Chapter XXXVIII
SOME TWELFTH CENTURY TRANSLATORS, CHIEFLY OF ASTROLOGY FROM THE ARABIC IN SPAIN
Importance of medieval translations--Plan of this chapter--Transmission of Arabic astrology--Walcher, prior of Malvern--Pedro Alfonso--His letter to the Peripatetics--Experimental method--Magic and scepticism in the Disciplina clericalis--John of Seville--Dates in his career--Further works by him, chiefly astrological--John’s experimental astrology--Gundissalinus De divisione philosophiae--Place of magic in the classification of the sciences--Al-Farabi De ortu scientiarum--Gundissalinus on astrology--Robert Kilwardby De ortu sive divisione scientiarum--Plato of Tivoli--Robert of Chester--Hermann the Dalmatian--Hugh of Santalla--A contemporary memorial of Gerard of Cremona--Account by a pupil of his astrological teaching--Character of Gerard’s translations--Science and religion in the preface to a translation of the Almagest from the Greek--Arabs and moderns--Astronomy at Marseilles--Appendix I. Some medieval Johns, mentioned in the manuscripts, in the fields of natural and occult science, mathematics and medicine.
[Sidenote: Importance of medieval translations.]
Already we have treated of a number of Arabic works of occult science which are extant in Latin translations, or have mentioned men, important in the history of medieval science like Constantinus Africanus or Adelard of Bath, whose works were either largely or partly translations. In future chapters we shall have occasion to mention other men and works of the same sort. We have already seen, too, that translations from the Greek were being made all through the early middle ages and in the tenth century; and we shall see this continue in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries especially in connection with Galen, Aristotle, and Ptolemy. We have also seen reasons for suspecting that the Latin versions of certain works were older than the so-called Greek originals, that works were sometimes translated from Arabic into Greek as well as from Greek into Arabic, and that there probably never were any Arabic originals for some so-called translations from the Arabic which are extant only in Latin. All this is not yet to mention versions from Hebrew and Syriac or in French, Spanish, and Anglo-Saxon. We have seen also in general how important and influential in the history of medieval learning was the work of the translator, and yet how complicated and difficult to follow. Many names of translators are mentioned in the medieval manuscripts: some, for instance, who will not be treated of in the present chapter are: from the Greek, Aristippus of Sicily, Bartholomew of Messina, Burgundio of Pisa, Eugenius admiral of Sicily, Grumerus of Piacenza, Nicolaus of Reggio, Stephen of Messina, and William of Moerbeke; from the Arabic, Egidius de Tebaldis of Parma, Arnold of Barcelona, Blasius Armegandus or Ermengardus of Montpellier, Marcus of Toledo, the canon Salio of Padua, John Lodoycus Tetrapharmacus, Philip of Spain, Philip of Tripoli, Roger of Parma, Ferragius, and so on. But not all such names of translators can be correctly placed and dated, and many translations remain anonymous in the manuscripts. Into this vast and difficult field Jourdain’s work on the medieval translations of Aristotle made but an entrance, and that one which now needs amendment, and even such extensive bibliographical investigations as those of Steinschneider have only made rough charts of portions. Some detailed monographs on single translators[159] and the like topics have been written, but many more will be required before we shall have a satisfactory general orientation.
[Sidenote: Plan of this chapter.]
The subject of medieval translations as a whole of course in any case lies in large part beyond the scope of our investigation and would lead us into other literary and learned fields not bearing upon experimental science and magic. In the present chapter we shall further limit ourselves to some translators of the twelfth century who chiefly translated works of astrology from the Arabic and who, although they themselves often came from other lands, were especially active in Spain. One or two men will be introduced who do not possess all these qualifications, but who are related to the other men and works included in the chapter.
[Sidenote: Transmission of Arabic astrology.]
Throughout the twelfth century from its first years to its close may be traced the transit of learning from the Arabic world, and more particularly from the Spanish peninsula, to northwestern Europe. Three points may be made concerning this transmission: it involves Latin translation from the Arabic; the matter translated is largely mathematical, or more especially astronomical and astrological in character; finally, it is often experimental.
[Sidenote: Walcher, prior of Malvern.]
On the very threshold of the twelfth century, in addition to Adelard of Bath to whom we have given a separate chapter, we meet with another Englishman, Walcher, prior of Malvern, whom we find associated with Peter Alphonso or Pedro Alfonso, who apparently was a converted Spanish Jew. Walcher’s experimental observations would seem to have antedated his association with Pedro, since a chapter headed, “Of the writer’s experience,”[160] in lunar tables which he composed between 1107 and 1112, tells of an eclipse which he saw in Italy in 1091 but could not observe exactly because he had no clock (horologium) at hand to measure the time, and of another in the succeeding year after his return to England which he was able to observe more scientifically with the aid of an astrolabe. In 1120 Walcher translated into Latin, at least according to the testimony of the manuscripts, an astronomical work by Pedro Alfonso on the Dragon.[161] Pedro perhaps wrote the original in Hebrew or Spanish or translated it from the Arabic into one of those languages, but we also know of his writing in Latin himself.
[Sidenote: Pedro Alfonso.]
This Pedro Alfonso seems to have been the same[162] who in 1106 in his forty-fourth year was baptized at Huesca with the name of his godfather, King Alfonso I of Aragon, and who wrote the Disciplina clericalis and Dialogi cum Iudeo. Indeed we find the Disciplina clericalis and De dracone ascribed to him in the same manuscript.[163] In another manuscript chronological and astronomical tables are found under his name and the accompanying explanatory text opens, “Said Pedro Alfonso, servant of Jesus Christ and translator of this book.”[164] This expression is very similar, as Haskins has pointed out, to a heading in a manuscript of the Disciplina clericalis, “Said Pedro Alfonso, servant of Christ Jesus, physician of Henry the first (sic) king of the Angles, composer of this book.”[165] The experimental pretensions and astrological leanings of the astronomical treatise are suggested by Pedro’s statement that the science of the stars divides into three parts, marvelous in reasoning, notable in the signification of events, and approved in experience; and that the third part is the science of the nature of the spheres and stars, and their significations in earthly affairs which happen from the virtue of their nature and the diversity of their movements, things known by experiment.
[Sidenote: His letter to the Peripatetics.]
In a manuscript at the British Museum[166] I have read what seems to be a third astronomical treatise by Pedro Alfonso, differing both from the preceding and from the De dracone.[167] We meet as before the expression, “Said Alfonso, servant of Jesus Christ and translator of this book,”[168] and the emphasis upon experiment and astrology continues. It will be noted further that in this treatise, which takes the form of a letter to Peripatetics and those nourished by the milk of philosophy everywhere through France, Pedro is no longer connected with Englishmen, although this manuscript, too, is in an English library. After rehearsing the utility of grammar, dialectic, and arithmetic, Pedro finally comes to astronomy, an art with which “all of the Latins generally” are little acquainted, in which he himself has long been occupied, and a portion of which he presents to them as something rare and precious. It has come to his ears that some seekers after wisdom are preparing to traverse distant provinces and penetrate to remote regions in order to acquire fuller astronomical knowledge, and he proposes to save them from this inconvenience by bringing astronomy to them. Apparently, therefore, this letter to the Peripatetics and other students of philosophy is simply the advertisement of, or preface to, a translation by Pedro of some astronomical or astrological work, presumably from the Arabic.[169] It is accordingly mainly devoted to a justification of the thorough study of astronomy and astrology. Many persons, in Pedro’s opinion, are simply too lazy to take the trouble to ground themselves properly therein. Those who think they know all about the subject because they have read Macrobius and a few other authors are found wanting in a crisis,--a passage meant doubtless as a hit at those who base their knowledge of astronomy simply upon Latin authors. Pedro also alludes to those who have been accustomed to regard themselves as teachers of astronomy and now hate to turn pupils again.
[Sidenote: Experimental method.]
