Estimaverunt Indi: la diffusion d’un texte géomantique condamné

This text, which, according to the first two words of its incipit is called Estimaverunt Indi (EI), is one the earliest extant Latin treatises on geomancy. It is translated from Arabic, and its author is unknown. Despite condemnation by Archbishop Etienne Tempier’s in the 1277 Syllabus, EI had a wide circulation. EI’s greatest admirer is Bartholomew of Parma, who expressly mentions it in all of his treatises on geomancy. It is also frequently quoted in a number of geomantic compilations of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, these quotations seem to be only general references to an auctoritas, as the EI was in fact considered, and not evidence of an actual knowledge of it. Moreover, the final section of the EI, concerning the ‘way of the point’ (via puncti), had an autonomous circulation both in the Latin and the vernacular tradition, yet in the version of another translator and under a different authority, i.e. as Liber Salcharie Albassarith. It seems therefore possible to conclude, from a first investigation, that EI’s diffusion should be downsized and that it derives, at least party, from the fortune of one of its sources, that Albusaid or Johannes Tripolitanus often mentioned in the EI.