Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/293

three great imposters, Moses, Christ, and Muhammad. This opinion of Frederick is expressed in passionate words by Gregory IX. in the encyclical letter "ad omnes principes et prelatos terrae" (in Mansi. xxiii. 79), where he compares the Emperor to the blaspheming beast of Apocalypse xiii., but Frederick in reply likened the Pope to the beast described in Apoc. vi., "the great dragon which reduced the whole world," and professed a perfectly orthodox attitude towards Moses, Christ, and Muhammad. It is quite probable, as Rènan (Averroes, p. 293) supposes, that the views ascribed to Frederick really are based on a professed sympathy towards the Arabic philosophers, who regarded all religions as equally tolerable for the uninstructed multitude, and commonly illustrated their remarks by citing the "three laws" which were best known to them. In 1224 Frederick founded a university at Naples, and made it an academy for the purpose of introducing Arabic science to the western world, and there various translations were made from Arabic into Latin and into Hebrew. By his encouragement Michael Scot visited Toledo about 1217 and translated Ibn Rushd's commentaries on Aristotle's de coelo et de mundo, as well as the first part of the de anima. It seems probable also that he was the translator of commentaries on the Meteora, Parva Naturalia, de substantia orbis, Physics, and de generatione et de corruptione. Ibn Sina's commentaries were in general circulation before this, so that they were very probably the "commentaries" referred