The contrast which Pedro draws, however, is not so much between Latin and Arabic writings as it is between dependence upon a few past authorities and adoption of the experimental method. He argues that the principles of astronomy were discovered in the first place only through experimentation, and that today no one can understand the art fundamentally without actual observation and experience. He believes that astrology as well as astronomy is proved by experience. “It has been proved therefore by experimental argument that we can truly affirm that the sun and moon and other planets exert their influences in earthly affairs.”[170] Or, as he says in another passage, “And indeed many other innumerable things happen on earth in accordance with the courses of the stars, and pass unnoticed by the senses of most men, but are discovered and understood by the subtle acumen of learned men who are skilled in this art.”[171] Pedro’s letter further includes some astrological medicine, interesting in connection with the statement in another manuscript that he was the physician of Henry I of England. In this context, too, he shows familiarity with the translations from the Arabic of Constantinus Africanus.[172]
[Sidenote: Magic and scepticism in the Disciplina clericalis.]
Pedro’s Disciplina clericalis,[173] although a collection of oriental tales rather than a work of natural science,[174] contains one or two passages of interest to us. Asked by a disciple what the seven arts are, the master gives a list somewhat different from the common Latin trivium and quadrivium, namely, logic, arithmetic, geometry, physics, music, and astronomy. As to the seventh there is some dispute, he says. Philosophers who believe in divination make necromancy the seventh; other philosophers who do not believe in predictions substitute philosophy; while persons who are ignorant of philosophy affirm that grammar is one of the seven arts.[175] Thus while Pedro retains all four arts of the quadrivium, he holds only to logic in the case of the trivium, omitting rhetoric entirely and tending to substitute physics and necromancy for it and grammar. This tendency away from belles-lettres to a curriculum made up of logic and philosophy, mathematical and natural science, also soon became characteristic of Latin learning, while the tendency to include necromancy as one of the liberal arts or natural sciences, although less successful, will be found in other writers who are to be considered in this chapter. In the passage just discussed the importance of the number seven also receives emphasis, as the master goes on to speak of other sevens than the arts. One is impressed also in reading the Disciplina clericalis by a sceptical note concerning magic and the marvelous properties of natural objects, as in the tale of the thief who repeated a charm seven times and tried to take hold of a moonbeam, but as a result fell and was captured, and in the tale of the Churl and the Bird, who promised his captor, if released, to reveal three pieces of wisdom.[176] The first was not to believe everyone. “This saide,” in the quaint wording of the medieval English version, “the litel brid ascendid vpon the tree and with a sweete voice bigan to synge: ‘Blessid be god that hath shit and closed the sight of thyn eyen and taken awey thi wisdam, forwhi if thow haddest sought in the plites of myn entrailes thow shuldest have founde a jacinct the weight of an vnce.’” When the churl wept and beat his breast at this announcement of his lost opportunity, the bird again warned him not to be so credulous. “And how belivistow that in me shuld be a jacynt the weight of an vnce, whan I and al my body is nat of somoche weight?”
[Sidenote: John of Seville.]
Apparently the chief and most voluminous translator of astrological works from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth century was John of Seville.[177] Although he translated some other mathematical, medical, and philosophical treatises, the majority of his translations seem to have been astrological, and they remained in use during the later middle ages and many of them appeared in print in early editions. So many Johns[178] are mentioned in medieval manuscripts and even wrote in almost the same fields as John of Seville that it is not easy to distinguish his works. Jourdain identified him with a John Avendeath or Avendehut (Joannes ibn David) who worked with the archdeacon Gundissalinus under the patronage of Raymond, archbishop of Toledo from 1126 to 1151.[179] John of Seville was perhaps not the man who worked with Gundissalinus[180] but he certainly appears to have addressed translations to Archbishop Raymond. Thus in speaking of Costa ben Luca’s De differentia spiritus et animae we saw that the manuscripts stated that it was translated by John of Seville from Arabic into Latin for Archbishop Raymond of Toledo.[181] John of Seville is further styled of Luna or Limia, in one manuscript as bishop of Luna,[182] and also seems to be the same person as John of Toledo or of Spain. In one of the citations of the Speculum astronomiae of Albertus Magnus he is called “Joannes Ulgembus Hispalensis.”[183] John Paulinus, who translated a collection of twelve experiments with snakeskin entitled Life-saver which he discovered when he “was in Alexandria, a city of the Egyptians,” is in at least one manuscript of his translation identified with John of Spain.[184]
[Sidenote: Dates in his career.]
Certain dates in the career of John of Seville may be regarded as fairly well fixed. In the Arabic year 529, or 1135 A. D., he translated the Rudiments of Astronomy of Alfraganus (Ahmed b. Muh. b. Ketîr el-Fargânî, or Al-Fargani)[185]; in 1142 A. D. he compiled his own Epitome of the Art of Astrology or Quadripartite Work of Judgments of the Stars,[186] consisting of Isagoge in astrologiam and four books of judgments. In 1153 A. D. he translated the Nativities of Albohali[187] (Yahyâ b. Gâlib, Abû Alî el-Chaiyât), if we accept the “John of Toledo” who is said to have translated that treatise as the same person as our John of Spain.[188] John of Spain is sometimes said to have died in 1157, but Förster argued that the Tarasia, queen of Spain, to whom the medical portion of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets, translated by John of Spain, was dedicated, was not the queen of Portugal contemporary with Archbishop Raymond of Toledo, but queen of Leon from 1176 to 1180; and in 1175 a monk of Mt. Tabor is called Johannes Hispanus.[189] If a Vienna manuscript is correct in saying that a marvelous cure for a sore heel which it contains was sent to Pope Gregory by John of Spain, the pope meant must be Gregory VIII (1187).[190] There is of course no impossibility in the supposition that the literary career of John of Spain extended from the days of Archbishop Raymond to those of Gregory VIII or Queen Tarasia. Still there is some doubt whether all the works extant under the name John of Spain were composed by the same individual.[191]
[Sidenote: Further works by him, chiefly astrological.]
Several books dealing with the science of judgments from the stars by John of Spain are included in the bibliography of deserving works of astrology in the Speculum Astronomiae of Albertus Magnus, but are perhaps simply sections of his Epitome[192] which, after discussing in the Isagoge the natures of the signs and planets, takes up in turn the four main divisions of judicial astrology, namely; conjunctions and revolutions, nativities, interrogations, and elections. John seems to have translated several astrological treatises by Albumasar and Messahala (Mâ-sâ-allâh), the treatise by Thebit ben Corat on astrological images of which we have already treated, that by Abenragel (ʿAli b. abî’l-Rigâl, abû’l-Hasan) on elections, and the Introduction to the Mystery of Judgments from the Stars by Alchabitius or Alcabitius[193] (ʿAbdelʿazîz b. ʿOtmân el-Qabîsî), which should not be confused with his own somewhat similar Ysagoge. Of other translations by John of Spain, such as a portion of the Secret of Secrets of the Pseudo-Aristotle, the twelve experiments with pulverized snakeskin, and Costa ben Luca’s De differentia spiritus et animae, we treat elsewhere. He was perhaps also the author of a chiromancy.[194]
[Sidenote: John’s experimental astrology.]
The experimental character of John’s own handbook on astrology is worth noting. In the main, it is true, he follows the works of the philosophers and astrologers of the past, especially when he finds them in agreement.[195] Besides constantly alluding to what astrologers in general or the ancients say on the point in question, he often cites of the Greeks Ptolemy and Dorotheus (“Dorothius”) and Hermes and Doronius, but probably through Arabic mediums. He also gives us the views of the masters of India, and distinguishes as “more recent masters of this art”[196] the Arabic writers “Alchindus” and Messahala. The latter he seems to regard as an Indian or at least as skilful in their methods of judgment.[197] But he also notes when his authorities are in disagreement[198] or points out that his own experience in many nativities contradicts their views,[199] against which John’s readers are warned when they find them in the books of judgments. Even Ptolemy is twice criticized on the basis of actual experiment.[200] We see that John was not merely a translator or writer on astrology but an expert practitioner of the art. He supplements the divergent views of past authorities, or qualifies their consensus of opinion, by his own apparently rich experience as a practicing or experimental astrologer. Indeed, for him the theory and practice of the art, the paths of reason and experience, are so united that he not merely speaks of “this reasoning” or view as being “tested by experience,”[201] but seems to employ the words ratio and experimentum somewhat indiscriminately for astrological tenet or technique.[202]
[Sidenote: Gundissalinus De divisione philosophiae.]
