In many accounts of Western intellectual history, the emergence of scholasticism is closely associated with the recovery of Aristotle’s major philosophical works, which had been unavailable in the West in the earlier Middle Ages.1 Actually, Alexander of Hales and the Halensian Summists have often been hailed as some of the first to incorporate Aristotle, though these claims have not really been substantiated by textual research. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that Aristotle was far from the only or even the most predominant philosophical influence during the great Latin translation movement, which spanned the century between 1150 and 1250.2 In addition to Aristotle, this movement saw many works by Arabic scholars translated into Latin. My account of these translations immediately below will reveal the extent to which the Islamic scholar Avicenna in particular influenced early Franciscan thought and indeed the school’s reading of Aristotle.