Chapter XXVII
OTHER EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING: BOETHIUS, ISIDORE, BEDE, GREGORY THE GREAT
Aridity of early medieval learning—Historic importance of The Consolation of Philosophy—Medieval reading—Influence of the works of Boethius—His relation to antiquity and middle ages—Attitude to the stars—Fate and free will—Music of the stars and universe—Isidore of Seville—Method of the Etymologies—Its sources—Natural marvels—Isidore is rather less hospitable to superstition than Pliny—Portent—Words and numbers—History of magic—Definition of magic—Future influence of Isidore’s account of magic—Attitude to astrology—In the De natura rerum—Bede’s scanty science—Bede’s De natura rerum—Divination by thunder—Riddles of Aldhelm—Gregory’s Dialogues—Signs and wonders wrought by saints—More monkish miracles—A monastic snake-charmer—Basilius the magician—A demon salad—Incantations in Old Irish—The Fili.
[Sidenote: Aridity of early medieval learning.]
The erudite fortitude of students of the Merovingian period commands our admiration, but sometimes inclines us to wonder whether anyone without a somewhat dry-as-dust constitution could penetrate far or tarry long in the desert of early medieval Latin learning without perishing of intellectual thirst. As a rule the writings of the time show no originality whatever, and least of all any scientific investigation; they are of value merely as an indication of what past books men still read and what parts of past science they still possessed some interest in. Under the same category of condemnation may be placed most of the Carolingian period so far as our investigation is concerned. We shall therefore traverse rapidly this period of sparse scientific productivity and shall be doing it ample justice, if from its meager list of writers we select for consideration Boethius of Italy at the opening of the sixth century and Gregory the Great at its close, Isidore of Spain at the opening of the seventh century, and Bede in England at the beginning of the eighth century, with some brief allusion to the riddles of Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, and to Old Irish literature. We should gain little or nothing by adding to the list Alcuin at the close of the eighth century and Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century, although it may be noted now that later medieval writers cite Rabanus for statements which I have failed to find in his printed works. In general it may be said that the writers whom we shall consider are those during the period who are most cited by the later medieval authors.
[Sidenote: Historic importance of The Consolation of Philosophy.]
Of the distinguished family and political career of Boethius who lived from about 480 to 524 A. D., and his final exile, imprisonment, and execution by Theodoric the East Goth, we need scarcely speak here. Our concern is with his little book, The Consolation of Philosophy, one of those memorable writings which, like The City of God of Augustine, stand out as historical landmarks and seem to have been written on the right subject by the right man at the most dramatic moment. The timely appearance of such works, produced in both these cases not under the stimulus of triumphant victory but the sting of bitter defeat, is nevertheless perhaps less surprising than is their subsequent preservation and enormous influence. We often are alternately amused and amazed by the mistakes concerning historical and chronological detail found in medieval writers. Yet medieval readers showed considerable appreciation of the course of history, of its fundamental tendencies, and of its crucial moments by the works which they included in their meager libraries.
[Sidenote: Medieval reading.]
But were medieval libraries as meager as we are wont to assume? Bede and Alcuin both tell of the existence of sizeable libraries in England,[2522] and Cassiodorus urged those monks whose duty it was to tend the sick to read a number of standard medical works.[2523] I sometimes wonder if too much attention has not been given to medieval writing and too little to medieval reading, of which so much medieval writing, in Latin at least, is little more than a reflection. We get their image, faint perhaps and partial; but they had the real object. It has been assumed by some modern scholars that medieval writers had usually not read the works, especially of classical antiquity, which they profess to cite and quote, but relied largely upon anthologies and florilegia. In the case of various later medieval authors we shall have occasion to discuss this question further. For the present I may say that in going through the catalogues of collections of medieval manuscripts I have noticed few florilegia or anthologies from the classics in medieval Latin manuscripts,—perhaps Byzantine ones from Greek literature are more common—and few indeed compared to the number of manuscripts of the old Latin writers themselves. We owe the very preservation of the Latin classics to medieval scribes who copied them in the ninth and tenth centuries; why deny that they read them? Latin florilegia of any sort do not exist in impressive numbers, but other kinds are as often met with as are those from classic poets or prose writers, for instance, selections from the church fathers themselves. On the whole, the impression I have received is that those authors included in florilegia, commonplace books, and other manuscripts made up of miscellaneous extracts, were likewise the authors most read in toto. I am therefore inclined to regard the florilegia as a proof that the authors included were read rather than that they were not. But from extant Latin manuscripts one gets the impression that the whole matter of florilegia is of very slight importance, and that the theory hitherto based upon them is a survival of the prejudice of the classical renaissance against “the dark ages.”
[Sidenote: Influence of the works of Boethius.]
At any rate, however scanty medieval libraries may have been, they were apt to include a copy of The Consolation of Philosophy, and however little read some of their volumes may have been, its pages were certainly well thumbed. Lists of its commentators, translators, and imitators, and other indications of its vast medieval influence may be found in Peiper’s edition.[2524] Other writings of Boethius were also well known in the middle ages and increased his reputation then. His translations and commentaries upon the Aristotelian logical treatises[2525] are of course of great importance in the history of medieval scholasticism. His translations and adaptations of Greek treatises in arithmetic, geometry, and music occupy a similar place in the history of medieval mathematical studies.[2526] Indeed, his treatise on music is said to have “continued to be the staple requisite for the musical degree at Oxford until far into the eighteenth century.”[2527] The work on the Trinity and some other theological tracts, attributed to Boethius by Cassiodorus and through the middle ages, are now again accepted as genuine by modern scholars and place Boethius’ Christianity beyond question.[2528]
[Sidenote: His relation to antiquity and middle ages.]
Boethius has often been regarded as a last representative of Roman statesmanship and of classical civilization. His defense of Roman provincials against the greed of the Goths, his stand even unto death against Theodoric on behalf of the rights of the Roman senate and people, his preservation through translation of the learned treatises of expiring antiquity, and the almost classical Latin style and numerous allusions to pagan mythology of The Consolation of Philosophy:—all these combine to support this view. But the middle ages also made Boethius their own, and several points may be noted in which The Consolation of Philosophy in particular foreshadowed their attitude and profoundly influenced them. Both a Christian and a classicist, both a theologian and a philosopher, Boethius set a standard which subsequent thought was to follow for a long time. The very form of his work, a dialogue part in prose and part in verse, remained a medieval favorite. And the fact that this sixth century author of a work on the Trinity consoled his last hours with a work in which Christ and the Trinity are not mentioned, but where Phoebus is often named and where Philosophy is the author’s sole interlocutor:—this fact, combined with Boethius’ great medieval popularity, gave perpetual license to those medieval writers who chose to discuss philosophy and theology as separate subjects and from distinct points of view. The great medieval influence of Aristotle and Plato, and in particular of the latter’s Timaeus, also is already manifest in The Consolation of Philosophy. Aristotle, it is true, appears to be incorrectly credited by Boethius with the assertion that the eye of the lynx can see through solid objects,[2529] but this ascription of spurious statements to the Stagirite also corresponds to the attribution of entire spurious treatises to him later in the middle ages.
[Sidenote: Attitude to the stars.]
Of the ways in which The Consolation of Philosophy influenced medieval thought that which is most germane to our investigation is its attitude toward the stars and the problem of fate and free will. The heavenly bodies are apparently ever present in Boethius’ thought in this work, and especially in the poetical interludes he keeps mentioning Phoebus, the moon, the universe, the sky, and the starry constellations. Per ardua ad astra was a true saying for those last days in which he solaced his disgrace and pain with philosophy. It is by contemplation of the heavens that he raises his thought to lofty philosophic reflection; his mind may don swift wings and fly far above earthly things
“Until it reaches starry mansions And joins paths with Phoebus.”[2530]
He loves to think of God as ruling the universe by perpetual reason and certain order, as sowing stars in the sky, as binding the elements by number, as Himself immovable, yet revolving the spheres and decreeing natural events in a fixed series.[2531] The attitude is like that of the Timaeus and Aristotle’s Metaphysics, closely associating astronomy and theology, favorable to belief in astrology, in support of which later scholastic writers cite Boethius.
[Sidenote: Fate and free will.]
We may further note the main points in Boethius’ argument concerning fate and free will, providence and predestination,[2532] which was often cited by later writers. He declares that all generation and change and movement proceed from the divine mind or Providence,[2533] while fate is the regular arrangement inherent in movable objects by which divine providence is realized.[2534] Fate may be exercised through spirits, angelic or daemonic, through the soul or through the aid of all nature or “by the celestial motion of the stars.”[2535] It is with the last that Boethius seems most inclined to identify fati series mobilis. “That series moves sky and stars, harmonizes the elements one with another, and transforms them from one to another.” More than that, “It constrains human fortunes in an indissoluble chain of causes, which, since it starts from the decree of immovable Providence, must needs itself also be immutable.”[2536] Boethius, however, does not believe in a complete fatalism, astrological or otherwise. He holds that nothing escapes divine providence, to which there is no distinction between past, present, and future.[2537] As the human reason can conceive universals, although sense and imagination are able to deal only with particulars, so the divine mind can foresee the future as well as the present. But there are some things which are under divine providence but which are not subject to fate.[2538] Divine providence imposes no fatal necessity upon the human will, which is free to choose its course.[2539] The world of nature, however, existing without will or reason of its own, conforms absolutely to the fatal series provided for it. As for chance, Boethius agrees with Aristotle’s Physics that there is really no such thing, but that what is commonly ascribed to chance really results from an unexpected coincidence of causes, as when a man plowing a field finds a treasure which another has buried there.[2540] Thus Boethius maintains the co-existence of the fatal series expressed in the stars, divine providence, and human free will, a thesis likely to reassure Christians inclined to astrology who had been somewhat disturbed by the fulminations of the fathers against the genethliaci, just as his constant rhapsodizing over the stars and heavens would lead them to regard the science of the stars as second only to divine worship. Indeed, his position was the usual one in the subsequent middle ages.
[Sidenote: Music of the stars and universe.]
The stars also come into Boethius’ treatise on music, where one of the three varieties of music is described as mundane, where the music of the spheres is declared to exist although inaudible to us, and where each planet is connected with a musical chord. Plato is quoted as having said, not in vain, that the world soul is compounded of musical harmony, and it is affirmed that the four different and contrary elements could never be united in one system unless some harmony joined them.[2541]
[Sidenote: Isidore of Seville.]
Isidore was born about 560 or 570, became bishop of Seville in 599 or 600, and died in the year 636. Although mention should perhaps be made of his briefer De natura rerum,[2542] a treatise dedicated to King Sisebut who reigned from 612 to 620, Isidore’s chief work from our standpoint is the Etymologiae.[2543] His friend, bishop Braulio, writing after Isidore’s death, says that he had left unfinished the copy of this work which he made at his request, but this was apparently a second edition, since in a letter written to Isidore probably in 630, Braulio speaks of copies as already in circulation, although he describes their text as corrupt and abbreviated. But apparently the work had been composed seven years before this.[2544] The Etymologies was undoubtedly a work of great importance and influence in the middle ages, but one should not be led, as some writers have been, into exaggerated praise of Isidore’s erudition on this account.[2545] For the work’s importance consists chiefly in showing how scanty was the knowledge of the early middle ages. Its influence also would seem not to have been entirely beneficial, since writers continued to cite it as an authority as late as the thirteenth century, when it might have been expected to have outlived its usefulness. We suspect that it proved too handy and convenient and tended to encourage intellectual laziness and stagnation more than any anthology of literary quotations did. Arevalus listed ten printed editions of it before 1527, showing that it was as popular in the time of the Renaissance as in the middle ages.
[Sidenote: Method of the Etymologies.]
The Etymologies is little more than a dictionary, in which words are not listed alphabetically but under subjects with an average of from one to a half dozen lines of derivation and definition for each term. The method is, as Brehaut well says, “to treat each subject by ... defining the terms belonging to it.”[2546] Pursuing this method, Isidore treats of various arts and sciences, human interests and natural phenomena: the seven liberal arts, medicine, and law; chronology and bibliography; the church, religion, and theology; the state and family, physiology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geography, and astronomy; architecture and agriculture; war and sport; arms and armor; ships and costume and various utensils of domestic life. Such is the classification which later medieval writers were to adopt or adapt rather than the arrangement followed in Pliny’s Natural History. Isidore’s association of words and definitions under topics makes an approach, at least, to the articles of encyclopedias: sometimes there is a brief discussion of the general topic before the particular terms and names are considered; sometimes there are chronological tables, family trees, or lists of signs and abbreviations. In short, Isidore forms a connecting link between Pliny and the encyclopedists of the thirteenth century.
[Sidenote: Its sources.]
In a prefatory word to Braulio Isidore describes the Etymologies as a collection made from his recollection and notes of old authors,[2547] of whom he cites a large number in the course of the work. It has been suspected that some of these writers were known to Isidore only at second or third hand; at any rate he has not made a very discriminating selection from their works and he has been accused more than once of not clearly understanding what he tried to abridge. On the other hand, Isidore seems to me to display a notable power of brief generalization, of terse expression and telling use of words. We should not have to go back to the middle ages for textbook writers who have written more and said less. This power of condensed expression probably accounts for Isidore’s being so much cited. Many of the derivations proposed for words are so patently absurd that we would fain ascribe them to Isidore’s own perverse ingenuity, but it is doubtful if he possessed even that much originality, and they are probably all taken from classical grammarians such as Varro.[2548] Isidore, however, still displays a considerable knowledge of the Greek language. And again it may be said in excuse of Isidore and his sources that the absurd etymologies are usually proposed in the case of words whose derivation is still problematic.
In the passages dealing with natural phenomena and science Isidore borrows chiefly from Pliny and Solinus, sometimes from Dioscorides, giving us a faint adumbration of their much fuller confusion of science and superstition. Occasionally bits of information or misinformation are borrowed through the medium of the church fathers. A work of Galen, for instance, is cited[2549] through the letter of Jerome to Furia against widows remarrying. Galen, indeed, is seldom mentioned by Isidore who draws his unusually brief fourth book on medicine chiefly from Caelius Aurelianus.[2550]
[Sidenote: Natural marvels.]
In his treatment of things in nature Isidore seldom gives their medicinal properties as Pliny does, and this reduces correspondingly the amount of space devoted to marvelous virtues. Indeed, of the twenty books of the Etymologies but one is devoted to animals other than man, one to vegetation which is combined in the same book with agriculture, and one to metals and minerals. The book on animals is the longest and is subdivided under the topics of domestic animals, wild beasts, minute animals, serpents, worms, fish, birds, and minute flying creatures. Isidore also tends to ascribe more marvelous virtues to animals than to plants or stones. From Pliny and Solinus are repeated the tales of the basilisk, echeneis, and the like,[2551] while Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms is cited for the story of the asp resisting the incantations of its charmers by laying one ear to the ground and stopping up the other ear with the end of its tail.[2552] On the other hand, Isidore omits Pliny’s superstitious assertions concerning the river tortoise and gives only his criticism that the statement that ships move more slowly if they have the foot of a tortoise aboard is incredible.[2553] Even in the books on minerals and vegetation we still hear of animal marvels:[2554] how the coloring matter, cinnabar, is composed of the blood shed by the dragon in its death struggle with the elephant, how the fiercest bulls grow tame under the Egyptian fig-tree, how swallows restore the sight of their young with the swallow-wort, or of the use of fennel and rue by the snake and weasel respectively, the former tasting fennel to enable him to shed his old skin, and the latter eating rue to make him immune from venom in fighting the snake. All these items, too, are from Pliny.
[Sidenote: Isidore is rather less hospitable to superstition than Pliny.]
But on the whole I should estimate that Isidore contains less superstitious matter even proportionally to his meager content than Pliny does in connection with the virtues of animals, plants, and stones. In discussing plants he says nothing of ceremonial plucking of them and he contains practically no traces of agricultural magic. He describes as a superstition of the Gentiles the notion that the herb scylla, suspended whole at the threshold, drives away all evils.[2555] He mentions the use of mandragora as an anaesthetic in surgical operations, and remarks that its root is of human form, but says nothing of its applications in magic.[2556] In his discussion of stones he repeats after Pliny and Solinus the marvelous virtues ascribed to a number of them, but follows Pliny’s method of making the magicians responsible for these assertions or of inserting a word of caution such as “if this is to be believed” with each statement. Finally he introduces together a number of cases of marvelous powers ascribed to stones with the introduction, “There are certain gems employed by the Gentiles in their superstitions.”[2557]
[Sidenote: Portents.]
Isidore lists a number of mythical monsters as well as cases of portentous births in the third chapter, De portentis, of his eleventh book. He there affirms that God sometimes wishes to signify future events by means of monstrous births as well as by dreams and oracles, and declares that this “has been proved by numerous experiences.”[2558]
[Sidenote: Words and numbers.]
Brehaut is impressed by Isidore’s “confidence in words,” which he thinks “really amounted to a belief, strong though perhaps somewhat inarticulate, that words were transcendental entities.”[2559] Isidore’s faith in the power of words does not seem, however, to have led him to recommend the use of any incantations; he was content with etymologies and allegorical interpretation. He was also a great believer in the mystic significance of numbers and wrote a separate treatise upon those numbers which occur in the sacred Scriptures. In the Etymologies, too, he more than once dwells upon the perfection of certain numbers. We have already heard how perfect most of the numbers up to twelve are, but this is our first opportunity to hear the Pythagorean method applied to the number twenty-two. However, Isidore is not the first to do this; he is, indeed, simply quoting one of the fathers, Epiphanius.[2560] “The modius is so-called because it is of perfect mode. For this measure contains forty-four pounds, that is, twenty-two sextarii. And the reason for this number is that in the beginning God performed twenty-two works. For on the first day He made seven works, namely, unformed matter, angels, light, the upper heavens, earth, water, and air. On the second day only one work, the firmament. On the third day four things: the seas, seeds, grass, and trees. On the fourth day three things: sun and moon and stars. On the fifth day three: fish and aquatic reptiles and flying creatures. On the sixth day four: beasts, domestic animals, land reptiles, and man. And all twenty-two kinds were made in six days.[2561] And there are twenty-two generations from Adam to Jacob.... And twenty-two books of the Old Testament.... And there are twenty-two letters from which the doctrine of the divine law is composed. Therefore in accordance with these examples the modius of twenty-two sextarii was established by Moses following the measure of sacred law. And although various peoples have added something to or ignorantly subtracted something from its weight, it is divinely preserved among the Hebrews for such reasons.” With such mental magic and pious “arithmetic,” as Isidore’s friend Braulio called it, might the Christian attempt to sate the inherited thirst within him for the operative magic and pagan divination in which his conscience and church no longer allowed him to indulge.
[Sidenote: History of magic.]
Isidore’s chapter on the Magi or magicians, which occurs in his eighth book on the church and divers sects, is a notable one, of whose great future influence we shall presently speak. His own borrowing here is only in small part from Pliny’s famous passage on the same theme. On such a subject Isidore naturally has recourse mainly to Christian writers: Augustine, Jerome, Lactantius, Tertullian. From the occasional similarity of his wording to these authors it seems fairly certain that his account is a patchwork from their works, and the context is too Christian to have been drawn in toto from some Roman encyclopedist now lost to us. Perhaps the most noteworthy point about Isidore’s chapter is that he has made magic and magicians the general and inclusive head under which he presently lists various other minor occult arts and their practitioners for separate definition. But first we have a longer discussion, though long only by comparison, of magic in general. Its history is sketched; Zoroaster and Democritus, as in Pliny, are mentioned as its founders, but it is not forgotten that the bad angels were really responsible for its dissemination. From the first Isidore identifies magic and divination; after stating that the magic arts abounded among the Assyrians, he quotes a passage from Lucan which speaks of the prevalence of liver divination, augury, divination from thunder, and astrology in Assyria. Also the magic arts are said to have prevailed over the whole world for many centuries through their prediction of the future and invocation of the dead. Brief allusion is further made to Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians, to the invocation of Samuel by the witch of Endor, to Circe and the comrades of Ulysses, and to several other passages in classical literature anent magic.
[Sidenote: Definition of magic.]
Next comes a formal definition of the Magi. They are “those who are popularly called malefici or sorcerers on account of the magnitude (a characteristic bit of derivation) of their crimes. They agitate the elements, disturb men’s minds, and slay merely by force of incantation without any poisoned draught. Hence Lucan writes, ‘The mind, though polluted by no venom of poisoned draught, perishes by enchantment.’[2562] For, summoning demons, they dare to work their magic so that anyone may kill his enemies by evil arts. They also use blood and victims and sometimes corpses.“ After this very unfavorable, although sufficiently credulous, definition of magic, which is represented as seeking the worst ends by the worst means, Isidore goes on to list and briefly define a number of subordinate or kindred occult arts. First come necromancers; then hydromancy, geomancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy; next diviners, those employing incantations, arioli, aruspices, augurs, auspices, pythones, astrologers and their cognates, the genethliaci and mathematici, who as Isidore notes are spoken of in the Gospel as Magi, and horoscopi. ”Sortilegi are those who profess the science of divination under the pretended guise of religion through certain devices called sortes sanctorum and predict by inspection of certain scriptures.” Salisatores are those who predict from the jerks of their limbs. To this list of magic arts Isidore adds in the words of Augustine all ligatures and suspensions, incantations and characters, which the art of medicine condemns and which are simply the work of the devil. With mention of the origin of augury among the Phrygians, the discovery of praestigium which deceives the eye by Mercury, and the revelation of aruspicina by Tagus to the Etruscans, Isidore closes the chapter. Some of its items will be found again in his De differentiis verborum,[2563] listed under the appropriate letters of the alphabet. It may also be noted that he briefly treats of transformations worked by magic in the fourth chapter of the eleventh book of the Etymologies.
