Talk:Centiloquium

Bethem's Centiloquium

Found using Google here here, Renate Smithuis (2006) Abraham Ibn Ezra's Astrological Works in Hebrew and Latin: New Discoveries and Exhaustive Listing, Aleph: historical studies in science & Judaism, 6, 239--338 notes (n. 25, p. 251):

The short Bethen treatises may well originate from the Arabic, though nothing is known about their supposed author. Earlier suggestions that this person be identified with either Henry Bate or Al-Battani have been discarded (see Sezgin, GAS, 7:160). Francis J. Carmody (Arabic Astronomical and Astrological Sciences in Latin Translation. A critical bibliography, [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956], p.74) claims to have found an Arabic original of Bethen's Centiloquium in the form of two manuscripts at the Escorial. Cf Thorndike, "The Latin Translations", p. 299, who mentions an Oxford manuscript that ascribes the translations to Peter.

David Juste, for the Warburg Institute, writes [1]:

Author and origin: unknown. The tract is apparently identical with the De consuetudinibus of Abraham ibn Ezra (ca. 1090-1167) and often occurs in manuscripts together with other astrological texts of Abraham ibn Ezra translated from a French version by Peter of Abano (1257-ca. 1315)...

Bibliography: L. Thorndike, "The Latin Translations of the Astrological Tracts of Abraham Avenezra", Isis, 35, 1944, pp. 293-302 (p. 299); F.J. Carmody, Arabic Astronomical and Astrological Sciences in Latin Translation. A Critical Bibliography, Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1956, pp. 74-75 (nr. 1).

Sezgin is Fuat Sezgin (1979), Astrologie, Meteorologie und Verwandtes bis ca. 430 H (Vol. 7 of his Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums), p. 160, who writes (in German) is:

In Latin manuscripts three minor astrological treatises are preserved, whose author is given as Bethem, Boetem, Bereni, Bareni, etc. That they can have nothing to do with al-Battani has been clarified by Nallino (I, introduction, XXVIII–XXX; EI I,709) (cf. Carmody, p. 74–75; Suter, Nachtr. 164).

• The other two "minor astrological treatises" are De horis planetarum ("The hours of the planets"?) and De significatione triplicitatum ortus ("About the meaning of triple risings"?)
• I'm not certain about I is, but it appears to be part 1 of Carlo Alfonso Nallino (1899-1907 bound together; part 1 is 1903), Al-Battānī - sive Albatenii Opus astronomicum, Arabic and Latin, from the manuscripts in the Escorial.
• EI is (I think) Enzyklopädie des Islam: Geographisches, ethnographisches und biographisches Wörterbuch der muhammedanischen Völker, Vols 1–4, + Supplement vol., Leiden, Leipzig, 1913–1938. (Encyclopaedia of Islam -- see EI1). An English version also exists; though the relevant article (Al-Battani?) won't presumably have the same page number.

  Got it. It is indeed the article by Nallino on al-Battani: [2]

  Three insignificant astrological pamphlets, of which a Latin version exists in several manuscripts, which give their author's name as Bethem, Boetem, Bereni, Bareni, have wrongly been attributed to al-Battani

• Carmody is Francis J. Carmody (1956), Arabic Astronomical and Astrological Sciences in Latin Translation. A critical bibliography. Berkeley & Los Angeles.

  -- I think (if Google books has given me the right snippet) this suggests that there may be two Arabic copies of the work in the library at the Escorial. [3] + + (mss. Escurial 517, 966) But, the Escorial manuscript catalogue is also accessible, and I think suggests that these are (i) very late; (ii) translations into Arabic from Latin; and (iii) even of one of the other Centiloquiums (Ptolemy's ?).

• Suter is Heinrich Suter (1902), Die Nachträger und Berichtigungen -- an article of addenda to his 1900 book.

  -- Suter describes this ref in a piece in the Bibliotheca Mathematica (1904) [4]

  On pages XXVIII to XXX Nallino holds, to my mind for convincing reasons, that the works Centiloquium, de horis planetarum, de ortu triplicatum attributed to Bethem or Bethen do not originate from al-Battani, which from a kind communication of Nallino I already had in my "Addenda and Corrections" (Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der mathematischen Wissenschaften 14 (1902)).

Lynn Thorndike (1944), ‘The Latin Translations of the Astrological Tracts of Abraham Avenezra’, Isis, 35, pp. 293-302 (p. 299) jstor is also cited by Smithius in Aleph, as well as by the Warburg Institute, etc.; and apparently discusses the "enigmatic" Bethem.

