SAINTS AND SKEPTICS:
THE MIGRATION OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY FROM
EAST TO WEST IN THE MIDDLE AGES
CRISPIN WELLBURN

This paper examines the westward movement of Greek natural philosophy in the
Middle Ages, assessing the documentation of many Greek philosophers in Islamic
schools and their proliferation throughout the Islamic world. The paper will
examine the transfer of Greek philosophy from Islam to Christendom via major
thinkers from both cultures, such as Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Thomas Aquinas.
The paper heavily engages with the reception of Greek philosophy from Islamic
and Christian Religious leaders. Particularly, the focus will be upon the problems
that natural philosophy presented for Islam’s and Christianity’s respective
medieval religious worldviews and whether those ideological problems were
resolved or remained.

During the Middle Ages, there was little knowledge of Greek philosophy in the
Latin West, whereas in the Muslim world the works of many influential Greek
thinkers were well documented. Much of the philosophical heritage that Western
thinkers attribute to the Greeks was disseminated to western scholars by Arabic
translations and commentaries of Greek works. In the Muslim world, there was an
unparalleled collection of translated Greek works. However, despite its availability,
teaching Greek philosophy was viewed as nearly heretical by religious leaders. In
the West, while few works of Greek philosophy were readily accessible, they were
standard curriculum in many universities. Philosophy became essential for the
understanding of theology and was assimilated into Christian thought. The
differences in reception to Greek philosophy between the two cultures can largely
be attributed to their structures of education and limitations of religious authority.
Despite these differences notable scholars in both regions learned from and wrote
about Greek philosophy and had a measurable impact on the development of
thought in both regions.

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In the Muslim world, copies of Arabic translations of Greek philosophy and the
natural sciences were available to scholars. Translation of these works in the Middle
East began with Nestorian Christians translating the original Greek into local
languages. 1 Under the Abbasid Caliphs, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad became
a center of translation of Greek philosophical texts, spreading them throughout the
Islamic world. 2 Educational institutions such as libraries held vast amounts of
information, including Greek philosophy. 3 Thanks to the translated works that were
studied by Islamic scholars, sciences such as astronomy, mathematics and medicine
were more advanced than in the Latin West. 4 Within the educational realm of the
Islamic world Greek writings on natural philosophy were abundant, but were not
widely taught. 5
To understand the relatively non-existent study of Greek philosophy in the Muslim
world, particularly in its educational centers, it is vital to comprehend the structure
of their houses of learning which differed greatly in structure and formation than
those of the Latin West. The main schools of secular education in the Islamic world,
known as madrasa, were exclusive to all foreign sciences (most schools that
officially taught foreign sciences were non-existent by the twelfth century). 6 The
most respected fields of study in the Islamic world were law and theology, the field
of philosophy by contrast was outright ridiculed and its teachers persecuted. 7
A madrasa was formed under the law of the Waqf. The law pertained to the
advancement of education through the founding of new madrasas, which was
synonymous with advancement of religion in Islam. 8 The law of the Waqf allowed
wealthy Muslim benefactors to provide the funds for both the physical
establishment and administration of new madrasas. 9 The founder was expected to
donate not just land but also the materials and lodgings needed for a madrasa. 10 The
Law of the Waqf gave the founder a huge amount of choice in the administration,
preferred study and distribution of funds. 11 If Islamic law allowed benefactors the
liberty of individual liberties for benefactors, why was Greek philosophy rarely

1

William E Carroll, “Creation and Science in the Middle Ages,” New Blackfriars 88, no. 1018
(November 2007): 680.
2
Carroll, 680.
3
George Makdisi, The Rise of College: Institutions of learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 25.
4
Edward Grant, “The Fate of Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Islam and
Western Christianity,” The Review of Metaphysics 61, no. 3 (2008): 507.
5
Grant, 509.
6
Makdisi, 10.
7
Grant, 509.
8
Makdisi, 38.
9
Makdisi, 35.
10
Makdisi, 38.
11
Makdisi, 36.