[Sidenote: Future influence of Isidore’s account of magic.]
We turn to the future influence of this account of magic which seems to have been first patched together by Isidore. Juiceless as it is, it seems to have become a sort of stock or stereotyped treatment of the subject with succeeding Christian writers down into the twelfth century. Somewhat altered by omission of poetical quotations or the insertion of transitional sentences, it was otherwise copied almost word for word by Rabanus Maurus (about 784 to 856), in his De consanguineorum nuptiis et de magorum praestigiis falsisque divinationibus tractatus, and by Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres (died 1115) in their respective collections of Decreta, while Hincmar of Rheims in his De divortio Lotharii et Tetbergae copied it with more omissions.[2564] It was also in substance retained in the Decretum of Gratian in the twelfth century, when, too, Hugh of St. Victor probably made use of it and John of Salisbury made it the basis of his fuller discussion of the subject. Isidore’s account of magic, like his discussion of many other topics, sounds as if he had ceased thinking on the subject, and it must have meant still less to those who copied it. John of Salisbury is the first of them to put any life into the subject and give us any assurance that such arts were still practiced in his day. We have, however, other evidence that magic continued to be practiced in the interval. And such practices as the sortes sanctorum, though included in Isidore’s stock definition of magic, were probably not generally regarded as reprehensible.[2565]
[Sidenote: Attitude to astrology.]
Isidore’s repetition of the views of the fathers concerning demons is so brief and trite[2566] that we need not further notice it, but turn to his attitude toward astrology. We have just heard him associate astrologers with practitioners of the magic arts, but in his third book in discussing the quadrivium he states that astrology is only partly superstitious and partly a natural science. The superstitious variety is that pursued by the mathematici who augur the future from the stars, assign the parts of the soul and body to the signs of the zodiac, and try to predict the nativities and characters of men from the course of the stars. Such superstitions “are without doubt contrary to our faith; Christians should so ignore them that they shall not even appear to have been written.” Mathesis, or the attempt to predict future events from the stars, is denounced, according to Isidore, “not only by doctors of the Christian religion but also of the Gentiles,—Plato, Aristotle, and others.” Isidore also states that there is a distinction between astronomy and astrology, but what it is, especially between astronomy and natural astrology, he fails to elucidate.[2567]
[Sidenote: In the De natura rerum.]
In the preface to his De natura rerum, which deals chiefly with astronomical and meteorological phenomena, Isidore asserts that “it is not superstitious science to know the nature of these things, if only they are considered from the standpoint of sane and sober doctrine.” He also states that his treatise is a brief sketch of what has been written by the men of old and especially in the works of Catholics. In it some of the stock questions which gave difficulty to Christian scientists are briefly discussed, for instance, “Concerning the waters which are above the heavens,” and “Whether the stars have souls?”[2568] Isidore rejects as “absurd fictions” imagined by the stupidity of the Gentiles their naming the days of the week from the planets, “because by the same they thought that some effect was produced in themselves, saying that from the sun they received the spirit, from the moon the body, from Mercury speech and wisdom, from Venus pleasure, from Mars ardor, from Jupiter temperance, from Saturn slowness.”[2569] Yet later in the same treatise we find him saying that everything in nature grows and increases according to the waxing and waning of the moon.[2570] Moreover, he calls Saturn a cold star and explains that the planets are called errantia, not because they wander themselves but because they cause men to err.[2571] He also describes man as a microcosm.[2572] Like most ecclesiastical writers, no matter how hostile they may be to astrologers, he is ready to assert that comets signify political revolutions, wars, and pestilences.[2573] In the Etymologies he not only attributes racial and temperamental differences among the peoples of different regions to “force of the star”[2574] and “diversity of the sky,”[2575] phrases which seem to imply astrological influence rather than the mere influence of climate in our sense. He also encourages astrological medicine when he says that the doctor should know astronomy, since human bodies change with the qualities of the stars and the change of times.[2576] Isidore might as well have taken the planets as signs in the astrological sense as have ascribed to them the absurd allegorical significance in passages of Scripture that he did. He states that the moon is sometimes to be taken as a symbol of this world, sometimes as the church, which is illuminated by Christ as the moon receives its light from the sun, and which has seven meritorious graces corresponding to the seven forms of the moon.[2577]
[Sidenote: Bede’s scanty science.]
The scientific acquisitions of Bede have too often been referred to in exaggerated terms. Sharon Turner said of him, “He collected and taught more natural truths with fewer errors than any Roman book on the same subjects had accomplished. Thus his work displays an advance, not a retrogradation of human knowledge; and from its judicious selection and concentration of the best natural philosophy of the Roman Empire it does high credit to the Anglo-Saxon good sense.”[2578] Dr. R. L. Poole more moderately says of Bede, “He shows an extent of knowledge in classical literature and natural science entirely unrivalled in his own day and probably not surpassed for many generations to come.”[2579] Bede perhaps knew more natural science than anyone else of his time, but if so, the others must have known practically nothing; his knowledge can in no sense be called extensive. As a matter of fact, we have evidence that his extremely brief and elementary treatises in this field were not full enough to satisfy even his contemporaries. In the preface to his De temporum ratione[2580] he says that previously he had composed two treatises, De natura rerum and De ratione temporum, in brief style as he thought fitting for pupils, but that when he began to teach them to some of the brethren, they objected that they were reduced to a much briefer form than they wished, especially the De temporibus, which Bede now proceeds to revise and amplify. It is noteworthy that in order to fulfill the monks’ desire for a fuller treatment of the subject he found it necessary to do some further reading in the fathers. In addition to Bede’s own statement of his aim, the frequency with which we find manuscripts of early date[2581] of the De natura rerum and De temporibus suggests that they were employed as text-books in the monastic schools of the early middle ages. As the Carolingian poet expressed it,
_Beda dei famulus nostri didasculus evi Falce pia sophie veterum sata lata peragrans._
[Sidenote: Bede’s De natura rerum.]
Of Bede’s Hexaemeron we spoke in an earlier chapter. His chief extant genuine scientific treatise is the aforesaid De natura rerum,[2582] a very curtailed discussion of astronomy and meteorology. It is very similar to Isidore’s treatise of the same title, but is even briefer, omitting for the most part the mention of authorities and the Biblical quotations and allegorical applications which make up a considerable portion of Isidore’s brief work. One of the few authorities whom Bede does cite is Pliny in a discussion of the circles of the planets.[2583] Like Isidore he accepts comets as signs of war and political change, of tempests and pestilence.[2584] He also states that the air is inhabited by evil spirits who there await the worse torments of the day of judgment.[2585] In his Biblical commentaries Bede briefly echoes some of the views of the fathers concerning magic and demons, for instance, in his treatment of the witch of Endor.[2586]
[Sidenote: Divination by thunder.]
Bede also translated into Latin a treatise on divination from thunder, perhaps from the works of the sixth century Greek writer, John Lydus. In the preface to Herefridus, at whose request he had undertaken the translation, he speaks of it as a laborious and dangerous task, sure to expose him to the attacks of the invidious and detractors who will perhaps insinuate that he is possessed of an evil spirit or is a practitioner of magic. The three chapters of the treatise give the significance of thunder for the four points of the compass, the twelve months of the year, and the seven days of the week. For instance, if thunder arises in the east, according to the traditions of subtle philosophers there will be in the course of that year copious effusion of human blood. Each signification is introduced with some bombastic phraseology concerning the agile genius or sagacious investigation of the philosophers who discovered it.[2587] Other tracts on divination which were attributed to Bede are probably spurious and will for the most part be considered later in connection with other treatises of the same sort.[2588]
[Sidenote: Riddles of Aldhelm.]
Some interest in and knowledge of natural science is displayed in the metrical riddles[2589] of St. Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, “the first Englishman who cultivated classical learning with any success and the first of whom any literary remains are preserved.” Most of them are concerned with animals, such as silkworms, peacock, salamander, bee, swan, lion, ostrich, dove, fish, basilisk, camel, eagle, taxo, beaver, weasel, swallow, cat, crow, unicorn, minotaur, Scylla, and elephant; or with herbs and trees, such as heliotrope, pepper, nettles, hellebore, and palm; or with minerals, such as salt, adamant, and magnet; or with terrestrial and celestial phenomena, such as earth, wind, cloud, rainbow, moon, Pleiades, Arcturus, Lucifer, and night. There is a close resemblance between some of these riddles and a score of citations from an Adhelmus made in the thirteenth century by Thomas of Cantimpré in his De natura rerum.[2590] Pitra,[2591] however, suggested that the Adhelmus cited by Thomas of Cantimpré was a brother of John the Scot of the ninth century.
[Sidenote: Gregory’s Dialogues.]
The total lack of originality and the extremely abbreviated character of the infrequent scientific writing in the west is not, however, a fair example of the total thought and writing of early medieval Latin Christendom. When we turn to the lives of the saints, to the miracles recorded of contemporary monks and missionaries, we find that in the field of its own supreme interests the pious imagination of the time could display considerable inventiveness and was by no means satisfied with brief compendiums from the Bible and earlier Fathers. Here too the superstition and credulity, which had been held back by fear of paganism in the case of natural and occult science, ran luxuriant riot. Such literature lies rather outside the strict field of this investigation, but it is so characteristic of the Christian thought of the period that we may consider one prominent specimen, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great,[2592] pope from 590 to 604. We shall sufficiently illustrate the nature of this farrago of pious folk-lore by a résumé of the contents of the opening pages of the first of its four books. We need not dwell upon the importance of Gregory in the history of the papacy, of monasticism, and of patristic literature, further than to emphasize the point that so distinguished, influential, and for his times great, a man should have been capable of writing such a book. Similar citations which might be multiplied from other authors of the period could not add much force to this one impressive instance of the naïve pious credulity and superstition of the best Christian minds of that age. Not only were the Dialogues well known throughout the medieval period in the Latin reading world, but they were translated into Greek at an early date and in 779 from that language into Arabic, while King Alfred made an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Latin in the closing ninth century.
[Sidenote: Signs and wonders wrought by saints.]
In the Dialogues Gregory narrates to Peter the Deacon some of the virtues, signs, and marvelous works of saintly men in Italy which he has learned either by personal experience or indirectly from the statements of good and trustworthy witnesses. The first story is of Honoratus, the son of a colonus on a villa in Samnium. When the lad evinced his piety by abstaining from meat at a banquet given by his parents, they ridiculed him, declaring that he would find no fish to eat in those mountains. But when the servant presently went out to draw some water, he poured a fish out of the pitcher upon his return which provided the boy with enough food for the entire day. Subsequently the lad was given his freedom and founded a monastery on the spot. Still later he saved this monastery from an impending avalanche by frequent calling upon the name of Christ and use of the sign of the cross. By these means he stopped the landslide in mid-course and the rocks may still be seen looking as if they were sure to fall.
[Sidenote: More monkish miracles.]
A tale follows of Goths who stole a monk’s horse, but found themselves unable to force their own horses to cross the next river to which they came until they had restored his horse to the monk. In another case where Franks came to plunder this same monk, he remained invisible to them. This same monk was a disciple of the afore-mentioned Honoratus and once raised a woman’s child from the dead by placing upon its breast an old shoe of his master which he cherished as a souvenir. Thus he contrived to satisfy the mother’s pleading and at the same time preserve his own modesty and humility. Gregory does not doubt that the woman’s faith also contributed to the miracle. Gregory adds, however, that he thinks the virtue of patience greater than signs and miracles and tells another story of the same monk to illustrate that virtue.
[Sidenote: A monastic snake-charmer.]
We may pass on, however, to the third chapter which contains a story of the gardener of a monastery who set a snake to catch a thief who had made depredations upon the garden, adjuring the snake as follows: “In the name of Jesus I command you to guard this approach and not permit the thief to enter here.” The serpent obediently stretched its length across the path, and when the gardener returned later, he found the thief hanging head first from the hedge, in which his foot had caught as he was climbing over it and had been surprised by the sight of the serpent. The monk of course then freely gave the thief what he had come to steal, but also of course gave him a brief moral lecture which was perhaps less welcome.
[Sidenote: Basilius the magician.]
After a brief account of a miraculous release from sexual passion Gregory comes to a tale of Basilius the magician. This is the same man concerning whose arrest and trial on the charge of practicing magic and sinister arts we find directions given in two of the letters of Cassiodorus.[2593] According to Gregory he took refuge with the aid of a bishop in a monastery, although the abbot saw something diabolical about him from the very start. Soon a virgin who was under the charge of the monastery became so infatuated with Basilius as to call publicly for him, declaring that she should die unless he came to her aid. The abbot then expelled him from the monastery, on which occasion Basilius confessed that he had often by his magic arts suspended the monastery in mid-air but that he had never been able to injure anyone who was in it. This is more detailed information concerning the nature of Basilius’ magic than Cassiodorus gives us. Gregory further adds that not long after Basilius was burned to death at Rome by the zeal of the Christian people.
[Sidenote: A demon salad.]
A female servant of this same monastery once ate a lettuce in the garden without making the sign of the cross first, and became possessed of a demon straightway. When the abbot was summoned, the demon attempted to excuse himself, exclaiming, “What have I done? what have I done? I was just sitting on a lettuce when she came along and ate me.” The abbot nevertheless indignantly proceeded to drive the evil spirit out of his serf.
Such are a few specimens of the monkish magic that was considered perfectly legitimate and rapturously admired at the same time that men like Basilius were burned at the stake on charges of magic by the zealous Christian populace.
[Sidenote: Incantations in Old Irish.]
We may add a word at this point concerning Old Irish literature[2594] which, as it has reached us, is almost entirely religious in character,[2595] produced and preserved by the Christian clergy. Yet we find a number of traces of magic in these remains of Celtic learning and literature during the dark ages. Indeed, the sole document in the Irish language which is ascribed to St. Patrick is a Hymn or incantation in which he invokes the Trinity and the powers of nature to aid him against the enchantments of women, smiths, and wizards. By repeating this rhythmical formula Patrick and his companions are said to have become invisible to King Loigaire and his Druids. The spell is perhaps as old as Patrick’s time. Three other incantations for urinary disease, sore eyes, and to extract a thorn are contained in the Stowe Missal. An Irish manuscript of the eighth or ninth century in the monastery of St. Gall has four spells for similar purposes and another is found in a ninth century codex preserved in Carinthia.
[Sidenote: The Fili.]
The Irish had their Fili corresponding somewhat to the Druids of Gaul or Britain. They were perhaps less closely connected with heathen rites, since the church seems to have been less opposed to them than to the Druids. They were poets and learned men, and a large part of their learning, at least originally, seems to have consisted of magic and divination. There are many instances in Irish literature of their disfiguring the faces of their enemies by raising blotches upon them by the power of words which they uttered. St. Patrick forbade two of their three methods of divination.
XXVIII. ARABIC OCCULT SCIENCE OF THE NINTH CENTURY
Plan of the chapter—Works of Alkindi—On Stellar Rays, or The Theory of the Magic Art—Radiation of occult force from the stars—Magic power of words—Problem of prayer—Figures, characters, and sacrifice—Experiment and magic—Alkindi’s medieval influence—Divination by visions and dreams—Weather prediction—Alkindi as an astrologer—Alkindi on conjunctions—Alkindi and alchemy—Astrological works of Albumasar—The Experiments of Albumasar—Albumasar in Sadan—Book of Rains—Costa ben Luca’s translation of Hero’s Mechanica—Latin versions of his Epistle concerning Incantation—Form of the epistle—Incantations directly affect the mind alone—Men imagine themselves bewitched—How are amulets effective?—Citations from the lapidary of the Pseudo-Aristotle—From Galen and Dioscorides—Occult virtue—On the Difference between Soul and Spirit—The nature of spiritus—Thought explained physiologically—Views of other medieval writers—Thebit ben Corat—The Sabians—Thebit’s Relations to Sabianism—Thebit as encyclopedist, philosopher, astronomer—His occult science—Astrological and magic images—Life of Rasis—His 232 works—Charlatans discussed—His interest in natural science—Rasis and alchemy—Titles suggestive of astrology and magic—Conclusion.
[Sidenote: Plan of the chapter.]
In this chapter we shall consider a number of learned men who wrote in Arabic or other oriental languages in the ninth and early tenth century: Alkindi, Albumasar, Costa ben Luca, Thebit ben Corat, and Rasis—to mention for the present only the brief and convenient form of their names by which they were commonly designated in medieval Latin learning. Not all of these men were Mohammedans; not one was an Arab, strictly speaking; but they lived under Mohammedan rule and wrote in Arabic. We shall note especially those of their works which deal with occult science and which were plainly influential upon the later medieval Latin learning. Indeed, most of the works of which we shall treat seem to be extant only in Latin translation. This chapter aims at no exhaustive treatment of Arabic science and magic in the ninth century, but merely, by presenting a few prominent examples, to give some idea of it and of its influence upon the middle ages. In subsequent chapters we shall have occasion to mention many other such medieval translations from Arabic and other oriental languages.
[Sidenote: Works of Alkindi.]
One of the great names in the history of Arabic learning is that of Alkindi (Ya‘kûb ibn Ishâk ibn Sabbâh al-Kindî), who died about 850 or 873 A. D.[2596] Comparatively few of his writings have come to us, however, although some two hundred titles prove that he covered the whole field of knowledge in his own day. He translated the works of Aristotle and other Greeks into Arabic, and wrote upon philosophy, politics, mathematics, medicine, music, astronomy, and astrology, discriminating little between science and superstition in his enthusiasm for extensive knowledge. The first treatise of his to appear in print was an astrological one on weather prediction in Latin translation.[2597] In 1875 Loth printed an Arabic text of his treatise on the theory of conjunctions. More recently Nagy has edited Latin versions of some of his philosophical opuscula, and Björnbo has published an optical treatise by him entitled De spectaculis.
[Sidenote: On Stellar Rays, or The Theory of the Magic Art.]
In a manuscript of the closing fourteenth century are contained several sets of errors of Aristotle and various Arabs, also others condemned at Paris in 1348 and 1363, at Oxford in 1376, and so on. Among these are listed the Errors of Alkindi in the Magic Art.[2598] The allusion is to a treatise by Alkindi, variously styled The Theory of the Magic Art or On Stellar Rays, which is found in Latin version in a number of medieval manuscripts,[2599] but which has never been published or described at all fully.
[Sidenote: Radiation of occult force from the stars.]
Alkindi begins the treatise by asserting the astrological doctrine of radiation of occult influence from the stars. The diversity of objects in nature depends upon two things, the diversity of matter and the varying influence exerted by the rays from the stars. Each star has its own peculiar force and certain objects are especially under its influence, while the movement of the stars to new positions and “the collision of their rays” produce such an infinite variety of combinations that no two things in this world are ever found alike in all respects. The stars, however, are no the only objects which emit rays; everything in the world of the elements radiates force, too. Fire, color, and sound are examples of this. The science of physics considers the action of objects upon one another by contact, but the sages know of a more occult interaction of remote objects suggested by the power of the magnet and the reflection of an image in a mirror. All such emanations, however, are in the last analysis caused by the celestial harmony, which governs by necessity all the changes in this world. Thus the men of old, by experiments and by close scrutiny of the secrets of both superior and inferior nature and of the disposition of the sky, came to comprehend many hidden things in the world of nature and were able to discover the names of those who had committed theft and adultery.
[Sidenote: The border-line between science and magic.]
Alkindi has thus prepared the reader’s mind for the consideration of phenomena beyond the realm of ordinary physical action. At the same time he has approached the occult by arguing on the analogy of natural phenomena and he has laid down as a fundamental scientific premise what we now regard as a superstition of astrologers. In other words, he is not unaware of a difference in method and character between physics and astrology, between science and superstition, yet he tries to formulate a scientific basis for what is really a belief in magic.
[Sidenote: Magic power of words.]
Although Alkindi does not, as I recall, use the word magic, he next argues in favor of what is commonly called the magic power of words. He affirms that the human imagination can form concepts and then emit rays which will affect exterior objects just as would the thing itself whose image the mind has conceived. Muscular movement and speech are the two channels by which the mind’s conceptions can be transformed into action. Frequent experiments have proven clearly the potency of words when uttered in exact accordance with imagination and intention, and when accompanied by due solemnity, firm faith, and strong desire. The effect produced by words and voices is heightened if they are uttered under favorable astrological conditions. Some go best with Saturn, others with the planet Jupiter, some with one sign of the zodiac and others with another. The four elements are variously affected by different voices; some voices, for instance, affect fire most powerfully. Some especially stir trees or some one kind of tree. Thus by words motion is started, accelerated, or impeded; animal life is generated or destroyed; images are made to appear in mirrors; flames and lightnings are produced; and other feats and illusions are performed which seem marvelous to the mob.
