This adaptation is published with the authorization of Professor Xu Shanwei. It is an AI-assisted contemporary editorial adaptation by Clio Walker, based on Xu’s book and sources actually consulted, using a first-person guide’s voice. It is neither a new personal travelogue by the professor nor a chapter-by-chapter reproduction. Authorization does not imply his individual approval of every additional interpretation.

On one side of a pack animal hung a coffin. On the other side hung a stack of books.

In the coffin lay Ibn Rushd of Córdoba, whom the Latins would later call Averroes. He had died in Marrakesh around the Islamic year 595, which is 1198 of the common era, and his body was to be carried home to Córdoba for burial. When the coffin was loaded onto the animal, his own books were put on the other side so that the two loads would balance.

Three men stood watching: a jurist and secretary named Ibn Jubayr, a copyist called Abu al-Hakam, and the young Ibn Arabi. The copyist turned to the others and said: Look at what balances the imam Ibn Rushd on his mount. Here is the imam, and there are his works. Ibn Jubayr said: My son, you have seen well.

Ibn Arabi wrote the remark down as a lesson to remember and added two lines of verse: Here is the imam, and these are his works; would that I knew whether his hopes were fulfilled. Writing about it many years later, he noted that of everyone there that day, he alone was still alive.

The two had met before. When Ibn Arabi was a boy, his face still beardless, his father sent him to see the judge of Córdoba. Ibn Rushd rose, embraced him, and said, “Yes.” The boy answered, “Yes,” and the judge was delighted. Sensing why the judge was pleased, the boy then said, “No.” The judge’s face changed, and he asked: What you have found through mystical unveiling and divine outpouring, is it the same as what rational inquiry gives us? The boy replied: Yes and no. The judge turned pale and began to tremble.

One man trusted reasoning, the other revelation. Ibn Arabi himself recorded this exchange of “yes” and “no.” Yet once Ibn Rushd’s books had traveled north, the quarrel they set off in Paris turned on almost the same question: if reason proves something, may faith refuse it?

On 7 March 1277 the bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, banned 219 propositions. Many of the views in that list were connected with the man who was buried with his books for ballast. And the “double truth” that people pinned on him: did he ever say it?

The Caliph Asks About the Heavens

Ibn Rushd was born in Córdoba in 1126; his grandfather and his father were both judges. He wrote no autobiography, and the best-known episode of his life comes from a historian a generation younger, ʿAbd al-Wahid of Marrakesh. He says he had it from Ibn Rushd’s student Bundud, who said he had heard his teacher tell it more than once.

It happened during the reign of Abu Yaʿqub Yusuf, the second ruler of the Almohad dynasty, from 1163 to 1184. The man who introduced Ibn Rushd was the philosopher Ibn Tufayl.

When Ibn Rushd came in, he found the ruler alone with Ibn Tufayl. Ibn Tufayl began by praising him, describing his family and his ancestors, with compliments Ibn Rushd felt he did not deserve.

After asking his name, his father’s name and his lineage, the ruler’s very first question was: What is their view, meaning the philosophers’ view, of the heavens? Are they an eternal substance, or did they have a beginning?

Ibn Rushd was embarrassed and afraid. He made an excuse not to answer and denied that he had ever studied philosophy. He did not know what Ibn Tufayl had told the ruler beforehand.

The ruler saw his alarm, turned to Ibn Tufayl, and began to discuss the question himself. He set out what Aristotle, Plato and the other philosophers had said, and the arguments the Muslim theologians had raised against them. Little by little the ruler put him at ease, drew him into speaking, and found out how much he knew. When Ibn Rushd withdrew, he was given a sum of money, a precious robe of honor and a mount.

Why should the question be frightening? To my mind, for Aristotle the world had no beginning; for the Qur’an it was created by God. Asked this at a first audience with the ruler, one wrong sentence could get a man taken for an unbeliever. Nearly a century later, one of the thirteen errors banned by the bishop of Paris was “that the world is eternal.”

