Philippus Tripolitanus, Secretum secretorum
Tripoli, c. 1220–1230

Johannes Hispaniensis – Dominicus Gundissalinus, Secretum secretorum
Toledo, twelfth to thirteenth centuries

University Library, MS Add. 4493, f. 5r
England, first half of the fifteenth century
Vellum, 122 x 91 mm (c. 68 x 47 mm), III + 117 + IV ff.

This miniature-sized but elegantly manufactured manuscript contains both the long and the short version of the Latin Secretum secretorum. The long version, ff. 1–107, was prepared by Philippus Tripolitanus (i.e., of Tripoli), who tells that he translated the text directly from the Arabic, probably in 1220–1230. The short version, from which the long version appears to be textually independent, is a partial translation again from the Arabic, known also as the Epistola Aristotelis ad regem Alexandrum de sanitate corporis (‘Letter of Aristotle to King Alexander on the health of the body’) and was prepared in the context of the Toledo school of Translators (twelfth to thirteenth centuries). This manuscript came to the University Library in 1910.