Secretum Secretorum
Encyclopedia
Secretum secretorum is a medieval treatise also known as Secret of Secrets, or The Book of the Secret of Secrets, or in Arabic
Kitab sirr al-asrar, or the Book of the science of government: on the good ordering of statecraft. It is a mid-12th century Latin
translation of a 10th century Arabic encyclopedic treatise on a wide range of topics, including statecraft
, ethics
, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy
, magic
and medicine. It was influential in Europe during the High Middle Ages
.
original exists, though there are claims in the Arabic treatise that it was translated from the Greek into Syriac and from Syriac into Arabic by a well-known 9th century translator, Yahya ibn al-Bitriq. It appears, however, that the treatise was actually composed originally in Arabic. The treatise also contains supposed letters from Aristotle
to Alexander the Great, and this may be related to Alexander the Great in the Qur'an and the wider range of Middle Eastern Alexander romance
literature.
As for its date of origin, we cannot say with certainty whether the section on physiognomy
was circulating in Arabic before AD 940: A manuscript now in the British Library
(OIOC, MS Or. 12070) supposed to have been copied in 941 by one Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn Durustawayh of Isfahan which contains a physiognomy similar to the one in the Sirr al-asrar (Secret of Secrets) is probably a 20th century forgery.
More safely, we may assume that a form of the text must have existed after the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-safa'
were composed and before the time Ibn Juljul
was writing, quite surely in the late 10th century AD.
The Arabic version was translated into Persian (at least twice), Ottoman-Turkish (twice), Hebrew (and from Hebrew into Russian), Castilian and Latin.
There are two Latin translations from the Arabic, the first one dating from around 1120 by John of Seville
for the a Portuguese queen (preserved today in some 150 copies), the second one from circa 1232 by Philippus Tripolitanus (preserved in more than 350 copies), made in the Near East (Antiochia). It is this second Latin version that was translated into English by Robert Copland
and printed in 1528.
The Latin Secretum secretorum was eventually translated into Czech, Russian, Croatian, Dutch, German, Icelandic, English, Catalan, Castilian, Portuguese, French, Italian and Welsh.
There is another book called "Kitab al-asrar" (Book of Secrets) on practical technical recipes, classification of mineral substances, description of the alchemical laboratory, etc. by Abu Bakr Muhammed ibn Zakariya al-Razi
. A Latin translation appears in Europe as Liber secretorum. This is a completely separate book entirely and is a common source of confusion because of the same names and similar subject matter and time period. In addition it is distinctly different from a treatise on physiognomy with the title Kitab fi al-firasah attributed to Aristotle and said to have been translated into Arabic in the 9th century by Hunayn ibn Ishaq
.
letter supposedly from Aristotle
to Alexander the Great during his campaigns in Persia. The text ranged from ethical questions that faced a ruler to astrology
and magical/medical properties of plants, gems, numbers, and a strange account of a unified science, of which only a person with the proper moral and intellectual background could discover. An enlarged version appearing in the 13th century includes some alchemical references and an early version of the tabula smaragdina (the Emerald Tablet
). The Arabic treatise is preserved in two forms: a long version of 10 books and a short version of 7 or 8 books, preserved in a total of about fifty copies.
, or even "the" most-read.ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī (1987), La transmission de la philosophie grecque au monde arabe, Paris, Librairie Philosophique Vrin, p. 11 Medieval readers took the ascription to Aristotle as authentic and treated this work among Aristotle's genuine works. Roger Bacon
cited the Secretum in own his works more often than his contemporaries, and even produced one manuscript with his own introduction and notes, something rather unusual for him to do with others' works. Although it is generally accepted that the Secretum held a special place in Bacon's world, more dashing proposals like that of early 20th century medievalist Robert Steele
—claiming that Bacon's contact with Secretum was the key event pushing Bacon towards experimentalism—have been regarded with skepticism in more recent reevaluations.
Scholarly attention to the Secretum waned around 1550 but lay interest has continued to this day in particular with devotées of the Occult
. Scholars today see it as a window onto medieval intellectual life: it was used in a variety of scholarly contexts, and had some part to play in the scholarly controversies of the day.
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
Kitab sirr al-asrar, or the Book of the science of government: on the good ordering of statecraft. It is a mid-12th century Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
translation of a 10th century Arabic encyclopedic treatise on a wide range of topics, including statecraft
Political aspects of Islam
Political aspects of Islam are derived from the Qur'an, the Sunna , Muslim history, and elements of political movements outside Islam....
, ethics
Islamic ethics
Islamic ethics , defined as "good character," historically took shape gradually from the 7th century and was finally established by the 11th century...
, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy
Alchemy and chemistry in medieval Islam
Alchemy and chemistry in Islam refers to the study of both traditional alchemy and early practical chemistry by scholars in the medieval Islamic world. The word alchemy was derived from the Arabic word كيمياء or kīmīāʾ...
, magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
and medicine. It was influential in Europe during the High Middle Ages
High Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages was the period of European history around the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries . The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which by convention end around 1500....
.
Origin
The origins of the treatise are uncertain. No GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
original exists, though there are claims in the Arabic treatise that it was translated from the Greek into Syriac and from Syriac into Arabic by a well-known 9th century translator, Yahya ibn al-Bitriq. It appears, however, that the treatise was actually composed originally in Arabic. The treatise also contains supposed letters from Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
to Alexander the Great, and this may be related to Alexander the Great in the Qur'an and the wider range of Middle Eastern Alexander romance
Alexander Romance
Alexander romance is any of several collections of legends concerning the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great. The earliest version is in Greek, dating to the 3rd century. Several late manuscripts attribute the work to Alexander's court historian Callisthenes, but the historical figure died...
literature.