The chief known work of Gundissalinus, the archdeacon who was for a time perhaps associated with John of Spain in the labor of translation, is his De divisione philosophiae,[203] a treatise which owes much to the Turkoman Al-Farabi (Muh. b. Muh. b. Tarchân b. Uzlag, Abû Nasr, el-Fârâbî). If Baur is right in thinking that Gundissalinus made use of translations by Gerard of Cremona, 1114-1187, in the De divisione philosophiae,[204] it would appear to be a later work than his translating for Archbishop Raymond, 1130-1150, which perhaps began as early as 1133.[205]
[Sidenote: Place of magic in the classification of the sciences.]
In the classification and description of the sciences which make up the bulk of the De divisione philosophiae Gundissalinus gives a certain place to the occult arts. At the beginning of the book, it is true, the magic arts are not classed among useful things of the spirit like the virtues and true sciences (honestae scientiae). Neither, however, are they grouped with pride, avarice, and vain glory as harmful vices, but are merely classed along with worldly honors as vanities.[206] “Nigromancy according to physics,” however, is later listed as one of eight sub-divisions of natural science together with alchemy, medicine, agriculture, navigation, the science of mirrors, and the sciences of images and of judgments.[207] Gundissalinus was innocent, however, of any detailed knowledge of necromancy or indeed of any of the other sub-divisions except medicine. He explains that he has not yet advanced as far as these subjects in his studies.[208] He is manifestly simply copying an Arabic classification, probably from Al-Farabi’s De ortu scientiarum, and one of which we find similar traces in other medieval Christian authors.[209]
[Sidenote: Al-Farabi De ortu scientiarum.]
This little treatise on The Rise of the Sciences by Al-Farabi, although it occupies only a leaf or two in the manuscripts and has only recently been printed,[210] is a rather important one to note, as other of its statements than its eight sub-divisions of natural science seem to be paralleled in medieval Latin writers. There seems, for instance, a resemblance between its attitude towards the sciences and classification of them and that of Roger Bacon in the Opus Maius.[211] Al-Farabi believes in God the Creator, as his opening words show, and he regards “divine science” as the end and perfection of the other sciences; “and beyond it investigation does not go, for it is itself the goal to which all inquiry tends.”[212] At the same time Al-Farabi emphasizes the importance of natural science, adding its eight parts to the four divisions of the quadrivium--arithmetic, geometry, astrology, and music, and saying, “Moreover, this last (i. e. natural) science is greater and broader than any of those sciences and disciplines (or, than any of those disciplinary sciences).” We need a science, he says in effect, which deals inclusively with changes in nature, showing how they are brought about and their causes and enabling us to repel their harmful action when we wish or to augment them,--a science of action and passion.[213] This suggestion of applied science and of a connection between it and magic also reminds one of Roger Bacon, as does Al-Farabi’s statement later that the beginning of all sciences is the science of language.
[Sidenote: Gundissalinus on astrology.]
Both for Al-Farabi and Gundissalinus the sciences of images and judgments were undoubtedly astrological. Gundissalinus himself believes that the spiritual virtue of the celestial bodies is the efficient cause, ordained by the Creator, of generation, corruption, and other natural operations in this corporeal world. He defines astrologia as we would astronomy, while he explains that astronomia is the science of answering questions from the position of the planets and signs. There are many such sciences,--geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy, and augury; but astronomy is superior to the rest because it predicts what will befall upon earth from the dispositions of the heavenly bodies. Gundissalinus also repeats Isidore’s distinction between astronomia and astrologia, and between the natural and superstitious varieties of “astronomy.”[214]
[Sidenote: Robert Kilwardby, De ortu sive divisione scientiarum.]
At this point it may be well to note briefly a later work with a very similar title to that of Gundissalinus, namely, the De ortu sive divisione scientiarum of Robert Kilwardby,[215] archbishop of Canterbury from 1272 to 1279. The work borrows a great deal from Isidore, Hugh of St. Victor, and Gundissalinus. One of its more original passages is that in which Kilwardby suggests an alteration in Hugh’s division of the mechanical arts, omitting theatrical performances as more suited to Gentiles than Catholics, and arranging the mechanical arts in a trivium consisting of earth-culture, food-science, and medicine, and a quadrivium made up of costuming, armor-making, architecture, and business-courses (mercatura), after the analogy of the seven liberal arts.[216] Kilwardby, as has been already noted elsewhere, repeats Hugh’s classification of the magic arts.[217]
[Sidenote: Plato of Tivoli.]
Next in importance to John of Spain as a translator of Arabic astrology in the first half of the twelfth century should probably be ranked Plato of Tivoli. They seem to have worked independently and sometimes to have made distinct translations of the same work, as in the case of the Nativities of Albohali and the Epistle of Messahala. On the whole, Plato’s translations[218] would appear slightly to antedate John’s. Haskins has shown, however, that the date 1116, hitherto assigned for Plato’s translation of the Liber embadorum of Savasorda, should be 1145.[219] But Plato’s translation of Albohali is dated 1136, while John’s was not made until 1153.[220] In 1136 is also dated Plato’s translation of the astrological work of Almansor in the form of one hundred and fifty or so brief aphorisms, judgments, propositions, or capitula, which later appeared repeatedly in print. Two years later he turned the famous Quadripartitum of Ptolemy into Latin. His other translations include Albucasis (Abû’l-Qâsim Chalaf b. ʿAbbâs el-Zahrâwî) on the astrolabe, Haly (ʿAlî b. Ridwân b. ʿAlî b. Ğaʿfar, Abû’l-Hasan) on nativities, and a geomancy. Most of Plato’s translations were produced at Barcelona.
[Sidenote: Robert of Chester.]
In a manuscript at the British Museum[221] one of Plato of Tivoli’s translations is immediately preceded in the same large clear hand, different from the smaller and later writing employed in the remainder of the manuscript, by a translation of the Judgments of the astrologer Alkindi by Robert of Chester,[222] with an introduction to “my Hermann,” whom Robert commends highly as an astronomer. A letter written in 1143 by Peter the Venerable to St. Bernard tells how in 1141 he had induced two “acute and well trained scholars,” who were then residing in Spain near the river Ebro, to turn for a time from the arts of astrology which they had been studying there, and to translate the Koran. These two translators were the friends whom we have just mentioned, Hermann of Dalmatia and Robert of Chester. Robert, too, tells us in the prefatory letter to the translation of the Koran, completed in 1143, that this piece of work was “a digression from his principal studies of astronomy and geometry.” Besides such mathematical treatises as his translations of the Judicia of Alkindi, the Algebra of Al-Khowarizmi, a treatise on the astrolabe ascribed to Ptolemy, and several sets of astronomical tables, including a revision or rearrangement of Adelard of Bath’s translation of the Tables of Al-Khowarizmi, Robert on February 11, 1144, translated a treatise on alchemy which Morienus Romanus, a monk of Jerusalem, was supposed to have written for “Calid, king of Egypt,” or Prince Khalid ibn Jazid, a Mohammedan pretender and patron of learning at Alexandria. Of it we shall treat more fully in another chapter. About 1150 we seem to find Robert returned to his native England and writing at London.[223]
[Sidenote: Hermann the Dalmatian.]
Hermann the Dalmatian, or twelfth century translator, must be distinguished on the one hand from Hermann the Lame who wrote on the astrolabe,[224] and apparently on the other hand from Hermann the German who translated Averroes and Aristotle in the thirteenth century.[225] To the twelfth century translator we may ascribe such works as a treatise on rains,[226] a brief glossary of Arabic astronomical terms,[227] and Latin versions of the Planisphere of Ptolemy,[228] of the astrological Fatidica of Zahel,[229] and of the Introduction to Astronomy in eight books of the noted Arabic astrologer Albumasar, a work often entitled Searching of the Heart or Of Things Occult.[230] Hermann dedicated it to Robert of Chester, whom he also mentions in the preface of his translation of the Planisphere,[231] and in his chief work, the De essentiis, a cosmology which he finished at Béziers in the latter part of the same year 1143.[232]
[Sidenote: Hugh of Santalla.]