• cf Thorndike & Kibre (1937) A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin, 965 (Mediaeval Academy of America, 1937), which presumably just gives the Incipit.

Thorndike (1944), p. 299, describes the incipits of seven manuscripts. One, Oxford: Bodleian: Canon Misc 190, 15th century, ff. 57--59, self-describes as:

Eiusdem (i.e. Abraham Abenezra) liber de consuetudinibus in iudiciis astrorum et est centiloquium Bethen eodem interprete (i.e. Peter of Abano)

To this he footnotes:

PIERRE DUHEM, Le système du monde, IV (1916), 28, apparently identifies this name with BATE, to whom he ascribes the work regardless of the fact that PETER OF ABANO is named as translator and ABRAHAM as author. Bethen is more likely to be the corruption of some Greek or Arabic writer such as ALBATEGNI whose work ABRAHAM has appropriated. WALLERAND, p.21, lists the work as BATE's but notes that A BIRKENMAJER, Henri Bate de Malines has deemed this attribution erroneous.

Nallino (1903) writes (in Latin), p. xxix, having given the incipits and excipits of the three works:

That all this is a world away from the remaining works by Al-Battani (and those certain) there is no-one who would not see; neither from the book on the ascensions of the signs of the Zodiac, which is treated according to the governing planet, can these propositions of astrological judgement be extracted; nor considered in agreement with the mind and character of Al-Battani, such as they appear from any other source. In addition Johannes Stöffler (d. 1531), an expert judge in these matters, felt thus about the work: "Many most learned astrologers followed the Babylonians [sic], especially Bethen, who composed a treatise concerning the hours proper to the planets, of which the beginning is 'When it was the hour of Saturn'. The work therefore hardly seems to agree with the principles of Ptolemy, which however we have discovered that Al-Battani followed.

There is therefore no reason why we should attribute those works to our astronomer besides the similarity of the author's name. That that argument is most deceptive no-one can dare deny who knows how the Arabic words were corrupted in the middle ages in a way wholly incredible from ours. The most certain indication that Bethen or Bethem has nothing to do with Al-Battani I think may be taken from this very name itself, as I shall show in the following.

Of Arab proper names there are two kinds, the one always provided with the article al, the other steadfastly destitute of the article. Proper names of any one kind can never be turned into the other. Now the rule was strongest to those who in the Middle Ages translated Arabic books into Hebrew, Latin and Spanish. Therefore also John Hispalensis for us should maintain the article of proper names as often as it would be found in the Arabic; a most certain witness to which are Albategnius, Albenait, Alcabitius, Alchindus, Alcharsi, Alchasibi, Alchorismus, Alfraganus, Algazelus, Alhazen, Alkasem, Almansor, Almeon, Alpetragius, Alpharabius, Anaritius, Asaphar, Azarchel or Azachel, Azophi, and many other names of men. Moreover, even names composed with the word Abu (i.e. father) were sometimes furnished with a false article by the translators, as Albohali, Albohazen, Albubather, Albucasis, Albumasar

And they did not operate any differently in geographical names, the most copious examples of which are given by John Hispalensis in the translation of Alfraganus and Alcabitius, Plato of Tivoli in the translation of the Tetrabiblios and of Al-Battani, the interpreters of the astrologer Ibn Abi 'r-Rigal, and others. Finally in the technical vocabulary of sciences itself the Latin and Spanish translators preserved the article, even though in such terms in Arabic it is put in or left out as appropriate, just as it may be in our own languages: Alchata, alcoranum, regula alchatain, alhigera, alkali, alkekengi, alchimia, alambicus, alchermes, alkohol, algebra, etc., and, as regards astronomy and astrology, almagesti or almagestum, almanach, almanar, almuri, alhidada, alcora, alchitoth, alferath, almehuar, asaphaea, almucantarat, azimuth, almunchariff, alchinchirefet, attacium (for attacuim), athazir, alcobol, almenen, alichorad, alfazim, alhylech, alcochoden, algebugthar, azemena, in addition to many others sprinkled in books of astrology and medicine. So slavishly did they translate that not infrequently they placed or omitted the Arabic article according to the rules of Arabic grammar.

(to be continued) ...

That this Bethem, Bethen, Bereni etc be the same man as Beleni, Belini (i.e. Apollonius Thyaneus) of whom translations of astrological and magical works from Arabic into Latin are attributed I dare not affirm, indeed I think it hardly likely.