XXXII. CONSTANTINUS AFRICANUS: C. 1015-1087
Reputation and influence—His studies in the Orient—His later life in Italy—His works were mainly translations—Pantegni—Viaticum—Other translations—The book of degrees—On melancholy—On disorders of the stomach—Medical works ascribed to Alfanus—Constantinus and experiment—“Experiments” involving incantations—Superstition comparatively rare in Constantinus—And of Greek rather than Arabic origin—Some signs of astrology and alchemy—Constantinus and the School of Salerno—Liber aureus and John Afflacius—Afflacius more superstitious than his master.
[Sidenote: Reputation and influence.]
Constantinus Africanus will be here considered at perhaps greater length than his connection with the history either of magic or experimental science requires, but which his general importance in the history of medicine and the lack of any good treatment of him in English may justify.[2950] Our discussion of him as an importer of Arabic medicine will also serve to support our attitude towards the School of Salerno. Daremberg wrote in 1853, “We owe a great debt of gratitude to Constantinus because he thus opened for Latin lands the treasures of the east and consequently those of Greece. He has received and he deserves from every point of view the title of restorer of medical literature in the west.”[2951] Daremberg proceeded to propose that a statue of Constantinus be erected in the center of the Gulf of Salerno or on the summit of Monte Cassino. Yet in 1870 he made the surprising assertion that “the voice of Constantinus towards the close of the eleventh century is an isolated voice and almost without an echo.”[2952] But as a matter of fact Constantinus was a much cited authority during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the works both of medicine and of natural science produced in Latin in western Europe, and his translations were cited under his own name rather than those of their original authors.[2953]
[Sidenote: His studies in the Orient.]
A brief sketch of Constantinus’ career and a list of his works[2954] is twice supplied us by Peter the Deacon, who wrote in the next century,[2955] and who treats of Constantinus both in the chronicle of Monte Cassino, which he continued to the year 1138,[2956] and in his work on the illustrious men of Monte Cassino.[2957] Peter tells that Constantinus was born at Carthage, by which he probably means Tunis, since Carthage was no longer in existence, but went to Babylon, by which Cairo is presumably designated, since Babylon had ages before been reduced to a dust heap,[2958] to improve his education. His birth must have been in about 1015. There he is said to have studied grammar, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, “mathematics,” astronomy, and physics or medicine (physica). To this curriculum in the Chronicle Peter adds in the Lives of Illustrious Men the subjects of music and necromancy. When so little was said of spirits in the occult science of the Arabic authors of the ninth century whom we considered in an earlier chapter, it is rather a surprise to hear that Constantinus studied necromancy, but that subject is listed along with mathematical and natural sciences by Al-Farabi in his De ortu scientiarum,[2959] and we shall find this classification reproduced by two western Christian scholars of the twelfth century.[2960] The mathematica and astronomy which Constantinus studied very likely also included considerable astrology and divination. At any rate we are told that he not only pursued his studies among “the Chaldeans, Arabs, Persians, and Saracens,” and was fully imbued with “all the arts of the Egyptians,” but even, like Apollonius of Tyana, visited India and Ethiopia in his quest for learning. It was only after a lapse of thirty-nine or forty years that he returned to North Africa. Most modern secondary accounts here state that Constantinus was soon forced to flee from North Africa because of the jealousy of other physicians who accused him of magic,[2961] or from fear that his fellow citizens would kill him as a wizard. In view of his study of necromancy, this may well have been the case. Peter the Deacon, however, simply states that when the Africans saw him so fully instructed in the studies of all nations, they plotted to kill him,[2962] and gives no further indication of their motives.
[Sidenote: His later life in Italy.]
Constantinus secretly boarded ship and made his escape to Salerno, where he lived for some time in poverty, until a brother of the caliph (regis Babiloniorum) who chanced to come there recognized him, after which he was held in great honor by Duke Robert Guiscard. The secondary accounts say that he became Robert’s confidential secretary and that he had previously occupied a similar position under the Byzantine emperor, Constantine Monomachos,[2963] but of these matters again Peter the Deacon is silent. When Constantinus left the Norman court, it was to become a monk at Monte Cassino, where he remained until his death in 1087. In a work addressed to the archbishop of Salerno he speaks of himself as Constantinus Africanus Cassinensis[2964] and Albertus Magnus cites him as Constantinus Cassianensis.[2965] What purports to be a picture of Constantinus is preserved in a manuscript of the fifteenth century at Oxford.[2966]
[Sidenote: His works were mainly translations.]
Peter the Deacon states both in the Chronicle and in the Illustrious Men that while at the monastery of Monte Cassino Constantinus Africanus “translated a great number of books from the languages of various peoples.” Peter then lists the chief of these. It is interesting to note, in view of the fact that Constantinus in prefaces and introductions appears to claim some of the works as his own, and that he was accused of fraud and plagiarism by medieval writers who followed him as well as by modern investigators, that Peter the Deacon speaks of all his writings as translations from other languages. Peter does not, however, give us much information as to who the Greek or Arabic authorities were whom Constantine translated. It may be added that if Constantinus claimed for himself the credit for Latin versions which were essentially translations, he was merely continuing a practice of which Arabic authors themselves had been repeatedly guilty. Indeed, we are told that they sometimes even destroyed earlier works which they had copied in order to receive sole credit for ideas which were not their own.[2967]
[Sidenote: Pantegni.]
