-81.
47 Aristotle, Opera, ed. B. Fontana (Venice,
Fontanae S.P.D.'): 'Ioanis Argyropili Bizantii
pollebat in naturalibusque et moralibus contin
Aristoteles ipse in suam pristinam et graecam
fuisset . . .'
48 See O. Lewry, 'The Liber sex principiorum, a supposedly Porretanean work: a study in ascrip
tion', in Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains: aux origines de la 'logica modernorum'. Actes du
septième symposium européen d'histoire de la logique et de la sémantique médiévales, Poitiers 1985,
ed. J. Jolivet and A. de Libera (Naples, 1987), 251-78.
49 There were at least seventeen printings in the sixteenth century: Cranz and Schmitt,
Bibliography, 200. On Barbaro's reworking of De sex principiis, see Minio-Paluello, Opuscula, 498;
and Garin, 'Traduzioni umanistiche', 87-8. For another of Barbaro's attempts to make the same
point, see C. Dionisotti, 'E. Barbaro e la fortuna di Suiseth', in Medievo e rinascimento: studi in
onore di Bruno Nardi (Florence, 1955), I, 219-53. For Barbaro's views on translation see L.
Martinoli Santini, 'Le traduzioni dal greco', in Un pontificato ed una citta: Sisto IV (1471-1484).
Atti del convegno, Roma . . . 1984, ed. M. Miglio et al. (Vatican City, 1986), 81-101, at pp. 90-2.
Earlier in the century Bruni had produced a similar humanist rewriting of a medieval Latin text: the
original Greek of book III of the Oeconomics was (and remains) lost; he therefore reworked, in

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 201

here confirms the high level of commitment to humanist values and


methods that characterizes the 1496 volume as a whole.50
It is interesting to note that this humanist edition of Aristotle's works
contains a large number of pseudo-Aristotelian tracts. These are not
limited, moreover, to the works for which there was an extant Greek text,
such as the Physiognomy, De coloribus and De lineis indivisibilibus\ there
are also treatises which, although they contain elements of Greek
philosophy, were transmitted to the West directly or indirectly from
Arabic sources, such as De plantis, De proprietatibus elementorum, De
pomo and De causis. In humanist editions of Aristotle published in the
sixteenth century, this sort of treatise tended to be excluded on the
grounds that there was no Greek original.51 Those with Greek texts,
however shaky their claims to genuineness, remained and to this day are
printed in complete editions of the corpus. But in the mid-1490s it seems
that the existence of a Greek text had not as yet come to be a decisive fac
tor in deciding on the authenticity or importance of a piece ascribed to
Aristotle - even for those of a generally humanist inclination. Nor is this
surprising, given that few philosophers of the time were acquainted with
Greek. This is not to say, however, that no distinction was made between
different types of pseudo-Aristotelian literature, but rather that the
criteria of selection and exclusion were, as is often the case with in
cunables, closer to those operative in medieval manuscripts than to those
developed by philologically minded humanists of the sixteenth century.
The place of pseudo-Aristotelian literature within the printing history of
Aristotle in the fifteenth century is another topic in Renaissance
philosophy which can benefit from a bibliographical approach. And
since comparatively few commentaries were written on such works,52 this
is an area where it is possible, on the basis of present information, to draw
reasonably secure conclusions.
The Aldine Aristotle, the Greek editio princeps, prints several pieces no
longer regarded as authentic; but these are of course limited to treatises
with a Greek text.53 As for the Latin Opera, the 1482 and 1496 editions,

Ciceronian Latin, one or both of the thirteenth-century translations: Soudek, 'Bruni and his public',
54-5.

50 Boethius' translations of De sophisticis elenchis and the Topics were included, but this was
because there were no available humanist versions of these texts. On this edition see Minio-Paluello,
Opuscula, 498; Cranz, 'Editions of the Latin Aristotle', 117.
51 For instance, the Basle editions of 1538, 1542, 1548, 1563 and the Lyon editions of 1549, 1561,
1563, 1578 and 1581: see C. B. Schmitt, 'Francesco Storella and the last printed edition of the Latin
Secretum secretorum (1555)', in Pseudo-Aristotle, 'The Secret of Secrets': Sources and Influences,
ed. W. F. Ryan and C. B. Schmitt, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 9 (London, 1982), 14-31,
at pp. 125, 129 n. 8.
52 The one pseudo-Aristotelian treatise to receive a substantial number of commentaries - in the
Middle Ages, at least - was the Liber de causis: see C. d'Ancona, '"Philosophus in libro de causis": la
recezione del Liber de causis come opera aristotelica nei commenti di Ruggero Bacone, dello ps.
Enrico di Gand e dello ps. Adamo de Bocfeld', Doc Stud Trad Filos Mediev, 2 (1991), 611-49.
53 The Aldine Aristotle (5 parts, Venice, 1495-8: GW 2334) includes the following Greek treatises
now regarded as pseudo-Aristotelian: De mundo; De mirabilibus auscultationibus', De Xenophane,