“If Only Someone Would Explain These Books”

On another day Ibn Tufayl sent for him and said: Today I heard the ruler complain that Aristotle and his translators are obscure. He said, if only someone would master these books and set them out clearly, so that everyone could read them. You have everything such a task requires. Take it on. I am old and busy in the ruler’s service; I cannot do it.

Ibn Rushd later said that this was what led him to write his summaries of Aristotle’s works.

This story was told to the historian by a student who said he had it from his teacher’s own mouth. For the audience we have this single source. The historian finished his book in the Islamic year 621, which is 1224, at least forty years after the audience, and not every word need be exact. Modern scholars adopt the account: the ruler did ask him to comment on Aristotle and make the books accessible, and he later became the ruler’s chief physician in Marrakesh. But what they rely on is still this one report.

Xu Shanwei writes that Ibn Rushd’s achievement as a philosopher rested on his detailed commentaries on Aristotle, and that while most of their Arabic originals are lost, the Latin translations survive complete.

The Giraffe and Venus

After Abu Yaʿqub died, his son Abu Yusuf took the throne. Near the end of his reign, Ibn Rushd met with disaster.

The historian ʿAbd al-Wahid says there were two causes, one open and one hidden. The hidden one mattered more. In his commentary on Aristotle’s book on animals, Ibn Rushd came to the giraffe and wrote, “I saw it at the court of the king of the Berbers.” He named the country and the ruler in a scholar’s plain way, without the formulas of praise and glorification that courtiers and clever secretaries expected. People at court quietly held it against him. The historian calls it a mere oversight on Ibn Rushd’s part.

The open cause was this. Some men of Córdoba who claimed a family as good as his and ancestors as noble denounced him, using one of the summaries he had written in his own hand. In it, discussing an ancient philosopher, he ended with a sentence: so it is clear that Venus is a deity.

The ruler gathered chiefs and notables of every rank around him in Córdoba, summoned Ibn Rushd, handed him the pages, and asked: Is this your handwriting? He said: No. The ruler said: May God curse whoever wrote these lines! Everyone present repeated the curse after him.

Then Ibn Rushd was driven out in disgrace and exiled. Orders went out to the provinces: books of philosophy were to be burned, except for medicine, arithmetic, and the part of astronomy needed to reckon the hours of day and night and the direction of Mecca.

Later, back in Marrakesh, the ruler changed his mind and called Ibn Rushd there to pardon him and treat him well. He fell ill there and died at the end of the Islamic year 594.

This account needs careful reading.

First, by the historian’s own telling, the sentence about Venus was written while Ibn Rushd was reporting an ancient philosopher’s view, and his accusers lifted it out of context. Ibn Rushd denied on the spot that the handwriting was his. Whether he was telling the truth, we cannot know.

Second, the historian says he died at almost eighty, yet by his birth year he was only about seventy-two; and the year of death he gives is one year earlier than Ibn Arabi’s.

Third, the historian presents the disgrace as the work of jealous townsmen and a quotation taken out of context, and adds that the ruler later relented. Told this way, the fault lies with the accusers, and the ruler was only misled for a time. ʿAbd al-Wahid was writing the history of this dynasty, and he says in the book that he had repeatedly received favors from Ibrahim, the ruler’s son. In my view, that is worth keeping in mind when reading this passage. Modern scholars put it most cautiously: late in life he fell out of favor and was exiled to Lucena, for reasons that remain unclear.

Truth Does Not Oppose Truth

So how did he himself see philosophy and faith? He left a treatise whose title can be rendered as The Decisive Word on the Connection Between Philosophy and the Religious Law, usually called the Decisive Treatise.

There he wrote: since we Muslims hold that this divine Law is true, and that it calls people to the kind of reflection that leads to knowledge of the truth, we know for certain that demonstrative reasoning will not lead to conclusions that contradict the Law. For truth does not oppose truth; it agrees with it and bears witness to it. Where a demonstrated conclusion differs from the literal sense of scripture, one should look for a figurative reading, following the rules by which Arabic uses figures of speech.