The longest of Constantinus’ translations and the one most often cited in the middle ages was the Pantechni or Pantegni, comprising ten books of theory and ten of practice as printed in 1515 with the works of Isaac,[2968] although Peter the Deacon speaks of Constantinus’ dividing the Pantegni into twelve books and then of a Practica which also consisted of twelve books. What is the ninth book of the Practica in this printed version is listed as a separate book on surgery by Peter in his Illustrious Men, although omitted from his list in the Chronicle, and was so printed in the 1536 edition of the works of Constantinus.[2969] And the Antidotarium which Peter lists as a separate title is probably simply the tenth book of the Practica as printed with the works of Isaac.[2970] The Pantegni, however, is not a translation of any work by Isaac, but an adaptation of the Khitaab el Maleki, or Royal Art of Medicine, of Ali Ibn Abbas. The preface of Constantinus[2971] says nothing of Ali but tells the abbot Desiderius that, failing to find in the many works of the Latins or even in “our own writers, ancient and modern,” such as Hippocrates, Galen, Oribasius, Paulus, and Alexander, exactly the sort of treatise desired, he has composed “this little work of our own” (hoc nostrum opusculum). But Stephen of Pisa, who also translated Ali into Latin in 1127,[2972] accused Constantinus of having suppressed both the author’s name and title of the book and of having made many omissions and changes of order both in preface and text but without really adding any new contributions of his own.[2973] Stephen further justified his own translation by asserting that not only had the first part of The Royal Art of Medicine of Ali Ibn Abbas been “corrupted by the shrewd fraud of its translator,” but also that the last and greater portion was missing in the version by Constantinus.[2974] Also Ferrarius said in his gloss to the Universal Diets of Isaac that Constantinus had completed the translation of only three books of the Practica, losing the rest in a shipwreck.[2975] A third medieval writer, Giraldus Bituricensis, adds[2976] that Constantinus substituted in its place the Liber simplicis medicinae and Liber graduum, and that it was Stephen of Pisa who translated the remainder of the work of Ali ben Abbas which is called the Practica Pantegni et Stephanonis. Stephen’s translation is indeed different from the ten books of the Practica printed with the works of Isaac. From these facts and from an examination of the manuscripts of the Practica Rose concluded[2977] that Constantinus wrote only its first two books[2978] and the first part of the ninth, which is roughly the same as the Surgery published separately among Constantinus’ works. The rest of this ninth book was translated into Latin at the time of the expedition to besiege Majorca, that is, in 1114-1115, by a John[2979] who had recently been converted to Christianity[2980] and whom Rose was inclined to identify with John Afflacius, “a disciple of Constantinus,” of whom we shall have more to say presently. Rose further held that this John completed the Practica[2981] commonly ascribed to Constantinus with the exception of its tenth book which, as we have suggested, seems originally to have been a distinct Antidotarium. Different from the Pantegni is the Compendium megategni Galeni by Constantinus published with the works of Isaac, and the Librum Tegni, Megategni, Microtegni listed by Peter the Deacon.
[Sidenote: Viaticum.]
Perhaps the next best known and the most frequently printed[2982] of Constantinus’ translations or adaptations from the Arabic is his Viaticum which, as Peter the Deacon states, is divided into seven books. In the preface Constantinus states that the Pantegni was for more advanced students, this is a brief manual for others. He also adds that he appends his own name to it because there are persons who profit by the labors of others and, “when the work of someone else has come into their hands, furtively and like thieves inscribe their own names.” Daremberg designated Abu Jafar Ahmed Ibn-al-Jezzar as author of the Arabic original of the Viaticum. Moses Ibn Tibbon, who made a Hebrew translation in 1259, criticized the Latin version of Constantinus as often abbreviated, obscure, and seriously altered in arrangement.[2983] Constantinus seems to be alluded to in the Ephodia or Greek version of the same work.[2984]
[Sidenote: Other translations.]
If neither the original of the Pantegni nor of the Viaticum is to be assigned to Isaac, Constantinus nevertheless did translate some of his works, namely, those on diets, urines, and fevers.[2985] Moreover, Constantinus himself admits that these Latin works are translations, stating in the preface to the treatise on urines that, finding no satisfactory treatment of the subject in Latin, he turned to the Arabic language and translated the work which Isaac had compiled from the ancients. Constantinus also states that he translated the treatise on fevers from the Arabic. We have already seen that the alphabetical Latin version of Dioscorides which had most currency in the middle ages is ascribed in at least one manuscript to Constantinus. He also translated some treatises ascribed to Hippocrates and Galen, such as Galen’s commentary on the Aphorisms and Prognostics of Hippocrates[2986] and the Tegni of Galen. Constantinus has also been credited with translating works of Galen on the eyes, on diseases of women, and on human nature, but these are not genuine works of Galen.
[Sidenote: The book of degrees.]
In his list of the works which Constantinus translated from various languages.[2987] Peter the Deacon includes The book of degrees, but it has not yet been discovered from what earlier author, if any, it is copied or adapted. The work is a development of Galen’s doctrine that various medicinal simples are hot or cold, dry or moist, in varying degrees. Constantinus presupposes four gradations of this sort. Thus a food or medicine is hot in the first degree if its heating power is below that of the normal human body; if it is of the same temperature as the body, it ranks as of the second degree; if its heat is somewhat greater than that of the body, it is of the third degree; if its heat is extreme and unbearable, it is of the fourth degree. The rose is cold in the first degree, is dry towards the end of the second degree, while the violet is cold towards the end of the first degree and moist in the beginning of the second degree. Thus Constantinus distinguishes not only four degrees but a beginning, middle and end of each degree, and Peter the Deacon once gives the title of the work as The book of twelve degrees.[2988] This interesting though crude beginning in the direction of scientific thermometry and hydrometry unfortunately rested upon incorrect assumptions as to the nature and causation of heat and moisture, and so was perhaps destined to do more harm than good.
[Sidenote: On melancholy.]