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202 Jill Kraye
both printed in Venice, are the o
coverage of the Aristotelian corpus
number of pseudo-Aristotelian com
scholastic and medieval in orientation as the 1496 edition is humanist and
Renaissance; yet there is little difference between the two in the range
and type of pseudo-Aristotelian literature which they print; in both we
find works translated from the Greek combined with others which derive
from an Arabic milieu.55 What we do not find in either edition are
any of the numerous Aristotelian spuria, mostly, but not exclusively,
of Arabic origin, which deal with occult and pseudo-scientific topics;
astrology, alchemy, chiromancy and popular medicine. Although such
tracts circulated widely in the Middle Ages, they did not, on the whole,
appear in manuscripts of Aristotle's authentic works. On the other hand,
there was another type of pseudo-Aristotelian literature which did tend to
travel with the genuine works in the Middle Ages; and it is this sort of
treatise which we find in the 1482 and 1496 editions; that is, not only texts
translated from the Greek, but also Arabic and Latin compositions of a
serious philosophical or scientific nature.56
The most important work in this category is the Liber de causis (The
Book of Causes), a ninth-century reworking of extracts from Proclus'
Elements of Theology, which was translated from Arabic into Latin in
the mid-twelfth century and became a standard part of the Aristotelian

Zenone et Gorgia; Problems; Mechanics. It also mistakenly prints Georgios Pachymeres' paraphrase
of On Indivisible Lines instead of the actual Greek text attributed, wrongly, to Aristotle; that text
was translated into Latin in the thirteenth century by Grosseteste and appears in the editions of the
Opera printed in Venice in 1482 (GW 2336) and 1496 (GW 2341): see my 'Erasmus and the
canonization of Aristotle: the letter to John More', in England and the Continental Renaissance:
Essays in Honour of J. B. Trapp, ed. E. Chaney and P. Mack (Woodbridge, 1990), 37-52, at pp.
46-7. The Aldine edition does not include the Greek version of De plantis - on which see n. 78 below
- but prints instead the botanical works of Theophrastus: see C. B. Schmitt, 'Aristotelian textual
studies at Padua: the case of Francesco Cavalli', in Storia e filosofia all'Universita di Padova nel
Quattrocento, ed. A. Poppi (Padua, 1983), 287-314, at pp. 299-300.
14 The 1479 Augsburg edition (GW 2335) includes only the logical works, while the 1497 Cologne
edition (GW 2342) contains only the libri naturales. Editions of Aristotle's works printed together
with the commentaries of Averroes did not include pseudo-Aristotelian works - with the exception of
the Greek-based Physiognomy, which appeared in only one such edition, published in Venice in 1489
(GW 2339) - presumably because Averroes did not write any expositions of these treatises: see the
Aristotle-Averroes editions published in Venice in 1483 (GW 2337-8) and 1495-6 (GW 2340); on the
other hand, these editions included the Politics and the Oeconomics, even though there are no
Averroes commentaries on them.
" Both editions include De coloribus, Physiognomia and De lineis indivisibilibus (all translated
from the Greek), along with De plantis, De porno and De causis (all from Arabic sources); in addi
tion, the 1496 edition contains the medieval Latin translation by Nicolaus Siculus of De mundo and
the Arabic-derived De proprietatibus elementorum. Both editions also print De inundatione Nili,
which does not have an extant Greek original but which is now generally regarded as a genuine work
of Aristotle: C. B. Schmitt and D. Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus: A Guide to Latin Works Falsely
Attributed to Aristotle before 1}00, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 12 (London, 1985), 44-5
(no. 61).
" Schmitt and Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus, 4; and C. B. Schmitt, 'Pseudo-Aristotle in the
Latin Middle Ages', in Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The 'Theology' and Other Texts, ed. J.
Kraye et al., Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 11 (London, 1986), 3-14.

