On Aristotle’s Influence in Europe

The notion that Thomas Aquinas reintroduced Aristotle to Europe in the thirteenth century is a myth created by some nineteenth and twentieth century historians and philosophers. Aristotle never vanished from Europe. Several scholars in the Roman Empire and in the post-Roman era studied and extensively commented on Aristotle. Aquinas could not read Greek, and the Aristotelian texts that he studied were the Latin translations done by William of Moerbeke. Aquinas can be credited with introducing a Thomistic version of Aristotle to Europe—but several other versions of Aristotle were available before him. In the Preface to his book The Republic of Plato, Allan Bloom writes, “William of Moerbeke's Latin translations of Aristotle… are so faithful to Aristotle's text that they are authorities for the correction of the Greek manuscripts, and they enabled Thomas Aquinas to become a supreme interpreter of Aristotle without knowing Greek.”