Hugo Sanctelliensis or Hugh of Santalla[233] is another translator of the first half of the twelfth century in the Spanish peninsula who appears to have worked independently of the foregoing men, since he to some extent translated the same works, for instance, the Centiloquium ascribed to Ptolemy, Latin versions of which have also been credited to Plato of Tivoli and John of Seville. Hugh’s translations are undated but at least some of them may have antedated those of the men already mentioned,[234] since Haskins has identified Hugh’s patron, “my lord, Bishop Michael,” with the holder of the see of Tarazona from 1119 to 1151. Hugh’s nine known translations are concerned with works of astronomy, astrology, and divination. Those on astrology include, besides the Centiloquium already mentioned, Albumasar’s Book of Rains, Messahala on nativities, and a Book of Aristotle from 255 volumes of the Indians, of which we shall have more to say in the chapter on the Pseudo-Aristotle. The works on other forms of divination are a geomancy[235] and De spatula, a treatise on divination from the shoulder-blades of animals. In the preface to the geomancy he promises to treat next of hydromancy but says that he has failed to find books of aeromancy or pyromancy.[236] Although, as has been said, Hugh seems to have labored independently of the other translators and in a somewhat out-of-the-way town, he nevertheless seems to have felt himself in touch with the learning of his time. In his various prefaces, like William of Conches, he speaks of “moderns” as well as the arcana of the ancients,[237] and his patron is continually urging him to write not only what he has gathered from the books of the ancients but what he has learned by experiment.[238] In the preface to his translation of Albumasar’s Book of Rains he tells Bishop Michael that “what the modern astrologers of the Gauls most bemoan their lack of, your benignity may bestow upon posterity,”[239] and the distribution of manuscripts of his translations in European libraries indicates that they were widely influential.
[Sidenote: A contemporary memorial of Gerard of Cremona.]
The best source for the life and works of Gerard of Cremona[240] (1114-1187) is a memorandum attached by his friends to what was presumably his last work, a translation of the Tegni of Galen with the commentary of Haly, in imitation of Galen who in old age was induced to draw up a list of his own works. Gerard, however, is already dead when his associates write, having worked right up to life’s close and passed away in 1187 at the age of seventy-three. They state that from the very cradle he was educated in the lap of philosophy, and that he learned all he could in every department of it studied among the Latins. Then, moved by his passion for the Almagest, which he found nowhere among the Latins, he came to Toledo. There, beholding the abundance of books in every field in Arabic and the poverty of the Latins in this respect, he devoted his life to the labor of translation, scorning the desires of the flesh, although he was rich in worldly goods, and adhering to things of the spirit alone. He toiled for the advantage of all both present and future, not unmindful of the injunction of Ptolemy to work good increasingly as you near your end. Now, that his name may not be hidden in silence and darkness, and that no alien name may be inscribed by presumptuous thievery in his translations, the more so since he (like Galen) never signed his own name to any of them, they have drawn up a list of all the works translated by him whether in dialectic or geometry, in “astrology” or philosophy, in medicine or in the other sciences.[241]
[Sidenote: Account by a pupil of his astrological teaching.]
Another contemporary picture of Gerard’s activity at Toledo is provided us by the Englishman, Daniel of Morley, or de Merlai, who went to Spain to study the sciences of the quadrivium. He tells how Gerard of Toledo (Gerardus tholetanus), interpreting the Almagest in Latin with the aid of Galippus, the Mozarab,[242] asserted that various future events followed necessarily from the movements and influences of the stars. Daniel was at first astounded by this utterance and brought forward the arguments against the mathematici or astrologers in the homily of St. Gregory. But Gerard answered them all glibly. It should perhaps be added that in another passage Daniel without mentioning Gerard speaks of setting down in Latin what he learned concerning the universe in the speech of Toledo from Galippus, the Mozarab.[243] Gerard’s translation of the Almagest seems to have been completed in 1175,[244] but meanwhile in Sicily an anonymous translation from the Greek had appeared, probably soon after 1160. Of it we shall presently have something to say. Gerard’s version was, however, the generally accepted one, as the number of manuscripts and citations of it show.
[Sidenote: Character of Gerard’s translations.]
But to return to the list of Gerard’s translations. Only three of the long list are strictly dialectical, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, the commentary of Themistius upon them, and Alfarabi on the syllogism. And only one or two of the translations listed under the heading De phylosophya are pure philosophy.[245] Most of Gerard’s work is mathematical and medical, natural and occult science. He translates Ptolemy and Euclid; Archimedes, Galen and Aristotle; Autolycus and Theodosius; and such writers in Arabic as Alkindi, Alfarabi, Albucasis, Alfraganus, Messahala, Thebit, Geber, Alhazen, Isaac, Rasis, and Avicenna. His mathematical translations include the fields of algebra and perspective as well as geometry and astronomy. Of Aristotle’s natural philosophy the list includes the Physics, De coelo et mundo, De generatione et corruptione, De meteoris except the fourth and last book which he could not find,[246] and the first part of the astrological De causis proprietatum et elementorum ascribed to Aristotle. Among his translations of Galen was the apocryphal De secretis, of which we shall have more to say in a later chapter on books of experiments. Three treatises of alchemy are included in the list of his translations and also a geomancy, although Boncompagni tries to saddle the latter upon Gerardus de Sabloneto. Gerard is also supposed to have translated some works not mentioned in this list but ascribed to him in the manuscripts. One of interest to us is a work on stones of the Pseudo-Aristotle.[247]
[Sidenote: Science and religion in the preface to a translation of the Almagest from the Greek.]
We must say a word of the anonymous Sicilian translation of the Almagest which preceded that of Gerard of Cremona, because of a defense in its preface[248] of natural science against a theological opposition of which the anonymous translator appears to be painfully conscious. After darkly hinting that he was prevented from speedily completing the translation by “other secret” obstacles[249] as well as by the manifest fact that he did not understand “the science of the stars” well,[250] and remarking that the artisan can hope for nothing where the art is in disrepute, the translator inveighs against those who rashly judge things about which they know nothing, and who, lest they seem ignorant themselves, call what they do not know useless and profane. Hence the Arabs say that there is no greater enemy of an art than one who is unacquainted with it. So far the tone of the preface reminds one strongly of those of William of Conches. The writer proceeds to complain that the opposition to mathematical studies has gone so far that “the science of numbers and mensuration is thought entirely superfluous and useless, while the study of astronomy (i. e. astrology) is esteemed idolatry.”[251] Yet Remigius tells us that Abraham taught the Egyptians “astrology” (i. e. astronomy), and the translator ironically adds that he supposes it can be shown from Moses and Daniel that God condemned the science of the stars. He then dilates on how essential it is to study and understand the created world before rising to study of the Creator, and waxes sarcastic at the expense of those who study theology before they know anything else and think themselves able like eagles to soar aloft at once above the clouds, disdaining earth and earthly things, and to gaze unblinded upon the full sun:[252]--a passage somewhat similar to Roger Bacon’s diatribe against the “boy-theologians” in the following century.
[Sidenote: Arabs and moderns.]
The translator, although his own rendition is from a Greek manuscript, shows some familiarity with Arabic learning. Besides the Arabic saying already quoted, in giving the Greek title of Ptolemy’s thirteen books on astronomy he adds that the Saracens call it by the corrupt name, elmeguisti (i. e. Almagest).[253] He also acknowledges the aid he has received from Eugene, the admiral or emir, whose translation of Ptolemy’s Optics from the Arabic we have mentioned elsewhere, and whom he describes as equally skilled in Greek and Arabic, and “also not ignorant of Latin.” It may also be noted that as Adelard of Bath contrasted “the writings of men of old” with “the science of moderns,”[254] so this translator characterizes Ptolemy as veterum lima, specculum modernorum.
[Sidenote: Astronomy at Marseilles.]