[Sidenote: Problem of prayer.]
Alkindi even ventures to touch upon the subject of prayer. He states that the rays emitted by the human mind and voice become the more efficacious in moving matter, if the speaker has fixed his mind upon and names God or some powerful angel. Human ignorance of the harmony of nature also often necessitates appeal to a higher power in order to attain good and to avoid evil. Faith, and observance of the proper time and place and attendant circumstances have their bearing, however, upon the success or failure of prayer as well as of other utterances. And there are some authorities who would exclude spiritual influence entirely in such matters and who believe that words and images and prayers as well as herbs and gems are completely under the universal control exercised by the stars.
[Sidenote: Figures, characters, and sacrifice.]
The treatise concludes by discussing the virtues of figures, characters, images, and sacrifices in much the same way as it has treated of the power of words. We are assured that “The sages have proved by frequent experiments that figures and characters inscribed by the hand of man on various materials with intention and due solemnity of place and time and other circumstances have the effect of motion upon external objects.” Every such figure emits rays having the peculiar virtue which has been impressed upon it by the stars and signs. There are characters which can be employed to cure disease or to induce it in men or animals. Images constructed in conformity with the constellations emit rays having something of the virtue of the celestial harmony. Alkindi also defends the practice of animal sacrifice. Whether God or spirits are placated thereby or not, none the less the sacrifice is efficacious, if made with human intent and due solemnity and in accordance with the celestial harmony. The star and sign which are dominant when any voluntary act of this sort is begun, rule that work to its finish. The material and forms employed should be appropriate to the constellation, or the effect produced will be discordant and perverted.
[Sidenote: Experiment and magic.]
It will have been noted that Alkindi more than once asserts that his conclusions have been demonstrated experimentally. Thus we have one more example of the connection, supposititious or real, between magic and experimental method.
[Sidenote: Alkindi’s medieval influence.]
The doctrine here set forth by Alkindi of the radiation of force and his explanation of magic by astrology were both to be very influential conceptions in Latin medieval learning. We shall find Roger Bacon, for example, repeating the same views in almost the same language concerning stellar rays and the power of words, and it is appropriate that in two manuscripts his utterances are placed together with those of Alkindi.[2600]
[Sidenote: Divination by visions and dreams.]
Alkindi’s treatise De somno et visione, as we have it in the Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona,[2601] accepts clairvoyance and divination by dreams as true and asks why we see some things before they happen, why we see other things which require interpretation before they reveal the future, and why at other times we foresee the contrary of what is to be.[2602] His answer is that the mind or soul has innate natural knowledge of these things, and that “it is itself the seat of all species sensible and rational.” Vision is when the soul dismisses the senses and employs thought, and the formative or imaginative virtue of the mind is more active in sleep, the sensitive faculties when one is awake.
[Sidenote: Weather prediction.]
While by some persons, at least, opinions of Alkindi in his Theory of the Magic Art were regarded as erroneous, Albertus Magnus in his Speculum astronomiae listed among works on judicial astrology with which he thought that the church could find no fault “a book of Alchindi” which opened with the words Rogatus fui.[2603] This is a work on weather prediction which still exists in a number of manuscripts[2604] and was printed in 1507 at Venice, and in 1540 at Paris, together with a treatise on the same theme by Albumasar, of whom we shall say more presently.[2605]
[Sidenote: Alkindi as an astrologer.]
A majority, indeed, of the works by Alkindi extant in Latin translation are astrological.[2606] Several were translated by Gerard of Cremona, and one or two by John of Spain and Robert of Chester.[2607] Geomancies are attributed to Alkindi in manuscripts at Munich.[2608] Loth notes concerning Alkindi’s astrology what we have already found to be the case in his theories of radiation and magic art and of divination by dreams; namely, that while he believes in astrology unconditionally, he tries to pursue it as a science in a scientific way, observing mathematical method and physical laws—as they seemed to him—while he attacked the vulgar superstitions which were popularly regarded as astrology.
[Sidenote: Alkindi on conjunctions.]
The astrological treatise by Alkindi, of which Loth edited the Arabic text, is a letter on the duration of the empire of the Arabs. This bit of political prediction was, as far as Loth knew, the first instance of the theory of conjunctions in Arabian astrology. The theory was that lesser conjunctions of the planets, which occur every twenty years, middling conjunctions which come every two hundred and forty years, and great conjunctions which occur only every nine hundred and sixty years, exert a great influence not only upon the world of nature but upon political and religious events, and, especially the great conjunctions, open new periods in history. Thus, as Loth says, the conjunction is for the macrocosmos what the horoscope is for man the microcosmos; the one forecasts the fate of the individual; the other, that of society. Loth knew of no Latin translation of Alkindi’s letter, and medieval writers in Latin cite Albumasar usually as their authority on the subject of conjunctions. But Loth held that Albumasar, who was a pupil of Alkindi, merely developed and popularized the astrological theories of his master, and Loth showed that Albumasar embodied our letter on the duration of the Arabian empire in large part in his work On Great Conjunctions without mentioning Alkindi as his authority.
[Sidenote: Alkindi and alchemy.]
Although a believer in astrology to the point of magic, and not unacquainted with metals as his work On the Properties of Swords shows, Alkindi regarded the art of alchemy as a deception and the pretended transmutation of other metals into gold as false.[2609] He affirmed this especially in his treatise entitled, The Deceits of the Alchemists, but also in his other writings.[2610]
[Sidenote: Astrological works of Albumasar.]
Something further should be said concerning the astrological treatises of Albumasar (Abu Maؗ’shar Ja’far ben Muhammad al-Balkhî) whence also his briefer appellations, Japhar and Dja’far. He died in 886 and has been called the most celebrated of all the ninth century Bagdad astrologers, although he has also been accused of plagiarism, as we have seen. In 1489 at Augsburg Erhard Ratdolt published three of his works, the Greater Introduction to Astronomy in eight books, the Flowers—which Roger Bacon cites as severely condemning physicians who do not study astrology[2611]—and the eight books concerning great conjunctions and revolutions of the years. Of these the Introduction was translated both by John of Spain and Hermann of Dalmatia, but the former translation, although found in many manuscripts, remains unprinted. The Flores is found in numerous manuscripts and was reprinted in 1495. The work on conjunctions and revolutions was printed again in 1515 and also exists in many manuscripts.[2612] A French translation which Hagins the Jew, working for Henri Bate of Malines, made in 1273 of “Le livre des revolutions de siècle,” of whose six chapters he translated only four,[2613] probably applied to a part of this work.
[Sidenote: The Experiments of Albumasar.]
Albertus Magnus in the Speculum astronomiae, in listing irreproachable works of astronomy and astrology, mentions a “Book of Experiments” by Albumasar instead of the Conjunctions and Revolutions along with his Flowers and Introduction.[2614] This book of experiments by Albumasar is often met with in the manuscripts. It is a different and shorter work than that in eight parts on Conjunctions, but itself deals with the subject of revolutions. It is not, however, to be confused with still another work by Albumasar on revolutions as connected with nativities.[2615]
[Sidenote: Albumasar in Sadan.]
Another work on astrology with which the name of Albumasar is connected is cited by medieval writers, notably Peter of Abano,[2616] as Albumasar in Sadan (or Sadam), and is also found in Latin manuscripts where it is also called “Excerpts from the Secrets of Albumasar.”[2617] Steinschneider regarded the Latin translation as a shortened or incomplete version of an Arabic original entitled al-Mudsakaret, or Memorabilia by Abu Sa’id Schâdsân, who wrote down the answers of his teacher to his questions.[2618] There is also a Greek text, entitled Mysteries, which differs considerably from the Latin and of which Sadan perhaps made use.[2619] The Latin version might be described as a miscellaneous collection of astrological teachings, anecdotes, and actual cases of Albumasar gathered up by his disciples and somewhat resembling Luther’s Table-Talk in form.
[Sidenote: Book of rains.]
We have already alluded to the treatise on weather prediction by Albumasar which was printed with a similar work by Alkindi in 1507 and 1540, and also often accompanies it in the manuscripts. In this “book of rains according to the Indians”[2620] Albumasar is variously disguised under the names of Gaphar, Jafar, and Iafar and is called an Indian, Egyptian, or Babylonian.[2621] In his Latin translation of it Hugo Sanctellensis tells his patron, the “antistes Michael” that the treatise was written by Gaphar, an ancient astrologer of India, and has since been abbreviated by a Tillemus or Cilenius or Cylenius Mercurius.[2622] To Japhar is also attributed a Minor Isagoga to astronomy in seven lectures or sermones, which Adelard of Bath is said to have translated from the Arabic.[2623]
[Sidenote: Costa ben Luca’s translation of Hero’s Mechanica.]
We turn next to Costa ben Luca, or Qustá ibn Lūqá, of Baalbek, and especially to his treatise On Physical Ligatures, or more fully, The Epistle concerning Incantations, Adjurations, and Suspensions from the Neck. The scientific importance of Costa ben Luca may be seen from the circumstance that the Mechanica of Hero of Alexandria, of which the Greek text is for the most part lost, has been preserved in the Arabic translation which Costa prepared in 862-866 for the caliph al-Musta. Several manuscripts of this Arabic text are still extant at Cairo, Constantinople, Leyden, and London, and it has been twice printed.[2624]
[Sidenote: Latin versions of his Epistle concerning Incantation, etc.]
The work in which we are more especially interested has also been printed in editions of the works of Galen, of Constantinus Africanus, of Arnald of Villanova, and of Henry Cornelius Agrippa.[2625] The treatise is also attributed to Rasis in the library at Montpellier.[2626] Its inclusion among Galen’s works is a manifest error; in the edition of Agrippa it is appended as The Letter of an Unknown Author (Epistola incerti authoris); while Arnald is represented as translating the work from Greek—a language of which he was ignorant—into Latin. He could read Arabic, however, and perhaps rendered the treatise from that language.[2627] But it had certainly been translated before his time, the end of the thirteenth century, and presumably by Constantinus Africanus, c1015-1087, since it not merely appears in his printed works but is found together with an imperfect copy of his Pantegni in a manuscript of the twelfth century.[2628] In a fifteenth century manuscript Unayn or Honein ben Ishak is named as the author of our treatise, but this seems to be a mistake.[2629] Albertus Magnus in the middle of the thirteenth century cites our treatise both in his Vegetables and Plants,[2630] where he alludes to “the books of incantations of Hermes the philosopher and of Costa ben Luca the philosopher, and the books of physical ligatures,” and in his Minerals,[2631] where the Liber de ligaturis physicis, as he calls it, is the source whence he has borrowed statements concerning gems ascribed to Aristotle and Dioscorides.
[Sidenote: Form of the epistle.]
Our treatise is in the form of a reply by Costa ben Luca to someone whom he addresses as “dearest son” and who has asked him what validity there is in incantations, adjurations, and suspensions from one’s neck, and what the books of the Greeks and Indians have to say upon these matters. The wording of Costa’s epistle varies considerably in the printed editions owing probably to careless interpretation of the manuscripts or careless copying by the earlier scribes, but its general tenor is the same.
[Sidenote: Incantations directly affect the mind alone.]
Costa first affirms that all the ancients have agreed that the virtue of the mind affects the state of the body. Galen in particular is cited as to the effect of passions upon health and the advisability of the physician’s cheering the minds of gloomy patients even by resort to deception to a limited extent, if it seems necessary. A perfect mind generally goes with a perfect body and an imperfect mind with an imperfect body, as is seen in the case of children, old men, and women, or in the inhabitants of the intemperate zones, either torrid Ethiopia or the frozen north. Here one text specifies Scotland (Scotie); another, Schytie, which is perhaps intended for Scythia. Costa therefore argues that if anyone believes that an incantation will help him, he will at least be benefited by his own confidence. And if a person is constantly afraid that incantations may be directed against him, he may easily fret himself into a fever. This, Costa thinks, was what Socrates had in mind when he described incantations as “words deceiving rational souls by their interpretation or by the fear they produce or by despair.” According to Albertus Magnus, who embodies a good deal of Costa’s Epistle in his Minerals, Socrates said more fully that incantations, or perhaps better, enchantments, were made in four ways, namely, by suspending or binding on objects, by imprecations or adjurations, by characters, and by images; and that they dement rational souls so that they fall into fear and despair or rise to joy and confidence; and that through these accidents of the mind bodies are altered either in the direction of health or of chronic infirmity.[2632] Costa states that the medical men of India believe that incantations and adjurations are beneficial. But he says nothing to indicate that they, much less the Greeks or himself, have faith in the efficacy of incantations or words to work changes in matter per se or directly, nor does he say anything to indicate that demons may be summoned and given orders by this method. Perhaps his discussion of incantations is a trifle constrained and not sufficiently outspoken, but it is moderate and scientific and shows a fair degree of scepticism for that period, especially when we compare it with Alkindi’s attitude towards the power of words.
[Sidenote: Men imagine themselves bewitched.]
Costa ben Luca’s attitude towards sorcery seems the same as towards incantations. He concludes his discussion of this point by a story of “a certain great noble of our country” who had convinced himself that he had been bewitched and consequently became impotent. After vainly endeavoring to convince him that this was simply due to his imagination, Costa decided that there was nothing to do but humor him in his delusion. He therefore showed him a passage in The Book of Cleopatra which prescribed as an aphrodisiac the anointing of the entire body with the gall of a crow mixed with sesame.[2633] The noble followed the prescription and had so much faith in it that his imaginary complaint disappeared.
[Sidenote: How are amulets effective?]
Finally Costa considers the question of the validity of amulets, or ligatures and suspensions, which we have heard Socrates class with incantations, adjurations, characters, and images. Costa says that he has read in many works by the ancients that objects suspended from the neck are potent not through their natural, but their occult properties. He will not deny that this may be so, but is inclined as before to attribute the result rather to the comforting effect which such things have upon one’s mind. He proceeds, however, to list a number of suspensions recommended by ancient writers.
[Sidenote: Citations from the lapidary of the Pseudo-Aristotle.]
First he cites from “Aristotle in the Book of Stones,” a spurious treatise of which we shall have more to say in the chapter on Aristotle in the middle ages, a number of examples of the marvelous powers of gems worn suspended from the neck or set in a ring upon the finger. One augments the flow of saliva, another checks the flow of blood. The stone hyacinth enables its bearer to pass safely through a pestilent region, and makes him honored in men’s thoughts and procures the granting of his petitions by rulers. The emerald wards off epilepsy, “wherefore we often prescribe to nobles that their children should wear this stone hung about the neck lest they incur this infirmity.”
[Sidenote: From Galen and Dioscorides.]
Costa also cites some recommendations of ligatures and suspensions from Galen, such as curing stomach-ache by suspending coral about the neck or abdomen, or the dung of wolves who have eaten bones, which should preferably be bound on with a thread made from the wool of a sheep eaten by that wolf. To Dioscorides are attributed such amulets as the teeth of a mad dog who has bit a man, which will safeguard their wearer from ever being so bitten—and it would be somewhat of a coincidence, if he were—and the seed of wild saffron which, held in the hand or worn about the neck, is good for the stings of scorpions. The Indians are cited for what is a recipe rather than an amulet: stercum elephantinum cum melle mixtum et in vulva mulieris positum numquam permittit concipere. And some say that a woman who spits thrice in a frog’s mouth will not conceive for a year. A number of other examples are given without mention of any particular authority. Some of them, indeed, are very familiar and could be found in many authors, and we shall meet them in other contexts.
[Sidenote: Occult virtue.]
Costa concludes by saying that he himself has not tested these statements extracted from the works of the ancients, but that neither will he deny them, since there exist in nature many strange phenomena and inexplicable forces. We would not believe that the magnet attracts iron, if we had not seen it. Similarly lead breaks adamant which iron cannot break. There is a stone which no furnace can consume and a fish which paralyzes the hand of the person catching it. These strange properties act in some subtle and mighty fashion which is not perceptible to our senses and which we cannot account for by reasoning.[2634] But it is noteworthy that as in discussing incantations Costa said nothing of demons, so he fails to ascribe occult virtue to the influence of the stars.
[Sidenote: On the Difference between Soul and Spirit.]
Another treatise by Costa ben Luca, On the Difference between Soul and Spirit,[2635] has little to do with occult science, but gives too good a glimpse of medieval notions in the field of physiological psychology to pass it by. It was translated into Latin by John of Spain for Archbishop Raymond of Toledo in the twelfth century,[2636] and is found in many manuscripts, often together with the works of Aristotle.[2637] Probably by a confusion of the names Costa ben Luca and Constantinus[2638] it was printed among the latter’s works,[2639] and indeed we find very similar views in his Pantegni[2640] and in his treatise On Melancholy. The work has also been ascribed to Augustine,[2641] Isaac,[2642] Avicenna,[2643] Alexander Neckam, Thomas of Cantimpré, and Albertus Magnus.[2644] A different work with a similar title and somewhat similar contents is the De spiritu et anima, which is printed with the works of Augustine[2645] but which cites such later authors as Boethius, Isidore, Bede, Alcuin, St. Bernard, and Hugh of St. Victor, to whom also it has been attributed.[2646] Thomas Aquinas called it the work of an anonymous Cistercian.[2647] But to return to our treatise.
[Sidenote: The nature of spiritus.]
Costa ben Luca has, as we have hinted, some diverting passages in the fields of physiological psychology. He believes in the existence of spiritus, which is not spirit in one of our senses of that word, but “a subtle body,” unlike the soul which is incorporeal. This subtle spiritus perishes when separated from the body and it operates most of the vital processes of the body such as breathing and the pulse, sensation and movement. The two former processes are operated by spiritus “arising from the heart and borne in the pulsating veins to vivify the body.” The two latter processes are caused by spiritus which arises from the brain and operates through the nerves. Thus spiritus is the cause of life in the body and it leaves this mortal frame with our dying gasp. The clearer and more subtle this spiritus is, the more readily it lends itself to mental processes, while the more perfect the human body, the more perfect the spiritus and the human mind. Hence the intellectual powers of children and women are inferior, and the same is true of races subjected to excessive heat or cold like the Ethiopians or Slavs. Here we have the same views repeated as in the Epistle concerning Incantation. Some physicians and philosophers think that there are two vessels in the heart and that there is more spiritus than blood in the left hand vessel and more blood than spiritus in the right hand vessel. The spiritus in the brain becomes more subtle and apt to receive the virtues of the soul by its passage from one cavity of the brain to another. The less subtle spiritus the brain uses for the five senses; Costa speaks of “hollow nerves” from the brain to the eye through which the spiritus passes for the purpose of vision. The most subtle spiritus is employed in the higher mental processes such as imagination, memory, and reason.
[Sidenote: Thought explained physiologically.]
Costa ben Luca gives an amusing explanation of how these processes take place in the brain. The opening between the anterior and posterior ventricles of the brain is closed by a sort of valve which he describes as “a particle of the body of the brain similar to a worm.” When a man is in the act of recalling something to memory, this valve opens and the spiritus passes from the anterior to the posterior cavity. Moreover, the speed with which this valve works or responds differs in different brains, and this fact explains why some men are of slow memory and why others answer a question so much sooner. The habit of inclining the head when deep in cogitation is also to be explained as tending to open this valve. However, the relative subtlety of the spiritus is another important factor in intellectual ability.
[Sidenote: Views of other medieval writers.]
Other medieval writers differed somewhat from these views of Costa ben Luca as to the nature of spiritus and the cavities of the brain. For instance, Constantinus Africanus in his treatise On Melancholy states that the spiritus of the brain is called the rational soul, which is inconsistent with the distinction drawn between soul and spirit in the other treatise. In the eleventh century both Constantinus in his Pantegni and Anatomy or De humana natura,[2648] and Petrocellus the Salernitan in his Practica;[2649] in the twelfth century both Hildegard of Bingen[2650] and the Pseudo-Augustinian Liber de spiritu et anima;[2651] in the thirteenth century both Bartholomew of England, who seems to cite Johannitius (Hunain ibn Ishak) on this point,[2652] and Vincent of Beauvais agree that the brain has three main cavities. The first is phantastic, from which the senses are controlled, where the sensations are registered, and where the process of imagination goes on. The middle cell is logical or rational, and there the forms received from the senses and imagination are examined and judged. The third cell retains such forms as pass this examination and so is the seat of memory.[2653] The Pseudo-Augustine, however, represents it further as the source of motor activity. Constantinus and Vincent of Beauvais, who quotes him in the thirteenth century, further distinguish the phantastic cavity as hot and dry, the logical cell as cold and moist, and the seat of memory as cold and dry. Moreover, the phantastic cell which multiplies forms contains a great deal of spiritus and very little medulla, while the cell of memory which retains the smaller number of forms selected by reason contains much medulla and little spiritus. Thus the general point of view of these other authors resembles that of Costa ben Luca despite the divergence from him in details. They perhaps also owe something to Augustine, who in his genuine works speaks of the three cells of the brain but makes the hind-brain the center of motor activity, and the mid-brain the seat of memory.[2654]
[Sidenote: Thebit ben Corat.]