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 203

syllabus, usually regarded as a supplement to the Metaphysics.57 It did


not cease to play that role even after 1272, when Thomas Aquinas, hav
ing read William of Moerbeke's recent translation of Proclus' Elements™
revealed the true source of the treatise.59 Although many philosophers
were aware that Aristotle had not written De causis, they continued to
find it a valuable text, which is why it was included in the 1482 and 1496
editions of the Opera. There is no indication in either of these volumes
that the piece is not a genuine work of Aristotle. In 1493, however, it ap
peared in an edition of the Parva naturalia, accompanied, as were all the
works in the volume, by Thomas Aquinas' commentary; since Thomas
had recognized that the ultimate source of the treatise was the Elements,
De causis was assigned on the title-page to Proclus.60
De proprietatibus elementorum (On the Properties of Elements), a
brief tract on physical geography, is another ninth-century Arabic piece;
it was attributed to Aristotle and translated into Latin in the late twelfth
century by Gerard of Cremona. It often appears in manuscripts together
with the Aristotelian libri naturales-, and, like De causis, it became an in
tegral part of the curriculum of medieval Aristotelianism.61 Surprisingly,
it is not included in the scholastic Opera of 1482 but does appear, for the
first time in print, in the humanist edition of 1496.
A further work which belongs to this category is the Liber de porno
(The Book of the Apple). Based on Plato's Phaedo, it purports to be
Aristotle's death-bed conversation with his pupils; the title refers to the
fact that Aristotle keeps himself alive long enough to assert his belief
in the immortality of the soul by smelling the life-giving fragrance of
an apple. A tenth-century Arabic work, De porno was translated into

57 It was included in the 1255 statute laying out the curriculum for students at the University of
Paris: Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H. Denifle et al. (Paris, 1889), I, 277-9, at p. 279:
'librum de causis in Septem septimanis'. On this treatise, see R. C. Taylor, 'The Kalam fi mahd al
khair (Liber de causis) in the Islamic philosophical milieu', in Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages,
37-62; C. d'Ancona Costa, 'Le fonti e la struttura del Liber de causis', Medioevo, 15 (1989), 1-38;
Schmitt and Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus, 18-20 (no. IS); L. Sweeney, Research difficulties in
the Liber de causis', in his Divine Infinity in Greek and Medieval Thought (New York, etc., 1992),
309-18.
" Proclus, Elementatio theologica translata a Guillelmo Morbecca, ed. H. Boese (Louvain,
1987).
" Thomas Aquinas, Super Librum de causis expositio, ed. H.-D. Saffrey (Fribourg, 1954), 3:
'[Liber de causis] videtur ab aliquo philosophorum arabum ex . . . libro Procli excerptus, praesertim
quia omnia quae in hoc libro continentur, multo plenius et diffusius continentur in illo.'
60 Aristotle, Opuscula per divini Thome Aquinatis commentaria compendiose exposita (Padua,
1493: GW 2430): altissimi Proculi De causis cum . . . Thome commentationibus'.
" See S. L. Vodraska, 'Pseudo-Aristoteles, De causis proprietatum et elementorum: critical edition
and study', PhD diss. (University of London, 1969); Aristoteles latinus, i.l: Codices, 91-2; S.
Williams, 'Defining the Corpus Aristotelicum: scholastic awareness of Aristotelian spuria in the High
Middle Ages',/ Warburg C, 58 (1995), forthcoming; Schmitt and Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus,
20 (no. 14); and C. B. Schmitt, 'Renaissance Averroism studied through the Venetian editions of
Aristotle-Averroes (with particular reference to the Giunta edition of 1550-2)', in L'Averroismo in
Italia. Convegno internationale, Roma . . . 1977 (Rome, 1979), 121-42, at p. 137. Albertus Magnus
wrote a commentary on the treatise: see his Opera omnia (Münster i. W., 1980), v.2, 47-106.

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204 Jill Kr aye
Hebrew in 1235 and from Hebrew into Latin around 1255; it often cir
culated in manuscripts of Aristotle's works and is included in both the
1482 and the 1496 editions of the Opera.62 In addition, an enterprising
Antwerp publisher, Mathias van der Goes, packaged it with an Ars
moriendi by Jean Gerson, producing a handy volume devoted to the
preparation for death.63
While De pomo was frequently included, along with De causis, in
manuscripts of the so-called corpus recentius, a collection of Aristotle's
works put together in the late thirteenth century, it circulated with the
spurious works as well.64 This pattern is likewise reflected in its fifteenth -
century printing history, for the treatise appeared not only in the editions
of the Opera mentioned above, but also in a small collection of respec
table pseudo-Aristotelian works, published in Cologne around 1472.65
The other pieces in the volume are: De bona fortuna, a medieval com
pilation of Magna moralia II.8 and Eudemian Ethics VII.14;66 De inun
datione Nili, a treatise which survives only in Latin but is now thought to
have good claims to being an authentic work of Aristotle;67 the
Physiognomy, translated from the Greek by Bartholomaeus of Messina in
the mid-thirteenth century;68 and finally, De differentia Spiritus et
animae (On the Difference between Spirit and the Soul), a ninth-century
Arabic medico-philosophical tract.
Although this last treatise is not listed in Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus,
the standard guide to works falsely attributed to Aristotle before 1500,
edited by Charles Schmitt and Dilwyn Knox,69 during the Middle Ages it
was sometimes assigned to Aristotle, despite the fact that he is quoted as
an authority throughout the work. More commonly, the author was
thought to be Avicenna, Augustine or Constantine the African. Never
theless, it regularly appears in manuscripts of the corpus Aristotelicum,
often in connection with the Parva naturalia, since, like these short tracts,
it concerns the biological relationship between body and soul.70 Further