A glossary of herbs and species and a work on the pulse, which Peter the Deacon includes in both his lists of Constantinus’ works or translations, do not seem to have been printed or identified as Constantinus’. On the other hand, the printed edition of the works of Constantinus includes treatises on melancholy and on the stomach[2989] which are not mentioned in Peter’s list. In a preface to the De melancholia which is not included in the printed edition[2990] Constantinus Africanus speaks of himself as a monk of Monte Cassino and states that, while he has often touched on the disease of melancholy in the many medical books which he has added to the Latin language, he has decided also to write a separate brochure on the subject because it is an important malady and because it is especially prevalent “in these regions.” “Therefore I have collected this booklet from many volumes of our adepts in this art.” Whether the word “our” here refers to Greek or Arabic writers would be hard to say. Constantinus states that melancholy is a disease to which those are especially liable who are always intent on study and books of philosophy, “because of their scientific investigations and tiring their memories and grieving over the failure of their minds.” This ailment also afflicts “those who lose their beloved possessions, such as their children and dearest friends or some precious thing which cannot be restored, as when scholars suddenly lose their books.” Constantinus also describes the melancholy of “many religious persons who live lives to be revered, but fall into this disease from their fear of God and contemplation of the last judgment and desire of seeing the summum bonum. Such persons think of nothing and seek for nothing save to love and fear God alone, and they incur this complaint and become drunk as it were with their excessive anxiety and vanity.”[2991] Such passages would seem to describe Constantinus’ own associates and environment, but they may possibly be a mere translation of some work of an earlier Christian Arab, such as Honein ben Ishak who translated or pretended to translate a number of works of Greek medicine into Arabic. In a later chapter[2992] we shall find that Honein perhaps had something to do with another work called The Secrets of Galen, in which remedies for religious ascetics who have ruined their health by their austerities form a rather prominent feature.
[Sidenote: On disorders of the stomach.]
That the treatise on disorders of the stomach is Constantinus’ own work is indicated by its preface, which is addressed to Alfanus, archbishop of Salerno from 1058 to 1087 and earlier a monk of Monte Cassino. Alfanus had himself translated Nemesius Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου[2993] and was the center of a group of learned writers: the dialectician, Alberic the Deacon, the historian, Amatus of Salerno, and the mathematician and astronomer, Pandulf of Capua.[2994] Constantinus states that he writes this treatise for Alfanus as a compensation for his recent failure to relieve a stomach-ache with which that prelate was afflicted. Such instances of self-confessed failure, be it noted in passing, are rare indeed in ancient and medieval medicine, and for this reason we are the more inclined to deal charitably with the charges of literary plagiarism which have been preferred against Constantinus. He goes on to say that he has sought with great care but in vain among ancient writings for any treatise devoted exclusively to the stomach, and has only succeeded in finding here and there scattered discussions which he now presumably combines in the present special treatise.
[Sidenote: Medical works ascribed to Alfanus.]
This archbishop Alfanus appears to have written on medicine himself, since A treatise of Alfanus of Salerno concerning certain medical questions was listed among the books at Christchurch, Canterbury about 1300.[2995] Also a collection of recipes entitled, Experiments of an archbishop of Salerno, in a manuscript of the early twelfth century are very likely by him.[2996] They follow a treatise on melancholy which does not, however, appear to be that of Constantinus Africanus.[2997]
[Sidenote: Constantinus and experiment.]
Peter the Deacon’s bibliography of the works of Constantinus includes a De experimentis which, if extant, has not been identified as Constantinus’. In such works of his as are available, however, we find a number of mentions of experience and its value. It is of course to be remembered that such expressions as “we state what we have tested and what our authorities have used,”[2998] and “we have had personal experience of the confection which we now mention,”[2999] may refer to the experience of the past authors whose works Constantinus is using or translating rather than to his own. In the Pantegni[3000] “ancient medical writers” are divided into experientes and rationabiles, and we are told that the empirics declare that compound medicines can be discovered only in dreams and by chance, while the rationalists hold that these can be deduced from a knowledge of the virtues and qualities and accidents of bodies and diseases. This much is of course simply Galen over again. Constantinus occasionally gives medical “experiments,” as in the case of “proved experiments to eject reptiles from the body,”[3001] or the placing of a live chicken on the place bitten by a mad dog. The chicken will then die while the man will be cured “beyond a doubt.”[3002] Such medical “experiments” by Constantinus were often cited by subsequent medieval writers.
[Sidenote: “Experiments” involving incantations.]
Incantations are involved in some of these “experiments.” One approved experiment, we are told, consists in whispering in the ear of the patient the words, Recede demon quia dee fanolcri precipiunt. The effect of this procedure is that when the epileptic rises, after remaining like one dead for an hour, he will answer any question that may be put to him. Another experiment to cure epilepsy is frequently cited by subsequent medieval medical writers from Constantinus, and, while it may not have originated with him, is apparently of Christian rather than Greek or Mohammedan origin. If the epileptic has parents living, they are to take him to church on the day of the four seasons and have him hear mass on the sixth day and also on Saturday. When he comes again on Sunday the priest is to write down the passage in the Gospel where it says, “This kind is not cast out save by fasting and prayer.” Presumably the epileptic is to wear this writing, in which case a sure cure is promised, “be he epileptic or lunatic or demoniac.” But it is added that the charm will not work in the case of persons born of incestuous marriages.[3003]
[Sidenote: Superstition comparatively rare in Constantinus.]
