Flourished (Spain), 1106–1120
Petrus Alfonsi is likely to have been instrumental in introducing Arabic astronomy to Christian scholars such as Walcher of Malvern and Adelard of Bath, and thus played a key role in prompting the whole‐scale translation of Arabic mathematical and astronomical learning in the 12th century.
Alfonsi was educated as a Jew in an Arabic milieu in Huesca (Aragon) in the Islamic kingdom of Zaragoza; but, after the Christian conquest of Huesca in 1096, he converted to Christianity, and was baptized on 29 June 1106. Thereafter he traveled in France and England, advertising himself as a “teacher of astronomy,” but perhaps returned to Spain (if he can be identified with a “Peter of Toledo”) later in his life. Alfonsi was the earliest scholar to bring learned Arabic cosmological and astronomical knowledge to Latin‐reading Christians.
Much astronomical and cosmological information is included in his popular Dialogus contra Iudaeos(Dialogue against the Jews) in which...
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Selected References
Burnett, Charles (1997). “The Works of Petrus Alfonsi: Questions of Authenticity.” Medium Aevum 66: 42–79.
Mercier, Raymond (1987). “Astronomical Tables in the Twelfth Century.” In Adelard of Bath: An English Scientist and Arabist of the Early Twelfth Century, edited by Charles Burnett, pp. 87–118. esp. pp. 95–100. London: Warburg Institute.
Neugebauer, Otto (1962). The Astronomical Tables of al‐Khwārizmī. Translation with commentaries of the Latin version edited by H. Suter, supplemented by Corpus Christi College MS 283. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.
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Burnett, C. (2007). Alfonsi, Petrus. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_32
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