Philip of Tripoli, sometimes Philippus Tripolitanus or Philip of Foligno (fl. 1218–1269), was an Italian Catholic priest and translator. Although he had a markedly successful clerical career, his most enduring legacy is his translation of the complete Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum from Arabic into Latin around 1230.
Little is known of Philip's origins and early life. He seems to have received a good education, specializing in law. His career was divided between various appointments in the Holy Land, where he spent most of the 1220s and late 1250s, and service to the Papacy. He was a canon of Antioch by 1222. In 1225, he briefly held the castle of Cursat. In 1227 he was made a canon of Tripoli and in 1238 of Byblos. In 1238 he served as apostolic legate in Frankish Greece. In 1248 he exchanged his canonry in Byblos for another in Tyre and added an archdeaconry in Sidon to his portfolio.
Philip won a disputed election to the archdiocese of Tyre during the vacancy of 1244–1250, but declined to accept it. He took up a cantorship at Tyre in 1250 instead. In 1251 he was made a papal chaplain, an office he held until his death. In 1266–1267 he was deputy apostolic legate in the Kingdom of Sicily. In 1267 he accepted an archdeaconry at Tripoli. He served the cardinals during the papal election of 1268–1271, being appointed an auditor general in 1269. He died not long after.
Life
Education and early postings
Philip was probably born between about 1195 and 1200 in Umbria. One document refers to him as a "clerk of Foligno". His uncle Rainier, who was from the county of Todi, served as Latin patriarch of Antioch from 1219 until 1225. Philip received a prebend in Trent in 1218, at which point he would have to have been at least 22 years old unless granted a papal dispensation. A papal subdeacon, Dainisius, was assigned to assist him. He joined his uncle in Antioch sometime between 1219 and 1222, when he received a canonry there. He remained in his uncle's service through 1225. By at the latest 1225, he had become a papal subdeacon. He probably worked for a time in the papal chancery, possibly under his uncle, who had been vice chancellor.
Something of Philip's education can be inferred from papal documents and his translation. In papal documents, he is regularly referred to as a magister (master), a title which indicates that he had received a higher education, probably but not necessarily a university degree. If he did study at university, it was probably the University of Paris or possibly that of Bologna. He evidently had a legal education, and the popes praise his scientia litterarum (knowledge of letters). At least one 13th-century manuscript of the Secretum refers to its translator as magister philosophorum ("a master of philosophers"), and his language regarding Aristotle in the prologue suggests that he had some formal education in philosophy. His Latinity is good which, together with his affected modesty, suggests formal training in rhetoric. Some possible interpolations in the text of the Secretum in defence of astrology have been attributed to Philip, and a correction to its astronomy was almost certainly made by him. Throughout his career, he was a pluralist, which had only been permitted under canon law since the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, when an exception was carved out for "learned persons".
During his time in the Holy Land Philip seems to have picked up French, the lingua franca of the Crusader states, to judge by some gallicisms in his translation.
Antioch to Greece
In 1225, Philip was still in his uncle's service at Antioch. When Rainier returned to Italy that year, he gave his nephew charge of the castle and fief of Cursat (Quṣayr), where the patriarchal treasury was located. Philip was tasked with preventing the castle and treasure from falling into the hands of the cash-strapped Prince Bohemond IV of Antioch. Rainier praised Philip to the pope for the assistance he had rendered him during his bouts of illness. He died in September, apparently still in Italy. Pope Honorius III wrote to Philip ordering him to hand the castle over to the proper representatives of the patriarchate during its vacancy.