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taught in madrasas? Founders of madrasas were granted intellectual autonomy.12
This essentially banned the teaching of Greek philosophy in institutions of secular
learning, as benefactors were not willing to endanger personal reputation for the
sake of education. As opposed to the Latin West, the church and state in Islam were
not separated; a secular ruler had to always bear in mind the interests of religious
leaders.
Muslim religious leaders did not hold favourable views of Greek philosophy,
choosing either to ignore it or to condemn its teaching. 13 This was primarily because
Greek philosophy, especially natural philosophy, was distrusted by religious
leaders who controlled the attitudes that the secular Islamic world and its schools
held of foreign sciences. Perhaps the most problematic view held by Greek
philosophy was that the universe is eternal, which is incompatible with Islamic
teaching. William E. Carroll writes in his article, Creation and Science in the
Middle Ages, that a concern for Muslim theologians was that God’s “Divine
sovereignty … of the created order must be protected from the encroachments of
Greek logic.” 14 The control which the religious class held over secular authority
meant that Islamic schools had no feasible way to teach Greek philosophy, because
it did not fundamentally accord with the tenets of Islam.
Despite these roadblocks, well-educated teachers of Greek philosophy still existed
in the Muslim world, though they were both persecuted by religious leaders and
ridiculed within university circles. 15 The students who wished to gain an education
in natural philosophy were circumstantially required to do so outside of madrasas.
A private education offered the opportunity to learn the teachings of Greek
philosophers that did not attract the attention of religious leaders. 16 The existence
of many developments in natural philosophy in the Muslim world is impressive
given the high degree of persecution and resultant lack of teachers. 17 This
advancement is apparent in the effect that Islamic Philosophers’ writings had on
Western Christendom and its thinkers.
The West had a small selection of translated works by Greek philosophers and
eagerly absorbed any amount it could gain access to. 18 There were no significant
developments in the European understanding of Greek philosophy until the
commentaries of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) on Aristotle were circulated. Averroes, a
Muslim philosopher from Cordoba, was harassed by the religious establishment for
his views but his commentaries on Aristotle were paramount for an understanding
12

Makdisi, 36.
Grant, 508.
14
Carroll, 680.
15
Grant, 509.
16
Grant, 514.
17
Grant, 517.
18
Grant, 520.
13

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of Greek philosophy in the West. 19 Averroes’s impact on the Christian world is so
significant that Raphael places him in his painting The School of Athens alongside
the very philosophers Averroes’ commentated on. 20 For the Latin world, Averroes
came to be seen not just as a Muslim commentator on Aristotle but as a philosopher
in his own right. 21 However, the theological problems that troubled Islamic
religious leaders were still an issue for the Catholic Church. Averroes writes that
“reconciliation is the real purpose of religion by those verses and hadith which are
apparently contradictory. When their universal nature be limited in this manner,
those contradictions should vanish by themselves, and all the doubts which were
raised before, about the contradictory nature of reason, would disappear.” 22 The
contradictions Averroes speaks of are differences between religion and philosophy.
Averroes insists that embracing reason would limit the contradictions between
theology and philosophy, which also means embracing Aristotelian ideas such as
the eternity of the world. The Church, like the religious institutions of the Islamic
world believed in a created world and not an eternal one. 23
The Catholic Church, seeing a rising number of Averrosists at the university of
Paris, requested that scholars reject his teachings. 24 Thomas Aquinas is the most
well-known of these intellectual combatants but other scholars such as Giles of
Rome also wrote against the Averrosists. 25 However, the church portrayed Aquinas
as the singular victor over Averroes. 26 Aquinas argued not only on the basis of
theology but of reason, using Aristotelian logic as the foundation of his arguments.
Aquinas writes that “something exists which is truest, greatest, noblest, and
consequently most fully in being; for, as Aristotle says, the truest things are most
fully in being.” 27 Appealing to the authority of Aristotle allows Aquinas to
demonstrate that the Greek philosopher’s ideas are not fundamentally wrong, only
Averroes’s interpretation of Greek philosophy is flawed. Despite Aquinas’s
questionable popularity, Pope John XXII eventually sought to canonize the scholar
for his work. 28 The granting of a sainthood to Aquinas in honor of his victory over
Averroes meant that the Church officially recognized the use of Greek philosophy
in tandem with theology.
19