But as a rule incantations and superstitious ceremony are comparatively rare in the works of Constantinus, which contain little to justify the charge of magic said to have been made against him in Africa or the charge of superstition made against the Arabic medicine which his writings so largely reflect. Also these superstitious passages seem limited to the treatment of certain ailments of a mysterious character like epilepsy and insanity, which, Constantinus says, the populace call divinatio and account for by possession by demons.[3004] It is against epilepsy and phantasy that it is recommended to give a child to swallow before it has been weaned the brains of a goat drawn through a golden ring. And it is for epilepsy that we find such suspensions as hairs from an entirely white dog or the small red stones in swallows’ gizzards, from which they must have been removed at midday. When Constantinus is treating of eye and ear troubles, or even of paralysis of the tongue and toothache, use of amulets is infrequent and there is only an occasional suggestion of marvelous virtue. Gout is treated with unguents and recipes but without the superstitious ligatures often found in medieval works of medicine.[3005] Parts of animals are employed a good deal: thus if you anoint the entire body with lion fat, you will have no fear of serpents, and binding on the head the fresh lung of an ox is good for frenzy.[3006] But Constantinus more often explains the action of things in nature from their four qualities of hot, cold, moist, and dry, than he does by assuming the existence of occult virtues.
[Sidenote: And of Greek rather than Arabic origin.]
It is also to be noted that those passages where Constantinus’ medicine borders most closely upon magic are apt to be borrowed from, or at least credited to, Galen and Dioscorides. Neither Constantinus nor his Arabic authorities introduced most of these superstitious elements into medicine. In his work on degrees Constantinus repeats Galen’s story of the boy who fell into an epileptic fit whenever the suspended peony was removed from his neck.[3007] In the Viaticum[3008] he ascribes the suspension of a white dog’s hairs and the use of various other parts of animals for epileptics to Dioscorides, but they do not seem to be found in that author’s extant works. Water in which blacksmiths have quenched their irons is another remedy prescribed for various disorders upon the authority of Dioscorides and Galen.[3009] Theriac and terra sigillata are of course not forgotten. That there is a magnetic mountain on the shore of the Indian Ocean which draws all the iron nails out of passing ships, and that the magnet extracts arrows from wounds is stated on the authority of the Lapidary of Aristotle, a spurious work. Constantinus adds that Rufus says that the magnet comforts those afflicted with melancholy and removes their fears and suspicions.[3010] However, it is without citation of other authors that Constantinus states that the plant agnus castus will mortify lust if it is merely suspended over the sleeper.[3011]
[Sidenote: Some signs of astrology and alchemy.]
There is not a great deal of astrological medicine in the works of Constantinus Africanus. There are some allusions to the moon and dog-days,[3012] Galen being twice cited to the effect that epilepsy in a waxing moon is a very moist disease, while in a waning moon it is very cold. In a chapter of the Pantegni[3013] the relation of critical days to the course of the moon and also to the nature of number is discussed. In another passage of the same work[3014] we read that if other remedies fail in the case of a patient who cannot hold his water while in bed, he should eat the bladder of a river fish for eight days while the moon is waxing and waning and he will be freed from the complaint. But Hippocrates testifies that in old men the ailment is incurable. But the principal astrological passage that I have found in the works of Constantinus is that in De humana natura[3015] where he traces the formation of the child in the womb and the influence of the planets upon the successive months of the process, and explains why children born in the seventh or ninth month live while those born in the eighth month die. This passage was cited by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum naturale.[3016] Belief in alchemy is suggested when Constantinus repeats the assertion of some book on stones that lead would be silver except for its smell, its softness, and its inability to endure fire.[3017]
[Sidenote: Constantinus and the School of Salerno.]
The relation of Constantinus Africanus to the School of Salerno has been the subject of much dispute and of divergent views. Some have held that Salerno’s medical importance practically began with him; others have tried to maintain for Salernitan medicine a Neo-Latin character quite distinct from Constantinus’ introduction of Arabic influence. From the fact that Constantinus passed from Salerno to Monte Cassino, where most, if not all, of his writing seems to have been done, it has been assumed that there was an intimate connection between the monks and the rise of a medical school at Salerno. On the other hand, Renzi and Rashdall have ridiculed the notion, declaring the distance and difficulty of communication between the two places to be an insurmountable difficulty. It must be remembered, however, that Constantinus himself both attended the archbishop of Salerno in a case of stomach trouble and sent a treatise on the subject to him afterwards. A strong personal influence by him upon the practice and still more upon the literature of Salernitan medicine is therefore not precluded, though his stay at Salerno may have been brief and his literary labor performed entirely at the monastery. In any case a Master John Afflacius, who is associated with other Salernitan writers in a compilation from their works, was a disciple of Constantinus and, as we are about to see, perhaps the author of some of the treatises which have been published under Constantinus’ name. It certainly would seem that Constantinus and his disciple have as good a right to be called Salernitan as most of the authors included in Renzi’s collection.
[Sidenote: Liber aureus and John Afflacius.]
In a medical manuscript which Henschel discovered at Breslau in 1837[3018] and which he regarded as a composition of the School of Salerno and dated in the twelfth century, he found in the case of two works compiled from various authors[3019] that the passages ascribed to a Master John Afflacius, who was described as “a disciple of Constantinus,”[3020] were identical with passages in the Liber aureus or De remediorum et aegritudinum cognitione published as a work of Constantinus in the Basel edition of 1536. He also identified a Liber urinarum attributed to the same John Afflacius, disciple of Constantinus, in the Breslau manuscript with the De urinis which follows the Liber aureus in the printed edition of Constantinus’ works. Thus either the pupil appropriated or completed and published the work of his master, or Constantinus had the same good fortune in having his own name attached to the compositions of his pupil[3021] as in the case of the writings of his Arabic predecessors.
[Sidenote: Afflacius more superstitious than his master.]