Thabit ibn Kurrah ibn Marwan ibn Karaya ibn Ibrahim ibn Marinos ibn Salamanos (Abu Al Hasan) Al Harrani or Thabit ben Corrah ben Zahrun el Harrani, or Tabit ibn Qorra ibn Merwan, Abu’l-Hasan, el-Harrani, or Thabit ben Qorrah or Thabit ibn Qurra, or Tabit ibn Korrah, or Thabit ben Korra, as he is variously designated by modern scholars;[2655] or Thebit ben Corat, or Thebith ben Corath, or Thebit filius Core, or Thebites filius Chori, also Tabith, Tebith, Thabit, Thebeth, Thebyth, and Benchorac, ben corach, etc., as we find it in the medieval Latin versions—Thebit ben Corat seems the prevalent medieval spelling and so will be adopted here—was born at Harran in Mesopotamia about 836, spent much of his life at Bagdad, and lived until about 901.[2656] He wrote in Arabic as well as Syriac, but was not a Mohammedan, and Roger Bacon alludes to him as “the supreme philosopher among all Christians, who has added in many respects, speculative as well as practical, to the work of Ptolemy.”[2657] As a matter of fact, he was a heathen or pagan, a member of the sect of Sabians, whose chief seat was at his birthplace, Harran.
[Sidenote: The Sabians.]
The Sabians appear to have continued the paganism and astrology of Babylonia, but also to have accepted the Agathodaemon and Hermes of Egypt,[2658] and to have had relations with Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. They seem to have laid especial stress upon the spirits of the planets,[2659] to whom they made prayers, sacrifices, and suffumigations,[2660] while days on which the planets reached their culminating-points were celebrated as festivals.[2661] They observed the houses and stations of the planets, their risings and settings, conjunctions and oppositions, and rule over certain hours of the day and night.[2662] Some planets were masculine, others feminine; some lucky, others unlucky;[2663] they were related to different metals;[2664] the different members of the human body were placed under different signs of the zodiac;[2665] and in general each planet had its own appropriate figures and forms, and ruled over certain climates, regions, and things[2666] in nature. Most of this, however, is astrological commonplace whether of pagans, Mohammedans, or Christians. Nor were the Sabians peculiar in associating intellectual substances or spirits with the planets.[2667] It was only in worshiping these and denying the existence of one God and in their practice of sacrificial divination that they could be distinguished as heathen or pagan. However, they seem to have devoted a rather unusual amount of attention to astrology and other forms of magic such as oracular heads,[2668] magic knots and figures,[2669] and seal-rings carved with peculiar animal figures. These last they often buried with the dead for a time in order to increase their virtue.[2670]
[Sidenote: Thebit’s relations to Sabianism.]
Thebit, at any rate, seems to have prided himself upon being a descendant of pagan antiquity. In a passage praising his native town he said, “We are the heirs and posterity of heathenism,”[2671] and he described with veneration a ruined Greek temple at Antioch.[2672] He had, however, some religious disagreement with the Sabians of Harran and was finally forced to leave.[2673] He met a philosopher who took him to Bagdad where he became one of the Caliph’s astronomers[2674] and founded there a Sabian community to his own taste. His numerous religious writings show the value which he attached to various Sabian usages and rites: ceremonials at burials, hours of prayer, rules of purity and impurity and concerning the animals to be sacrificed, readings in honor of the different planets.[2675]
[Sidenote: Thebit as encyclopedist, philosopher, astronomer.]
Thebit was a writer of encyclopedic range and translated from the Greek[2676] into Arabic or Syriac such authors as Apollonius, Archimedes, Aristotle, Euclid, Hippocrates, and Galen. He “was famed above all as a philosopher,”[2677] but most of his philosophical works are lost, but some geometrical treatises by him are extant, and a work on weights appears in Latin translation.[2678] A group of four astronomical treatises by him also occurs with fair frequency in medieval manuscripts.[2679] On the basis of these specimens of his astronomy Delambre was not moved to assign him any great place in the history of the science;[2680] Chwolson objects that they are too brief to do him justice,[2681] but they are probably the cream of his own contributions to the subject or the middle ages would not have translated and preserved them so sedulously.
[Sidenote: His occult science.]
Whatever Thebit’s contributions to positive knowledge may or may not have been, there is no dispute as to the fact that he was given to occult science and even superstition. His attitude towards alchemy, indeed, is doubtful, as a work of alchemy is ascribed to him in one manuscript of the fourteenth century and some notes against the art in another[2682]. But of his adhesion to astrology there is no doubt[2683], and Chwolson notes his interest in the mystic power of letters and magic combinations of them[2684]. But the one outstanding example of his occult science is his treatise on images, which seems to have been a favorite with the Latin middle ages, since it appears to have been translated into Latin twice, by Adelard of Bath[2685] and by John of Seville[2686], since the manuscripts of it are numerous,[2687] and it also was printed,[2688] and since Thebit is cited as an authority on the subject of images by such medieval writers as Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus,[2689] the author of Picatrix,[2690] Peter of Abano,[2691] and Cecco d’Ascoli.[2692]
[Sidenote: Astrological and magic images.]
The work begins by emphasizing the need of a knowledge of astronomy in order to perform feats of magic (praestigia). The images described are astronomical or astrological and must be constructed under prescribed constellations in order to fulfill the end sought. Often, however, they are human forms rather than astronomical figures. It is not necessary to engrave them upon gems; Thebit expressly states that the material of which they are made or upon which they are engraved is unimportant, and that lead or tin or bronze or gold or silver or wax or mud or anything you please will do. The essential thing and “the perfection of mastery” is careful conformity to astrological conditions. This science of images is indeed, as Aristotle and Ptolemy have testified, the acme of astrology. Nevertheless, after the image has been properly constructed, there is usually some non-astrological ceremony to be executed in connection with it which savors of magic. Often the image is to be buried, not however in a grave as in the case of the ancient curses upon lead tablets, but in the house of someone concerned. Once two images are to be placed facing each other and wrapped in a clean cloth before burying them. Instructions are also given as to the direction in which the person burying the image should face. Also forms of words are prescribed which are to be repeated as the image is buried. Once the name of the person whom it is desired to injure is to be written with “names of hate on the back of the image.” Among the objects supposed to be achieved by such images are driving off scorpions, destroying a given region, causing misfortunes to happen to others, recovery of stolen objects, success in business or politics, protection from possible injury at the hands of the king, or the causing of an enemy’s death by bringing him into disfavor with the monarch. The treatise closes, at least in the printed text, with an admission of its essentially magic character by saying, “And this is what God the highest wished to reveal to his servants concerning magic, that His name may be honored and praised and ever exalted through the ages.” But no mention is made of demons, unless an instruction to name one image “by a famous name” alludes to some spirit.
We shall now conclude the present survey with some account of Rasis and his writings, with the exception of a number of books of experiments ascribed to him, but which it is impossible to separate from those ascribed to Galen and other authors, and of which we shall treat later under the head of such experimental literature.
[Sidenote: Life of Rasis.]
The full name of Rasis or Rhazes was Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi,[2693] the last word indicating his birthplace in Persia. The date of his birth is uncertain, perhaps about 850. He died in 923 or 924.[2694] For the facts of his life we are dependent upon two Arabic writers of the thirteenth century[2695] who do little except tell one “good” story after another about him, or quote his famous sayings, most of which sound as if culled from the works of Galen. When about thirty years of age Rasis came to Bagdad and is said to have been attracted to the study of medicine by hearing how an inflamed and swollen forearm which gave great pain was marvelously cured by the application of an herb, which came to be called “the vivifier of the world.” In the early years of the tenth century Rasis served as physician in the hospital at Bagdad. According to Withington he has been called “the first and most original of the great Moslem physicians.” He also was interested in philosophy and alchemy, as his writings will show.
[Sidenote: His 232 works.]
There has come down to us a list of some 232 works ascribed to Rasis.[2696] Some of them are probably merely different wordings of the same title, others are very likely chapters repeated from his longer works, but at any rate they serve to give us some idea of his interests and the ground he covered, although of course some may be incorrectly attributed to him. Editions of the Latin translations of some of his chief medical works were printed before the end of the fifteenth century at Milan in 1481 and Bergamo in 1497.[2697] These contain the famous Liber Almansoris or Liber El-Mansuri dictus with its ten subordinate treatises: (1) introduction to medicine and discussion of human anatomy, (2) the doctrine of temperaments and humors and a discussion of the art of physiognomy,[2698] with a chapter on how to select slaves, (3) diet and drugs, (4) hygiene, (5) cosmetics, (6) rules of health and medicines for travelers, (7) surgery or “the art of binding up broken bones and concerning wounds and ulcers,” (8) poisons, (9) treatment of diseases from head to foot, (10) fevers. Following this in both editions come his works on Divisions, on diseases of the joints, on the diseases of children, and his Aphorisms or six books of medicinal secrets. Other writings by Rasis found in one or both of the printed editions are a brief treatise on Surgery, Cautery, and Leeches,[2699] the book of Synonyms, the table of antidotes, and some others which we shall have occasion to mention later. His treatise on the pestilence or on smallpox and measles was printed many times from the fifteenth to sixteenth century.
[Sidenote: Charlatans discussed.]
In the list of 232 titles are three works which all seem to bear on the same point and are perhaps different descriptions of one treatise, or else show that this was a favorite theme with Rasis. The idea in all three seems to be that no physician is perfect or can cure all diseases of all patients, that this is why many persons go to charlatans, and why sometimes quacks, old-wives, and popular practice succeed in certain cases where the most learned doctors have failed.[2700]
[Sidenote: His interest in natural science.]
Other titles show that Rasis was interested in natural science and not merely in the practice of medicine. Besides what would appear to have been a general treatise entitled, Opinions concerning Natural Things, he wrote on optics, holding that vision was not by rays sent forth from the eye, and discussing some of the figures in the work on optics ascribed to Euclid. In a letter he inquired into the reason for the creation of wild beasts and venomous reptiles; and in a third treatise wrote of the magnet’s attraction for iron and of vacuums.[2701] His interest in natural philosophy of a rather theoretical sort is indicated by an Explanation of the book of Plutarch or commentary on the book of Timaeus.[2702] Other titles attest his experimental tendency.[2703]
[Sidenote: Rasis and alchemy.]
Eight titles deal with alchemy[2704] and show that Rasis regarded transmutation as possible. One is a reply to Alkindi who held the opposite opinion.[2705] None of these writings seem to be extant in Arabic, however, and the Latin works of alchemy ascribed to Rasis are generally regarded as spurious. The thirteenth century encyclopedist, Vincent of Beauvais, made a number of citations from the treatise De salibus et aluminibus attributed to Rasis, but Berthelot[2706] regarded this work as later than Rasis and it is not found among our eight titles. The Lumen luminis, which is ascribed to Rasis[2707] and seems to have been translated by Michael Scot[2708] in the early thirteenth century, is also mainly devoted to these two substances, salts and alums. A Book of Seventy is ascribed to Rasis as well as to Geber. Berthelot was inclined to think that a Book of Secrets perhaps went back to Rasis. At least some good stories are told by Arabic chroniclers of Rasis’ connection with alchemy. One is to the effect that he abandoned the art as a result of a sound beating to which the caliph subjected him when he failed to transmute metals at order. Another states that in preparing the elixir he injured his eyes with its vapors and was cured by a physician who charged him a fee of five hundred dinars. Rasis paid the doctor’s bill, but, remarking that at last he had discovered the true alchemy and the best art of making gold, devoted the remainder of his life to the study and practice of medicine.[2709]
[Sidenote: Titles suggestive of astrology and magic.]
Rasis also wrote treatises on mathematics and the stars but it is not always easy to infer their contents from the titles which have alone reached us or to tell when mathematica means astrology. In one work he seems to have shown the excellence and utility of mathematica, but to have confuted those who extolled it beyond measure.[2710] In a letter he denied that the rising and setting of the sun and other planets was because of the earth’s motion and held that it was due to the movement of the celestial orb.[2711] In another letter he discussed the opinion of natural philosophers concerning the sciences of the stars and whether or not the stars were living beings.[2712] Rasis also discussed the difference between dreams from which the future can be forecast and other dreams.[2713] The title, Of exorcisms, fascinations, and incantations, under which, according to Negri’s Latin translation Rasis discussed the causes and cures of diseases by these methods and magic arts, should, in Ranking’s opinion, be more accurately translated as The Book of Divisions and Branches.[2714] A work On the Necessity of Prayer is also included in the list of 232 works ascribed to Rasis,[2715] while a Lapidary produced for Wenzel II of Bohemia (1278-1305) cites Rasis On the virtues of words and characters.[2716]
[Sidenote: Conclusion.]
Herewith we conclude our present survey of Arabian occult science especially in the ninth century, although in the following chapters we shall frequently encounter its influence. We have found the occult science closely associated with natural science and difficult to sever from it. In the authors and works reviewed we have found both scepticism and superstition, both rationalism and empiricism. But perhaps the most impressive point is that even superstition pretends to be or attempts to be scientific.
Chapter XXIX
LATIN ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION: ESPECIALLY IN THE NINTH, TENTH, AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES
Astrology in Gaul before the twelfth century—Figures of astrological medicine—The divine quaternities of Raoul Glaber—Celestial portents and other marvels—An eleventh century calendar—Astrology and divination in ecclesiastical compoti—Notker on the mystic date of Easter—Prediction from the Kalends of January—Other divination by the day of the week—Divination by the day of the moon—Authorship of moon-books—Spheres of life and death: in Greek—Medieval Latin versions—Survival of such methods in medical practice of about 1400—Egyptian days—Their history—Medieval attempts to explain them—Other perilous days—Firmicus read by an archbishop of York—Relation of Latin astrology to Arabic—Appendix I. Some manuscripts of the Sphere of Pythagoras or Apuleius—Appendix II. Egyptian days in early medieval manuscripts.
[Sidenote: Astrology in Gaul before the twelfth century.]
Astrology had continued to flourish in Gaul in the last declining days of the Roman Empire, despite the strictures of Christian writers and clergy,[2717] and it was one of the first subjects to revive after the darkness of the Merovingian period. Two centuries ago Goujet in a treatise on the state of the sciences in France from the death of Charlemagne to that of King Robert noted that from the reign of Charlemagne astronomy continued to be increasingly studied. “The councils in their decrees, the bishops in their statutes, the kings in their capitularies, expressly recommended the study of it to the clergy.”[2718] With the study of astronomy naturally developed a belief in astrology. According to the Histoire Littéraire de la France it became quite the fashion during the reign of Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s successor, when we are told that there was no great lord but had his own astrologer. Adalmus, before he became abbot of Castres, wasted much time upon this pseudo-science, and Rabanus Maurus showed tendencies in that direction. In the tenth century such celestial phenomena as comets and eclipses were feared as sinister portents, and men resorted to enchantments, auguries, and other forms of divination.[2719] A brief treatise in a manuscript of the ninth century in the Vatican library also develops the thesis that comets signify disasters.[2720] In the eleventh century Engelbert, a monk of Liège, and Odo, teacher at Tournai, were devoted to the study of the stars; and Gilbert Maminot, bishop of Lisieux, and for a time chaplain and physician to William the Conqueror, would rather spend his nights in star-gazing than in sleep. “But what was the outcome of all this toil and study?” inquires the Histoire Littéraire and replies to its own question, “The making of some wretched astrologers and not a single true astronomer!”[2721]
[Sidenote: Figures of astrological medicine.]
These words were written nearly two hundred years ago, but such a recent investigation of manuscripts in French libraries as that of Wickersheimer on figures illustrative of astrological medicine from the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries has on the whole confirmed the importance of astrology in the meager learning of that time.[2722] The manuscripts in English libraries, I have found, tell a similar story. Of the human figures marked with the twelve signs of the zodiac, which become so common in the manuscripts by the fourteenth century, and in which the head rests upon the Ram, the feet on Pisces, while the intervening members of the body are marked by their respective signs,—of these Wickersheimer found none before the twelfth century. But in a medical manuscript of the eleventh century the twelve signs with their names and the names of the parts of the human body to which they apply are grouped about a half figure of Christ, who has His right hand raised to bless, while about His head is a halo or sun-disk with twelve rays.[2723] Less favorable to astrology is the accompanying legend, “According to the ravings of the philosophers the twelve signs are thus denoted.” On the page following the text describes the twelve signs “according to the Gentiles.” Schemes in which the world, the year, and man were associated, and where are shown the four elements, four seasons, four humors, four temperaments, four ages, four cardinal points, and four winds, are frequently found in extant manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.[2724]
[Sidenote: The divine quaternities of Raoul Glaber.]
Such association reminds one of the opening of the chronicle of Raoul Glaber, written in the eleventh century, “Since we are to treat of events in the four quarters of the earth, it will be well to touch first upon the power of divine and abstract quaternity.” There are four elements, he gives us to understand, four virtues and four senses. There are four Gospels and they have their relation to the four elements. Matthew, dealing with Christ’s incarnation, corresponds to earth; Mark to water, since it emphasizes baptism; Luke to air, because it is the longest Gospel; and John to fire or ether as the most spiritual. In like manner can be associated with the four cardinal virtues those four famous rivers which had their sources in Paradise: Phison and prudence, Geon and temperance, the Tigris and fortitude, the Euphrates and justice. Finally the ages of the world are found to be four by Raoul, instead of the six eras corresponding to the days of creation which we find in Isidore, Bede, and other medieval historians; and these four ages also relate to the four virtues. The days of Abel, Enoch, and Noah were days of prudence; but on leaving Noah we have temperance marking the age of Abraham and the patriarchs; fortitude is the feature of the time of Moses and the prophets; while justice characterizes the period since the incarnation of the Word.
[Sidenote: Celestial portents and other marvels.]
The faith of Raoul and his contemporaries in the mystic significance of numbers, if not also in astrology, and the fact that they were constantly on the lookout for portents and prodigies, are further attested by the stress laid in his chronicle upon the thousandth anniversaries of Christ’s birth and of His passion. Says Raoul, “After the multiplicity of prodigies which, although some came a little before and some a trifle afterwards, happened in the world around the thousandth year of Christ the Lord, there were many industrious men of sagacious mind who prophesied that there would be others not inferior to these in the thousandth year of our Lord’s passion.” That they were not mistaken in this premonition he shows later by several chapters, including an account of the eclipse of the sun in that year. Like many another medieval historian, Raoul is careful to note the appearance of comets—in the Bayeux tapestry of the same century one marks the death of Edward the Confessor; Raoul also believes that if a living person is visited by spirits, either good or evil, it is a sign of his approaching death; he holds the usual view that demons may sometimes work marvels by divine permission, and tells of a magician-impostor whom he saw work miracles upon pseudo-relics. But from the superstition of medieval chroniclers we must turn back to astrological manuscripts proper.
[Sidenote: An eleventh century calendar.]
An eleventh century calendar at Amiens[2725] reveals both a simple form of astrological medicine and a belief in some peculiar significance of the number seven, whether as a sacred or an astrological number. At the head of each month are brief instructions as to what herbs to use during that month, as to bleeding and bathing, and what disease may most easily be cured then.[2726] In the same manuscript one miniature shows someone striking seven bells with a hammer, perhaps as notes in a scale, and another miniature represents a seven-branched candlestick, of which the branches are respectively labeled, “Spirit of piety, Spirit of fortitude, Spirit of intellect, Spirit of wisdom, Spirit of prudence, Spirit of science, Spirit of the fear of God.”[2727]
[Sidenote: Astrology and divination in ecclesiastical Compoti.]
Indeed works of astrology and divination are especially likely to be found in the same manuscripts with ecclesiastical calendars and computi. Computus or compotus, as one manuscript states, was “the science considering times.”[2728] For example, in a brief compotus of the ninth century[2729] a divining sphere of Pythagoras occurs twice, and we have also a moon book, an account of the Egyptian days, and a method of divination from winds. In a twelfth century manuscript,[2730] sandwiched in between calendars and reckonings of Easter and eclipses and Bede’s work On the Natures of Things, are a sphere of divination, an account of Egyptian days, a method of divination from thunder, and a portion of a work on judicial astrology beginning with the eleventh chapter which tells how to determine whether anyone will be poor or rich by inspection of the planet in his nativity.[2731]
[Sidenote: Notker on the mystic date of Easter.]
The very dating of Easter itself might be the occasion for indulging in mystic speculation of a semi-astrological nature. Thus Notker Labeo, c 950-1022, the well-known monk of St. Gall,[2732] in a treatise to his disciple Erkenhard on four questions of compotus,[2733] states that the principal problem, with which all others are connected, is that of the date of Easter. He gives the time as in the first full moon after the vernal equinox, but adds that this is because of a certain mystery. For if there were no mystery connected with the date of Easter, and it merely celebrated like other festivals the memory of an event which once happened, there is no doubt but that it would occur every year without variation upon the twenty-seventh of March, which was the day of the Lord’s resurrection. But as after the vernal equinox the days grow longer than the nights, and as at the full of the moon its splendor is revolved on high, so we should overcome the darkness of sin by the light of piety and faith and turn our minds from earthly to celestial things, if we wish to celebrate Easter worthily.