62 It does not appear in any edition of Aristotle's works printed after 1500: Schmitt and Knox,
Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus, 51-2 (no. 75). For an edition of this text see: 'Aristotelis qui ferebatur
Liber de pomo', ed. M. Plezia, Eos, 47 (1954), 191-217; see also The Apple or Aristotle's Death (De
pomo sive De morte Aristotelis), trans. M. F. Rousseau (Milwaukee, 1968); and Dictionnaire des
philosophes antiques, ed. R. Coulet and P. Hadot (Paris, 1989), I, 537-41.
63 Aristotle, De pomo et morte (Antwerp, about 1486-91: GW 2451), which also includes Jean
Gerson's De scientia bonae mortis.
64 Dod, 'Aristoteles latinus', 51; Schmitt, 'Pseudo-Aristotle', 9.
65 Aristotle, Tractatus de pomo et morte . . . (Cologne, c. 1472: GW 2450).
66 Aristoteles Latinus, i.l: Codices, 72-3.
67 See n. 55 above.
68 For the Greek text see Scriptores physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, ed. R. Förster (Leipzig,
1893), I, 5-91; on Bartholomaeus of Messina see Dod, 'Aristoteles latinus', 62.
69 See n. 55 above.
70 See J. Wilcox, 'The transmission and influence of Qusta ibn Luqa's "On the Difference between
Spirit and Soul ", PhD diss. (The City University of New York, 1985), esp. p. 113, for its appearance
together with Aristotelian works in the manuscript tradition; on this point see also D. Jacquart,
'Aristotelian thought in Salerno', in A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. P.

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The torintine history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 205

more, it is mentioned, along with De causis, in the curriculum for the


Aristotelian philosophy course set out in the 1255 statues of the University
of Paris.71 De differentia was not printed in either the 1482 or the
1496 edition of the Opera-, and in the Cologne collection it is attributed,
not to Aristotle, as are the other works in the volume, but rather to
'Constantinus Arabicus' - a garbled Latin form of Costa ben Luca
(Qusta ibn Luqa), the actual author of the piece.72
My next example might be described as a bibliographical ghost story.
Among the Bodleian's holdings of Aristotelian incunabula, I came across
what appeared to be a run-of-the-mill edition of the Parva naturalia,
published in Cologne in 1491, and accompanied by the commentary of
Johannes de Mechlinia, a late fifteenth-century follower of Albertus
Magnus.73 Half-way through the volume, however, there is a secondary
title-page (fig. 2), which lists three tracts from the Parva naturalia, then
De motu animalium and finally a work entitled De motu cordis (On the
Motion of the Heart).1* Aristotle never wrote such a treatise, nor does it
appear in Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus. Unfortunately, it does not appear
in the 1491 volume either: the colophon follows directly after the conclu
sion of De motu animalium. There is a reprint of this edition, published
in Cologne in 1498, a copy of which I consulted in the British Library.
This volume lists De motu cordis on the main title-page as well as the
secondary one, but also fails to print the text.75
There can be few people in the world who get excited at the prospect of
discovering yet another work falsely attributed to Aristotle, but I happen
to be one of them. I was therefore keen to identify this piece, even though
all that I knew of it was the title. There are in fact two well-known
thirteenth-century works entitled De motu cordis-, one by Alfred of

Dronke (Cambridge, 1988), 407-28, at p. 426; and Dod, 'Aristoteles latinus', 50-1; see also
Dictionary of Scientific Biography, xi, 244-6.
71 Chartularium, I, 278: 'librum De differentia Spiritus et anime in duabus septimanis'.
72 Aristotle, Tractatus (Cologne, c. 1472: GW 2450), sig. b7v: 'Liber de differentia spiritus et
anime incipit féliciter. Constantinus Arabicus luce amico suo scriptori eiusdam regis hoc opus edidit
. . For the form of his name found in manuscripts of John of Seville's translation of the treatise,
made in Spain in 1130, see Wilcox, 'Transmission and influence', 143: 'consta ben luce'. Wilcox
wrongly states that the treatise 'never appeared in any early printed edition of the works of Aristotle'
(p. 112), citing as her authority the first edition of F. E. Cranz, A Bibliography of Aristotle Editions,
1501-1600 (Baden-Baden, 1971); she is apparently unaware that printing began some fifty year
before 1501. In the sixteenth century, the treatise appeared in the 1536 Basle edition of the works of
Constantine the African.
73 On Johannes Hulshot de Mechlinia see C. H. Lohr, 'Medieval Latin Aristotle commentaries.
Authors: Jacobus-Joannes Juff, Traditio, 26 (1970), 135-216, at pp. 205-7.
74 Aristotle, Textus Parvorum naturalium . . . (Cologne, 1491: GW 2428), sig. P5V.
75 Aristotle, Textus Parvorum naturalium . . . (Cologne, 1498: GW 2429), the main title-page:
'De sensu et sensato / De memoria et reminiscentia / De somno et vigilia / De longitudine et brevitate
vite / De iuventute et senectute / De inspiratione et respiratione / De vita et morte / De motu
animalium / De motu cordis'. The secondary title-page (sig. M4r) is the same as the 1491 edition
(fig. 2). The index to Aristotelian incunables in GW, II, 554, lists both these editions under De motu
cordis, even though the actual text appears in neither.

