st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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secular literature.
ON NATURAL SCIENCE. 169
But it has not been on that account
unimportant. It was in Syria that Greek philosophy
found a home, after it had been driven from
Alexandria. The Aristotelian philosophy, in par
ticular, which was looked on with suspicion and
dislike by the earlier fathers of the Church, and
which John of Damascus himself inveighs against in
one of his writings, when used as a pillar of Nestorianism,
1 became domiciled there, and was in the
end employed by Damascenus in the service of the
orthodox faith. To Syrian Christians belongs the
credit of having taught their Arabian conquerors what
the latter in turn taught Western Europe. The
versions of Aristotle were not made by Arabic
scholars directly from the Greek, but by Syrian
interpreters, first into Syriac, and then (often from
that same Syriac version) into Arabic. 2 The chief
physicians, and in that sense teachers of science, at
the court of Bagdad, appear to have been Nestorians
of Syria ;
and as the first Arabic translation of
Aristotle was not made till the reign of Almamun
(813-833),
1
it becomes a matter of some interest to
"Contra Jacobitas." Migne s ed., torn, i., col. 1441. He
there bitterly speaks of Aristotle as a "thirteenth apostle" in
the estimation of the heretics.
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2 This is distinctly stated by Kenan in his essay De Philosophia
Peripatetica apud Syros," 1852, p. 55 ; and to the same
effect Schmolders, Essai sur les ecoles philosophiques chez les
Arabes," 1842, p. 95, and Ueberweg,
"Hist, of Philosophy
(tr. by Norris and Porter), 1875, l ->
P- 4 IQ "The acquaint
-
ance of the Mohammedan Arabs," says the last-mentioned
author, "with the writings of Aristotle was brought about
through the agency of Syrian Christians."