Pietro d’Abano, Translator of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Astrological Writings

Abstract

From the Middle Ages until the present, the development of astrology among the Jews has been associated with the name of Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1089-ca. 1161). He created the first comprehensive set of Hebrew astrological textbooks that addressed the main systems of Arabic astrology and provided Hebrew readers with access to the subject. Some of his works became known to Christian scholars during his years in the Latin West and shortly after his death. However, Ibn Ezra’s astrological writings remained outside the mainstream of Latin astrological literature until the last decades of the thirteenth century. Then an Ibn Ezra renaissance took place in the Latin West, thanks to a number of almost simultaneous translation projects. The most extensive and ambitious of all the translation projects was carried out by Pietro d’Abano (ca. 1250-1316), the Italian philosopher, astrologer, and professor of medicine, during his years in Paris (1293-1307). The main purpose of this paper is to study the contents, structure, and source texts of Pietro d’Abano’s Latin translation, their correspondence to Ibn Ezra’s Hebrew originals, Pietro’s references to his other translations, and his methods of translation.