It may be further noted that the disciple seems to have been more superstitious than the master, for in one of the passages ascribed to Afflacius in the aforesaid compilation, after the correspondence with the Liber aureus has ceased, the text goes on to prescribe the suspension of goat’s horn over one’s head as a soporific and gives the following “prognostic of life or death.” Smear the forehead of the patient from ear to ear with musam eneam. “If he sleeps, he will live; but if not, he will die; and this has been tested in acute fevers.” Another method is to try if the patient’s urine will mix with the milk of a woman who is suckling a male child. If it will, he will live. Another procedure to induce sleep is then given, which consists in reading the first verse of the Gospel of John nine times over the patient’s head, placing beneath his head a missal or psalter and the names of the seven sleepers written on a scroll. This is not the first instance of such Christian magic that we have encountered in connection with the School of Salerno and we begin to suspect that it was rather characteristic. At any rate it was not uncommon in medieval medicine in general and was almost certainly introduced before Innocent III who in 1215 forbade ordeals and who frowned on other superstitious practices. Probably such Christian magic dates from a period before Arabic influence began to be felt. Thus again we have reason to doubt whether early medieval medicine or Salernitan medicine was less superstitious than Arabic medicine or than medieval medicine after the introduction of Arabic medicine. At least Constantinus Africanus who represents the introduction of translations from the Arabic is comparatively free from superstition.
Chapter XXXIII
TREATISES ON THE ARTS BEFORE THE INTRODUCTION OF ARABIC ALCHEMY
Latin treatises on the arts and colors—Progress of the arts even during the early middle ages—Scantiness of the sources—Character of Arabic alchemy—Different character of our Latin treatises—Compositiones ad tingenda—Mappe Clavicula—Some of its recipes—Question of symbolic nomenclature—Magical procedure with goats: in Mappe Clavicula—Similar passages in Heraclius—And Theophilus—A magic figure—Use of an incantation in tenth century alchemy—Experimental character of the work of Theophilus—How to make Spanish gold—The question of symbolic terminology again—Alchemy in the eleventh century—St. Dunstan and alchemy and magic—Introduction of Arabic alchemy in the twelfth century.
“ ... campum latissimum diversarum artium perscrutari....” —Theophilus, Schedula, I, Praefatio.
[Sidenote: Latin treatises on the arts and colors.]
We come to the consideration of several treatises dealing with colors and the arts and dating from about the eighth to the twelfth centuries and probably in part of earlier origin. These are the Compositiones ad tingenda in a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, the Mappe clavicula found in part in a tenth century manuscript and more fully in one of the twelfth century, the poem of Heraclius on The colors and arts of the Romans, and the remarkable treatise of Theophilus On diverse arts in three books.[3022] The oldest known manuscripts of Theophilus are of the twelfth century and he has been dated at the beginning of that century or end of the eleventh, and Heraclius, from whom he takes a number of his chapters, still earlier. But it scarcely seems that some of Theophilus’ descriptions of ecclesiastical art would have been written before the twelfth century. Mrs. Merrifield regarded only the first two metrical books of The colors and arts of the Romans as the work of Heraclius, and the third book in prose as a later addition of the twelfth or thirteenth century and probably written by a Frenchman, whereas she believed that Heraclius wrote in southern Italy under Byzantine influence.[3023] His poem sounds to me like an attempt to imitate Lucretius, while one also is inclined to associate it with the perhaps nearly contemporary poems in which the so-called Macer and Marbod recounted in verse form some of the properties of herbs and stones which they had learned from ancient writers.
[Sidenote: Progress of the arts even during the early middle ages.]
Berthelot regarded these treatises on the arts as proof that the knowledge of industrial and alchemical processes continued unbroken even in western Europe from Egypt to the middle ages, although he held that the theories of transmutation and the like reached the west only in the twelfth century through the Arabs.[3024] Moreover, there is progress in the technical processes just as there was progress in Romanesque and Gothic art. New items and recipes appear in the lists. Even in the declining Roman Empire and earliest middle age we have evidence of new discoveries. The artificial fabrication of cinnabar becomes known at some time after Dioscorides and Pliny and before the eighth century.[3025] The hydrostatic balance is described not only in the Mappe clavicula but in the Carmen de ponderibus of Priscian or of Q. Remnius Fannius Palaemo of the fourth or fifth century A. D.[3026] Heraclius speaks more than once in his poem with admiration of the works of art of the Roman “kings” and people, and asks, “Who now is capable of investigating these arts, is able to reveal to us what those potent artificers of immense intellect discovered for themselves?”[3027] However, his aim is to resurrect these arts; he assures the reader that he writes nothing which he has not first proved himself;[3028] and he tells in particular how he discovered by close scrutiny of a piece of Roman glass that there was gold-leaf placed between two layers of glass, a work which he successfully imitated.[3029] On the other hand, lead glazing, according to Alexandre Brongniart, director of the Sèvres manufactory, is not found in European pottery before the twelfth century, when it was applied in Pesaro about 1100 and is found on pottery in a tomb at Jumièges of about 1120.[3030]
[Sidenote: Scantiness of the sources.]
During the early medieval centuries the Byzantine Empire, Syria and Egypt after they were conquered by the Arabs, the busy streets of Bagdad and Cordova, and Persia undoubtedly produced a far more flourishing activity in the fine arts and the industrial arts than was the case in backward western Christian Europe. Yet the surviving evidence for such activity is disappointing, and seems limited to some notices and allusions in Arabian and Jewish travelers and historians, and to the dust-heaps of ruined cities like Fostat, Rai, and Rakka. As the finest early specimens of Byzantine mosaics are preserved in Italy at Ravenna, so our Latin treatises concerning the arts are perhaps the best extant for the early medieval period up to the twelfth century.
[Sidenote: Character of Arabic alchemy.]
