There is a tendency to associate the Toledo School of Translators with the Learned King (1221–1284) when, in fact, it was founded in the twelfth century by Raimundo de Sauvetât, Archbishop of Toledo and Chancellor of Castile from 1126 to 1150, a Cistercian monk of French origin.
The seed of the school lies in the pressure exerted on Jewish and some Muslim scholars by the Almoravid and Almohad invasions, which during the eleventh and twelfth centuries forced them to migrate to the northern Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, taking with them all the knowledge accumulated by Arab culture over the preceding centuries.
Toledo, a Christian city since 1085 after its conquest by Alfonso VI of Castile, was therefore chosen as the centre from which this culture would be disseminated.
Among the founder's successors stand out Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo (1170–1247), known for his historical writings and, above all, for his prominent part in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), and the scholars Dominicus Gundissalinus (c. 1115 – post 1190) and Johannes Hispanus (?–c. 1180).
In its early days the School leaned towards science: works on medicine and mathematics, then on astrology, astronomy and magic and, finally, on philosophy, gaining a reputation across Europe that drew scholars from abroad attracted by the prodigious Arabic books. The Scotsman Michael Scot (c. 1175 – c. 1232) would be the author of the first translations of Aristotle and Averroes.
The Greek, Arabic and Hebrew translations can fairly be called a triumph after the centuries during which Europe had been steeped in the gloom of medieval culture. Aristotle was barely known until well into the twelfth century. It was only in the mid-thirteenth century, thanks to the work of Avicenna and Averroes, that the Aristotelian corpus began to circulate, opening the horizon of thought and philosophy. Nature began to be investigated through reason.
Works by Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates and Euclid were translated, with a real cultural impact, and theology shifted from being a pastoral teaching delivered from the pulpit to becoming an academic discipline.
The Church, however, did not welcome translations of pagan authors and was not slow to condemn them.
It would be Alfonso X, upon his accession, who would invigorate the centre with translations of treatises on astronomy, physics, alchemy and mathematics, as well as works of leisure such as books of chess, dice and tables, and collections of tales such as Kalila wa-Dimna and Sendebar. From then on, translations would no longer be poured into Latin but into Castilian, opening knowledge to a far wider readership.
If anyone, among other enlightened figures, is owed the cultural awakening of an age in which the end of the Middle Ages was beginning to be glimpsed, it is without doubt the Learned King, whose patronage extended to every kind of scientist, scholar and troubadour. If his work was not that of an outright creator, he certainly directed the labour of his translators and selected, among their works, those of the greatest value.
Europe owes much, and translation as a craft owes much, to the Toledo School of Translators for its later scientific and intellectual development.