Toledo and the translators: the road of Arabic science and magic

In 1085 King Alfonso VI of Castile entered Toledo, which for more than three centuries had been one of the most important cities of Muslim Spain. With the conquest, its libraries passed into Christian hands, together with a community of scholars used to moving between Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and the Romance vernacular. Over the next two centuries the city became the main crossroads through which the philosophy, medicine, astronomy and occult sciences of the Arab world reached Latin Europe, profoundly changing medieval culture.

The age of Archbishop Raymond and Gerard of Cremona

The first impulse came in the twelfth century, during the episcopate of Archbishop Raymond, between 1125 and 1152, who encouraged the work of the translators. The expression “Toledo School of Translators” was coined only in the nineteenth century: there was no organised institution, but rather a milieu of scholars, often working together. Among the best-known names are Dominicus Gundissalinus and a learned Jewish convert known as Avendauth.

The most prolific was the Italian Gerard of Cremona, who died in Toledo in 1187; he came to Spain to read Ptolemy's Almagest and stayed there for the rest of his life. Dozens of translations from Arabic are attributed to him, including the Almagest itself, Avicenna's Canon of Medicine and works on geometry and alchemy. In the thirteenth century the Scot Michael Scot also worked in Toledo, later becoming astrologer to Frederick II.

Alfonso X and the books of the stars

In the second half of the thirteenth century King Alfonso X of Castile, known as the Wise, who reigned from 1252 to 1284, gave new impetus to translation, often having works rendered into Castilian rather than Latin. His court produced the Alfonsine Tables, used for centuries by European astronomers, and astrological and magical compilations such as the Lapidary, which describes stones in relation to the signs of the zodiac according to the beliefs of the time.

Under Alfonso the Ghayat al-hakim, “The Goal of the Sage”, an Arabic treatise on astral magic known in Europe as Picatrix, was also translated. The Castilian version, dated 1256 by tradition, was then rendered into Latin and circulated for a long time in the learned circles of the Renaissance. These texts described a cosmos in which planets, stones, plants and images were bound by secret correspondences.

A city of necromancers in the European imagination

Toledo's reputation as a place of occult learning spread quickly. Already in the Middle Ages, in various European texts, studying at Toledo became almost synonymous with learning necromancy, and the city appears as a homeland of magicians in tales and sermons. People spoke of underground schools where the devil himself taught the students, a rumour that reflects the fear aroused by knowledge that had come from Islam.

Among the local legends stands out that of the Cueva de Hércules, a cave that tradition said was founded by the Greek hero and housed an enchanted palace. According to the tale, Roderic, the last Visigothic king, entered it in breach of an ancient prohibition and saw there the announcement of the Arab invasion of 711. Today underground spaces identified with the cave can be visited in the city; in reality they are connected with Roman-era water structures.

Toledo's most important legacy, however, remains its books. Without the Toledan translations, thirteenth-century European science and Scholastic philosophy would have been very different, and Renaissance magic too would have lacked many of its fundamental texts. Anyone walking today between the cathedral, the synagogues of Santa María la Blanca and El Tránsito and the old mosques can still sense the coexistence of cultures from which that season was born.