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206 Jill Kraye

öe qmmtor aliqtï
uo£ naturaliö
nop naturaliii Sïriftoteli
slriftoteli
mrta
iurta Docrnna
oocrrina Albert!
Ulbert! m
m
ftdcrto fatagentes p:to:i
fidcrio fatagenteo pziozi
berenria
bcrentta acetufdem
ac ciufdem i1pp
cognttioncm adiuctl < (f
cognttionem admcti

Dc iuuentütc
De iuuentute ct
et fenec
Deinfpirattoneet ref
IDcinfpirattoncct re
De r>tta
Oc et
»ita et mo:te
mozte
De
Dc motu animalium
mora animalium
De motu
IDc mom coîdts
cozdis

Fig. 2 Aristotle, Textus Parvorum naturaliu


Library shelfmark: Inc. d. G3.1491.1)

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 207

Sareshel, written before 1217;76 the other by Thomas Aquinas, dated


1260." Of the two authors, Alfred of Sareshel has the better pseudo
Aristotelian credentials: he translated into Latin the Arabic version of De
plantis, in reality a commentary by Nicholas of Damascus falsely ascribed
to Aristotle;78 and he also produced a Latin version of the chemical and
geological part of Avicenna's The Book of the Remedy, which he ap
pended to Book IV of the Meteorology but which also circulated in
dependently, often under Aristotle's name, as De mineralibus.79 Sadly, so
far as it has been investigated, the manuscript tradition of Alfred's own
composition on the motion of the heart gives no indication that it was ever
assigned to Aristotle.80 But while reading through another pseudo
Aristotelian piece, a medieval book of Problemata, I came upon a cita
tion from 'Aristotle's book De motu cordis', which corresponded to a
passage from chapter 12 of Alfred's work.81 Further corroboration came
from Nicholas of Paris, a professor in the arts faculty at the University of
Paris in the mid-thirteenth century. According to him, the libri naturales
included De caelo, the Physics, On Generation and Corruption, the
Meteorology, De plantis, the books on animals, De differentia Spiritus et
animae, supplemented by various tracts from the Parva naturalia, among
which he mentions De motu cordis.82 Whether or not Nicholas actually

76 Alfred of Sareshel, De motu cordis, ed. C. Baeumker (Münster i. W., 1923); see also C.
Baeumker, Die Stellung des Alfred von Sareshel (Alfredus Anglicus) und seiner Schrift De motu
cordis in der Wissenschaft des beginnenden XIII. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1913); C. S. Barach,
Excerpta e libro Alfredi Anglici De motu cordis . . . (Innsbruck, 1878; repr. Frankfurt, 1968);
Pelzer, Etudes d'histoire littéraire, 241-71; Alfred of Sareshel, Commentary on the Metheora of
Aristotle, ed. J. K. Otte (Leiden, etc., 1988), 4-7, 15; Dod, 'Aristoteles latinus', 58.
77 Thomas Aquinas, De motu cordis, in his Opuscula omnia (Rome, 1976), xliii, 95-130; see also
E. Paschetto, 'La natura del moto in base al De motu cordis di S. Tommaso', in Thomas von A quin:
Werk und Wirkung im Licht der neuerer Forschungen, ed. A. Zimmermann, Miscellanea
Mediaevalia, 19 (Berlin and New York, 1988), 247-60.
78 Nicolaus Damascenus, De plantis: Five Translations, ed. H. J. Drossaart Lulofs and E. L. J.
Poortman, Aristoteles Semitico-Latinus (Amsterdam, etc., 1989), 465-561. Alfred's Latin version
was translated into Greek by an anonymous Byzantine scholar in the thirteenth century {ibid.
563-624); it is this text which appears in Greek printed editions of Aristotle's works, including that of
Bekker(814a10-830b3).
79 On De mineralibus, see Schmitt and Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus, 43-4 (no. 59); Alfred of
Sareshel, Commentary, 8, 11-13. The work was first printed in Aristotle, Secretum secretorum . . .
De mineralibus . . ., ed. Alessandro Achillini (Bologna, 1501), fols. 2T-22V; see H. S. Matsen,
Alessandro Achillini (1463-1512) and His Doctrine of 'Universals' and 'Transcendentals': A Study in
Renaissance Ockhamism (Lewisburg, Pa, 1974), 35-6, 220 n. 190.
80 Alfred of Sareshel, De motu cordis, xi: none of the seven manuscripts listed by Baeumker has
any ascription to Aristotle.
81 Aristotle, Tractatue propleumatum . . . multas in naturalibus questiunculas admiratione
dignas in se continens legentibus multum iucundus ac utilis (Leipzig, 1494: GW 2460), sig. Dlr ('De
corde'): 'Quare cor continue movetur. Respondetur secundum Arest. in libro de motu cordis . . .
quia ibi Spiritus generatur qui est subtilior aere . . .'; cf. Alfred of Sareshel, De motu cordis, 47: 'cum
a dextro cordis thalamo sanguis, a sinistro Spiritus procedat, in utroque Spiritus reperitur et sanguis'.
82 Nicholas of Paris, Compilatio de libris naturalibus, MS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
elm 14460, fol. 150v, cited in M. Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben: Abhandlungen zu
Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystik (Munich, 1936), II, 192: 'Et sie patet divisio totius naturalis in
ferioris in istos libros, scilicet, librum de celo et mundo, librum phisicum, de generatione et corrup