[Sidenote: Prediction from the Kalends of January.]
But let us consider in more detail the methods of divination found in such manuscripts. Simplest of all perhaps are predictions as to the character of the ensuing year according to the day of the week upon which the first of January falls. For example, “If the kalends of January shall be on the Lord’s day, the winter will be good and mild and warm, the spring windy, and the summer dry. Good vintage, increasing flocks; honey will be abundant; the old men will die; and peace will be made.”[2734] In some manuscripts these predictions concerning the weather, crops, wars, and king for the ensuing year are called Supputatio Esdrae or signs which God revealed to the prophet Esdras.[2735] In another manuscript[2736] the weather for winter and summer is predicted according to the day of the week upon which Christmas falls and Lent begins. Christmas of course was sometimes regarded as the first day of the new year and in any case it falls on the same day of the week as the following first of January. In a ninth century manuscript[2737] predictions for the ensuing year are made according as there is wind in the night on Christmas eve and the eleven nights following. For instance, “If there is wind in the night on the night of the natal day of our Lord Jesus Christ, in that year kings and pontiffs will perish,” and “If on twelfth night there shall be wind, kings will perish in war.”
[Sidenote: Other divination by the day of the week]
Divination from thunder is another form of judicial astrology, if it may so be called, found in these early manuscripts. Perhaps the simplest variety of it is according to the day of the week on which thunder is heard.[2738] Predictions were also made according to the month in which thunder was heard,[2739] or the direction from which it was heard.[2740] It may be recalled that the three chapters of Bede’s translation of some work on divination from thunder had been respectively devoted to these three methods by the direction from which the thunder is heard, the month, and the day of the week. Nativities of infants are also given according to the day of the week on which they are born, and further taking into account whether the hour of birth is diurnal or nocturnal.[2741] It is also regarded as important to note upon which day of the week the new moon occurs,[2742] and we are further informed of the various hours of the days of the week when it is advisable to perform blood-letting.[2743] In a method of divination according to the day of the week and the letters in the boy’s or girl’s name the Lord’s day is assigned the number thirteen, the day “of the moon” eighteen, and that “of Mars” fifteen.[2744] Since the days of the week bore the names of the planets, it was not strange that they should have been credited with something of the virtues of the stars.
[Sidenote: Divination by the day of the moon.]
A commoner method of divination and one more nearly approaching approved astrological doctrine was that by the day of the month or moon. Briefest of such moon-books is that which merely designates each of the thirty days as favorable or unfavorable.[2745] We also find a Lunarium for the sick, stating the patient’s prospects from the day of the moon on which he contracted his illness;[2746] a work ascribed to “Saint Daniel” on nativities by the day of the moon;[2747] and an equally brief interpretation of dreams upon the same basis.[2748] Or all these matters may be considered in the same treatise and each of them somewhat more fully, and we may be told whether the day is a good one on which to buy and sell, to board a ship, to enter a city, to operate upon a patient, to send children off to school, to breed animals, to build an aqueduct or mill, or whether it is best to abstain on it from most business. Also such predictions as that the boy born on that day will be illustrious, astute, wise, and lettered; that he will encounter danger on the water, but will live to old age if he escapes; while the girl born on the same day will be “chaste, benign, good-looking, and pleasing to men.” That anyone who takes to his bed on that day will suffer a long sickness, but that it is a favorable day for blood-letting, and that one should not worry about dreams he has then, since they possess no significance either for good or evil. Also what chance there is of recovering articles stolen on that day.[2749] In later manuscripts at least it is further stated that certain Biblical characters were born on this day or that day of the moon: Adam on the first, Eve on the second, Cain on the third, Abel on the fourth, and so on.[2750]
[Sidenote: Authorship of moon-books.]
In the early manuscripts moon-books are anonymous or ascribed to Daniel, but in later medieval manuscripts other authors are named. The name of Adam is coupled with that of Daniel in both of two rather elaborate moon-books in a fourteenth century manuscript,[2751] where Adam is said to have worked out these “lunations” “by true experience.” A fifteenth century one is attributed to a philosopher, astrologer, and physician named Edris,[2752] perhaps the Esdras of the method of divination by the kalends of January rather than the Arab Edrisi. It briefly predicts from the relation of the moon to the twelve signs whether patients will recover and captives escape. In a sixteenth century manuscript at Paris are “Significations of the days of the moon which the most excellent astronomer Bezogar revealed to his disciples and transmitted to them as a very great secret and most precious gift.”[2753] But such an ascription is rather obviously a late fiction.
[Sidenote: Spheres of life and death: in Greek.]
Determining the fate of the patient from the day of the moon upon which his illness was incurred enters also into certain spheres of life and death which were much employed in the early middle ages. But in these the number of the day of the moon is combined with a second number obtained by a numerical evaluation of the letters forming the patient’s name. This method came down from the ancient Greek-speaking world, as in a “Sphere of Democritus, prognostic of life and death” found in a Leyden papyrus,[2754] while the very similar Sphere of Petosiris, the mythical Egyptian astrologer, is variously dated by W. Kroll from the second century before Christ, by E. Riess from the first century before Christ, and by F. Boll in the first century of our era.[2755] The so-called “Sphere” is really only a wheel of fortune, circle, or other plane figure divided into compartments where different numbers are grouped under such headings as “Life” and “Death.” Having calculated the value of a person’s name by adding together the Greek numerals represented by its component letters, and having further added in the day of the moon, one divides the sum by some given divisor and looks for the quotient in the compartments. This method of divination was also employed in regard to fugitive slaves and the outcome of gladiatorial combats.[2756]
[Sidenote: Medieval Latin versions.]
In the medieval Latin versions of these Spheres of life and death the numerical value of the Greek letters was naturally usually lost and arbitrary numerical equivalents were assigned to the Roman letters or some other method of calculation was substituted. The Sphere of Petosiris was perpetuated in the form of a letter by him to Nechepso, king of Egypt.[2757] But more common than this in manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries was the Sphere of life and death of Apuleius or Pythagoras or both[2758] which replaced that of Democritus. Like it, it consisted of the numbers from one to thirty arranged in six compartments, three above a line each containing six numbers, and three below the line having four each. John of Salisbury, in the twelfth century, presumably refers to it when he speaks of divination or lot-casting “by inspection of the so-called Pythagorean table”;[2759] and it continues to be found with great frequency in the manuscripts of subsequent centuries.[2760] It is not to be confused, however, with the Prenostica Pitagorice, a more elaborate, although somewhat similar, method of divination by means of geomantic tables, of which we shall treat later in the chapter on Bernard Silvester. A Sphere ascribed to St. Donatus in a twelfth century manuscript includes instructions how to determine the sign of the zodiac under which a person was born by computing the difference between his name and his mother’s name. If this amounts to four letters, he was born under the fourth sign, and so on.[2761]
[Sidenote: Survival of such methods in medical practice of about 1400.]
The survival of such superstitious methods of divination into the later middle ages is attested not only by the frequent recurrence of the Sphere of Apuleius and the divinations from the kalends of January in manuscripts of the later centuries, but by the medical notebook, written in middle English, of John Crophill, who practiced medicine in Suffolk under Henry IV.[2762] Besides a record of his patients and the sums of money due from them, rules of dieting and blood-letting for the twelve months of the year, and his “more regular and masterly observations upon Urin,” his notes include a treatise on astrological medicine which, in the sarcastic language of the old catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, concludes “with a masterpiece of art, namely, a tretys or chapter of ‘Calculation to know what thou wilt,’ and this by observation of persons’ names.” The notebook also contains “Oracular Answers prepared beforehand by this great Doctor for those of both Sexes who shall come to consult him in the momentous affair of Matrimony; according to the several Months of the year wherein they should apply themselves.” Further contents are an incantation in Latin for women in child-birth, and “The names of the 12 signs with such marks as shew that this John Crophill was a dabbler in Geomancy.”
[Sidenote: Egyptian days.]
Brief lists of “Egyptian Days” are of rather common occurrence in both Latin and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, and succeeding centuries.[2763] Often it is merely stated what days of the year they are; sometimes it is simply added that the doctor should not bleed the patient upon them. As early as a ninth century manuscript,[2764] however, we are further warned not to take a walk or plant or carry on a lawsuit or do any work upon these days. And under no circumstances, no matter what the seeming necessity, is it permitted to bleed man or beast on these days. Two Egyptian days are then listed for each month, one reckoned as so many days from the beginning and the other as so many days before the close of the month. Eleven days is the farthest removed that any Egyptian day is from the first of the month and twelve the most from the close, so that they never fall in the middle of a month nor on the very first or last day. Our ninth century manuscript then mentions three of these days in April, August, and December as especially dangerous. Whoever falls ill or receives a potion on them is sure to die soon. Whoever, male or female, is born on one of them will die an evil and painful death. “And if one drinks water on those three days, he will die within forty days.” The account then closes with the statement that on the Egyptian days the people of Egypt were cursed with Pharaoh. In another ninth century manuscript a bare list of the Egyptian days is followed by a somewhat similar account of the three which must be observed with especial care.[2765] In a calendar of saints’ days in this same manuscript only the third of March and the third of July are marked dies egiptiagus.[2766] Egyptian days are also marked in the calendar of Marianus Scotus, the well-known chronicler and chronologist.[2767] A somewhat different account in a twelfth century manuscript states that “these are the days which God sent without mercy.” It also, however, lists two of them for each month and distinguishes the three in April, August, and December as especially dangerous.[2768]
[Sidenote: Their history.]
There seems to be no doubt that these Egyptian days were a relic of the unlucky days in the ancient Egyptian calendar,[2769] of which we learn from several papyri, although of course the ancient Egyptians were also accustomed to distinguish further the three divisions of each day as lucky or unlucky. The Egyptian days are noted in official calendars of the Roman Empire about 354 A. D., and in the Fasti Philocaliani there are twenty-five in all, of which three fall in January. In the middle ages, as has already been illustrated, there were usually but twenty-four, two to each month.[2770] They were mentioned in the Life of Proclus by Marinus, and both Ambrose and Augustine testified that many Christians still had faith in them.[2771] Indeed, they passed into the ecclesiastical calendar, as the Franciscan, Bartholomew of England, states in the thirteenth century.[2772]
[Sidenote: Medieval attempts to explain them.]
By that time the notion had become prevalent that they were anniversaries of the days upon which God afflicted Egypt with plagues, as our citations from the manuscripts have shown. Bartholomew, indeed, is at pains to explain that the days are placed in the church calendar, “not because one should omit anything upon them more than upon other days, but in order that God’s miracles may be recalled to memory.” The circumstance that there are twenty-four days does not embarrass him; he simply explains that this proves that God sent more plagues upon Egypt than the ten which are especially famed. Our citations from earlier manuscripts have shown that most people would not agree with Bartholomew that nothing should be omitted on these days. Moreover, other explanations of their origin had been already given in the middle ages than that from the plagues of Egypt. Honorius of Autun stated in the twelfth century that they were called Egyptian days because they had been discovered by the Egyptians, and since Egypt means dark,[2773] they are called tenebrosi, because they are declared to bring the incautious to the shadows of death.[2774] The Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais,[2775] who probably wrote his encyclopedia soon after that of Bartholomew, did not find the discrepancy between ten plagues and twenty-four days so easy to explain away. He states that of the two Egyptian days in each month one comes near the beginning and the other near the close, as we have already learned. He adds that some call them lucky days, while others say that the astrologers of Egypt discovered that they were unlucky. Yet another explanation of their origin is that on these days the Egyptians were accustomed to sacrifice to demons with their own blood, a circumstance which would not seem to recommend them for inclusion in the ecclesiastical calendar. Bernard Gordon, a medical writer at the end of the thirteenth century, reverts to the position that the Egyptian days were in memory of the plagues in Egypt. He declares that there is no sense in the prohibition of blood-letting upon these days, since they have no astrological significance, but are the anniversaries of miracles worked by special providence.[2776] Gilbert of England, earlier in the thirteenth century, had advised against bleeding on Egyptian days, if the moon was then influenced by any evil planet.[2777]
[Sidenote: Other perilous days.]
On the other hand, not only did the twenty-four Egyptian days and the three in April, August, and December which were considered especially dangerous, continue to be listed in the fourteenth and fifteenth century manuscripts, but imitations of them appeared. Thus in a fourteenth century manuscript we read of forty perilous days which should be observed with the utmost care and which Greek masters have tested by experience;[2778] while in a second manuscript of the closing medieval period appear fifty-eight dangerous days “according to the Arabs.”[2779] Of the Greek days only twenty-nine are actually listed, seven in January, three in February, and so on, omitting the months of July and August entirely, which perhaps should contain the missing eleven days.[2780] The Arabic days vary in number per month from seven in March, which is the first month listed, to three in February. “And there are four other days and nights according to Bede on which no one is ever born or conceived, and if by chance a male is conceived or born, its body will never be freed from putridity.”[2781]
[Sidenote: Firmicus read by an archbishop of York.]
That astrological knowledge in England, at least soon after the Norman conquest, was not limited to such meager and simple treatises as the moon-books described above from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, is seen from the closing incident in the career of Gerard, a learned and eloquent man, bishop of Hereford under William Rufus and archbishop of York under Henry I, whom he supported in the investiture struggle with Anselm and the pope. The story goes that Gerard, who had been feeling slightly indisposed, lay down to rest and enjoy the fresh air and fragrance of the flowers in a garden near his palace, asking his chaplains to leave him for a while. On their return after dinner they found him dead, and beneath the cushion upon which his head rested was a copy of the astrological work of Julius Firmicus Maternus. Gerard had not been popular with the inhabitants of York, and when his corpse was brought back to town, boys stoned the bier and the canons refused it burial within the cathedral, which, however, his successor granted. “His enemies,” we are told, “interpreted his death, without the rites of the church, as a divine judgment for his addiction to magical and forbidden arts.” At any rate the story shows that the work of Firmicus was well known by this time; it is from the eleventh century that the oldest manuscripts of it date; and we suspect that some of his enemies were rather hypocritical in the horror which they expressed at a bishop’s reading such a book. “Too independent a thinker for his contemporaries,” writes Miss Bateson, “his opponents held up their hands in horror that an astrological work by Julius Firmicus Maternus should be found under his pillow when he died.”[2782] The style of Firmicus is much imitated by the anonymous author of The Laws of Henry I and another legal work entitled Quadripartitus written in 1114. F. Liebermann states that the author was in the service of archbishop Gerard aforesaid.[2783]
[Sidenote: Relation of Latin astrology to Arabic.]
Charles Jourdain once made the generalization that before the translation of the Quadripartite of Ptolemy and the works of the Arabian astrologers into Latin in the twelfth century, astrology had little hold among men of learning in western Europe.[2784] An even more erroneous assertion was that in Burckhardt’s Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien that “at the beginning of the thirteenth century” the superstition of astrology “suddenly appeared in the foreground of Italian life.”[2785] Even Jourdain’s assertion the entire present chapter tends to disprove, but since it has been quoted with approval by a subsequent writer on the thirteenth century,[2786] we may deal with it a little farther. The reason which Jourdain added in support of his generalization was that before the translations from the Arabic “those who cultivated astrology had no other guides than Censorinus, Manilius, and Julius Firmicus, who might indeed seduce a few isolated dreamers but did not have enough weight to convince philosophers. Ptolemy and the Arabs, on the contrary, appeared as masters of a regular science having its own principles and method.” This sounds as if Jourdain had not read Firmicus who gives a more elaborate presentation of the art of astrology than the elementary Quadripartite of Ptolemy. It is true that Ptolemy had a great scientific reputation from his other writings, but Manilius is a poet of no small merit, and there would be no reason why an age which accepted Ovid and Vergil as authorities concerning nature and regarded such works as De vetula and the Secret of Secrets as genuine works of Ovid and Aristotle, should draw delicate distinctions between Firmicus and Albumasar or Manilius and Alkindi. It was because reading Firmicus and even practicing the cruder modes of divination which we have described had already aroused an interest in astrology that other works in the field were sought out and translated. Moreover, there is an even more cogent objection to Jourdain’s generalization which will be developed in the following chapter, and it is that the taking over of Arabic astrology had already begun long before the twelfth century. We have, indeed, in the present chapter told only half the story of astrology in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and must now turn back to Gerbert and the introduction of Arabic astrology.
APPENDIX I
SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SPHERE OF PYTHAGORAS OR APULEIUS
Besides the copies noted by Wickersheimer (1913) in French manuscripts from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, such as Laon 407, Orléans 276, and BN nouv. acq. 1616, where in fact it occurs twice: at fol. 7v, “Ratio spere phytagor philosophi quem epulegus descripsit,” and at fol. 14r, “Ratio pitagere de infirmis,”—the following may be listed.
BN 5239, 10th century, # 12.
Harleian 3017, 10th century, fol. 58r, “Ratio spherae Pythagorae philosophi quam Apuleius descripsit.”
Cotton Tiberius C, VI, 11th century, fol. 6v, Imagines vitae et mortis quarum utraque rotulum tenet longum literis et numeris quae ad sphaeram Apuleii ad latera adscriptis, cum versibus pagina circumscriptis. The figures are of Vita with halo, robes, and angelic face, and of Mors, who wears only a pair of drawers, whose ribs show through his flesh, and who has wings like a demon. One has to turn the page upside down in order to read some of it.
CU Trinity 1369, 11th century, fol. 1r, just before the Calendar of Marianus Scotus, “Racio spere pytagorice quam apuleius descripsit.”
Chartres 113, 9th century, fol. 99, following works by Alcuin, “Spera Apuleii Platonis.”
Ivrea 19, 10th century, # 5, De spera Putagorae.
CLM 22307, 10-11th century, fol. 194, Ratio sphaerae Phitagoreae philosophi quam Apulegius descripsit, “Petosiris philosophus Micipso regi salutem ...”, where it would seem to be confused with the letter of Petosiris to Nechepso.
Vatican Palat. Lat. 176, 10th century, fol. 162v, “Eulogii ratio sperae Pitagorae philosophi,” in a MS containing works of Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose.
Vatican Urb. Lat. 290, 11-13th century, fol. 2v, Ratio spere Pitagoras quam Apuleius descripsit; fol. 3, Petosiris Micipso regi salutem.
I suspect that the following would also prove upon examination to be one of these Spheres of life and death.
CLM 18629, 10th century, fol. 95, Characteres literarum secretarum, item incantationes. Alphabetum Graecorum et numeri per tabulam dispositi; fol. 106, Tractatus de literis alphabeti (mysticus).
Vatican Palat. Lat. 485, 9th century, fol. 14, Litterae graecae cum interpretatione alphabetica et numerica.
Vatican 644, 10-11th century, fol. 16v.
Of the numerous occurrences of the Sphere of Pythagoras or of Apuleius in MSS later than the eleventh century I have noted only a few examples.
Vienna 2532, 12th century, fols. 1-2, Tractatus astrologicus de divinando exitu morborum e positionibus lune et de sphere Pythagore.
Vatican 642, 12th century, fol. 82, a somewhat different mode of divination, by which one tells what another is thinking or is holding in his hand, is attributed to Bede.
Madrid 10016, early 13th century, fol. 3, “spera de morte vel vita”; fol. 85v, the letter of Petosiris to Nechepso. It is interesting to note that this MS originally belonged to an English Cluniac monastery: Haskins, EHR (1915), p. 65.
BN 7486, 14th century, fol. 66v, “Canon supra rotam Pictagore,” opens, “Pictagoras is said to have written thus to Nasurius, king of the Chaldees;” then at fol. 67r comes “The Sphere of Pictagoras the philosopher which Epuleus Platonicus briefly described;” which is followed at fol. 68r by a long treatise ascribed to Ptolemy, Exortatio ad artem prescientie ptholomei regis egypti, in which various questions are answered by numerical and alphabetical calculations and one is also by the same method referred to nativities arranged under the 28 mansions of the moon.
CU Trinity 1109, 14th century, fol. 15, Spera apulei et platonici; fol. 20, “Ratio spere pictagis philosophe quod apollonius scripsit;” fol. 392, S(p)era Fortune.
Digby, 58, 14th century, fol. 1v, “Spera philosophorum.”
Bodleian 26 (Bernard 1871), 13-14th century, fols. 207 and 216v.
Bodleian 177 (Bernard 2072), late 14th century, # 1, Pythagorae sphaera quam Apuleius exaravit ut scias an aeger convalescat; # 14, fol. 22r, Apuleii Platonici Sphaera de vita et morte et de omnibus negotiis quae inquirere volueris.
Amplon. Quarto 380, 14th century, at the close of a Geomancy by Abdallah, “Spera Apuley de vita et morte vel de omnibus negociis de quibus scire volueris; sic facias....”
Additional 15236, 13-14th century, fol. 108, “Spera (Pictagore) de vita et morte sive de re alia quacunque secundum Apuleium.”
Harleian 5311, 15th century, folder i, “Spera Apullei.”
S. Marco XI, 111, 16th century, ascribes a wheel of life and death to “Bede the presbyter,” and another to Apollonius and Pythagoras.
APPENDIX II
EGYPTIAN DAYS IN EARLY MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS
The following citations could probably be greatly multiplied.