He also wrote that philosophy is hurt most by those who claim to belong to it, as injury from a friend is worse than injury from an enemy. Philosophy is the companion of the Law, its sister nursed at the same breast.

Later, the bishop of Paris accused certain men of holding “two contrary truths,” and later still that label was pinned on Ibn Rushd. Xu Shanwei’s book keeps the name “double truth,” saying that through his study of Aristotle he put forward such a doctrine; but the book goes straight on to explain that he did not treat philosophical and theological truth as two truths in conflict, only that he placed philosophical truth above theological truth. The name “double truth” itself comes from the charge Bishop Tempier later made.

One Intellect

His books traveled north. A table in Xu Shanwei’s book lists the long, middle and short commentaries by Ibn Rushd that Michael Scot translated into Latin between about 1220 and 1235. By the 1230s Latin scholars were already calling him “the Commentator.”

The trouble came over one question: what is it in a human being that thinks?

In On the Soul, Aristotle says that we have an intellect able to receive everything that can be known. Ibn Rushd concluded that this intellect is not one per person but one shared by all humankind, separate from the body.

What that meant to believers, Xu Shanwei puts bluntly: on this view what is immortal is the intellect of the human race, not each person’s soul, and the doctrines of the soul’s survival and of reward and punishment after death are left with nothing to stand on.

At about this time the Dominican friar Giles sent Albert the Great a list of propositions that some Paris masters were putting forward in the schools; the first was that the intellect of all men is one in number.

“Not in Corners, Before Boys”

In 1268 Thomas Aquinas was called back to Paris for an unusual second term as master of theology. In 1270 he wrote a short treatise titled On the Unity of the Intellect, Against the Averroists.

He did not argue from faith but from the philosophers’ own words, saying Averroes had distorted Aristotle and calling him a “perverter of Peripatetic philosophy.” It is strange, he wrote, that some people who have read only Averroes’ commentary dare to declare that all the Greek and Arab philosophers held this view.

Then he singled out a sentence from his opponent. The man had said: by reason I conclude of necessity that the intellect is one in number; but by faith I firmly hold the opposite.

Thomas would not let it go. On this account, he said, faith would believe something whose opposite can be proved of necessity. Only a necessary truth can be proved of necessity, and its opposite is an impossible falsehood; so faith would be believing an impossible falsehood, something even God cannot bring about. The ears of the faithful cannot bear it.

The last paragraph reads like a challenge: if anyone, boasting of knowledge falsely so called, wishes to reply to what I have written, let him not speak in corners, nor before boys who cannot judge such difficult matters, but write a reply to this, if he dares. He will find standing against him not only me, the least of all, but many other lovers of truth.

The treatise names no one. Denifle noticed that a manuscript in Munich names him in its title: Treatise of Brother Thomas against Master Siger on the unity of the intellect. Siger of Brabant was the most controversial master in the Paris arts faculty in those years.

Thirteen Errors and a Geometer

That same year, on 10 December 1270, Bishop Tempier of Paris announced thirteen errors and excommunicated everyone who knowingly taught them. The first was that the intellect of all men is one in number. Others followed: that the human will chooses of necessity; that the world is eternal; that God does not know particular things.

Denifle notes that these propositions were for the most part Averroist and had been taught in the Paris schools, and that the list Giles sent to Albert may have been the same.

A little over a year later, on 1 April 1272, the masters of the arts faculty met in the church of Sainte-Geneviève and, with no one dissenting, adopted a rule: no master was to dispute purely theological questions such as the Trinity or the Incarnation, and anyone who settled a question touching the faith against the faith and did not retract within three days would be expelled for good.

At this point they quoted a saying of “the Philosopher”: it is entirely unfitting for one who is not a geometer to dispute with a geometer.

To my mind, the saying cut both ways: theologians, keep out of our philosophy, and we will keep out of your theology.