As for its date of origin, we cannot say with certainty whether the section on physiognomy
Physiognomy
Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...
was circulating in Arabic before AD 940: A manuscript now in the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
(OIOC, MS Or. 12070) supposed to have been copied in 941 by one Muhammad ibn ‘Ali ibn Durustawayh of Isfahan which contains a physiognomy similar to the one in the Sirr al-asrar (Secret of Secrets) is probably a 20th century forgery.
More safely, we may assume that a form of the text must have existed after the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-safa'
Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity was a large encyclopedia in 52 treatises written by the mysterious Brethren of Purity of Basra, Iraq sometime in the second half of the 10th century CE...
were composed and before the time Ibn Juljul
Ibn Juljul
Abū Dāwūd, Sulaymān ibn Ḥassān Ibn Juljul was an influential Andalusian Muslim physician and pharmacologist who wrote an important book on the history of medicine. His works on pharmacology were frequently quoted by physicians in Muslim Spain during the 10th and 11th centuries...
was writing, quite surely in the late 10th century AD.
The Arabic version was translated into Persian (at least twice), Ottoman-Turkish (twice), Hebrew (and from Hebrew into Russian), Castilian and Latin.
There are two Latin translations from the Arabic, the first one dating from around 1120 by John of Seville
John of Seville
John of Seville was the main translator from Arabic into Castilian together with Dominicus Gundissalinus during the early days of the Toledo School of Translators....
for the a Portuguese queen (preserved today in some 150 copies), the second one from circa 1232 by Philippus Tripolitanus (preserved in more than 350 copies), made in the Near East (Antiochia). It is this second Latin version that was translated into English by Robert Copland
Robert Copland
Robert Copland , English printer and author, is said to have been a servant of William Caxton, and certainly worked for Wynkyn de Worde. The first book to which his name is affixed as a printer is The Boke of Justices of Peace , at the sign of the Rose Garland, in Fleet Street, London...
and printed in 1528.
The Latin Secretum secretorum was eventually translated into Czech, Russian, Croatian, Dutch, German, Icelandic, English, Catalan, Castilian, Portuguese, French, Italian and Welsh.
There is another book called "Kitab al-asrar" (Book of Secrets) on practical technical recipes, classification of mineral substances, description of the alchemical laboratory, etc. by Abu Bakr Muhammed ibn Zakariya al-Razi
Al-Razi
Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī , known as Rhazes or Rasis after medieval Latinists, was a Persian polymath,a prominent figure in Islamic Golden Age, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher, and scholar....
. A Latin translation appears in Europe as Liber secretorum. This is a completely separate book entirely and is a common source of confusion because of the same names and similar subject matter and time period. In addition it is distinctly different from a treatise on physiognomy with the title Kitab fi al-firasah attributed to Aristotle and said to have been translated into Arabic in the 9th century by Hunayn ibn Ishaq
Hunayn ibn Ishaq
Hunayn ibn Ishaq was a famous and influential Assyrian Nestorian Christian scholar, physician, and scientist, known for his work in translating Greek scientific and medical works into Arabic and Syriac during the heyday of the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate.Ḥunayn ibn Isḥaq was the most productive...
.
The Secrets
Secrets of Secrets takes the form of a pseudoepigraphicalPseudepigraphy
Pseudepigrapha are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed authorship is unfounded; a work, simply, "whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past." The word "pseudepigrapha" is the plural of "pseudepigraphon" ; the Anglicized forms...
letter supposedly from Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
to Alexander the Great during his campaigns in Persia. The text ranged from ethical questions that faced a ruler to astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
and magical/medical properties of plants, gems, numbers, and a strange account of a unified science, of which only a person with the proper moral and intellectual background could discover. An enlarged version appearing in the 13th century includes some alchemical references and an early version of the tabula smaragdina (the Emerald Tablet
Emerald Tablet
The Emerald Tablet, also known as Smaragdine Table, Tabula Smaragdina, or The Secret of Hermes, is a text purporting to reveal the secret of the primordial substance and its transmutations...
). The Arabic treatise is preserved in two forms: a long version of 10 books and a short version of 7 or 8 books, preserved in a total of about fifty copies.
Influences
It was one of the most widely-read texts of the High Middle AgesMiddle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, or even "the" most-read.ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī (1987), La transmission de la philosophie grecque au monde arabe, Paris, Librairie Philosophique Vrin, p. 11 Medieval readers took the ascription to Aristotle as authentic and treated this work among Aristotle's genuine works. Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods...
cited the Secretum in own his works more often than his contemporaries, and even produced one manuscript with his own introduction and notes, something rather unusual for him to do with others' works. Although it is generally accepted that the Secretum held a special place in Bacon's world, more dashing proposals like that of early 20th century medievalist Robert Steele
Robert Steele (medievalist)
Robert Steele was a British scholar, best known for editing between c. 1905 and 1941 the 16-volume Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Bacon....
—claiming that Bacon's contact with Secretum was the key event pushing Bacon towards experimentalism—have been regarded with skepticism in more recent reevaluations.
Scholarly attention to the Secretum waned around 1550 but lay interest has continued to this day in particular with devotées of the Occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
. Scholars today see it as a window onto medieval intellectual life: it was used in a variety of scholarly contexts, and had some part to play in the scholarly controversies of the day.
External links
- Secretum secretorum of pseudo-Aristotle: e-text (in English)
- Three Late Medieval English Translations of the Secreta Secretorum, from late medieval manuscripts, historically valuable for their preservation of late medieval English.