BN nouv. acq. 1616, 9th century, fol. 12r.
Digby 63, end of 9th century, Anglo-Saxon minuscule, fol. 36, “Dies Egiptiachi.”
Berlin 131 (Phillips 1869, Trier), 9th century, fol. 12r.
Lucca 236, about 900 A. D., on its last 3 leaves are Egyptian days and a dream-book; described by Giacosa (1901), p. 349.
Harleian 3017, 10th century, fol. 59r, De diebus Egiptiacis qui mali sunt in anno circulo. The catalogue dates this MS as 920 A. D. but at fol. 66r the date is given as DCCClxii or DCCCClxii (962 A. D.)—a letter seems to have been erased which probably was the fourth C.
Harleian 3271, 10th century (?), fol. 121, Versus ad dies Egyptiacas inveniendas. See also Baehrens, Poet. lat. min. V, 354-6; Mommsen CIL I, 411.
Sloane 475, this portion of the MS 10-11th century, fol. 216v, Versus de significatione dierum mensis, opening, “Tenebrae Aegyptus Grecos sermone vocantur....”
Additional 22398, 10th century, fol. 104.
Cotton Caligula A, XV, written mostly in Gaul before 1000 A. D., fol. 126, a list of lucky and unlucky days for medical purposes, in Anglo-Saxon.
Cotton Titus D, XXVI, 10th century, fol. 3v.
Cotton Vitellius A, XII, fol. 39v.
Cotton Vitellius C, VIII, in Anglo-Saxon, fol. 23, de tribus anni diebus Aegyptiacis.
CU Trinity 945, early 11th century, fol. 37.
CU Trinity 1369, 11th century (perhaps 1086 A. D.), fol. 1v.
Vatican 644, 10-11th century, fol. 77r, versus duodecim de diebus aegyptiis, and a fragment “de tribus diebus aegyptiis.”
Dijon 448, 10-12th century, fol. 88, Calendrier, avec jours égyptiaques ajoutés; fol. 191, “De Egyptiacis diebus.” Bede’s De temporibus and De natura rerum occur twice in this MS and at fol. 181 is an incantation for use in fevers.
Harleian 1585 and Sloane 1975, where the Egyptian days are found with the Herbarium of Apuleius, are both 12th century but probably copied from earlier MSS.
So in Chalons-sur-Marne 7, 13th century, fol. 41, verses on the Egyptian days occur with the Ars calculatoria of Helpericus of Auxerre who wrote in the ninth century.
I have usually not noted the occurrence of the Egyptian days in later manuscripts. A few exceptions are:
BN 7299A, 12th century, fol. 37r.
CLM 23390, 12-13th century, the last item is, “Verses concerning the twelve signs and the Egyptian days.” The previous contents were mainly religious.
Cambrai 195, fol. 208; 229, fol. 56; 829, fol. 54; all three MSS of the 12th century.
Cambrai 861, early 13th century, fol. 56.
Sloane 2461, end of 13th century, fols. 62r-64v.
The verses concerning the ten plagues of Egypt contained in CLM 18629, 10th century, fol. 93, and ascribed by the catalogue to Eugenius Toletanus have, I presume, no connection with the Egyptian days. Such proved to be the case with BN 16216, 13th century, fol. 251v, de decem plagis Egyptiorum et de vii diebus, although from the fact that it follows “Precepta Pithagore” I suspected before examining it that it might have something to do with divination. But not even the Pythagorean precepts have in this case.
XXX. GERBERT AND THE INTRODUCTION OF ARABIC ASTROLOGY
Arabic influence in early manuscripts—A preface and twenty-one chapters on the astrolabe—Are they parts of one work?—Their relation to Gerbert and the Arabic—Hermann’s De mensura astrolabii—Attitude towards astrology in the preface—Question of Gerbert’s attitude towards astrology—His posthumous reputation as a magician—An anonymous astronomical treatise; its possible relation to Gerbert—Contents of its first two books—Attitude towards astrology—The fourth book—Citations: Arabic names—Mathematica of Alchandrus or Alhandreus—An account of its contents—Astrological doctrine—Nativities and name-calculations—Interrogations and more name-calculations—Alchandrus or Alhandreus not the same as Alexander—Alkandrinus or Alchandrinus on nativities according to the mansions of the moon—Albandinus—Geomancy of Alkardianus or Alchandianus—An anonymous treatise or fragment of the tenth century.
[Sidenote: Arabic influence in early manuscripts.]
The usual view has been that western Latin learning was not affected by Arabic science until the twelfth or even the thirteenth century. We shall see in other chapters that the translations of the Aristotelian books of natural philosophy were current rather earlier than has been recognized, that in medicine a period of Neo-Latin Salernitan tradition can scarcely be distinguished from one of Arabic influence, and that in chemistry owing to the misinterpretation of the date of Robert of Chester’s translation of the book of Morienus Romanus—in which Robert says that the Latin world does not yet know what alchemy is—Berthelot in his history of medieval alchemy placed the introduction of Arabic influence half a century too late. In the present chapter we shall see that the voluminous work of translation of Arabic astrologers which went on in the twelfth century—and to which another chapter will later be devoted—was preceded in the eleventh and even tenth centuries by numerous signs of Arabic influence in works of astronomy and astrology and also by translations of Arabic authors. I was somewhat startled when I first found works by Arabic authors and use of astronomical terminology drawn from the Arabic in a manuscript of the eleventh century in the British Museum[2787] and Wickersheimer was similarly surprised at the traces of Arabic influence in a similar but still earlier manuscript of the tenth century at Paris.[2788] Bubnov, however, had already noted this Paris manuscript as a proof that Arabic books were being translated into Latin in Gerbert’s time,[2789] and one of Gerbert’s letters, written in 984 to a Lupitus of Barcelona (Lupito Barchinonensi), asking him to send Gerbert a book on “astrology” which he had translated, points in the same direction. In the present chapter we shall discuss the contents of the early manuscripts just mentioned and of some others which seem to have some connection either with Gerbert or the introduction of Arabic astrology into Latin learning.
[Sidenote: A preface and twenty-one chapters on the astrolabe.]
In an eleventh century manuscript at Munich[2790] the astrological work of Firmicus is preceded by writings in a different hand upon the astrolabe. One of these, in its present state an anonymous fragment, is a stilted and florid introduction to a translation from the Arabic of a work on the astrolabe.[2791] Another is a treatise on the astrolabe in twenty-one chapters and containing many Arabic names.[2792] Bubnov lists three other copies of the introductory fragment, and they are all in manuscripts where the second treatise is also included;[2793] it, however, is often found in other manuscripts where the anonymous fragment does not appear, and it must be admitted that its omission is no great loss.
[Sidenote: Are they parts of one work?]
Although the fragment precedes the other treatise in only one manuscript mentioned by Bubnov, there is reason to think that they belong together, since both are concerned with the Wazzalcora or planisphere or astrolapsus of Ptolemy, and since the plan outlined by the writer of the introduction is followed in the treatise of twenty-one chapters except that it ends incompletely. Bubnov recognized this, yet did not unite them as a single work.[2794] In 984 Gerbert wrote to a Lupito Barchinonensi asking Lupitus to send him a work on “astrology” which Lupitus had translated.[2795] If Lupitus was of Barcelona, his translation was probably from the Arabic, and as such translations were presumably not common in the tenth century, it is natural to wonder if he may not be the above-mentioned anonymous translator. This Bubnov suggested in the case of the introductory fragment,[2796] but the treatise in twenty-one chapters he placed among the doubtful works of Gerbert,[2797] because a monastic catalogue composed before 1084 speaks of a work of Gerbert on the astrolabe, while six manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, although none earlier to his knowledge, ascribe this very treatise of twenty-one chapters to Gerbert. Bubnov believed that whoever the author of the treatise in twenty-one chapters was, he had utilized the full work of the anonymous translator. But this seems a rather unnecessary refinement. For what has become of that translation? Why is only its wordy and rhetorical preface extant? If the writer of the twenty-one chapters destroyed its text after plagiarizing it, why did he not also make away with the preface? It seems more plausible that the twenty-one chapters are the original translation from the Arabic, and that many makers of manuscripts have copied it alone and omitted the wordy and rather worthless preface of the translator. If, as Bubnov suggested, the treatise in twenty-one chapters is Gerbert’s revision and polishing up of Lupitus’ translation,[2798] why did he not prefix a new introduction of his own? And why should anyone try to polish up the style of so rhetorical a writer as he who penned the extant anonymous introduction?
[Sidenote: Their relation to Gerbert and the Arabic.]
If we accept this anonymous introduction as the preface to the twenty-one chapters, Gerbert would be the most likely person to ascribe both to, unless we argue that he could not make a translation from the Arabic and that his letter asking to see a translation from the Arabic by Lupitus is a proof of this. If Gerbert is not the author, Lupitus would perhaps be the next most likely person, but the hint contained in Gerbert’s letter is all that points to Lupitus, and indeed the only mention that we have of him. If the translator is some third unknown person, at least he is not later than the eleventh century. If, on the other hand, we regard the introduction of the translator and the twenty-one chapters as by different persons, who perhaps had no connection with each other, and Gerbert’s letter of 984 as having nothing to do with either, we have the more evidence of an early and widespread interest in astronomy and knowledge of Arabic in the western Latin learned world.
[Sidenote: Hermann’s De mensura astrolabii.]
One reason why the treatise on the astrolabe in twenty-one chapters is so seldom found in the manuscripts preceded by the introduction of the translator may be that it is more often found with and preceded by another treatise on the astrolabe, sometimes entitled De mensura astrolabii, and attributed to a Hermann who modestly calls himself “the offscouring of Christ’s poor and the butt of mere tyros in philosophy.”[2799] This treatise tells how to construct an astrolabe, thus filling in the deficiency left by the incomplete ending of the treatise in twenty-one chapters, which fails to carry out fully this last item in the plan of the introductory fragment. A note in one manuscript, reproduced in part by Macray in his catalogue of the Digby Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, states that the treatise in twenty-one chapters is by Gerbert and that when a certain Berengarius read it, he found it told how to exercise the art but not to make the instrument and asked Hermann to tell him how to make one. Hermann therefore composed the work in question, dedicated it to Berengarius, and prefixed it to Gerbert’s treatise.[2800] Of late there has been a tendency to identify this Hermann with Hermann of Dalmatia, the twelfth century translator from the Arabic,[2801] rather than with Hermann the Lame, the chronicler, who died in 1054, but if Bubnov is correct in dating two manuscripts[2802] containing Hermann’s treatise on the astrolabe in the eleventh century, they could not be the work of Hermann the translator of the next century.[2803] Moreover, in the thirteenth century the treatise seems to have been regarded as the work of Hermann the Lame.[2804] The author’s self-depreciatory description of himself is also a mark of Hermann the Lame, who in another treatise addressed to his friend Herrandus and discussing the length of a moon calls himself “of Christ’s poor a vile abortion.”[2805]
[Sidenote: Attitude towards astrology in the preface.]
In the treatise of twenty-one chapters, which simply tells how to use the astrolabe, there is naturally no reference to judicial astrology. But in the introduction of the anonymous writer to his translation from the Arabic of a work on the astrolabe there is mention of the influence of the stars. Their “concord with all mundane creatures in all things” is regarded as established by “secret institution of divinity and by natural law” and testified to by scientists.[2806] Not only is the effect of the moon on tides adduced as usual as an example, but God is believed to have set the seal of His approval upon “this discipline,” when He made miraculous use of the stars and heavens to mark the birth and passion of His Son. The writer, however, stigmatizes as a “frivolous superstition” the doctrine of the Chaldean genethlialogi, “who account for the entire life of man by astrological reasons” and “try to explain conceptions and nativities, character, prosperity and adversity from the courses of the stars.” Something nevertheless is to be conceded to them, provided all things are recognized as under divine disposition. But their doctrine is an egg which is not to be sucked unless rid of the bad odors of error.[2807] The translator urges the importance of a knowledge of astronomy in determining the date of church festivals and canonical hours. He cites Josephus concerning Abraham’s instruction of the Egyptians in arithmetic and astronomy, but regards Ptolemy as the most illustrious of all astronomers and the astrolabe as the invention of his “divine mind.” The translator wishes his readers to understand that he is offering them nothing new but only reviving the discoveries of the past, and that he is simply presenting what he finds in the Arabic.
[Sidenote: Question of Gerbert’s attitude toward astrology.]
If Gerbert could be shown to be the translator who wrote this introduction, it would be a more valuable bit of evidence as to his attitude toward astrology than anything that we have at present. His surely genuine mathematical works, as edited by Bubnov, consist solely of a short geometry and a few of his letters in which mathematical topics, mainly the abacus, are touched upon. His contemporary and disciple, the historian Richer, tells in the well-known passage[2808] how Borellus, “the duke of Hither Spain,” took Gerbert as a youth from the monastery at Aurillac in Auvergne back with him across the Pyrenees and entrusted his education to Hatto, bishop of Vich, in the north-eastern part of the peninsula. Whether Gerbert studied Arabic or not Richer does not state. Since he is still described as adolescens when the duke and bishop take him with them to Italy and leave him there with the pope, one would infer that he probably had not engaged in the work of translation from the Arabic. Another almost contemporary writer, alluding very briefly to Gerbert, makes him visit Cordova, but is perhaps mistaken.[2809] Richer does, however, state that Berbert especially studied mathesis, a word which, as various medieval writers inform us, may mean either mathematics or divination. Apparently Richer uses it in the former sense, for later he mentions only Gerbert’s achievements in arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.[2810] But Robert, king of France, 987-1031, whose teacher Gerbert had been, seems to refer to him as “that master Neptanebus” in some verses,[2811] a name which certainly suggests an astrologer, as well as an instructor of royalty, if not also a magician.
[Sidenote: His posthumous reputation as a magician.]
But Gerbert’s reputation for magic seems to start with William of Malmesbury in the first half of the twelfth century, who makes him flee by night from his monastery to Spain to study “astrology” and other arts with the Saracens, until he came to surpass Julius Firmicus in his knowledge of fate. There too, according to William of Malmesbury, “he learned what the song and flight of birds portend, to summon ghostly figures from the lower world, and whatever human curiosity has encompassed whether harmful or salutary.” William then adds some more sober facts concerning Gerbert’s mathematical achievements and associates.[2812] Michael Scot in his Introduction to Astrology in the early thirteenth century speaks of a master Gilbertus who was the best nigromancer in France and whom the demons obeyed in all that he required of them day and night because of the great sacrifices which he offered and his prayers and fastings and magic books and great diversity of rings and candles. Having succeeded in borrowing an astrolabe for a short time he made the demons explain its purpose, how to operate it, and how to make another one. Later he reformed and became bishop of Ravenna and pope.[2813] In a manuscript early in the thirteenth century is a statement that Gerbert became archbishop and pope by demon aid and had a spirit enclosed in a golden head whom he consulted as to knotty problems in composing his commentary on arithmetic. When the demon expounded a certain very difficult place badly, Gerbert skipped it, and hence that unexplained passage is called the Saltus Gilberti.[2814]
[Sidenote: An anonymous astronomical treatise; its possible relation to Gerbert.]
In a manuscript in the Bodleian library which seems to have been written early in the twelfth century[2815] is an astronomical treatise in four books which Macray suggested might be the Liber de planetis et mundi climatibus which Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester from 963 to 984, is said to have composed.[2816] The present treatise indeed embodies a Letter of Ethelwold to Pope Gerbert on squaring the circle.[2817] It seems, however, that this letter on squaring the circle was really written by Adelbold, bishop of Utrecht from 1010 to 1027.[2818] Adelbold speaks of himself in the letter as a young man[2819] and of course wrote it before Gerbert’s death in 1003, and very probably before Gerbert became Pope Silvester II in 999. But he could scarcely have written the letter early enough to have it included in a work written by Ethelwold who died in 984. Our astronomical treatise in four books is therefore not by Ethelwold, unless the letter be a later interpolation, but it is possibly by Adelbold or by Gerbert.[2820] Its opening words, “Quicumque mundane spere rationem et astrorum legem ...,” are similar to those of the treatise on the uses of the astrolabe which has often been ascribed to Gerbert, “Quicumque astronomice peritiam discipline....”[2821]
[Sidenote: Contents of its first two books.]
Our treatise then may be by Gerbert or it may be a specimen of the astronomy of the eleventh or early twelfth century. As it appears to be little known and never to have been published, it may be well to give a brief summary of its contents. An introductory paragraph outlines some of the chief points with which the treatise will be concerned, such as the twelve signs of the zodiac, their positions, “most varied qualities,” the reasons for their names, and the diverse opinions of gentile philosophers and Catholics as to their significations; the four elements; and the seven planets. In the text which follows, these topics are considered in rather the reverse order to that in which they were named in the preface. After some discussion of “the founders of astronomy and the doctors of astrology,” the first book is occupied with a description of the sphere or heavens. The second book is largely geographical, beginning with the question of the size of the earth, the zones, the ocean, and how to draw a T map. This geographical digression the author justifies in the prologue to his third book by the statement that often the position of the stars can be determined from the location of countries, and that if the habitat of peoples is known one can more easily arrive at the effect of the stars.[2822]
[Sidenote: Attitude towards astrology.]
This suggests that the author believes in astrological influence, and in the two following books he states a number of astrological doctrines, not, however, as his own convictions but as the opinions of the genethliaci or astrologers, or “those who will have it that prosperity and adversity in human life are due to these stars.”[2823] On the other hand, he seldom subjects the astrologers to any adverse criticism. Indeed, early in the third book, he states that the belief of the genethliaci that human wealth and honors, poverty and obscurity, depend upon the stars, pertains to another subject than that which he is at present discussing; namely, prognostication, concerning which he will treat fully in later chapters. But I cannot see that he fulfills this promise in the present manuscript, which seems to end rather abruptly,[2824] so that possibly there is something missing. In the previous passage, however, he immediately proceeded to admit that the sun and moon greatly affect our life and to tell further how it is connected with the other five planets. In the star of Saturn the soul is said to busy itself especially with reasoning and intelligence, logic and theory. Jupiter is practical and represents the power of action. Mars signifies animosity; Venus, desire; Mercury, interpretation. Men have proved the moon’s moist influence by sleeping out-of-doors and finding that more humor collected in their heads when they slept in the moonlight than when they did not.[2825] After mentioning the twelve signs, “through which the aforesaid planets revolving exert varied influences, and even, according to the genethliaci, make a good man in some nativities and a bad man in others,”[2826] the author goes on to tell which signs are masculine and which are feminine, to relate them to the four cardinal points and to the four elements, to define the twenty-eight mansions and their distribution among the twelve signs and seven planets,[2827] and to tell how the planets differ in quality.[2828] All this is providing at least the basis for astrological prediction.
[Sidenote: The fourth book.]
The fourth book of the treatise is mainly taken up with descriptions and figures of the constellations, concerning which the author often repeats the fables of antiquity. After discussing the six ages of the world, the author intended to insert a figure on what is the next to last page of the present text to show “the harmony of the elements, climates of the sky, times of the year, and humors of the human body,” for, as he goes on to say, man is called a microcosm by the philosophers. This missing figure or figures would have been analogous to those which Wickersheimer investigated in the early medieval manuscripts in the libraries of France.
[Sidenote: Citations: Arabic names.]
Our author does not make many citations, but among them are Eratosthenes,[2829] Aratus, Ptolemy, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella. Some of these authors are perhaps known to him only indirectly, and he seems to make use of Isidore and Pliny without mentioning them. He shows, however, an acquaintance with foreign languages, listing the seven heavens as “oleth, lothen, ethat, edim, eliyd, hachim, atarpha,” and giving Greek, Hebrew, and “Saracen” names for the seven planets, as well as a “Similitudo,” or corresponding metal, and “Interpretatio,” or quality such as “Obscurus, Clarus, Igneus.”[2830] He also gives the Arabic names for the twenty-eight mansions into which the circle of the zodiac subdivides.[2831] We now turn to another treatise, found in tenth and eleventh century manuscripts, in which Arabian influence is apparent.
[Sidenote: The Mathematica of Alchandrus or Alhandreus.]
William of Malmesbury, writing in the first half of the twelfth century concerning Gerbert’s studies in Spain, says, probably with a great deal of exaggeration, that Gerbert surpassed Ptolemy in his knowledge of the astrolabe, Alandraeus in his knowledge of the distances between the stars, and Julius Firmicus in his knowledge of fate.[2832] It is rather remarkable that a work ascribed to Alhandreus or Alcandrus, “supreme astrologer,” should be found in two manuscripts of the eleventh century[2833] in both of which occurs also the work on the astrolabe which is perhaps by Gerbert, while in one is found also the Mathesis of Julius Firmicus Maternus. Alchadrinus or Archandrinus is cited in Michael Scot’s long Introduction to Astrology as the author of a “book of fortune making mention of the three facies of the signs and the planets ruling in them,” and Michael adds that a similar method of divination is employed in general among the Arabs and Indians as can be seen in the streets and alleys of Messina where “learned women” answer the questions of merchants.[2834] Peter of Abano in his Lucidator astronomiae,[2835] written in 1310, mentions Alchandrus as a successor of Hermes Trismegistus in the science of astronomy but as flourishing before the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Alchandrus was probably scarcely as ancient as that, but the treatise ascribed to him also exists in Latin in a manuscript of the tenth century,[2836] and seems to be a translation from the Arabic. In any case it is full of Arabic and Hebrew words, and professes to cite the opinions of Egyptians, Ishmaelites, and Chaldeans in general as well as those of Ascalu the Ishmaelite and Arfarfan or Argafalan or Argafalaus[2837] the Chaldean in particular. Since the name Alchandrus or Alhandreus is found so far as I know in no historian or bibliographer of Arabian literature or learning,[2838] we shall treat somewhat fully of the work and its author here.