Two Contrary Truths

On 18 January 1277 Pope John XXI wrote asking Tempier to look into rumors of heresy in Paris, and on 7 March Tempier published 219 propositions. Earlier still, in November 1276, the inquisitor of France had summoned Siger, then living in Liège, as gravely suspect of heresy.

Tempier’s list came with a covering letter. Some students of the arts in Paris, he wrote, were overstepping the limits of their own faculty and disputing manifest and execrable errors in the schools. So as not to seem to assert these errors, they dressed up their answers, and in trying to avoid Scylla they fell into Charybdis. For they say that these things are true according to philosophy but not according to the Catholic faith, as if there were two contrary truths, and as if, against the truth of sacred scripture, there were truth in the sayings of the damned pagans.

“Two contrary truths”: this is where the later phrase “double truth” comes from. Hans Thijssen, a scholar of this condemnation, says scholars now agree that no medieval author held the philosophically absurd theory that two contradictory propositions, one derived from philosophical inquiry and the other from Christian revelation, can both be true at once. In his view, Tempier’s reproach is better read as an attempt to ridicule a certain way of interpreting texts.

Set the three sentences side by side. Ibn Rushd says: truth does not oppose truth. The opponent Thomas quotes says: by reason I conclude this, by faith I hold the opposite. Tempier says: they speak as if there were two contrary truths. The first is Ibn Rushd’s own sentence; the second is an opponent’s words as quoted by Thomas; the third is an accuser’s summary. Pinning the third on the first man means skipping two steps.

One of the 219 still sounds harsh: that the only wise men of the world are the philosophers. Xu Shanwei’s book says the 219 also included certain teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas was canonized on 18 July 1323, and Xu writes that two years later, in 1325, the ban touching his teachings was lifted. Which of the 219 articles actually implicate Thomas is still argued over by scholars.

Epilogue

What became of Siger? In a letter of November 1284 to the University of Oxford, John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury, discussing a thesis his predecessor had banned at Oxford, wrote that its two chief defenders were said to have ended their days miserably beyond the Alps. The letter names no one; it was later scholars who connected the remark with Siger. A Brabantine continuation of a chronicle is more specific: unable to stay in Paris, Siger went to the papal court, and before long was stabbed to death by his own half-mad clerk. An Italian poem says he died at Orvieto. From these, scholars date his death between 1281 and 1284. The stabbing appears only in that chronicle.

Some years later Dante wrote the Divine Comedy. In the first circle of Hell, among the unbaptized souls who still deserve honor, he saw “the master of those who know,” Aristotle, seated among a family of philosophers. The list ends with Avicenna, Galen, and Averroes, “who made the great commentary.”

In the heaven of the Sun, the soul of Thomas Aquinas introduces to Dante, one by one, the lights around him. Of the last he says: this is the light of a spirit who, in grave thoughts, found that death came too slowly; it is the eternal light of Siger, who, lecturing in the Street of Straw, drew syllogisms of truths that earned him envy.

Thomas wrote against Siger in his lifetime, yet Dante has Thomas praise him with his own mouth. Why? The author of the article on Siger in a 1912 Catholic encyclopedia admitted he could not guess. The question remains unsettled today.

When Ibn Rushd’s coffin was loaded onto the animal, the books on the other side weighed just as much as he did. Those books then traveled north, one after another. In Paris they came to weigh far more than the man himself: some used them to understand Aristotle, some made them a target, and some pinned on him a label he never accepted. The second line of Ibn Arabi’s verse asks exactly this: were his hopes fulfilled?

