The Library
1693 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
501–600
3 works
c. 505–523
Latin
Boethius · c. 477 – c. 524
Boethius set out to translate all of Aristotle and all of Plato and prove them compatible, and was executed long before finishing. What he completed was the logic: the Categories, On Interpretation, and Porphyry's Isagoge, each with commentary.
529
Greek
John Philoponus · c. 490–c. 570
A Christian grammarian dismantles the Aristotelian arguments for an eternal universe, and in doing so attacks Aristotle's physics of motion and the fifth element.
c. 552; survives in Syriac
Greek, surviving in Syriac
Diaitetes
John Philoponus · c. 490 – c. 570
An attempt to settle Chalcedon by defining the terms philosophically: nature means a particular thing, not a general kind, so two natures would mean two individuals. Pressed to its conclusion by his opponents, the same logic made the Trinity three particulars.
701–800
1 work
c. 780–820
Syriac
Timothy I · c. 728–823
The correspondence of a patriarch in Baghdad appointing bishops for Tibet and China, hunting for manuscripts of Aristotle, and negotiating with the caliph's officials.
801–900
1 work
c. 818–820
Greek
Nicephorus of Constantinople · c. 758–828
A line-by-line demolition of the iconoclast council of 815, dense with Aristotelian argument about relation, likeness, and circumscription.
1201–1300
6 works
c. 1231–1236
Latin
William of Auvergne · c. 1180–1249
A bishop of Paris works through the newly available Aristotelian and Arabic philosophy, accepting what he can and rejecting the eternity of the world and the single intellect.
c. 1258–1262
Latin
De Animalibus
Albert the Great · c. 1200–1280
Twenty-six books on animals, mixing Aristotle with first-hand observation — of falcons, of whales caught off the North Sea, of ants he had watched himself.
c. 1260–1286
Latin
William of Moerbeke · c. 1215–c. 1286
Aristotle rendered from Greek into Latin word for word, along with Proclus, Archimedes, and Greek commentators, at the request of his friend Aquinas.
c. 1271
Latin
Siger of Brabant · c. 1240–c. 1284
An argument that on Aristotelian principles the world must be eternal, whatever faith holds — the philosopher reasoning as a philosopher and stopping there.
c. 1271–1272
Latin
Thomas Aquinas · 1225–1274
A close reading of Aristotle's ethics on its own terms, using the new translations made from Greek rather than through Arabic.
1273; unfinished
Latin
Collationes in Hexaemeron
Bonaventure · 1221–1274
Lectures to the Paris friars warning that philosophy pursued for its own sake leads to error, broken off when their author was made a cardinal.
1301–1400
1 work
1377
Old French
Livre du ciel et du monde
Nicole Oresme · c. 1320–1382
A translation of and commentary on Aristotle for the king of France, arguing at length that nothing observable rules out the earth turning daily on its axis — and then declining to believe it.
1501–1600
1 work
1544
Latin
Democrates Alter
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda · 1490–1573
A justification of the conquest arguing from Aristotle that some peoples are slaves by nature and may rightly be subjected for their own good.
13 of 1693 works