WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

explains how Pedro should rule his kingdom and, like any member of the genre, comes complete
with theoretical ruminations on sovereign rule, short illustrative fables, analogies, and exempla
that the ruler may follow. Particularly, these advices are ways for Benaharin to tell Pedro that a
king should temper justice with mercy when treating with his subjects.
Although this letter is clearly fictional (after all, who would believe that Benaharin really
sent a complete manual on ruling upon Pedro’s initial victory over Enrique II?), Ayala claims
that he translated Benaharin’s letter and not that he summarized it or that he derived its maxims
from thinking about history. In so doing, he situates his intervention in parallel to the popular
Secretum Secretorum, a fictional letter of Aristotle to Alexander on the secrets of ruling,
translated from Arabic to Latin by John of Tripoli to his liege. As John of Tripoli prefaces his
work:
When then I was with you in Antioch and this most precious pearl of philosophy was discovered,
it pleased Your Lordship that it be translated from the Arabic language into Latin…I have
translated with great labor and clear prose from Arabic idiomatically into Latin…this book that is
not found among the Latins and but rarely among the Arabs, to your great glory and honor. The
most expert prince of philosophers, Aristotle, composed this book at the request of Alexander, his
pupil, who asked that he come to him and faithfully reveal to him the secret of certain arts…
Aristotle was not able to come because of his old age and the heaviness of his body… Wishing to
satisfy the emperor and also to safeguard the secrets of these arts, he spoke in enigmas and
figurative locutions, teaching extrinsically the philosophical doctrine pertaining to kingship. 312
Although the Secretum Secretorum is not the only speculum, its form is by far the most
disseminated, and, as far as Ayala, it is the closest analogue to his pseudo-letter from Benaharin.
In its Prologue, John of Tripoli becomes a translator of hidden knowledge which Aristotle wrote
in a letter because—just like Ayala has Benaharin narrate—he had engagements that kept him
from personally advising his liege.
312 Qtd. in Steven Williams, The Secret of Secrets. Trans. Steven Williams (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2003) 364.
185