A number of treatises on alchemy in Arabic have reached us but they, like the Byzantine, chiefly continue the fantastic mysticism and obscurity, the astrology and magic, of the ancient Greek alchemists. Thus in the Book of Crates we have a virgin priestess of the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, and the snake Ouroburos, also a vision of the seven heavens of the planets. The Book of Alhabib invokes Hermes Trismegistus and says that the sages have not revealed the secret of transmutation for fear of the anger of the demons. The Book of Ostanes, in which Andalusia is mentioned, has eighty-four different names for the philosopher’s stone, and a fantastic dream concerning seven doors and three inscriptions in Egyptian, concerning the Persian Magi, and a citation from an Indian sage concerning the healing virtues of the urine of a white elephant. The Book of Like Weights of Geber states that the sage can discern the mixture of the four elements in animals, plants, and stones by astrology and many other signs involving varied superstition. His Book of Sympathy again emphasizes the seven planets as the key to alchemy and has much about the spirit in matter. His Book on Quicksilver, although it promises clarity, is the most mystic and incomprehensible of all. In it we read of raising the dead and of use of such liquids as “a divine water” and the milk of an uncorrupted virgin.[3031]
[Sidenote: Different character of our Latin treatises.]
Our Latin treatises are as free from mysticism and obscurity, from dreams and visions, as they are from theoretical discussion. They are collections of recipes and directions which are supposed at least to be practical and which are written in a simple and straightforward style. They are not, however, taken together, by any means entirely free from astrological directions or belief in occult virtue or yet other superstition, and they include recipes for making gold. Of this there is least in the first treatise we have to consider.
[Sidenote: Compositiones ad tingenda.]
The Compositiones ad tingenda,[3032] a treatise or collection of notes and recipes preserved in a manuscript dating from the time of Charlemagne, throws some light on the technical processes preserved in the Latin west in the early middle ages and on the amount of knowledge of natural phenomena preserved in connection with the arts,—applied science in other words. It tells how to color glass and make mosaics, and describes a glass furnace; how to dye skins and make parchment; how to make gold-leaf, gold-thread, silver-leaf and tin-leaf; how to give copper the color of gold; it gives various directions and preparations for painting and gilding; and a description of various minerals and herbs employed in the above processes. Much is repeated that is found already in Pliny and Dioscorides, or in Aristotle and the Greek alchemists. But several things are mentioned, at least so far as we know, for the first time, although Berthelot believed that the compiler of the Compositiones ad tingenda had copied them from earlier works, very probably Byzantine or late Roman, and not invented them himself. We find here the first mention of vitriol and of “bronze,”—a word apparently derived from Brundisium. Amor aquae is used for the first time for the scum formed on waters containing iron salts and other metals, and we also meet the first instance of the preparation of cinnabar by means of sulphur and mercury. The work contains very little superstition with the exception of one passage which Berthelot has already noted.[3033] Once a stone is spoken of as having solar virtue; lead is distinguished as masculine and feminine; the gall of a tortoise is used in a composition for writing golden letters, and pig’s blood is employed in another connection. But these are trifling signs of occult science.
[Sidenote: Mappe Clavicula.]
More alchemistic in character is the Mappe Clavicula,[3034] which, in its fuller twelfth century form, embodies the Compositiones ad tingenda in a different order,[3035] and adds about twice as many more recipes for making gold, making colors, writing with gold, glues and various other matters, including building directions. Berthelot regarded two items instructing how to make images of the gods as signs of an ancient pagan origin for the work.[3036] One of these items occurs in the twelfth century text, the other in the tenth century table of contents. On the other hand Berthelot believed that the twelfth century version contained the oldest directions for the distillation of alcohol.[3037] The Mappe Clavicula adds a good deal that is of a superstitious character to the Compositiones ad tingenda which it includes, and at the same time lays considerable stress upon experimental method.
[Sidenote: Some of its recipes.]
It opens with a recipe “for making the best gold,” the first of a long series. One of the ingredients in this case is “a bit of moon-earth, which the Greeks call Affroselinum.” The third recipe advises one to experiment at first with only a little of the compound in question, until one learns the process more thoroughly.[3038] The ingredients for gold-making in the sixth recipe include the gall of a goat and of a bull, and saffron from Lycia or Arabia, which is to be pounded in a Theban mortar in the sun in dog-days. At the close of the fourteenth recipe, into which the gall of a bull again enters we have one of the injunctions to secrecy so dear to the alchemist: “Hide the sacred secret which should be transmitted to no one, nor give to anyone the prophetic.”[3039] It is also implied that alchemy is a religious or divine art in the twentieth recipe where it is said that operators should concede all things to divine works. But such mystic allusions are infrequent as well as brief. In the same twentieth item gold is supposed to be made from a mixture of iron rust, magnet, foreign alum, myrrh, gold, and wine. It is also stated that those who will not credit the great utility that there is in humors are those who do not make demonstration for themselves, another instance of the experimental character of the work. The forty-first recipe states that gold may be dissolved in order to write with it by dipping it in the blood of an Indian dragon, placing it in a glass vessel, and surrounding it with coals. In the sixty-ninth item the blood of a dragon or of a cock is mixed with urine and the stone celidonius. The gall of a bull and the blood of a pig are used again in recipes sixty-eight and one hundred and twenty-eight.
[Sidenote: Question of symbolic nomenclature.]