This seems the best place to call attention to some evidence for the existence of astronomical, and apparently also astrological, activity at Marseilles in the twelfth century, seemingly under the influence of the Arabic astronomy and astrology. In a manuscript at Paris which the catalogue dates of the twelfth century[255] is a treatise formerly said to have been composed at Marseilles in the year 1111 A. D. But Duhem has suggested that the XI should be XL, since the author tells of a dispute at Marseilles in 1139.[256] The text tells how to find the location of the planets for the city of Marseilles and is accompanied by astronomical tables imitating Azarchel. The same treatise appears in a manuscript at Cambridge,[257] written before the year 1175, where it is entitled “The Book of the Courses of the Seven Planets for Marseilles” and seems to be attributed to a Raymond of that city. Duhem notes that our author often cites an earlier treatise of his, De compositione astrolabii. The treatise opens with allusion to “many of the Indians and Chaldeans and Arabs”; the author also says, “And since we were the first of the Latins to whom this science came after the translation of the Arabs,” and avers that he employs the Christian calendar and chronology in order to avoid all appearance of heresy or infidelity. So we would seem to be justified in connecting it with the diffusion of Arabic astronomy and astrology. Our author believes that God endowed the sky with the virtue of presaging the future, cites various authorities sacred and profane in favor of astrology, and emphasizes especially the importance of astrological medicine.[258] It was also at Marseilles that William of England early in the next century in the year 1219 wrote his brief but very popular treatise, found in many manuscripts, entitled “Of Urine Unseen” (De urina non visa), that is, how by astrology to diagnose a case and tell the color and substance of the urine without seeing it. Of it we shall treat again later in connection with thirteenth century medicine. But we may note here that William, although of English nationality, was a citizen of Marseilles, and that the person to whom his work Of Urine Unseen was addressed had formerly studied with him at Marseilles. William is also spoken of as a professor of medicine. Furthermore in at least one manuscript William of England is called a translator from the Arabic, since he is said to have translated from that tongue into Latin “The very great Secret of Catenus, king of the Persians, concerning the virtue of the eagle.”[259] We may also note that it was in reply to inquiries which he had received from Jews of Marseilles that Moses Maimonides in 1194 addressed to them his letter on astrology.[260] Interest in astronomy and astrology thus appears to have prevailed at Marseilles from the first half to the close of the twelfth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[159] Especially by Professor C. H. Haskins, who has corrected or supplemented Steinschneider and others on various points, and who has other studies in preparation in addition to those to be mentioned in ensuing footnotes of this chapter.
[160] The passage is reproduced by C. H. Haskins, “The Reception of Arabic Science in England,” EHR 30, 57, from Bodleian Auct. F-i-9 (Bernard 4137), fols. 86-99.
[161] In the MS mentioned in the preceding note, “Sententia Petri Ebrei cognomento Anphus de dracone quam dominus Walcerus prior Malvernensis ecclesie in latinam transtulit linguam;” Haskins, Ibid., p. 58. I also note in Schum’s Verzeichniss, Amplon. Quarto 351, 14th century, fols. 15-23, the De dracone of Petrus Alphonsus with a table, translated into Latin by “Walter Millvernensis prior.” After two intervening tracts concerning the astrolabe by another author the same MS contains “Alfoncius,” De disciplina clericali.
[162] But not the same apparently as an Alfonsus of Toledo, to whom Steinschneider (1905) p. 4, has called attention, and who translated a work by Averroes (1126-1198) preserved in Digby 236, 14th century, fol. 190. Its prologue speaks of an abridgement of the Almagest by Averroes which Alfonso the Great (presumably Alfonso X or the Wise of Castile, 1252-1284) had had translated and which was in circulation in Spain and at Bologna. From the Explicit of the same treatise one would infer that two Alfonsos were engaged in its translation, one a son of Dionysius of Lisbon, and the other a convert, who became a sacristan at Toledo:--“et iste tractatus translatus fuit a magistro Alfonsio Dionysii de Ulixbona Hispano apud Vallem Toleti, interprete magistro Alfonso converso, sacrista Toletano.” The treatise is followed at fol. 194v by a “Narration concerning Averroes and the Saracen king of Cordova,” which opens, “This is worth knowing which was told me by Alfonso, a trustworthy Jew, physician of the king of Castile.”
[163] Amplon. Quarto 351, as noted in note 2 on the preceding page.
[164] Corpus Christi 283, late 12th century, fols. 113-44, “Dixit Petrus Anfulsus servus Ihesu Christi translatorque huius libri ...”, quoted by Haskins, EHR 30, 60.
[165] CU Ii, vi, 11, fol. 95. “Dixit Petrus Amphulsus servus Christi Ihesu Henrici primi regis Anglorum medicus compositor huius libri”; quoted by Haskins, Ibid., 61. Pedro would hardly have called Henry “first”, so the heading is perhaps not entirely genuine.
[166] Arundel 270, late 12th century, fols. 40v-44v, Epistola de studio artium liberalium praecipue astronomiae ad peripateticos aliosque philosophicos ubique per Franciam.
[167] So far as I can judge from Professor Haskins’ description of and brief excerpts from them; he does not notice the Arundel MS.
[168] This occurs at fol. 43r in the midst of the treatise; at the beginning, in addressing the Peripatetics and other philosophers and students throughout France, the writer calls himself, “Petrus Anidefunfus, servant of Jesus Christ, and their brother and fellow student.”
[169] See fol. 42v, “Ceterum in nostro translationis inicio prologum dictare curavimus de veritate videlicet artis.”
[170] Fol. 44v, “Probatum est ergo argumento experimentali quod re vera possumus affirmare solem et lunam aliosque planetas in terrenis viras (sic) suas exercere.” A little further along on the same page he employs the same phrase again, “Ostensum est quod eodem experimentali argumento....”
[171] Fols. 44v-45r, “Multa quidem alia et innumerabilia iuxta syderum cursus in terra contingunt atque vulgarium sensus hominum non attingit, prudentium vero atque huius artis peritorum subtile acumen penetrat et cognoscit.”
[172] Fol. 41v, “sicut Constantinus in libro suo quem de lingua saracena transtulit in latinam testatur.”
[173] The most recent edition of the Latin text is A. Hilka and W. Söderhjelm, Petri Alfonsi Disciplina Clericalis, 1911. An English version from a 15th century MS in Worcester Cathedral was edited by W. H. Hulme in The Western Reserve University Bulletin, 1919.
[174] In the preface (Hulme’s translation, p. 13) Pedro says, “I have composed this little book partly from the sayings and warnings of the philosophers, partly from Arabic proverbs and admonitions both in prose and verse, and partly from fables about animals and birds.”
[175] Discip. cleric., I, 9.
[176] Discip. cleric., XVII, 48.
[177] The fullest list of his translations that I know of is in Steinschneider (1905) pp. 41-50.
[178] See Appendix I at the close of this chapter for a list of some of them.
[179] Jourdain (1819) pp. 113 et seq., 449.
[180] A difficulty is that John of Seville’s translations are usually described as direct from the Arabic and nothing is said of Gundissalinus, whereas in the preface to Avicenna’s De anima John Avendeath tells the archbishop that he has translated it word for word from Arabic into Spanish, and that Dominicus Gundisalvus has then rendered the vernacular into Latin: Steinschneider (1893) pp. 981 and 380, note 2; J. Wood Brown (1897) p. 117; Karpinski (1915) pp. 23-4. But perhaps John learned Latin as time passed. However, as far as I know, there is no MS where John of Spain is definitely called John Avendeath or vice versa.
[181] For example, S. Marco X-57, 13th century, fols. 278-83; Avranches 232, 13th century; BN 6296, 14th century, #15.
[182] Amplon. Quarto 365, 14th century, fols. 100-19, Liber Haomar de nativitatibus in astronomia ... quem transtulit mag. Iohannes Hyspalensis et Lunensis epyscopus ex Arabico in Latinum. “Bishop” is omitted in Digby 194, 15th century, fol. 127v, “Perfectus est liber universus Aomar Benigan Tyberiadis cum laude Dei et eius auxilio quem transtulit magister Johannes Hispalensis atque Limensis de Arabico in Latinum.” Likewise in CU Clare College 15 (Kk. 4. 2), c. 1280 A. D., fol. 64v.
[183] Spec. astron., cap. 2.
[184] Arundel 251, 14th century, fol. 35v, “Cum ego Johannis hyspanicus....”
Steinschneider (1905) p. 51, lists “Johannes Pauli, oder Paulini,” as distinct from John of Spain. I shall treat of the Salus vitae in a later chapter on “Experiments and Secrets of Galen, Rasis and Others: II. Chemical and Magical.” See below, chapter 65, page 794.