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208 Jill Kraye
regarded De motu cordis as a treatise
it as belonging to the body of work
philosophy, occupying the same
Morever, he placed the treatise squar
naturalia, precisely where it appears
two fifteenth-century Cologne editio
The continuity between the mediev
literature and its role in fifteenth-c
fact that the same treatises were inc
and in incunable editions of Aristotle's works - sometimes attributed to
Aristotle, sometimes not - but also in the pattern of distribution of those
other pseudo-Aristotelian compositions which were on the fringes of
science and medicine. Just as these circulated in manuscript outside the
medieval Aristotelian corpus, so they were also never printed together
with the authentic treatises. As we are frequently told nowadays, the in
cunable period was an age of transition between the manuscript culture
of the Middle Ages and the print culture of the early modern era. It is fit
ting therefore that, in another respect, fifteenth-century practices were
closer to the critical spirit of the sixteenth century than to the more in
discriminate attitude of the Middle Ages. While almost a hundred such
works survive in manuscript,83 only four got into print in the fifteenth
century. And of these four, two were printed only once each: a chiro
mancy, published in Ulm in 1490;84 and a piece entitled Lapidarius,
printed in Merseburg in 1473.85 In contrast to this paucity of editions, the
other two pseudo-Aristotelian tracts were both printed as much, if not
more, than most of the genuine works - but never in combination with
them.

The first of these is The Secret of Secrets, a treatise of Arabic origin


which had an enormous diffusion in the Middle Ages, appearing in two
Latin translations and a variety of vernacular versions. Set out as a letter
from Aristotle to his student Alexander the Great, it provides not only
moral and political advice, but also miscellaneous information on

tione, librum metheorum, de plantis, de animalibus, de sensu et sensato, de sompno et vigilia, de


memoria et reminiscentia, de differentia Spiritus et anime. Alii autem libri ut de motu cordis, de
senectute et juventute et sie de aliis subalternantur istis. Et sie patet divisio naturalis seiende.' On
Nicholas of Paris see C. H. Lohr, 'Medieval Latin Aristotle commentaries. Authors: Narcissus
Richardus', Traditio, 28 (1972), 281-396, at pp. 298-9.
83 Schmitt and Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus, list ninety-six works attributed to Aristotle
before 1500.
84 Aristotle, Cyromancia cum figuris (Ulm, 1490: GW 2358); see Schmitt and Knox, Pseudo
Aristoteles Latinus, 21 (no. 16), who point out that there are internal references to both Aristotle and
Albertus Magnus in the text.
85 Lapidarium Quomodo virtutes pretiosorum lapidum augmentantur. Physiognomia
(Merseburg, 1473: GW 2389); the work circulated in manuscript under the title Physiognomia regia
in honorem Wenceslai II regis Bohemorum: see Schmitt and Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus, 50
(no. 72), who point out that there are passages in the printed text which do not appear in the
manuscript versions.

