What Factors Are Conducive to Coherence? Translation Activity in Late Medieval Western Europe: A Sketch of a Research Program

Why is the history of intellectual change in the Middle Ages a history of selectively studied influences about which so few historians have dared venture generalizations? Why is it so rich with contradictions? And why do we have so little comprehensive knowledge about the translators behind these intellectual changes? To answer these questions, this article proposes a novel approach to the history of Greek-Latin translations between 1050 and 1350, which substantially reshaped the Medieval Latin intellectual landscape and the cultural history of Europe. After reviewing the conclusions in the most recent secondary literature, the essay offers a sketch of a historical analysis of translation-centered decision-making processes. In doing so, it singles out four hypotheses and describes four research areas corresponding to these assumptions. The proposed research examines the translators’ personalities and activities, their training, mobility, cultural patronage, networks and their audiences (including universities) that influenced their decisions when they chose to translate texts from Greek into Latin. Such an analysis will help us better understand the expanding cultural networks between the medieval Western and Eastern Mediterranean and the development of translations in Latin-using Western Europe.