[185] Printed in 1497, 1537, and 1546 as Brevis ac perutilis compilatio or Rudimenta astronomiae. Digby 190, 13-14th century, fol. 87, gives the Arabic year as 529, while its 1173 should obviously not be A. D. but of the Spanish era. Corpus Christi 224 gives the Arabic year as 528, and the era date has been altered to clxx. m. (1170), probably from mclxxiii (1173), the initial ‘m’ dropping out, and the final ‘iii’ in consequence being misread by a copyist as ‘m.’ The same careless copyist has perhaps dropped an ‘i’ from the arabic year. In BN 6506 and 7377B, according to Jourdain (1819) pp. 115-6, the Arabic year is 529, but the other 1070, a further error. I suppose this is the same treatise as the Liber in scientia astrorum et radicibus motuum celestium or Theoria planetarum et stellarum of “El-Fargânî” which Sudhoff (1917) p. 27, following J. Brinkmann, Die apokryphen Gesundheitsregeln des Aristoteles, 1914, says John of Toledo translated into Latin in 1134.
[186] Epitome totius astrologiae conscripta a Ioanne Hispalensi Hispano astrologo celeberrimo ante annos quadringentos ac nunc primum in lucem edita. Cum praefatione Ioachimi Helleri Leucopetraei contra astrologiae aduersarios. Noribergae in officina Ioannis Montani et Ulrici Neuber, Anno Domini M.D.XLVIII. The date 1142 is given at fol. 18r and at the close, fol. 87v.
Steinschneider (1905), p. 41, “im Jahre 1142 kompilierte er, nach arabischen Mustern, eine Epitome totius astrologiae, ed. 1548, deren Teile (Isagoge und Quadripart.) mit besonderen Titeln vielleicht in einzelnen mss. zu erkennen wären.”
In the 14th century MSS, S. Marco XI-102, fols. 107-31, and XI-104, fols. 1-30, the title is “epitome artis astrologiae.” Vienna 5442, 15th century, fols. 158r-79v, Opus quadripartitum de iudiciis astrorum, has the same Incipit, “Zodiacus dividitur in duodecim....” See also Amplon. Octavo 84, 14th century, fols. 1-37, and Quarto 377, 14th century, fols. 7-11, Iudicia Iohannis Hispalensis, and BN 7321, 1448 A. D., fols. 122r-154v, “Incipiunt ysagoge Iohannis Hyspalensis cum parte astrologie iudiciali.”
[187] Laud. Misc. 594, 14-15th century, fols. 94-106, Liber Albohali de nativitatibus translatus a Johanne Toletano. “Perfectus est liber Nativitatis mense Julii anno ab Incarnatione Domini millesimo cliii cum laude Dei et ejus auxilio.”
CU Clare College 15 (Kk. 4, 2), c. 1280 A. D., fols. 39-47, does not name the translator but gives the date as 1153, and the same MS, fols. 24-9, contains John of Seville’s translations of a work on the astrolabe in 40 chapters, of treatises by Messahalla at fols. 48-55, and Aomar at fols. 56-64.
Royal 12-C-XVIII, 14th century, fols. 2-9v, ends incomplete, but a colophon added in another hand gives the date as 1152.
The work was printed at Nürnberg, 1546.
There is a different translation of it, made by Plato of Tivoli in 1136 A. D., in Cotton Appendix VI, fol. 163-, Aubueli liber in judiciis nativitatum quem Plato Tiburtinus ex Arabico sumpsit Ao. Arabum 530 et alexandri 1447 in civitate Barkelona.
[188] Steinschneider ascribes the translation of Albohali to John of Spain; the Catalogue of the Royal Manuscripts says that Johannes Toletanus is possibly the same as John of Spain. Sudhoff (1917), p. 17, identifies “Johann von Toledo (Hispanus, Avendehut).”
Perhaps, however, the John of Toledo to whom a treatise entitled, De conservanda sanitate, is ascribed in two 14th century MSS at Paris, BN 6978, #1 and 16222, fol. 76-; also Berlin 905, 15th century, fol. 74-; CU Gonville and Caius 95, 15th century, fol. 283-; was not the same person.
Rose, in the Berlin MSS catalogue, identifies this last John of Toledo with a John David of Toledo who in 1322 joined with other astrologers in issuing a threatening circular letter predicting terrible events for the year 1329. See Amplon. Quarto 371 for another such letter for the year 1371, and Amplon. Octavo 79 for tables of conjunctions of the sun and moon for the years 1346-1365 by a John of Toledo.
[189] R. Förster, De Aristotelis quae feruntur physiognomonicis recensendis, Killiae, 1882, pp. 26-27; J. Wood Brown (1897), 35; HL XXX, 369.
[190] Vienna 5311, 14-15th century, fol. 41v.
[191] A work that I have not before seen ascribed to him is, Perugia 683, 15th century, fols. 393-6, “Incipit summa magistri Iohannis yspani super arborem de consanguineitate.”
Steinschneider fails, I think, to note in his list of John’s translations an “introductio de cursu planetarum” (St. John’s 188, late 13th century, fol. 99v-) which he translated from Arabic into Latin at the request of two “Angligenarum, Gauconis scilicet et Willelmi.”
[192] However, the Incipits given by Albert do not agree very well with those of the sections of the Epitome in the printed text of 1548. See chapter 42 for the resemblance between this printed text and a treatise in MS ascribed to Roger of Hereford.
[193] Arundel 268, 13-14th century, fols. 7v-23r, Abdolaziz Arabis libellus ad judicium astrorum introductorius qui dicitur Alkabitius, interprete Johanne Hispalensi.
S. Marco XI-104, 14th century, fols. 79-102, Alcabitii ad iudicia astrorum interpretatum a Iohanne Hispalensi.
BN 7321, 1448 A. D., fols. 1-79r, Introductorium ad magisterium iudiciorum astrorum.
[194] S. Marco XI-105, 14th century, fols. 54-61, “Cyromancia est ars demonstrans mores et inclinationes naturales per signa sensibilia manuum.” Valentinelli comments, “Eadem fortasse cum chiromantia Ioannis Hispalensis quam inter codices manuscriptos Ioannis Francisci Lauredani Tomasinus refert.”
[195] Epitome, II, xx, “Iam radicem nativitatis secundum philosophorum dicta complevimus nec edidimus nisi ea in quibus sapientes convenerunt et ex quibus experimentum habetur.”
[196] Epitome, III, viii, “Iuniores huius artis magistri dicunt posse inveniri locum thesauri absconditi quod veteres discreti omiserunt....”
[197] Ibid., “Messehala autem Indorum in iudiciis solertissimus dicit....”
[198] Epitome, III, xii, “... in quaestione autem quis victurus astrologi discordati sunt....”
[199] Epitome, II, x, “Sed expertum est in nativitatibus multis hoc abrogari etiam cum omnes rationes praedictae simul convenerint cuius rei meminimus ne in libris inveniendo fidem daremus.”
[200] The passage just quoted in the preceding note continues, “Porro Ptolemaeus dicit ... sed experti sumus multoties hoc non recipi.” See also the following chapter of the Epitome, II, xi.
[201] Epitome, II, xxii, “... et est ratio experimentata haec....”
[202] See III, xii, where, after stating the discordant views of astrologers he says, “Hanc vero postremam rationem experimentis caeteris preponimus.”
[203] Ed. Ludwig Baur, in Beiträge, IV, 2-3, Münster, 1903, pp. 1-144 text; pp. 145-408 “Untersuchung.” Another work by Gundissalinus on the immortality of the soul was published in the same series by G. F. von Hertling, 1897.
Baur unfortunately failed to note the existence of the De divisione philosophiae in two 13th century MSS at the British Museum in the Sloane collection, nor does Scott’s Index catalogue of the Sloane MSS mention Gundissalinus as their author.
Sloane 2946, 13th century, fols. 209-16, “de philosophia ... auctore Isaaco philosopho.” But the Incipit, “Felix prior aetas qui (quae) tot sapientes ...” is that of Gundissalinus’ treatise. The erroneous ascription to Isaac is probably owing to the fact that the treatise just preceding, at fols. 205-208v, is a translation of a medical work by Isaac. This MS is mutilated towards the close so that the leaves containing our text have the upper right hand corner torn off, thus removing nearly one-sixth of the text. The colophon reads, “Explicit hoc opus a domino Gundissalini apud Tholetum editum, sdens (succedens?) de assignanda causa ex qua orte sunt scientie philosophie et ordo eorum et disciplina.” Similarly in Baur’s text the De divisione philosophiae at pp. 1-142 is followed at pp. 142-44 by Alfarabi’s “Epistola de assignanda causa ex qua orte sunt scientie philosophie et ordo earum in disciplina.”