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 209

astrology, physiognomy, alchemy, magic and medicine.86 Of the sixteen


incunable editions, most of them containing extracts rather than the
complete text, nine are in Latin and seven in French.87 The Secret of
Secrets was published together with a number of different texts - plague
tracts, medieval preaching aids, astrological and magical treatises con
cerned with medicine and a French translation of Valerius Maximus -
but it did not appear in the company of any genuine Aristotelian work.88
For all its continued popularity, The Secret of Secrets was surpassed, in
the number of fifteenth-century printed editions, by the medieval book
of Problemata mentioned above. This piece is completely unrelated to
the Greek treatise of the same title, also wrongly attributed to Aristotle:
the Greek Problemata comes out of the Peripatetic school of antiquity,
while the Latin one is a typical medieval collection of questions on
natural philosophy and medicine, composed some time between the end
of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth. Though
Aristotle, along with Galen, Avicenna, Averroes and Albertus Magnus, is
frequently cited - the piece begins by quoting the first line of the
Metaphysics - these internal references did not stop the work from being
attributed to Aristotle in most of the twenty-one known manuscripts and
in all incunable editions.89 Yet, this work too has slipped through the
net of Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus, which is clearly in need of a revised,
second edition; presumably, the editors wrongly believed it to be a Latin
translation of the Greek Problemata (and therefore falling outside their
remit) because of the misleading way in which it is usually catalogued.90

86 See the essays in Pseudo-Aristotle: 'Secret of Secrets'.


87 Editions of the Latin text were published in Cologne, c. 1475 (GW 2481), Paris, c. 1477 (GW
2486), Reutlingen, c. 1483 (GW 2487), Louvain, 1484/5-87 (GW 2482), Antwerp, 1486-91 (GW
2483), Antwerp, 1486-91 (GW 2484), Antwerp, c. 1491 (GW 2485), Leipzig, c. 1490/5 (GW 2490)
and Venice, 1492 (not in GW; see Catâlogo general de incunables en bibliotecas espaholas, ed.
F. Garcfa Craviotto, 2 vols., Madrid, 1989-90, 571). Editions of the French text were published in
Lyon, c. 1478 (GW 2488), Bréhan-Loudéac, c. 1484 (GW 2491), Paris, c. 1484 (GW 2492), Paris,
1487 (GW 2489), Lyon?, c. 1490 (not in GW, but recorded in ISTC: London Royal College of
Physicians), Paris, c. 1495-1500 (GW 2493), Antwerp, 1493-5 (GW 2494); according to CIBN, I,
135, GW 2495-6 are post-incunables.
88 See, e.g., GW 2485, which also contains Johannes Jacobi, Regimen contra pestilentiam and
Arnoldus de Villanova, Regimen sanitatis; GW 2481-2, which include John of Wales, De instruc
tion principum and Breviloquium de philosophia sanctorum; the Venice 1492 edition, in which are
printed Guillelmus Anglicus, De cognitione infirmitatis secundum astronomiam and Pseudo-Hermes
Trismegistus, Liber ad sigilla faciendum contra corporis infirmitates; and GW 2489, which includes
a French translation of Valerius Maximus by Simon de Hesdin and Nicolas de Gonesse.
89 For the manuscript tradition see B. Lawn, The Salernitan Questions: An Introduction to the
History of Medieval and Renaissance Problem Literature (Oxford, 1963), 99-103; for incunabula,
see n. 94 below.
90 In incunable catalogues Latin translations of the Greek treatise are distinguished from the
medieval Latin composition solely by incipit, as if they were all simply different versions of the same
work. The confusion this can lead to is well illustrated in Incunabula in Dutch Libraries, ed. G. van
Thienen (2 vols., Nieuwkoop, 1983), in which no. 410, a text beginning 'Omnes homines' (the incipit
of the medieval Problemata), is wrongly assigned to Theodore Gaza, the translator of the Greek
treatise.

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210 Jill Kr aye
While the Greek Problemata deals on occasion with somewhat frivolous
issues," it also contains a great deal of serious scientific material. The
appeal of the Latin Problemata, on the other hand, was that it provided
simple answers to such burning questions as: why do eunuchs not grow
bald? Answer: baldness is caused by dryness, which they lack because they
do not have testicles, which supply heat to all parts of the body. What
causes bad breath? Answer: noxious fumes rising from the stomach. Why
is sex so pleasurable? Answer: it is such a disgusting and abhorrent act
that no one would indulge in it if nature, in order to preserve the species,
had not made it enjoyable. Should hermaphrodites be baptized with a
male or female name? Answer: a male name because in baptism the most
worthy name should be used, and everything male is more worthy than
its female counterpart.92 Small wonder that while the Greek treatise had
only five printings in the fifteenth century - one in Greek in the Aldine
Aristotle, two in a medieval Latin translation and two in a humanist
version by Theodore Gaza93 - the Latin treatise went through twenty-three
incunable editions: seventeen printed in Germany (six of which are in a
German version), two in Antwerp and four in Paris.94 But this was small
beer compared to the later for tuna of the Latin Problemata. Translated
into English in 1595 and later combined with two sex manuals and a book
on midwifery, it went through numerous editions and sold thousands of
copies in England and America during the nineteenth century and con
tinued to be printed in the twentieth. The title under which it circulated
was as improbable as it was inaccurate: The Works of Aristotle.95

