Willem van Moerbeke, known in the English speaking world as William of Moerbeke (c. 1215–1286) was a prolific medieval translator of philosophical, medical, and scientific texts from Greek into Latin.
Moerbeke-Waas, a place and municipality in the north of East Flanders
It is thought to have been the hometown of William of Moerbeke, who as Bishop of Corinth produced a new translation into Latin of the works of Aristotle, including certain which had been rediscovered from Arab sources, in the late thirteenth Century.
William of Moerbeke was one of the most prolific and influential translators of Greek philosophical texts in the middle half of the thirteenth century.
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After the Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, scholars such as William of Moerbeke gained access to the original Greek texts that had been preserved in the Byzantine empire, and translated them directly into Latin.