philosopher translator scholars
The available evidence suggests that James was born in Venetia, and the qualifications “Grecus “could mean either that he spent much of his life in some Greek-speaking part of the Byzantine Empire or that he was of Greek descent.
Hardly anything is known of the circumstances of his life, and only vague hypotheses may be formulated on his possible connections with other learned men of his time, particularly with John of Salisbury.
It may well be that James' interests developed in the atmosphere of Constantinople, saturated with Aristotelian studies, in or around the university where the pupils of another Greco-Italian philosopher, Ioannes Italos, were keeping alive and renewing the traditions of the fifth and sixth-century commentators of Aristotle.
There are only three known dates relevant to James' life. On April 3, 1136, he attended, in the Pisan quarter of Constantinople, a theological debate between Anselm, Catholic bishop of Havelberg, and Nicetas, Orthodox archbishop of Nicomedia. When Moses of Vercelli, archbishop of Ravenna, claimed in Cremona, July 7, 1148, the privilege of sitting at the right hand of the Pope, he was supported by legal advice written for him by James. In 1159 John of Salisbury quoted James' translation of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics as being older than another version of the same treatise.
He was the first to translate the Physics, De anima, Metaphysics, and most of the shorter treatises which go under the title of Parva naturalia, that is, De, memoria, De longitudine et brevitate vitae, De iuventute, De respiratione, and De vita et morte. He was perhaps the first to translate the epistemological treatise Posterior Analytics; Boethius' translation, if it was ever made, does not seem to have been known by anybody.
He translated anew the Sophistici elenchi and probably the Prior Analytics and Topics. Fragments of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on Posterior Analytics and Sophistici elenchi, translated by James, still survive, as does his version of an anonymous introduction to the Physics (published under the title De intelligentia Aristotelis) and of scholia to Metaphysics I. He himself wrote a commentary on the Sophistici elenchi and perhaps on other Aristotelian works.
James provided the link between the Greek philosophical schools in Constantinople and those of the Latin West. At this time the study of Aristotle was prospering in Constantinople after the revivals of the ninth and eleventh centuries, which in turn were based on the work done in the schools of the second to sixth centuries. The philosophy masters in Constantinople frequented the same circles as James, whose commentary on the Sophistici elenchi contains clear evidence of its connection with the Greek teaching on this subject; there is no other place in the Greek world where, at that time, it would have been possible to have access to so many works of Aristotle.
James' work on sophisms, extensively quoted and discussed in logical treatises, was most probably written in northern Italy in the second half of the twelfth century. At the same time, his translations reached Normandy; copies of some of them, written in Mont-Saint-Michel before the end of the century, still survive. John of Salisbury knew at least one of them and asked for others.
James' translations (particularly of the works on philosophy of science) and Boethius' translations of most of the logical works formed the main body of work, to which were added, during the next four generations, all the other latinized texts of Aristotle. Some of these translations, either in an unaltered form like the Posterior Analytics, or in a form slightly revised by William of Moerbeke - like the Physics, De anima, and De memoria - were the recognized “authentic” texts for over three centuries. They contributed in considerable measure to the formation or establishment of the technical language of philosophy and, indirectly, of the scientific and common language of the Western world.
The several hundred manuscripts, the dozens of printed editions of the original or revised translations, and the vast number of commentaries, elaborations, and quaestiones by Roger Bacon, Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Ockham, and many other philosophers testify to the importance of James' work.
James of Venice is remembered as a learned canonist who was called upon to give advice on important matters, and as the most active and successful pioneer of Latin Aristotelianism in the twelfth century. He was probably the first to translate into Latin Aristotle's Physics, De anima, Metaphysics, and parts of the Parva Naturalia. Ten generations of Latin-speaking scholars and philosophers read the Posterior Analytics almost exclusively in his translation; his versions of the Physics, De anima, three books of the Metaphysics, and some of the Parva Naturalia held the ground almost unchanged for more than a century, and, not substantially revised, for two more centuries. The philosophical language owes to him many of its technical terms.
Nothing is known about James' family.