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. Authorized base text: Xu Shanwei, Eastern Learning’s Westward Transmission and the Revival of Western Culture. Used: the passage on Arabic commentaries (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198, Latin name Averroes, whose commentary on Aristotle amounts to a substantial work in its own right); the table of Latin translations listing Averroes’ long, middle and short commentaries translated by Michael Scot c. 1220–1235; the passage on Arabic stimulus to Western study of Aristotle; the passage on the three scholastic camps and Latin Averroism (his achievement rests on his detailed commentaries; most Arabic originals lost, Latin translations complete; Ibn Rushd put forward a doctrine of “double truth”; he held that both the active and the receptive intellect are one for all humankind, replacing the immortality of the soul with the immortality of the human intellect, in direct conflict with the doctrines of the soul’s survival and retribution after death); the passage on attacks on Thomism (some of Aquinas’s teachings among the 219 of 7 March 1277; the ban lifted in 1325, two years after his canonization). Read directly. Research works quoted in the base text (Russell, Guillaume and others) were not in the text supplied and are not used; the claim that Aquinas reported an Averroist fashion among students during his 1252–1261 teaching in Paris could not be traced to Aquinas and is not used; the Roger Bacon quotation is secondhand and not used. The base text’s passage on “double truth” is given with the qualifying sentence that immediately follows it in paragraph 1164 (“although his ‘double truth’ did not in fact treat philosophical and theological truth as two wholly different or even conflicting truths, he certainly regarded philosophical truth as higher than theological truth”); the story notes that the name itself comes from Tempier’s charge (item 5) and sets it against the Decisive Treatise. 2. ʿAbd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi, al-Muʿjib fi talkhis akhbar al-Maghrib (completed AH 621 / 1224 CE), French translation by E. Fagnan, Histoire des Almohades d’Abd el-Wâh’id Merrâkechi (Algiers, 1893), pp. 207–211, 264–267; Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/histoiredesalmo00margoog). The Arabic text (ed. R. Dozy, Leiden 1847/1881) was not checked word by word. Used: Ibn Tufayl’s introduction; the chain of transmission through the student Bundud; the audience, the question on whether the heavens are eternal or had a beginning, Ibn Rushd’s fear and denial, the ruler’s discussion and memory, the money, robe and mount; Ibn Tufayl’s report of the ruler’s complaint and his request; the historian’s sight of the one-volume Jawamiʿ of about 150 leaves and the later four-volume commentary; the two causes of disgrace (the giraffe “chez le roi des Berbères” without courtly formulas; the Córdoban denunciation and “Vénus est une divinité”); “Est-ce là ton écriture? — Non”; the curse, exile, and burning of philosophy books except medicine, arithmetic and astronomy for prayer times and the qibla; recall to Marrakesh and death “vers la fin de 594, à tout près de 80 ans”; the historian’s own statement that he received favors from Prince Ibrahim, son of Abu Yusuf. 3. Ibn Arabi, al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya, Cairo (General Egyptian Book Organization) edition, vol. 2, pp. 372–373 (lib.eshia.ir; an online digital text, not page images; printed pages to be verified), checked against the transcription of the Konya autograph manuscript, vol. 2, p. 287 (futmak.com); read in Arabic. Used: the boyhood meeting in Córdoba (“yes,” “no,” “yes and no,” the judge turning pale and trembling); the death in AH 595 in Marrakesh, burial in Córdoba, the coffin balanced by his books, the bystanders, Abu al-Hakam’s remark, Ibn Jubayr’s reply and the two-line verse. The text does not say where the coffin was loaded, and does not say whether this Ibn Jubayr is the travel writer; the story asserts neither. The two copies differ on some names; the story gives only “Abu al-Hakam” and “the copyist.” 