DOMINGO GUNDISALVO (1174)

Archdeacon of Segovia, Spain, philosopher and linguist whose Latin translations of Greco-Arabic philosophical works contributed largely to the Latin West´s knowledge of Eastern Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions and advanced the integration of Christian philosophy with Greek intellectual experience.

Reflecting views of the Neoplatonic school of Chartres and the mystical traditions centred at the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris, Gundisalvo may have studied in France (c. 1140).

Two of his works De anima (On the Soul) and De immortalitate animae (On the Immortality of the Soul) suggest the Neoplatonic argument for the soul´s natural immortality that markedly influenced later Scholastic philosophers -e.g. Bonaventure and Albertus Magnus- at the University of Paris.

While a member of the cathedral chapters of Toledo (c. 1150) and Segovia (c. 1190) Gundisalvo collaborated with linguists versed in Arabic in making Latin translations of Arabic philosophical treatises among them works by Avicenna.

Influenced by the Neoplatonic Christian views of St. Augustine, Gundisalvo strove to relate the Augustinian illuminationist theory of knowledge (the tesis that ideas are the consequence of supernatural enlightenment) with the Greco-Arabic tradition. His processione mundi (On the Procession of the World) by ascribing the emergent force of the universe to God´s causality attempted to harmonize the Neoplatonic-Arabic doctrine of emanationism with the Christian teaching on creation.