Sloane 2461, late 13th century, fols. 1-38r, contains the De divisione philosophiae under the caption, Compendium scientiarum, without indication of the author. It also is immediately followed at fols. 38v-40r by De unitate, which Baur found in another MS at the close of Gundissalinus’ De divisione philosophiae, and in a third MS before the above mentioned letter of Alfarabi.
A MS now lost is, Library of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, 1175, Gundisalvus de ortu et divisione scientiarum.
Cotton Vespasian B-X, fols. 24-27, Alpharabius de divisione omnium scientiarum, is not the treatise of Gundissalinus, as I was at first inclined to suspect that it might turn out to be upon examination.
Alfarabi’s De scientiis was published in his Opera omnia by Camerarius at Paris in 1638 from a MS which the preface represented as a recent discovery. Baur, p. viii, states that this text differs considerably from the Latin version by Gerard of Cremona, but that the borrowings of Gundissalinus from Alfarabi and the citations in Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum doctrinale agree with this 1638 text rather than with Gerard’s.
[204] Baur (1903), p. 163.
[205] Karpinski (1915), p. 23.
[206] Baur, pp. 4-5.
[207] Baur, p. 20.
[208] Baur, p. 89.
[209] See Daniel Morley on the eight parts of astrology in chapter 42 below, p. 177.
[210] I have read it in two MSS at Paris, where, however, the text seems faulty: BN 6298, 14th century, fols. 160r-161v, and BN 14700, fols. 328v-330v. It opens, “Scias nihil esse nisi substantia et accidens et creatorem substantie et accidentis in secula.” Printed in Beiträge, xix.
[211] For Bacon’s views see below, chapter 61.
[212] BN 6298, fol. 160v; BN 14700, fol. 330r. “Scientia divina que est finis scientiarum et perfectio earum. Et non restat post illam ulla inquisitio. Ipsa enim est finis ad quem tendit omnis inquisitio et in ea quiescit.”
[213] “Et imo opus erat (fuit) scientia que hoc totum ostendit scilicet per quam veniremus ad huiusmodi permutationis scientiam (perveniremus ad scientiam huius permutationis) qualiter fiat et que sint eius actiones nocentes (occasiones et cause et quomodo possemus removere has occasiones nocentes) cum vellemus repellere et quomodo cum vellemus possemus eas augere. Hec igitur scientia fuit scientia de naturis que est scientia de actione et passione.” The passages in parentheses are the variant readings in one of the two MSS.
[214] For the passages cited in this paragraph see Baur, 6, 115, 119-21.
[215] Baur, who lists MSS of the work at p. 368 and presents an analysis of it at pp. 369-75, gives the title as De ortu et divisione philosophiae, but the two 13th century MSS at Oxford, Balliol 3 and Merton 261, seem to prefer the form which I have given. I have looked through the text in Balliol 3, a beautifully written MS, but, in view of Kilwardby’s date, scarcely of the early 13th century, as it is described in the catalogue. Hauréau regarded the work as clear, accurate, and worth printing.
[216] Cap. 40.
[217] Cap. 67.
[218] Listed by Steinschneider (1905), pp. 62-6.
[219] C. H. Haskins, in EHR (1911), 26, 491 note.
[220] See page 75 of this chapter, note 2.
[221] Cotton, Appendix VI.
[222] For the biography and bibliography of Robert of Chester see L. C. Karpinski, _Robert of Chester’s Latin Translation of the Algebra of Al-Khowarizmi_, New York, 1915, especially pp. 26-32; C. H. Haskins, The Reception of Arabic Science in England, EHR 30 (1915), 62-5; Steinschneider (1905), pp. 67-73.
[223] Karpinski (1915), pp. 26, 29-30.
[224] See above, chapter 30, I, 702-3. Besides the articles of Clerval and Haskins there mentioned we may note A. A. Björnbo, Hermannus Dalmata als Uebersetzer astronomischer Arbeiten, in Bibliotheca Mathematica, VI (1903), third series, pp. 130-3.
[225] Steinschneider (1905), pp. 32-5. He says, “Hermannus Alemannus, oder Teutonicus, Germanicus, soll um 1240-1260 Lehrer des Roger Bacon in Toledo (?) gewesen sein,” but I do not know where he gets the notion that Hermann was Roger’s teacher. The following works ascribed to Hermannus Theutonicus by Denifle (1886), p. 231,--and not mentioned by Steinschneider--seem to indicate another person of that name: “(41) fr. Hermannus Theutonicus de Cerwist (Zerbst) scripsit postillam super cantica; (50) fr. Hermannus Theutonicus scripsit librum de ascensu cordis. Item super Cantica. Item de arte precandi.” In Vienna 2507, 13th century, fols. 85-123, an Ars dictandi is attributed to “Magistri Heremanni.”
On the part taken by Hermannus Alemannus in the translation of Aristotle in the thirteenth century see further Grabmann (1916), pp. 208-12, 217-22, etc., where translations of his are connected with the dates 1240 and 1254.
[226] Clare College 15 (Kk. 4. 2), c. 1280 A. D., fols. 1-2r, Hermannus, liber imbrium, “Cum multa et varia de imbrium cognicione precepta Indorum tradat auctoritas ... / ... plerumque etiam imbres occurrunt set steriles” Iafar on rains immediately follows.
Vienna 2436, 14th century, fols. 134v-136v, “Cum multa et varia ... / ... eciam ymbres occurrant sed mediocres. Finitur Hermanni liber de ymbribus et pluviis.”
Dijon 1045, 15th century, fols. 187-91 (following Hermann’s translation of Albumasar), “de pluviis ab Hermano (de) Kanto (?) a judico in latinum translatus. Cum multa et varia de nubium cognicione ... / ... occurrunt sed steriles.”
[227] In CUL 2022 (Kk. IV. 7), 15th century, fol. 116, however, such a short glossary preceding prognostications of famine is said to be “secundum Hermannum Teutonicum.”
[228] Printed Basel, 1536; and Venice, 1558. J. L. Heiberg, Claudii Ptolemaei Opera quae exstant omnia, II, pp. clxxxiii-vi; Karpinski (1915), p. 32; Haskins (1915), p. 62; Suter (1914), p. ix.
[229] Or Sahl ben Biŝr ben Hânî, Abû ʿOtmân. Steinschneider (1905), p. 34, and (1906) pp. 54-5, ascribes the translation to Hermann the Dalmatian; see, too, CUL 2022, 15th century, fols. 102r-115v, pronostica Zahel Iben Bixir, Hermanni secundi translatio. But in Digby 114, 14th century, fols. 176-99, “Explicit fetidica Zael Benbinxeir Caldei. Translacio hec mam. Gi. astronomie libri anno Domini 1138, 3 kal. Octobris translatus est.”
[230] Printed at Augsburg in 1489 and in other editions; it opens, “Astronomie iudiciorum omnium bispertita est via....”
[231] Suter (1914), pp. xiii, xviii, interprets Hermann’s words, “Quem locum a Ptolemaeo minus diligenter perspectum cum Albatene miratur et Alchoarismus, quorum hunc quidam opera nostra Latium habet, illius vero commodissima translatio Roberti mei industria Latinae orationis thesaurum accumulat,” to mean that Robert translated Al-Battani, but in view of Robert’s known translations of Al-Khowarizmi, I should translate hunc as “former” in this case and regard Hermann as the translator of Al-Battani.
[232] Professor Haskins wrote me on July 26, 1921, “The De essentiis is an interesting work of cosmology; when I am able to work it over more carefully I shall print the article on Hermann, now long overdue.”
[233] The best treatment of Hugh is, C. H. Haskins, “The Translations of Hugo Sanctelliensis,” in The Romanic Review, II (1911), 1-15, where attention is called to translations not noted by Steinschneider, and the prefaces of seven extant translations are printed.