Anthony Kenny, Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 50.
Koert Debeuf. “Damnatio Memoriae: On Deleting the East from Western History,” New England
Journal of Public Policy 32, no. 2 (2020): 4.
21
Kenny, 50.
22
Ibn Rushd, “Ibn Rushd on Fate and Predestination,” in Intellectual and Cultural Life, 1200-1300,
compiled by Niall Christie (Vancouver: Langara College, Spring 2021), 6.
23
Debeuf, 2.
24
Debeuf, 4.
25
Debeuf, 4.
26
Debeuf, 5.
27
Thomas Aquinas, “Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae,” in Intellectual and Cultural Life, 12001300, compiled by Niall Christie (Vancouver: Langara College, Spring 2021), 3.
28
Kenny, 74.
20

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The sentiments of the Church also shifted regarding the place of Greek philosophy
in education but there were hindrances that limited the power of the Church in the
educational realm. By the time that translations of Greek philosophy arrived in the
West, universities had already distinguished themselves institutionally from
Cathedral schools. 29 The Church attempted to ban the works of Aristotle but failed
to prevent their spread; 30 eventually secular universities even required an
understanding of Greek natural philosophy in order to attain a mastery of
theology. 31 Ultimately it would prove impossible to practice theology in the West
without using logic, even if many disagreed with Aristotle’s worldview. 32 Aquinas
himself made the distinction between faith and reason, even if he saw them as
complementary rather than contradictory. 33 Most importantly there was no legal
expectation that secular education adhere to the teaching of the Church; the
institutional separation of Church and university meant that secular subjects could
be taught without religious interference. The Church soon found that it was unable
to prevent the spread and influence of Greek philosophy and held no real power
over the curriculum of universities. 34
The spread of Greek philosophy from East to West during the Middle Ages carried
with it the intellectual connotations of Islamic philosophers. Western scholars such
as Aquinas refuted the previous attachments of Greek philosophy to Islam, using
the logical methods inherited from the same Islamic commentators. In its reliance
on philosophy, the Church permitted philosophy to become embedded into Western
theology. The differing receptions of Greek philosophy in the Islamic and Christian
worlds stem from not difference in religion but in institutional structures. Without
the separation of church and state, practicing secular philosophy in the Islamic
world proved impossible, no matter how many translations of Greek philosophy
were in circulation. In the West, the separation of the Church from academic
learning meant that the secular hunger for new knowledge went unchecked. This
provided the necessary framework for the influence of Greek philosophy upon
Catholic scholarship to flourish despite a limited number of translations and the
eventual assimilation of philosophy into Christian theology.

29

Grant, 520.
Grant, 515.
31
Grant, 521.
32
Grant, 522.
33
Kenny, 167.
34
Grant, 522-523.
30

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
AQUINAS, THOMAS. “Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae.” In Intellectual and
Cultural Life, 1200-1300, compiled by Niall Christie, 1-13. Vancouver:
Langara College, Spring 2021.
CARROLL, WILLIAM E. “Creation and Science in the Middle Ages.” New
Blackfriars 88, no. 1018 (2007) 678-689.
DEBEUF, KOERT. “Damnatio Memoriae: On Deleting the East from Western
History.” New England Journal of Public Policy 32, no. 2 (2020): 1-12.
GRANT, EDWARD. “The Fate of Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy in the Middle
Ages: Islam and Western Christianity.” The Review of Metaphysics 61, no.
3 (2008): 503-526.
IBN RUSHD. “Ibn Rushd on Fate and Predestination.” In Intellectual and Cultural
Life, 1200-1300, compiled by Niall Christie, 1-13. Vancouver: Langara
College, Spring 2021.
KENNY, ANTHONY. Medieval Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
MAKDISI, GEORGE. The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the
West. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981.

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