4. Ibn Rushd, Fasl al-maqal (Decisive Treatise), Arabic text in M. J. Müller (ed.), Philosophie und Theologie von Averroes (Munich, 1859); Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/philosophieundt00vollgoog). “Truth does not oppose truth, but agrees with it and bears witness to it” on p. 7; injury from a friend and philosophy as “the companion of the Law and its milk-sister” on p. 26 (page numbers read from the scan text; page images to be verified; the sentence on figurative interpretation to be verified word by word). Checked against G. F. Hourani’s translation, Averroes, On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy (London: Luzac, 1961), introduction p. 22, citing Müller p. 7. Hourani’s Arabic edition (Leiden: Brill, 1959) not obtained; to be verified. The English rendering of the title is an editorial translation. 5. Heinrich Denifle and Émile Chatelain (eds.), Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. 1 (Paris: Delalain, 1889); Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/chartulariumuniv01univuoft). Used, all paraphrased from Latin: no. 432 (the thirteen errors of 10 December 1270; Denifle’s note that they were largely Averroist and taught in Paris; the letter of “fr. Aegydius (de Lessinia?)” to Albert listing articles taught by Paris masters “qui in philosophia majores reputantur,” the first being the unity of the intellect; the Munich manuscript rubric “Tractatus fr. Thome contra mag. Sigerum de unitate intellectus”); no. 441 (arts faculty statute of 1 April 1272, at Sainte-Geneviève, “nullo ex nobis contradicente,” with the geometer saying and the three-day retraction clauses); no. 473 (Tempier’s letter of 7 March 1277: “vera secundum philosophiam, sed non secundum fidem catholicam, quasi sint due contrarie veritates”; Scylla and Charybdis; the ban on De amore, a geomancy and necromantic books; articles 152, 153, 154 and 175 in Denifle’s numbering). 6. Thomas Aquinas, De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, ed. L. W. Keeler, Corpus Thomisticum electronic text; read. This is an online transcription of Keeler’s text; the Leonine edition, vol. 43 (Rome, 1976), and the printed Keeler (1936) have not been checked and are to be verified. Used: the prologue on the error “ex dictis Averrois sumens originem”; “philosophiae Peripateticae depravator / perversorem”; those who read only Averroes’ commentary; the quoted opponent “per rationem concludo de necessitate, quod intellectus est unus numero; firmiter tamen teneo oppositum per fidem” and Thomas’s reply; the closing challenge “non loquatur in angulis nec coram pueris … rescribat, si audet.” The opponent’s words are known only as Thomas quotes them. 7. Dante, Divina Commedia, text ed. G. Vandelli, in Le opere di Dante: testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana (Florence: Bemporad, 1921); Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/LaDivinaCommediaTestoCriticoACuraDiGiuseppeVandelli). Inferno 4.131–132 and 144 (“vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno / seder tra filosofica famiglia”; “Averroìs, che ’l gran comento feo”); Paradiso 10.97–99 and 133–138 (Thomas names himself; Siger “che, leggendo nel vico de li strami, / sillogizzò invidiosi veri”). Canto and line confirmed from the running heads; page numbers not shown in the scan text, to be verified. Petrocchi not checked. “Vico de li strami” is usually taken as the Rue du Fouarre, the street of the arts schools in Paris. 8. Fouad Ben Ahmed and Robert Pasnau, “Ibn Rushd [Averroes],” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 23 June 2021; substantive revision 20 August 2025); read. The story’s “modern scholars” draws on this entry. Used: birth in Córdoba in 1126, family of judges, no autobiography; the recorded meeting with Abu Yaʿqub Yusuf (r. 1163–84) and the commission to comment on Aristotle (this “record” is the same report by ʿAbd al-Wahid, so it is not independent corroboration); chief physician in Marrakesh; disgrace and exile to Lucena for unclear reasons and, by one account, death in confinement in Marrakesh in 1198; Latin translation beginning with Michael Scot c. 1220, most commentaries in Latin by mid-century, “the Commentator” by the 1230s; the 1270 and 1277 lists; “truth does not oppose truth” (Decisive Treatise 12); doubts whether Ibn Rushd was the prime source of Siger and others. 9. Hans Thijssen, “Condemnation of 1277,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 2003; substantive revision December 2023); read. Thijssen’s view is presented in the story as a researcher’s view. Used: Simon du Val’s summons of 23 November 1276; the ban on De amore and other books; the scholarly consensus that no medieval author held a “double truth” theory and that Tempier’s phrase ridiculed a hermeneutical practice; the disagreement (Wippel, Hissette) over whether Aquinas was targeted. 