What Factors Are Conducive to Coherence? Translation Activity in Late Medieval Western Europe: A Sketch of a Research Program

Bara, Péter (2025) What Factors Are Conducive to Coherence? Translation Activity in Late Medieval Western Europe: A Sketch of a Research Program. HUNGARIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW: NEW SERIES OF ACTA HISTORICA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARIUM HUNGARICAE, 14 (2). pp. 158-185. ISSN 2063-8647

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Abstract

Why is the history of intellectual change in the Middle Ages a history of selectivelystudied influences about which so few historians have dared venture generalizations?Why is it so rich with contradictions? And why do we have so little comprehensiveknowledge about the translators behind these intellectual changes? To answer thesequestions, this article proposes a novel approach to the history of Greek-Latintranslations between 1050 and 1350, which substantially reshaped the Medieval Latinintellectual landscape and the cultural history of Europe. After reviewing the conclusionsin the most recent secondary literature, the essay offers a sketch of a historical analysisof translation-centered decision-making processes. In doing so, it singles out fourhypotheses and describes four research areas corresponding to these assumptions. Theproposed research examines the translators’ personalities and activities, their training,mobility, cultural patronage, networks and their audiences (including universities) thatinfluenced their decisions when they chose to translate texts from Greek into Latin.Such an analysis will help us better understand the expanding cultural networks betweenthe medieval Western and Eastern Mediterranean and the development of translationsin Latin-using Western Europe.

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