[Sidenote: An account of its contents.]
The “Mathematic of Alhandreus, supreme astrologer,” as it is entitled in one manuscript, opens somewhat abruptly with a terse statement of the qualities of the planets. Two estimates of the number of years between creation and the birth of Christ are then given, one “according to the Hebrews,” the other “according to others.”[2839] There follow letters of the Greek alphabet with Roman numerals expressing their respective numerical values, perhaps for future reference in connection with some sphere of life or death. Next is considered the division of the zodiac into twelve signs for which Hebrew as well as Latin names are given. The movements of the planets through the signs are then discussed, and it is explained in the usual astrological style that Leo is the house of the sun, Cancer of the moon, while two signs are assigned to each of the other five planets. Every planet is erect in some one sign and falls in its opposite, and any planet is friendly to another in whose house it is erect and hostile to another in whose house it declines. Presently the author treats of “the order of the planets according to nature and their names according to the Hebrews,”[2840] and then of their sex and courses, which last leads to considerable digressions anent the solar and lunar calendars.[2841] Then the twelve signs are related to the four “climates” and elements.
[Sidenote: Astrological doctrine.]
All this implies a favorable attitude to astrology, and the author has already expressed his conviction more than once that human affairs are disposed by the seven planets according to the will of God.[2842] Since man like the world is composed of the four elements it is no false opinion which persuades us that under God’s government human affairs are principally regulated by the celestial bodies.[2843] To make this plainer the author proposes to insert an astrological figure “which Alexander of Macedon composed most diligently,” and which presumably would have been of the microcosmus or Melothesia type, but the space for it remains blank in the manuscript. Next comes a paragraph on the sex of the signs and their rising and setting, and then lists of the hours of the day and night governed by the signs and by each planet for all the days of the week.[2844]
[Sidenote: Nativities and name-calculations.]
Then we read, “These are the twenty-eight principal parts or stars (i.e. constellations) through which the fates of all are disposed and pronounced indubitably, future as well as present. Anyone may with diligence forecast goings and returnings, origins and endings, by the most agreeable aid of these horoscopes.”[2845] These twenty-eight parts are of course the sub-divisions of the zodiac into mansions of the sun or moon which we have already encountered, and Arabic names are given for them beginning with Alnait, the first part of the sign Aries. First, however, we are instructed how to determine under which one of them anyone was born by a numerical calculation of the value of his name and that of his natural mother similar to that of the spheres of life and death except that it is based upon Hebrew instead of Greek letters.[2846] Then follow statements of the sort of men who are born under each of the twenty-eight mansions, their physical, mental, and moral characteristics, and any especial marks upon the body,—either birth-marks or inflicted subsequently by such means as hot irons and dog-bite,—their health or sickness, term of life, and manner of death,—which in the case of Alnait, the first mansion, will be “by the machinations or imaginations of the magic arts.”[2847] Also the number of their children is roughly predicted.
[Sidenote: Interrogations and more name-calculations.]
Next is discussed the course of the planets through the signs, the houses of the planets, and their positions in the signs at creation.[2848] The author then turns to the influence of the planets upon men and gives another method of numerical calculation of a man’s name in order to determine which planet he is under.[2849] Under the heading “Excerpts from the books of Alexander, the astrologer king,”[2850] directions are given for the recovery of lost or stolen articles and descriptions of the thief are provided for the hour of each planet. The letter of Argafalaus to Alexander instructs how to read men’s secret thoughts as Plato the Philosopher used to do, and how to tell what is hidden in a person’s hand by means of the hours of the planets.[2851] After some further discussion of astrological interrogations the manuscript at the British Museum closes with the Breviary of Alhandreus, supreme astrologer[2852], for learning anything unknown by a method of computation from Hebrew and Arabic letters.
[Sidenote: Alchandrus or Alhandreus not the same as Alexander.]
Someone may wonder if the names Alhandreus and Alchandrus may not be mere corruptions of Alexander who is cited and quoted even more than has yet been indicated[2853], and if some careless head-line writer has not inserted the name Alchandri or Alhandrei instead of Alexandri in the Titulus. But this would leave the statements of William of Malmesbury and of Peter of Abano to be explained away. Or, if it is argued that the name of Alhandreus should be attached only to the Breviary, it must be remembered that in the earliest manuscript, which does not contain the Breviary, the treatise is none the less called the Book of Alchandreus. As a matter of fact there is found also in the manuscripts a “Mathematica Alexandri summi astrologi,”[2854] but while the title is the same, the contents are different from the “Mathematica Alhandrei summi astrologi.”
However, the treatise itself is found together with the Mathematica Alhandrei in a tenth century manuscript.[2855] But no author is mentioned, and instead of Mathematica the title reads “Incipiunt proportiones cppfcfntfs knkstrprx indxstrkb,” which may be deciphered as “Incipiunt proportiones competentes in astrorum industria.”[2856] Possibly therefore this treatise is a part of the work of Alchander, and the title Mathematica Alexandri is an error for Mathematica Alhandrei.
[Sidenote: Alkandrinus or Alchandrinus on nativities according to the mansions of the moon.]
Moreover, in later manuscripts we encounter authors with names very similar to Alchandrus and works by them of the same sort as that we have just considered. In a fifteenth century manuscript at Oxford we find ascribed to Alkandrinus an account of the types of men born in each of the twenty-eight mansions of the moon[2857] such as we have seen formed a part of the Mathematica Alhandrei. And in a fifteenth century manuscript at Paris occurs under the name of Alchandrinus what seems to be a Christian revision of that same part of the Mathematica Alhandrei.[2858] What appears to be another revision and working over of this same discussion of nativities according to the twenty-eight mansions of the moon[2859] appeared in print a number of times in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in French and English translations as well as Latin. The author’s name in these printed editions is usually given as Arcandam, but the English edition of 1626 adds “or Alchandrin.”[2860]
[Sidenote: Albandinus.]
Two other manuscripts at Paris[2861] contain under the name of Albandinus a “book of similitudes of the sons of Adam, fortunate and unfortunate, of life or death, according to nations, that is, their nativities according to the twelve signs.” The treatise opens with a method of calculating a person’s nativity from the letters in his own and his mother’s name similar to that which occurs in the course of the Mathematica Alhandrei, but then applies it directly to the twelve signs rather than to the twenty-eight mansions of the moon. It also does not bother with the Hebrew alphabet but gives numerical equivalents directly for the Latin letters. Some treatise by Albandinus on sickness and the signs in a manuscript at Munich[2862] is perhaps identical with the foregoing.
[Sidenote: Geomancy of Alkardianus or Alchandiandus.]
To an Alkardianus or Alchandiandus is ascribed a geomancy,[2863] and since it also is arranged according to the twenty-eight divisions of the zodiac with 28 judges and 28 chapters each consisting of 28 lines in answer to as many questions, it would seem almost certain that it is by the same author who treated of the influences of the 28 houses or facies of the twelve signs upon those born under them. Moreover, this Alkardianus or Alchandiandus states in his preface that he has composed certain books on the dispositions of the signs and the courses of the planets and on prediction of the future from them. “But since moderns always rejoice in brevity,” he has added this handy and rapid geomantic means of answering questions and ascertaining the decrees of the stars. The 28 tables of 28 lines each of this Alkardianus or Alchandiandus are identical with one of the two such sets[2864] commonly included in the Experimentarius[2865] of Bernard Silvester, a work of geomancy which he is said to have translated from the Arabic.[2866] He lived in the twelfth century and will be the subject of one of our later chapters.
[Sidenote: An anonymous treatise or fragment of the tenth century.]
It still remains to speak of a portion of our tenth century manuscript at Paris which begins, after the book of Alchandrus seems to have concluded, with the words, “Quicunque nosse desiderat legem astrorum....”[2867] This Incipit is so similar to that of the twenty-one chapters on the astrolabe, “Quicumque astronomiam peritiam disciplinae ...” and to that of the four books of astronomy, “Quicumque mundane spere rationem et astrorum,” that one is tempted to imply some relation between them, and, in view of the tenth century date of the one at present in question, to connect it like the others with the name of Gerbert. Our present treatise or fragment of a treatise is largely astrological in character, “following for the present the wisdom of the mathematici who think that mundane affairs are carried on under the rule of the constellations.” This refusal to accept personal responsibility for astrological doctrine is similar to the attitude of the author of the four books of astronomy, so that perhaps the present text is the missing fragment required to fulfil his promise to treat of the subject of prognostication in later chapters. If so it indulges in some repetition, as it goes into the relations existing between signs, planets, and elements, and gives the “Saracen” names[2868] for the twenty-eight mansions of the moon. It includes a way to detect theft for each planet and a method of determining if a patient will recover by computation of the numerical value of the letters in his name. These features are suggestive of the Mathematical of Alchandrus.
Chapter XXXI
ANGLO-SAXON, SALERNITAN, AND OTHER LATIN MEDICINE IN MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE NINTH TO THE TWELFTH CENTURY
Plan of this chapter—Instances of early medieval additions to ancient medicine—Leech-Book of Bald and Cild—Magical procedure and incantations—A superstitious compound—Summary—Cauterization—Treatment of demoniacs—Incantations and characters—In a twelfth century manuscript—Magic with a split hazel rod—More incantations and the virtues of a vulture—Lots of the saints—Superstitious veterinary and medical practice—Two Paris manuscripts—Blood-letting—Resemblances to Egerton 821—Virtues of blood—Pious incantations and magical procedure—More superstitious veterinary practice—The School of Salerno—Was Salernitan medicine free from superstition?—The Practica of Petrocellus—Its sources—Fourfold origin of medicine—Therapeutics of Petrocellus—The Regimen Salernitanum—Its superstition—The Practica of Archimatthaeus—A Salernitan treatise of about 1200—The wives of Salerno.
[Sidenote: Plan of this chapter.]
In this chapter our purpose is to treat of early medieval medicine as distinct on the one hand from post-classical medicine, to which we have already devoted a chapter, and on the other hand from later medieval medicine as affected by translations from the Arabic and other oriental influence. Perhaps one of the outcomes of our discussion will be to suggest that any such distinctions cannot be at all sharply or chronologically drawn. However, the writings which we shall discuss now are contained mainly in manuscripts dating from the ninth to the twelfth century, although some of them may have been first composed at an earlier date than that of the manuscript in which they chance to be preserved. Some are in Anglo-Saxon; more, in Latin. Some it has been customary to classify under the caption of Salernitan. We shall postpone until the next chapter our consideration of Constantinus Africanus, although the dates of his life fall within the eleventh century, because he already at that early date represents the introduction of Arabic medicine to the western world.
[Sidenote: Instances of early medieval additions to ancient medicine.]
A good instance of the working over by men of the early medieval period of the medical writings of the late Roman period is provided by a manuscript of the ninth or tenth century at Berlin.[2869] It now consists of a number of fragments whose original order can no longer be determined. These are made up of extracts from different sources or from other collections, but the collection also bears the mark of its last compiler who has introduced new remedies of his own and words derived from the vernacular of his day. Even extracts on fevers taken from the old Latin adaptation of Galen[2870] are added to by some Christian physician, who introduces among other things some incantations, such as, “I adjure you, spots, that you go away and recede from and be destroyed from the eye of the servant of God.”[2871] The manuscript also comprises more than one tract on how dreams or the fate of the patient or child born can be foretold from the day of the moon.[2872] Another tract[2873] tells how God made the first man out of eight parts, of which the first was the mud of the earth and the last the light of the world. This would seem to be rather a novel departure from the usual four element theory but perhaps involves ancient Gnostic error. The author further argues that individual divergences of character depend upon the preponderance of one or another of the eight constituents of the body.
[Sidenote: Leech-Book of Bald and Cild.]
The Anglo-Saxon Leech-Book of Bald and Cild[2874] has been called “the first medical treatise written in western Europe which can be said to belong to modern history.”[2875] It was produced in the tenth century. However, it extracts a good deal from late Greek medical writers, such as Paul of Aegina and Alexander of Tralles, and cites Pliny, “the mickle leech,” for the cure of baldness by application of dead bees burnt to ashes,[2876] a remedy also found in the Euporista ascribed to Galen. On the whole, however, it uses parts of animals somewhat less than Pliny, although sometimes a powdered earthworm is recommended, or a man stung by an adder is to drink holy water in which a black snail has been washed, or the bite of a viper is to be smeared with ear-wax while thrice repeating “the prayer of Saint John.”[2877] And a man about to engage in combat is advised to eat swallow nestlings boiled in wine.[2878] Herbs are as useful against a woman’s tongue as birds against a foeman’s steel, for we are told: “Against a woman’s chatter; taste at night fasting a root of radish; that day the chatter cannot harm thee.”[2879] There are directions for plucking herbs similar to those in Pliny,[2880] and the significance which he ascribed to cart ruts is paralleled by the injunction, after one has treated a venomous bite by striking five scarifications, one on the bite and four around it, to “throw the blood with a spoon silently over a wagon way.”[2881] Eight virtues of the stone agate are enumerated.[2882]
[Sidenote: Magical procedure and incantations.]
Not only such occult virtues of animals, vegetables, and minerals, but also magical procedure and incantations abound in the work. In a prescription “for flying venom and every venomous swelling” butter is to be churned on a Friday from the milk of a “neat or hind all of one color,” and a litany, paternoster, and incantation of strange words are to be repeated nine times each.[2883] A great deal of superstitious use is made of such Christian symbols, names, and forms of prayer as the sign of the cross, the names of the four evangelists, and masses, psalms, and exorcisms. Fear of witchcraft and enchantment is manifested, and the ills both of man and beast are frequently attributed to evil spirits. “A drink for a fiend-sick man” is on one occasion “to be drunk out of a church bell,” with the accompaniment of much additional ecclesiastical hocus-pocus.[2884] “If a horse is elf-shot, then take the knife of which the haft is horn of a fallow ox, and on which are three brass nails. Then write upon the horse’s forehead Christ’s mark, and on each of the limbs which thou may feel at. Then take the left ear; prick a hole in it in silence. This thou shalt do; then take a yerd, strike the horse on the back, then it will be whole. And write upon the horn of the knife these words, Benedicite omnia opera domini dominum. Be the elf what it may, this is mighty for him to amends.”[2885]
[Sidenote: A superstitious compound.]
Neither Bald and Cild nor their continuator shared Pliny’s prejudice against compound medicines. In the third book by the continuator is described “a salve against the elfin race and nocturnal visitors, and for women with whom the devil hath carnal commerce.” One takes the ewe hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, lupin, ashthroat, henbane, harewort, viper’s bugloss, heatherberry plants, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and fennel. These herbs are put in a vessel and placed beneath the altar where nine masses are sung over them. They are then boiled in butter and mutton fat; much holy salt is added; the salve is strained through a cloth; and what remains of the worts is thrown into running water. The patient’s forehead and eyes are to be smeared with this ointment and he is further to be censed with incense and signed often with the sign of the cross.[2886]
[Sidenote: Summary.]
The “modern” character of Bald’s and Cild’s book cannot be said to have produced any diminution of superstition as against the writings of antiquity. But we do find native herbs introduced, also popular medicine, and probably a considerable amount of Teutonic and perhaps also Celtic folk-lore, which, however, has been more or less Christianized. Indeed the connection between medicine and religion is remarkably close.
[Sidenote: Cauterization.]
The medicine of this period may be further illustrated by two Latin manuscripts of the eleventh century in the Sloane collection of the British Museum.[2887] One contains a brief treatise which illustrates the common tendency at that time to employ cauterization not only for surgical purposes in connection with wounds, but as a medical means of giving relief to internal diseases and trivial complaints with which cauterization could have no connection. That the practice was very largely a superstition is further evident from the fact that one part of the body often was cauterized for a complaint in another or opposite portion or member. In the present example, under the alluring names of Apollonius and Galen as professed authors,[2888] are presented a series of human figures showing where the cautery should be applied. These pictures of naked patients marked all over their anatomy with spots where the red-hot iron should be applied, or submitting with smiling or wry faces to its actual administration in the most tender places, are both amusing and, when we reflect that this useless pain was actually repeatedly inflicted through long centuries, pathetic.[2889]
[Sidenote: Treatment of demoniacs.]
In a general and much longer work on diseases and their remedies which follows in the same manuscript and which is professedly compiled from Hippocrates, Galen, and Apollonius, the treatment prescribed for demoniacs,[2890] who, it states, are in Greek called epilemptici (epileptics), includes among other things vaporization between the shoulder blades with various mixtures, scarification and bleeding, application of leeches to the “stomach where you ought not to operate with iron,”[2891] shaving and “imbrocating”[2892] the scalp, and anointing the hands and feet with oil. Both our manuscripts contain recipes for expelling or routing demons.[2893] For this purpose such substances are employed as the stone gagates and holy water, and elsewhere the usual confidence is reposed in the virtues of herbs and such parts of animals as the liver of a vulture.
[Sidenote: Incantations and characters.]
In one of the manuscripts is a treatise in which much use is made of incantations and characters. There are prayers to “Lord Jesus and Holy Mary” to heal the sick, while characters, sometimes engraved upon lead plates, are employed not only for medical purposes, but to prevent women from conceiving, to make fruit trees bear well, and against enemies.[2894] Later on in the manuscript instructions for plucking a medicinal herb include facing east and reciting a paternoster.[2895]
[Sidenote: In a twelfth century manuscript.]
The twelfth century portion of this same manuscript consists mainly of a long medical medley with no definitely marked beginning or ending but apparently originally in five books.[2896] Towards its close occur a number of incantations and characters quite in the style of Marcellus Empiricus.[2897] Indeed, “a marvelous charm” for toothache is an exact copy of his instructions to repeat seven times in a waning moon on Tuesday or Thursday an incantation beginning, “Aridam, margidam, sturgidam.”[2898] To make all his enemies fear him a man should gather the herb verbena on a Thursday, repeating seven times a formula in which the plant is personally addressed and the desire expressed to triumph over all foes as the verbena conquers winds and rains, hail and storms.[2899] If here the influence of pagan religion is still present, many of the incantations are in Christian form and expressed in the name of God or the Father. To find a thief characters are employed together with the incantation, “Abraham bound, Isaac held, Jacob brought back to the house.”[2900] A charm against fever opens, “Christ was born and suffered; Christ Jesus rose from the dead and ascended unto heaven; Christ will come at the day of judgment. Christ says, According to your faith it shall be done.” Then the sign of the cross is employed and “sacred words,” which seem, however, to include not only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but Maximianus, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantinus. As we have to do with a twelfth century manuscript the last two names might be presumed to have reference to the medical writers of the eleventh century, but another manuscript which contains a similar incantation states that they are the names of the seven sleepers.[2901] Our charm then continues “In the name of Christ” and with a prayer to God to free from sickness anyone who “bears this writing in Thy name.”[2902]
[Sidenote: Magic with a split hazel rod.]
In the same work occurs the earliest instance of which I am aware of the magical “experiment” with a split rod and an incantation, to which we shall hear William of Auvergne, Albertus Magnus, John of St. Amand, and Roger Bacon refer in the thirteenth century. A rod of four cubits length is to be cut with repetition of the Lord’s Prayer. It is to be split, and the two halves are to be held apart at the ends by two men. Then, making the sign of the cross, one should repeat the following incantation, “Ellum sat upon ella and held a green rod in his hand and said, Rod of green reunite again,”[2903] together with the Lord’s Prayer until the two split halves bend together in the middle. One then seizes them in one’s fist at the junction point, cuts off the rest of the rods, and makes magic use of the section remaining in one’s grasp.[2904]
[Sidenote: More incantations and the virtues of a vulture.]
Another manuscript of the twelfth century[2905] contains many similar charms, incantations, prayers, and characters for healing purposes. One formula employed is, “Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands.” In cases of miscarriage a drink of verbena is recommended and repetition of the following incantation with three Paternosters, “Saisa, laisa, relaisa, because so Saint Mary did when she bore the Son of God.” Presently a paragraph opens with the assertion that the human race does not know how great virtue the vulture[2906] possesses and how much it improves health. But certain ceremonial directions must be observed in making use of it. The bird should be killed in the very hour in which it is caught and with a sharp reed rather than a sword. Before beheading it, one should utter an incantation containing such names as Adonai and Abraam. Various healing virtues appertain to the different parts of its carcass, although here again there are instructions to be observed. The bones of its head should be bound in hyena skin; its eyes should be suspended from the neck in wolf’s skin. Binding its wings on the left foot of a woman struggling in child-birth produces a quick delivery. One who wears its tongue will receive the adoration of all his enemies; if one has its heart bound in the skin of a lion or wolf, all demons will avoid one and robbers will only worship one. Its gall taken in quite a mixture cures epileptics and lunatics; its lung in another compound cures fevers; and so on.
