Jacob Anatoli - Anatoli and Michael Scot

Anatoli and Michael Scot

An example of such intellectual catholicity was set by Anatoli himself; for, in the course of his "Malmad," he not only cites incidentally allegoric suggestions made to him by Frederick II., but several times—Güdemann has counted seventeen—he offers the exegetic remarks of a certain Christian savant of whose association he speaks most reverently, and whom, furthermore, he names as his second master besides Samuel ibn Tibbon. This Christian savant was identified by Senior Sachs as Michael Scot, who, like Anatoli, devoted himself to scientific work at the court of Frederick. Graetz even goes to the length of regarding Anatoli as identical with the Jew Andreas, who, according to Roger Bacon, assisted Michael Scot in his philosophic translations from the Arabic, seeing that Andreas might be a corruption of Anatoli. But Steinschneider will not admit the possibility of this conjecture, while Renan scarcely strengthens it by regarding "Andreas" as a possible northern corruption of "En Duran," which, he says, may have been the Provençal surname of Anatoli, since Anatoli, in reality, was but the name of his great-grandfather.

Anatoli's example of broad-minded study of Christian literature and intercourse with Christian scholars found many followers, as, for example, Moses ben Solomon of Salerno; and his work was an important factor in bringing the Jews of Italy into close contact with their Christian fellow students.