Hermannus Alemannus

Hermannus Alemannus (Herman the German) translated Arabic philosophical works into Latin. He worked at the Toledo School of Translators around the middle of the thirteenth century (from approximately 1240 to 1256) and is almost certainly to be identified with the Hermannus who was bishop of Astorga in León from 1266 until his death in 1272.

His translations have been identified from prologues and colophons in the surviving manuscripts, three of which are dated. They are: the Rhetoric, comprising the almost complete text of Aristotle interspersed with portions of Averroes' middle commentary and short fragments from Avicenna and Alfarabi; the introductory section of Alfarabi's commentary on the Rhetoric; Averroes' middle commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (Toledo, 1240); an Arabic epitome of the Ethics known as the Summa Alexandrinorum (1243 or 1244); and the middle commentary on the Poetics (Toledo, 1256), this last being known as the Poetria.