It has sometimes been contended, chiefly by persons who did not realize how universal was the ascription of great virtue to the parts of animals in ancient and medieval science and their use as remedies in the medicine of the same periods, that they are not to be taken literally in alchemical recipes but are to be understood symbolically and are cryptic designations for common mineral substances. Thus Berthelot cites a passage from the Latin De anima, ascribed to Avicenna, which says, “I am going to tell you a secret: the eye of a man or bull or cow or deer signifies mercury,” and so on.[3040] But despite what Berthelot goes on to say about the “old prophetic nomenclature” of the Egyptians, I am inclined to think that such symbolism is mainly a refinement of later alchemists, and that originally most such expressions were intended literally. Certainly it would be impossible to explain all the medicinal use of parts of animals in Pliny’s Natural History as either symbolic or derived from the Egyptian priests. Like the suggestion that Roger Bacon wrote in cipher, the symbolic nomenclature theory is based on the assumption that the men of old concealed great secrets under an appearance of error. And where such cryptograms and symbols were employed, it was almost invariably done, we may be sure, with the object of impressing the reader with an exaggerated notion of the importance of what was written rather than because the writer really had any great discovery that he wished to conceal. That symbolic language was employed by alchemists, especially in the latest middle age and early modern centuries, is not to be questioned. The use of the names of the planets for the corresponding metals is a familiar example. But most such symbolic nomenclature is equally obvious, while there is no reason for not taking the use of parts of animals literally. Indeed, in many passages it must be so taken, as in a later item of the Mappe Clavicula[3041] which has no concern with alchemy and where in order to poison an arrow for use in battle, we are instructed to dip it in the sweat from the right side of a horse between the hip-bones. The following experiments with goats also illustrate the great value set upon animal fluids and substances.
[Sidenote: Magical procedure with goats in the Mappe Clavicula.]
We are reminded of the directions given by Marcellus Empiricus for the preparation of goat’s blood by a recipe for making figures of crystal which occurs near the close of the Mappe Clavicida.[3042] A he-goat which has never indulged in sexual intercourse is to be shut up in a cask for three days until he has completely digested everything that he had in his belly. He is then to be fed on ivy for four days, at the end of which time he is to be slain and his blood mixed with his urine which is now collected from the cask. By soaking the crystal overnight in this mixture it can be moulded or carved at will. This experiment is immediately preceded by a somewhat similar procedure for cutting glass with steel.[3043] The glass is to be softened and the steel is to be tempered by placing them either in the milk of a Saracen she-goat, who has been fed upon ivy and milked by scratching her udders with nettles, or in the lotion of a small girl of ruddy complexion, which must be taken before sunrise.
[Sidenote: Similar passages in Heraclius.]
Very similar passages are found in the works of Heraclius and Theophilus, the former of whom gives the following directions for glass engraving: “Oh! all you artists who wish to engrave glass correctly, now I will show you just as I myself have proven. I sought the fat worms which the plow turns up from the earth, and the useful art in such matters bade me at the same time seek vinegar and the hot blood of a huge he-goat, which I had taken pains to tie up under cover and to feed on strong ivy for a while. Next I mixed the worms and vinegar with the warm blood and anointed all the bright shining phial. This done, I tried to engrave the glass with the hard stone called pyrites.”[3044] In another passage Heraclius recommends the use of the urine and blood of a goat in engraving gems,[3045] and he also states that the blood of a goat makes crystal easier to carve.[3046]
[Sidenote: And Theophilus.]
Theophilus states that poets and artificers have greatly cherished the ivy, “because they recognized the occult powers which it contains within itself.”[3047] He also affirms that the blood of a goat makes crystal easier to carve, but he recommends the blood of a living goat two or three years old and repeated insertion of the crystal in an incision between the animal’s breast and abdomen.[3048] He also recommends a somewhat similar procedure to that of the Mappe Clavicula with a goat and a cask.[3049] In this case the goat should be three years old, and after being bound for three days without food should be fed for two days on nothing but fern. The following night he should be shut up in a cask with holes in the bottom through which his urine can be collected in another vessel for two or three nights, when the goat may be released and the urine employed to temper iron tools. Or the urine of a small red-headed boy may be employed, as it is better for tempering than plain water. Indeed, both Theophilus and Heraclius make much use of parts of animals in the arts: various animals’ teeth to shine and polish things with, horse dung mixed with clay, skins and bladders, saliva and ear-wax to polish niello, and so forth.
[Sidenote: A magic figure.]
Returning to the Mappe Clavicula we note the employment of a magic figure called arragab, which Berthelot thinks is a small lead image.[3050] By means of it the flow of a spring may be stopped; a cup may be made either to retain or to empty its contents; if the cows drink first from the trough, there will be enough water for both the cows and the horses, but if the horses drink first, there will not be enough for either. The same figure enables one to fill a pitcher from a cask without diminishing the amount of liquid in the cask, or to construct a lamp which will produce phantoms. It also makes soldiers leave their camp without their spears and yet return with them. After this flight into the realm of magic we come back to a more plausibly physical basis for marvels in a description of four revolving hoops or circles within which a vessel may be revolved in any direction without spilling its contents.[3051]
[Sidenote: Use of an incantation in tenth century alchemy.]
The passages which we have just noted in the Mappe Clavicula cannot be surely traced back earlier than the twelfth century version of it and do not appear in the table of contents which is preserved in the tenth century Schlestadt manuscript and which covers only a portion of the chapters of the twelfth century manuscript, but also some other chapters which are not extant. But that magic was not entirely absent from the earlier version to which this table of contents seems to apply is evidenced by the fact that one of the chapter headings dealing with the fabrication of gold mentions a prayer or incantation to be recited during the process.[3052]
[Sidenote: Experimental character of the work of Theophilus.]
The great importance of the work of Theophilus in the history of art is too generally recognized to need elaboration here. Our purpose is rather to point out that in it information of great value is found side by side with a considerable amount of misguided natural theory and magical ceremony. The stress laid by Theophilus upon personal observation, experience, and experimental method should not, however, pass unnoticed. He has scrutinized the works of art in the church of St. Sophia one by one “with diligent experience,” has tested everything by eye and hand, has as a “curious explorer” made all sorts of experiments, and appears to represent transparent stained glass as his own discovery or idea.[3053] Nor is he the only experimenter; he also speaks of “modern workmen” who deceive many incautious persons by their imitation of the appearance of most precious Arabian gold which “is frequently found employed in the most ancient vases.”[3054]
[Sidenote: How to make Spanish gold.]