10. Robert Pasnau, “Thomas Aquinas,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 7 December 2022); read. Used: the second Paris regency from 1268; De unitate intellectus dated 1270; canonization on 18 July 1323; articles of 1277 that seem to implicate Aquinas. 11. Siger’s death. (a) John Pecham, letter to the University of Oxford, 10 November 1284 (date as assigned by the editor), in C. T. Martin (ed.), Registrum epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham, vol. 3 (Rolls Series 77; London, 1885), no. 608 (DCVIII), pp. 840–843; Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/bwb_P9-CSD-722). On p. 842, after the thesis “in homine esse tantummodo formam unam” (the unity of substantial form), which his predecessor Robert Kilwardby had condemned at Oxford (pp. 840–842): “cujus duo precipui defensores vel forsitan inventores miserabiliter dicuntur conclusisse dies suos in partibus transalpinis, cum tamen non essent de illis partibus oriundi.” Dated at Notele, November 1284 (p. 843); the editor dates it 10 November (“DCVIII.—10 Nov.” in the volume’s table of contents). The letter names no one and does not mention murder; the identification with Siger and Boethius of Dacia is Mandonnet’s (p. 285). (b) P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l’averroïsme latin au XIIIme siècle, part 1, 2nd ed. (Louvain, 1911); Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/sigerdebrabantet01mand): p. 285, naming Siger and Boethius as the two meant in Pecham’s letter, also p. 101 n. and pp. 230, 278; p. 259 n. 3 and p. 277 n., quoting the Brabantine continuation of Martin of Troppau: “Sygerus, natione Brabantinus … Romanam curiam adiit ibique post parvum tempus a clerico suo quasi dementi perfossus periit”; p. 264 on the poem Il Fiore (“Nella corte di Roma, ad Orbivieto”); pp. 260, 286 on the date 1281–1284. The chronicle has now been checked directly (below); Il Fiore was read only as transcribed by Mandonnet; to be verified. Page numbers read from the scan text’s running heads; page images to be verified. Mandonnet’s further claim of a trial and life detention at the curia is not used. (b2) Martini Continuatio Brabantina, ed. L. Weiland, MGH Scriptores vol. 24 (Hanover, 1879), p. 263 (index “Sygerus Brabantinus 263,35”); Internet Archive scan text read (archive.org/details/gri_33125006186791): “Qui Sygerus, natione Brabantinus, eo quod quasdam opiniones contra fidem tenuerat, Parisius subsistere non valens, Romanam curiam adiit ibique post parvum tempus a clerico suo quasi dementi perfossus periit.” Matches Mandonnet’s transcription; page image to be verified. (c) F. Van Steenberghen, Maître Siger de Brabant (Louvain, 1977): not obtained, not checked; to be verified. (d) Maurice De Wulf, “Siger of Brabant,” Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (1912; via New Advent); read; supplementary source only, representing the view of 1912: the remark that Dante’s motive is a matter of conjecture. Its “two truths” claim and its “assassinated by his secretary” are not relied on. “The question remains unsettled today” is the editor’s summary. (e) The SEP entry on Siger could not be retrieved (404) and is not used. 12. Editorial boundaries: no dialogue, thoughts or scenes have been invented. Words introduced by quotation marks or colons are modern paraphrases from the Arabic, French translation, Latin or Italian, not literal translations. The audience and the disgrace rest on a single, secondhand source, as the story says; the SEP “record” in item 8 is that same source. On age and date: the historian says he died “à tout près de 80 ans” (Fagnan p. 267), but born in 1126 he was about seventy-two in 1198; the historian gives the end of AH 594, Ibn Arabi AH 595. “At least forty years” is reckoned from the end of Abu Yaʿqub’s reign (1184) to 1224; “nearly a century later” from his reign to 1270. The reading of the historian’s account in light of royal favor, the explanation of why the question about the heavens was frightening, the comment that the geometer saying “cut both ways,” the “two steps” between Tempier’s phrase and Ibn Rushd, and the closing reflection on the weight of the books are the editor’s judgments, marked as such where they occur. The year of death is given as AH 594 by ʿAbd al-Wahid and AH 595 by Ibn Arabi; the story gives both and uses 1198 CE.