91 See, e.g., Pseudo-Aristotle, Problems, in Aristotle, The Complete Works, ed. J. Barnes (2 vols.,
Princeton, N.J., 1984), II, 1336 (II.26): 'Why is [it] that the feet of those who are nervous perspire
and not the face?'; 1341 (in.3): 'Why is it that those who drink slightly diluted wine have worse
hangovers than those who drink wine absolutely unmixed?'; 1350-1 (iv.2): 'Why do the eyes and but
tocks of those who indulge too frequently in sexual intercourse sink very noticeably, though the latter
are near and the former far from the sexual organs?'
92 Aristotle, Tractatus propleumatum . . . (Leipzig, 1494: GW 2460), sigs. A5r, B6r, Elv, E6V.
93 The Problemata appear in part IV of the Aldine Aristotle (Venice, 1497: GW 2334); for the two
incunable editions of the thirteenth-century translation of Bartholomaeus of Messina see n. 21
above; Theodore Gaza's translation was published in Mantua, c. 1473 (GW 2452) and Rome, 1475
(GW 2453).
94 The following Latin editions were printed in Germany: Magdeburg, c. 1483-4 (GW 2454),
Magdeburg, 1488 (GW 2455), Leipzig, c. 1489-90 (GW 2456), Leipzig, c. 1489-90 (GW 2457),
Leipzig, 1494 (GW 2460), four in Cologne, c. 1490 (GW 2468-71), Cologne, c. 1493 (GW 2472), two
in Cologne, c. 1495 (GW 2473-4); as were these editions of the German translation: Augsburg, 1492
(GW 2462), Augsburg, 1493 (GW 2463), Memmingen, c. 1495 (GW 2464), Augsburg, 1496 (GW
2465), Ulm, 1499 (GW 2466), Ulm, 1500 (GW 2467). Editions of the Latin text were printed in
Antwerp in 1490 (GW 2458) and 1491 (GW 2459), and in Paris c. 1499 (GW 2475), 1500/1 (GW
2476), 1500 (GW 2477) and after 1500? (GW 2461).
95 The Latin text was published in London in 1583 together with the Problems attributed to
Alexander of Aphrodisias (in the translation of Angelo Poliziano) and those composed by Marcan
tonio Zimara in the mid-sixteenth century, under the title: Problemata Aristotelis ac philosophorum
medicorumque complurium . . . (STC 761); in 1595 an English translation of this volume was
published in London: The Problems of Aristotle with Other Philosophers and Phisitions (STC 762-3:
catalogued as genuine works of Aristotle). Late in the eighteenth century, it began to be printed
along with two sex manuals: Aristotle's Masterpiece and Aristotle's Last Legacy, and a third work

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The printing history of Aristotle in the fifteenth century 211

As we have seen, pseudo-Aristotelian treatises which were of


philosophical or scientific importance, even when they lacked a Greek
original and even when they were not consistently attributed to Aristotle,
travelled with the genuine works in both manuscript collections and in
cunable editions, and were not discarded until the sixteenth century.
There were, however, other tracts of a more popular nature, which were
never part of the Aristotelian corpus, either in the Middle Ages or in the
Renaissance. The journey of the Latin Problemata from medieval book
of questions to mildly pornographic Victorian bestseller,96 though hardly
typical, nevertheless shows just how far from the path of authentic
Aristotelianism it was possible for such pseudo-Aristotelian works to stray.

The Warburg Institute

called The Compleat and Experienced Midwife. See D. Power, The Foundations of Medical History
(Baltimore, Md, 1931), 147-78; J. Needham, A History of Embryology (New York, 1975), 91-2;
Lawn, Salemitan Questions, 100-1; V. L. Bullough, 'An early American sex manual, or, Aristotle
who?', Early Am L, 7 (1973), 236-46; R. Porter, "'The Secrets of Generation Display'd": Aristotle's
Masterpiece in 18th-century England', in Unauthorised Sexual Behavior during the Enlightenment,
ed. R. P. Maccubbin, Eight-Ct L, 9 (1985), 1-21.
96 Aristotle's Masterpiece, one of the two sex manuals regularly printed in The Works of Aristotle,
was included in a list, drawn up in 1954 by the Director of Public Prosecutions and the permanent
under-secretary of the Home Office, of 'works recognised throughout the civilised world as estab
lished classics', which, though they contained 'erotic passages which many would think obscene',
were to be exempt from seizure under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857; also on the list were
works of Aristophanes, Ovid, Catullus, Juvenal, Boccaccio, Rabelais and Defoe: see the report in the
Independent on Sunday (31 July 1994), 24-5.

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