[Sidenote: Lots of the saints.]
There follow Sortes sanctorum, introduced by a page and a half of prayers of this tenor, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we ask Father and Son and Holy Ghost, Three and One; we ask Saint Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ; we ask the nine orders of angels; we ask the whole chorus of patriarchs; we ask the whole chorus of apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins, and the whole chorus of God’s faithful that they deign to reveal to us these lots which we seek, and that no seduction of the devil may deceive us.” The treatise closes, “These are the lots of the saints which never fail; so ask God and obtain what you desire.”
[Sidenote: Superstitious veterinary and medical practice.]
The next items in the manuscript are some cases of superstitious veterinary practice, with such pious incantations as “May God who saved the thief on the cross save this beast!”[2907] and with instructions concerning the religious invocations and written characters to be employed in blessing the food and salt to be given to domestic animals in order to keep them in good health. Characters are also mentioned which will prevent the blood of a pig from flowing when it is slaughtered, provided they are bound upon the breast or are written on the knife with which the pig is to be stuck.[2908] Holy water and bread that has been blessed are used for medical purposes and instructions are given on what days medicinal herbs should be gathered. The prayers employed are usually put in Christian form, but one for the cure of toothache has slipped by at least partially uncensored. It opens with the words “O lady Moon, free me....”[2909]
[Sidenote: Two Paris manuscripts.]
If we turn from medical manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the British Museum to those of the Bibliothèque Nationale, we find the same occurrence of superstitious passages. In an eleventh century codex which contains parts of the medical work of Celsus and the De dinamidis of Galen are also found prayers to God for the medicinal aid of the angel Raphael against the treacherous attacks of the demons, a work on the virtues of stones which has much to say of their marvelous properties, and figures and text concerning the twelve signs of the zodiac and twelve winds.[2910] Much more superstitious, however, is an anonymous treatise occupying the first ten leaves of a twelfth century manuscript[2911] which is apparently of German origin from the number of German words and phrases introduced near its close. This treatise is followed in the manuscript by the works of Notker, Hermann the Lame, and others on computus and the astrolabe.
[Sidenote: Blood-letting.]
After discussing the effect of food upon health, listing potions of herbs to be drunk in each month of the year,[2912] treating of the veins and of the four winds, four seasons, and four humors, and the relations existing between the two last-named, the author enumerates the many advantages of blood-letting in a long passage which is worth quoting in part. “It contains the beginning of health, it makes the mind sincere, it aids the memory, it purges the brain, it reforms the bladder, it warms the marrow, it opens the hearing, it checks tears, it removes nausea, it benefits the stomach, it invites digestion, it evokes the voice, it builds up the sense, it moves the bowels, it enriches sleep, it removes anxiety, it nourishes good health ...”: and so on. The operation of bleeding should not be performed on the tenth, fifteenth, twenty-fifth, or thirtieth day of the moon, nor should a potion be taken then. The Egyptian days and dog-days are to be similarly observed. The hours of the day when each humor predominates are then given.
[Sidenote: Resemblances to Egerton 821.]
There then is introduced rather abruptly an account of the medicinal virtues of the vulture almost identical with that in the British Museum manuscript. Once again, too, herbs are to be plucked with repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.[2913] The use of characters to prevent a slaughtered pig from bleeding is introduced somewhat otherwise than in the other manuscript. Having first recommended as a cure for human sufferers from flux of blood the binding about the abdomen of a parchment inscribed with the characters in question, the author adds, “And if you don’t believe it, write them on a knife and kill a pig with it, and you will see no blood flow from the wound.”[2914]
[Sidenote: Virtues of blood.]
Considerable medicinal use is made of blood in this treatise. For cataract is recommended instilling in the eye the blood which flows from a certain worm (oudehsam?) when “you cut it in two near the tail.”[2915] To break the stone one employs goat’s blood caught in a glass vessel in a waning moon and dried eight days in the sun together with the pulverized skin of a rabbit caught in a waning moon and roasted over marble. These are to be mixed in wine and given in the name of the Lord to the patient to drink while he is in the bath.[2916] Another remedy consists of three drops of the milk of a woman nursing a male child given in a raw egg to the patient without his knowledge.[2917]
[Sidenote: Pious incantations and magical procedure.]
The work abounds in characters and in incantations which consist either of seemingly meaningless words or of Biblical phrases and allusions. These are very much like those in the manuscripts already considered and are often accompanied by elaborate procedure. For example, the prayer, “O Lord, spare your servant N., so that chastised with deserved stripes he may rest in your mercy,” is to be written on five holy wafers which are then to be placed on the five wounds of a figure of Christ on a crucifix. The patient is to approach barefoot, eat the wafers, and say: “Almighty God, who saved all the human race, save me and free me from these fevers and from all my languors. By God Christ was announced, and Christ was born, and Christ was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and Christ was placed in a manger, and Christ was circumcised, and Christ was adored by the Magi, and Christ was baptized, and Christ was tempted, and Christ was betrayed, and Christ was flogged, and Christ was spat upon, and Christ was given gall and vinegar to drink, and Christ was pierced with a lance, and Christ was crucified, and Christ died, and Christ was buried, and Christ rose again, and Christ ascended unto heaven. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Jesus, rising from the synagogue, entered the house of Simon. Moreover, Simon’s daughter was sick with a high fever. And they entreated Him on her behalf. And standing over her He commanded the fever and it departed.”[2918] To cure epilepsy an interesting combination of scriptural incantation and rather unusual magic procedure is recommended. Before the attack comes on, the words of the Gospel of Matthew, “Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert; and angels came and ministered unto Him,” are to be written on a wooden tablet with some black substance which will wash off readily. Then, when the fit comes on, this writing is to be washed off into a vessel with still water and given to the patient to drink in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “If you do this three times, God helping the patient will be cured.”[2919]
[Sidenote: More superstitious veterinary practice.]
Our manuscript further resembles Egerton 821 of the British Museum in containing remedies for beast as well as man. If a horse suffers from over-eating, one should learn his name and procure some hazel rods. Then one is to whisper in his right ear an incantation consisting of outlandish words accompanied by the Lord’s Prayer, and is to bind his thighs and feet with the rods. This ceremony, too, is to be repeated thrice.[2920]
[Sidenote: The School of Salerno.]
We now come to the consideration of treatises supposed to have been produced by the school of medicine at Salerno. But not only are the origins of the so-called School of Salerno “veiled in impenetrable obscurity,”[2921] much of its later history is scarcely less uncertain, and it is no easy matter to say what men and what writings may be properly called Salernitan, or when they lived or were composed. The manuscripts of Salernitan writings seem to have been found more frequently north of the Alps than in Italian libraries. It would perhaps be carrying scepticism too far to doubt if medicine developed much earlier or more rapidly at Salerno than elsewhere, since it seems certain that the town was famous for its physicians at an early date, and that we have medical writings of Salernitans produced in the early eleventh century. But one is inclined to view with some scepticism the assumption of historians of medicine[2922] that the word Salernitan represents a separate body of doctrine, or of method in practice, which may be sharply distinguished from Arabic medicine or from later medieval medicine as affected by Arabic influence. Rather the medical literature and practice of Salerno is an integral and scarcely distinguishable part of medieval medicine as a whole. Many Salernitan treatises themselves belong to the later medieval period, and very few of them can be shown to antedate Constantinus Africanus, whose translations seem to mark the beginning of Arabic influence. And on the other hand there are equally early medieval medical treatises, such as those we have hitherto been considering, which are not Salernitan and yet show no sign of Arabic influence. Thus the word Salernitan cannot accurately be identified with a first period of medieval Latin medicine based upon early or Neo-Latin translations of Greek medical authors and upon independent medical practice. Such activity was not confined to Salerno. But if we so employ the word Salernitan for a moment, there seems no reason for thinking that such a development would be very different from the Arabic and Byzantine continuations of Greek medicine. A place so open to Saracen and Byzantine influence as the coast of southern Italy is hardly the spot where we should look for a totally distinct medical development, and the influence of Celtic and Teutonic folk-lore upon medical practice would presumably be more felt north of the Alps. And it is to Salerno that Constantinus Africanus, the earliest known importer of Arabic medicine, comes.
[Sidenote: Was Salernitan medicine free from superstition?]
The notion, too, that the Salernitan or early medieval Latin medical practice was sound and straightforward and sensible and free from the superstition with which the holders of this opinion represent Arabic and later medieval medicine as overburdened, is also probably illusory. We have already seen evidence of rather extreme superstition in early medieval Latin medicine which shows no trace of Arabic influence, and the medical practitioners of Salerno are sometimes represented in the sources as empiricists or old-wives. The place was peculiarly noted for its female practitioners, of whom more anon; and one of the earliest mentions of a physician of Salerno is the account in Richer’s chronicle[2923] of the mutual poisoning of two rival physicians in 946 A. D. Here the Salernitan is described as lacking in Latin book-knowledge and skilful from natural talent and much experience. He was the queen’s favorite physician, but was worsted by another royal physician, Bishop Deroldus, in a debate which the king, Louis IV, instituted in order to find out “which of them knew more of the natures of things.” The defeated Salernitan then “prepared sorcery” and tried to poison the bishop, who cured himself with theriac and secretly poisoned his rival in turn. The Salernitan was then reduced to the humiliating position of being forced to beseech the prelate to cure him, but in his case the theriac only drove the poison into his foot, which had to be amputated by a surgeon. This tale, be it true or not, suggests that there were good Latin physicians and surgeons outside of Salerno at an early date as well as that Salernitan medicine was far from being free from magic and empiricism.
[Sidenote: The Practica of Petrocellus.]
It is fairer, however, to judge Salerno by its own best written productions rather than by the stories of perhaps jealous northerners, and we may note Payne’s comparison of the Practica of Petrocellus,[2924] written probably in the early eleventh century, with the earlier Leech-Book of Bald and Cild. Selected recipes, it may first be said, were translated from the Practica into Anglo-Saxon.[2925] Dr. Payne was impressed by “the complete freedom of the former from the magic and superstition which tainted the Anglo-Saxon and all other European medicine of the time.” Payne noted that the compounds of Petrocellus contained fewer ingredients, and regarded the Salernitan selection of drugs as “more intelligent.” The Salernitan formulae are “clear, simple, and written on a uniform system which implies traditional skill and culture.”[2926] “The pharmacy is generally very simple; and, as might be expected, there is an entire absence of charms and superstitious rites.”[2927] Such simplicity, however, is at best a negative sort of virtue; and we wonder if this early specimen of the School of Salerno is free from elaborate superstition for the very reason that the work is simple and elementary. The less medicine, the less superstition perhaps. Moreover, superstition is not quite absent, since Payne himself quotes the following recipe: “For those who cannot see from sunrise to sunset.... This is the leechcraft which thereto belongeth. Take a kneecap of a buck[2928] and roast it, and, when the roast sweats, then take the sweat and therewith smear the eyes, and after that let him eat the same roast; and then take fresh asses’ dung and squeeze it, and smear the eyes therewith, and it will soon be better with them.”[2929]
[Sidenote: Its sources.]
Petrocellus is thought to have used Greek writings directly without the intermediary of Arabic versions.[2930] He says in the introductory letter which opens the Practica that he reduces to brief form in the Latin language those “authors who have culled the dogmas of all cases from Greek places.”[2931] But these words might be taken to indicate that he has used Greek sources only indirectly, while the fact that the person to whom the work is addressed is called “dearest son” and “sweetest son” is rather in the style of Arabian and Hebrew medieval writers. He goes on to assure this person that everything in the work has been tested by experience and that nothing should be added to or subtracted from it.
[Sidenote: Fourfold origin of medicine.]
This introductory epistle also embodies an account of the origin of medicine which, while not exactly superstitious, is quite in the usual naïve and uncritical style so often employed by both ancient and medieval writers in treating of a distant past. Apollo and his son Esculapius, Asclepius and “Ypocras” are named as the four founders of the medical art. Apollo discovered methoyca, which presumably means methodism, but which Petrocellus proceeds to identify with surgery. Esculapius invented empirica, which is described as pharmacy rather than empiricism, although perhaps the distinction is slight. Asclepius founded loyca, which is probably meant for the dogmatic school. Hippocrates’ contribution was theoperica, which may mean therapeutics but is further described as the prognostication or “prevision of diseases.” It is in this same introductory epistle that Petrocellus makes the division of the brain into three cells of which we spoke in the chapter on Arabic occult science. Besides distinguishing the three cells as phantastic, logical, and mnemonic, he adds that good and evil are distinguished in the middle cell and that the soul is in the posterior one.
[Sidenote: Therapeutics of Petrocellus.]
In the Practica proper the method of Petrocellus is to take up one disease at a time, tell what the Greeks call it, and briefly describe it, sometimes listing its symptoms or causes, but devoting most of his space to such methods of curing it as diet and bleeding, simples and compounds. I saw no instance of astrological medicine nor of resort to amulets and incantations in the version published by Renzi from a twelfth century manuscript at Paris. But in a fragment of the work from a Milan manuscript where twenty-six lines are devoted to the treatment of epilepsy instead of but seven as in the other text,[2932] one is advised to use antimony in the holy water “which the Greeks bless on Epiphany” and to chant the Lord’s Prayer three times. If this passage be a later addition, it shows that Petrocellus was less inclined to superstitious methods than others and that his injunction that nothing should be subtracted from or added to his work was not well observed. But in any case it illustrates my previous point that the more medicine, the more superstition. In twenty-six lines on epilepsy one is much more likely to find something superstitious than in seven. Indeed, the treatment of epilepsy was so generally superstitious that my recollection is that any account of it of any considerable length which I have seen in medieval writings contained some superstition. In fact, even if Petrocellus wrote the longer passage, he could be praised for having resorted to charms and formulae only in the case of that mysterious disease.
[Sidenote: The Regimen Salernitanum.]
The work most generally known as a characteristic product of the School of Salerno is the Latin poem[2933] which opens with the line, “To the King of the English writes the whole School of Salerno.”[2934] This poem has been variously entitled Schola Salernitana, Regimen Salernitanum, and Flos medicinae. How much more influential and widespread it was than the Practica of Petrocellus may be seen from the fact that manuscripts of the text of the latter are rare, though the introductory letter is more common, and that it was first published by Renzi in the nineteenth century, whereas about one hundred manuscripts and two hundred and fifty printed editions of the poem have been found. It was known chiefly through the brief version of 362 verses, upon which Arnald of Villanova commented at the close of the thirteenth century, until as a result of the researches of Baudry de Balzac, Renzi, and Daremberg the number of lines was increased to 3526. This patchwork from many manuscripts can scarcely be regarded as the work of any one author, time, or even school, and it may be seriously questioned how many of the verses really emanated from Salerno. Certainly it is not free from Arabic influence, since it cites Alfraganus as well as Ptolemy.[2935] Pliny is used a great deal for the virtues of herbs. Much of it sounds like a late versification of commonplaces for mnemonic purposes. Sudhoff has recently pointed out that it was not generally known until the middle of the thirteenth century, before which time Frederick II, the cultured monarch, and Giles de Corbeil, the medical poet, appear unaware of its existence.[2936]
[Sidenote: Its superstition.]
The brief version of the poem commented upon by Arnald of Villanova naturally contains only one-tenth of the superstition found in the fuller text which is ten times longer. In some respects this brief version might pass as a restrained, though quaint, early set of directions how to preserve health, to which later writers have added superstitious recipes. But as a matter of fact it is too superstitious for even one as hospitable to theories of occult influence as Arnald, who rejects as false and worthless[2937] its assertion that the months of April, May, and September are lunar and that in them consequently fall the days upon which bleeding is prohibited. In the lines upon which Arnald comments marvelous properties are mentioned in the case of the plant rue, but the fuller text has many mentions of the occult virtues of herbs, stones, and animals. Almost at a glance we read that the urine of a dog or the blood of a mouse cures warts; that juice of betony should be gathered on the eve of St. John the Baptist, that rubbing the soles of the feet cures a stiff neck, and that pearls or the stone found in a crab’s head are of equal virtue for heart trouble.[2938] And not far away is a passage[2939] on the virtue of the Agnus Dei, made of balsam, pure wax, and the Chrism. It protects against lightning and the waves of the sea, aids women in child-birth, saves from sudden death, and in short from “every kind of evil.” Astrology is by no means omitted from the Regimen Salernitanum; in fact Balzac seems to have taken the fact that verses were astrological in character as a sign that they belonged in the Salernitan collection.
[Sidenote: The Practica of Archimatthaeus.]
A third work which may be considered as an example of the medicine of Salerno is the Practica of Archimatthaeus which Renzi placed in the twelfth century and conjectured to be the work of Matthaeus Platearius the Elder.[2940] One or two expressions, however, might be taken as indications that the writer is neither of early date nor himself a Salernitan. He speaks of curing pleurisy in a different way from the treatment recommended in the Practica’s and tells how the Salernitans try to prevent their hair from falling out by reason of their pores opening too wide when they frequent the bath.[2941] Renzi hailed this treatise with delight as “a true medical clinic,”[2942] since the author describes some twenty-two specific cases. He states at the beginning that he does not propose to write a systematic treatise or to deal with every variety of disease, but only with those in which he has learned new and better methods by experience, “and in which God has put the desired effect in my hand.”[2943] Through the work we encounter such phrases as expertum est, aliud probatissimum, “I tell you what I have proved,” “We have tested this by experience and rejoiced at the result.” These utterances seem really to refer to the writer’s own experience and not to be copied from previous authors. The following is an example of his cases. “A certain lady incurred paralysis of the face during sleep after the bath,” which he attributes to dissolution of humors which affected the muscles. First he bled the cephalic vein, hoping thereby to draw off somewhat the humors from the afflicted place. Then for three successive days he gave her “the potion of St. Paul with wine of a decoction of salvia and castoria which in part prevent dissolution, in part consume it.” He also had her hold that wine in her mouth for a long time before swallowing it. At length he gave her a purgative with pills of yerapiga (sacrum amarum), mixed with golden pills. “Afterwards we injected pills of diacastoria into her nostrils and placed her near the fire. Finally we gave opopira (bread free from furfure) with the aforesaid wine, and so she was cured, only a certain tumor remained in her face and made her eye water. We anointed her face with golden unguent and the potion of St. Paul mixed together and the tumor disappeared; for the tears we gave golden Alexandrina and they were checked; and thus it was that this year in your presence we cured a certain paralytic.”[2944] Like Galen’s accounts of his actual cases this makes us realize that all the gruesome mixtures of which we read in the books were actually forced upon patients, often several of them upon one poor sick person, and that medical practice was rather worse than medical theory. An interesting observation concerning the lot of the lower classes is let fall by our author when, in discussing involuntary emission of urine, he states that serfs and handmaids are especially subject to this ailment, since they go about ill-clad and with bare feet and become thoroughly chilled.[2945]
[Sidenote: A Salernitan treatise of about 1200.]
Giacosa classed one of the treatises which he published as Salernitan because it was written in a Lombard or Monte Cassino hand of about 1200.[2946] He described its contents as purely therapeutical and regarded its author as showing “a certain repugnance” to the popular remedies and superstitions recommended by other contemporary treatises. For this conclusion the chief evidence seems to be a passage where the author, after listing such means to prevent a woman from conceiving as binding her head with a red ribbon or holding the stone found in the head of an ass, says that he thinks that such remedies “operate more by faith than reason.”[2947] But he makes much use of parts of animals and of suffumigations, advising for example on the same page that after conception there should be fumigation with a root of mandragora or peony or the excrement of an ass mixed with flour, an operation which he characterizes as expertissimum. And on the preceding page, as Giacosa has noted, he recommends a procedure which is even more improbable than it is immoral, whereby patients who show themselves ungrateful to the physician after they have been cured may be made to suffer again.[2948]
[Sidenote: The wives of Salerno.]
We promised to say something of the female practitioners of Salerno. Trotula is no longer believed to be a woman and we have to judge the women of Salerno mainly by what others say of them. In a commentary of a Master Bernard of Provence, who I suspect may be Bernard Gordon, the medical writer at Montpellier of the closing thirteenth century, are a number of practices attributed to the women of Salerno which Renzi has already brought together.[2949] In these cases the practices are chiefly those employed by the women themselves in child-birth. We may note three from the list that savor strongly of magic. “The women of Salerno cook doves with the acorns which the doves eat; then they remove the acorns from the gizzard and eat them, whence the retentive virtue is much comforted.” “When the women of Salerno fear abortion, they carry with them the pregnant stone,” which our author explains is not the magnet. The other recipe had perhaps better remain untranslated: Stercus asini comedunt mulieres Salernitanae in crispellis et dant viris suis ut melius retineant sperma et sic concipiant. As we shall see in our chapter on Arnald of Villanova, another medical writer of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, he condemned the use of incantations in cases of child-birth by old-wives of Salerno but approved of a very similar procedure by which a priest had cured him of warts, and also mentioned favorably the cures wrought by female practitioners at Rome and Montpellier.