Theophilus, however, believes that other metals can really be transmuted into gold, and we may repeat his amusing account of how Spanish gold “is made from red copper and powdered basilisk and human blood and vinegar.” “For the Gentiles, whose skill in this art is well known, create basilisks in this wise. They have an underground chamber completely walled in on all sides with stone, and with two windows so small as scarcely to admit any light. In this they put two cocks of twelve or fifteen years and give them plenty of food. These, when they have grown fat, from the heat of their fat have commerce together and lay eggs. As soon as the eggs are laid the cocks are ejected and toads are put in to sit on the eggs and are fed upon bread. When the eggs are hatched chicks come forth who look like young roosters, but after seven days they grow serpents’ tails and would straightway burrow into the ground, were the chamber not paved with stone. Guarding against this, their masters have round brazen vessels of great amplitude, perforated on all sides, with narrow mouths, in which they put the chicks and close the mouths with copper covers and bury them underground, and the chicks are nourished for six months by the subtle earth which enters through the perforations. After this they uncover them and apply a strong fire until the beasts within are totally consumed. When this is over and it has cooled off, they remove and carefully pulverize them, adding a third part of the blood of a ruddy man, which blood is dried and powdered. Having compounded these two they temper them with strong vinegar in a clean vessel; then they take very thin plates of the purest red copper and spread this mixture over them on both sides and place them in the fire. And when they grow white hot, they take them out and quench and wash them in the same mixture, and this process they repeat until the mixture has eaten through the copper, and so obtain the weight and color of gold. This gold is suited for all operations.”[3055]
[Sidenote: The question of symbolic terminology again.]
Mr. Hendrie held that Theophilus was here describing in symbolic language a process “for procuring pure gold by the means of the mineral acids;” and that “the toads of Theophilus which hatch the eggs are probably fragments of the mineral salt, nitrate of potash; ... the blood of a red man ... probably a nitrate of ammonia; fine earth, a muriate of soda (common salt); the cocks, the sulphates of copper and iron; the eggs, gold ore; the hatched chickens, which require a stone pavement, sulphuric acid produced by burning these in a stone vessel, collecting the fumes.... The elements of nitro-muriatic acid are all here, the solvent for gold.”[3056] Mr. Hendrie leaves, however, a number of details unexplained and he admits that “Unfortunately each chemist appears to have varied the symbols in use.” Certainly one would have to vary them in almost every case to make any sense out of such procedures as this of Theophilus. On the other hand, there is nothing very surprising in his procedure taken literally to one who is acquainted with the beliefs of ancient and medieval science and magic. And certainly Shakespeare’s line concerning the precious jewel in the toad’s head, which Hendrie quotes in this connection, is much more likely to be meant literally than to be the symbolic “jargon of the alchemist.” Later we shall hear again from Alexander Neckam, in a passage which has no connection with alchemy, of the basilisk hatched by a toad from an egg laid by a cock, and we shall hear from Albertus Magnus of an experiment in which a toad’s eye was proved superior in virtue to an emerald.
[Sidenote: Alchemy in the eleventh century.]
The treatises which we have been considering appear, at least for the most part, to antedate the Latin translations of works of alchemy from the Arabic, although it is possible that, just as the first translations of mathematical and astronomical works from the Arabic go back to the tenth century at least, so the reception of Arabic alchemy may have begun in a small way before the twelfth century. At any rate we find that in the eleventh century not only were Michael Psellus and other Byzantine scholars spreading the doctrines of alchemy,[3057] but a scholium to Adam of Bremen records the presence at the court of Bishop Adalbert of Bremen of an alchemist in the person of a baptized Jew.[3058]
[Sidenote: St. Dunstan and alchemy and magic.]
To St. Dunstan, the famous abbot of Glastonbury, archbishop of Canterbury, and statesman of the tenth century (924 or 925 to 988), is attributed a treatise on the philosopher’s stone contained in a Corpus Christi manuscript of the fifteenth century at Oxford and printed at Cassel in 1649. No genuine works by him seem to be extant, however, but it is interesting to note that along with his reputation for learning and mechanical skill went the association of his name with magic. In his studious youth he was accused of magic, driven from court, and thrown into a muddy pond. His contemporary biographer also narrates how the devil appeared to him in various animal and other terrifying forms. His favorite studies were mathematics and music, and he was said to own a magic harp which played while hanging by itself on the wall.[3059]
[Sidenote: Introduction of Arabic alchemy in the twelfth century.]
Berthelot has associated the introduction of Arabic alchemy into Christian western Europe with the Latin translation by Robert of Chester of The Book of Morienus, but incorrectly dated it in 1182 A. D.,[3060] whereas the mention of that date in the manuscripts has reference to the Spanish era and denotes the year 1144 A. D.[3061] The main reason for regarding Robert’s translation as one of the earliest is that he remarks in his preface, “What alchemy is and what is its composition, your Latin world does not yet know truly.” Of the work translated by Robert we shall treat more fully in a later chapter on Hermetic Books in the Middle Ages. Here we may further note the existence of a work of alchemy in another twelfth century manuscript.[3062] It is a brief work in four chapters and its superstitious character may be inferred from its opening instruction to “take four hundred hen’s eggs laid in the month of March,” and its citation of Artesius concerning divination by the reflection or refraction of the sun’s rays or moon-beams in liquids or a mirror. Since the treatise bears the title Alchamia, it is probably safe to assume that it represents Arabic influence.