[234] I cannot, however, agree with Professor Haskins (p. 10), that “From certain phrases in the preface” (of Hugh’s translation of the Liber Aristotilis de 255 indorum voluminibus) “it would seem that, while Hugo has been for some time a devotee of Arabian science, he has only recently (nunc) and comparatively late in the day (serus ac indignus minister) entered the bishop’s service.” It seems to me that the last phrase should read servus ac indignus minister, for Hugh had already translated at least one other work for the bishop before this one on the 255 books of the Indians, and in the present preface he alludes to many previous discussions between them and to the bishop’s continually exhorting him to publish, so that one would infer that they had been associated for some time past. Since writing this I have learned both from Mr. H. H. E. Craster of the Bodleian and from Professor Haskins himself that the reading in the MS (Digby 159, fol. 1v) is “seruus” or servus, as I have it in the rough notes I took on the treatise in August, 1919.
[235] The following MSS may be noted in addition to those (BN 7453 and Florence, Laur. II-85, Plut. 30, c. 29) listed by Steinschneider (1905), pp. 35-6, and Haskins (1911), p. 13.
CU Magdalene 27, late 14th century, fols. 1-66, “Ludus philosophorum qui apellatur filius (?) Astronomie. Rerum opifex deus qui sine exemplo nova condidit universa ... Ego sanctelliensis geomantie interpretacionem (instead of inscriptionem as given by Haskins from BN 7453) ingredior et tibi mi domine tirasonensis antistes....” James adds, “On a Latin version of a tract of Apollonius, by Hugo Sanctelliensis in MS Bib. Nat. Lat. 14951, see F. Nau in Revue de l’Orient Latin, 1908,” but in a note of 21 June 1921 Dr. James informs me that one should read Orient Chrétien in place of Orient Latin.
Vienna 5508, 14th century, fols. 182-200, Hugo Sacelliensis sive Saxaliensis, Geomantia, “Rerum opifex deus ... / ... sive mundus facie.”
Vienna 5327, 15th century, fols. 59r-60v, Operis de geomantia ad Tirasconensem anstitem prologus et caput primum.
Haskins (1911), p. 13, note 45, notes that the Laurentian MS has a different Incipit from BN 7453, but CU Magdalene 27 and Vienna 5508 agree with the latter Incipit.
[236] Haskins, p. 14.
[237] In the preface to his translation of el-Biruni’s commentary on al-Fargani he says, “Lest therefore, completely intent upon the footprints of the ancients, I seem to dissent from the moderns utterly ...”, (Ne itaque antiquorum vestigiis penitus insistens a modernis prorsus videar dissentire,--Haskins, p. 8). In the preface to the Pseudo-Aristotle on the 255 books of the Indians he speaks of Bishop Michael as exalted above moderns or contemporaries (ultra modernos vel coequevos,--Haskins, 10) in fame and love of learning, and later of “what can be fully explained by none of the moderns” (quod a nullo modernorum plenissime valet explicari--Haskins, p. 11). In the preface to Albumasar’s Book of Rains occurs the allusion to modern astrologers of the Gauls given below in the text.
[238] Haskins, p. 10.
[239] Ibid., p. 12, “... tue offero dignitati, ut quod potissimum sibi deesse moderni deflent astrologi gallorum posteritati tua benignitas largiatur.”
[240] Baldassare Boncompagni, Della Vita e delle Opere di Gherardo Cremonese traduttore del secolo duodecimo e di Gherardo da Sabbionetta Astronomo del secolo decimoterzo, Roma, 1851.
Giovanni Brambilla, Monografie di due illustri Cremonesi, Gherardo Toletano e Gherardo Patulo, Cremona, 1894. It largely repeats Boncompagni without acknowledgement.
K. Sudhoff, Die kurze Vita und das Verzeichnis der Arbeiten Gerhards von Cremona, von seinen Schülern und Studiengenossen kurz nach dem Tode des Meisters (1187) zu Toledo verabfasst, in Archiv f. Gesch. d. Medizin, herausg v. d. Puschmann-Stiftung an der Universität Leipzig, VIII, 73, Nov., 1914.
V. Rose, in Hermes, VIII (1874), 334.
A. A. Björnbo, Alkindi, Tideus und Pseudo-Euclid, 1911 (Abhandl. z. Gesch. d. Math. Wiss. XXVI, 3), 127, 137, 150, etc.
Steinschneider (1905), 16-32.
[241] Boncompagni (1851), 3-4, from Vatican 2392, fols. 97v-98r. I have, except for changing the order, practically translated the Latin text of the Vita, which with some omissions is as follows: “... Ne igitur magister gerardus cremonensis sub taciturnitatis tenebris lateat ... ne per presumptuosam rapinam libris ab ipso translatis titulus infigatur alienus presertim cum nulli eorum nomen suum iscripsisset, cuncta opera ab eodem translata tam de dyalectica quam de geometria, tam de astrologia quam de phylosophya, tam etiam de physica quam de aliis scientiis, in fine huius tegni novissime ab eo translati, imitando Galenum de commemoratione suorum librorum in fine eiusdem per socios ipsius diligentissime fuerint connumerata.... Is etiam cum bonis floreret temporalibus.... Carnis desideriis inimicando solis spiritualibus adhaerebat. Cunctis etiam presentibus atque futuris prodesse laborabat non immemor illius ptolomei, cum fini appropinquas, bonum cum augmento operare. Et cum ab istis infantie cunabulis in gremiis philosophiae educatus esset, et ad cuiuslibet partis ipsius notitiam secundum latinorum studium pervenisset, amore tamen almagesti quem apud latinos minime reperiit tolectum perexit. Ubi librorum cuiuslibet facultatis habundantiam in arabico cernens et latinorum penurie de ipsis quam noverit miserans ...” etc.
Other less complete lists of Gerard’s works are found in the following MSS: Laon 413; All Souls 68, fol. 109; Ashmole 357, fol. 57.
[242] Arundel 377, 13th century, fols. 88-103, Philosophia magistri danielis de merlai ad iohannem Norwicensem episcopum, fol. 103r, “qui galippo mixtarabe interpretante almagesti latinavit.”
[243] Arundel 377, fol. 89v, “quod a galippo mixtarabe in lingua tholetana didici latine subscribitur.”
[244] Boncompagni (1851) 18, quoting Laurent. Plut. 89, 13th century.
[245] Such as “Aristotelis de expositione bonitatis pure.”
[246] It was translated from the Greek about the middle of the twelfth century by Aristippus, minister of William the Bad of Sicily: see Singer (1917) p. 24; V. Rose, Die Lücke im Diogenes Laertius und der alte Uebersetzer, in Hermes I (1866) 376; Haskins (1920) p. 605; F. H. Fobes, Medieval Versions of Aristotle’s Meteorology, in Classical Philology X (1915) 297-314; Greek text, ed. Fobes, Cambridge, 1919.
[247] Ed. V. Rose, in Zeitschrift f. deutsches Alterthum, XVIII (1875) 349-82.
[248] The preface was printed by Haskins and Lockwood, The Sicilian Translators of the Twelfth Century, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XXI (1910) pp. 99-102, to which text the following citations apply. Commented upon by J. L. Heiberg, Noch einmal die mittelalterliche Ptolemaios-Uebersetzung, in Hermes, XLVI (1911) 207-16.
[249] Line 31.
[250] Line 42.
[251] Line 61.
[252] Line 87 et seq.
[253] Line 23.
[254] Lines 20-21.
[255] BN 14704, fols. 144-70 (present numbering, fols. 110r-35v). The handwriting seems to me later than the twelfth century, but I am not an expert in such matters. The text ends at fol. 118v; the rest is tables.
[256] Duhem, III (1915), 201-16.
[257] CU McClean 165, fols. 44-47, Liber cursuum planetarum vii super Massiliam, “Cum multos indorum seu caldeorum atque arabum ... / ... Attamen siquis providus fuerit premissa satis emendare poterit. Expl. liber cursuum planetarum vii.” The Paris MS ends with the same sentence, but prefixes at the beginning, “Ad honorem et laudem dominis nostri, patris scilicet et filii,” etc. I have examined the Paris but not the Cambridge MS. Duhem does not note the latter.
[258] Duhem (1915) 205.
[259] Merton College 324, 15th century, but with such early works as that of Marbod, fol. 142, Secretissimum regis Cateni Persarum de virtute aquilae, “Est enim aquila rex omnium avium. ... / ... Explicit iste tractatus a magistro Willelmo Anglico de lingua Arabica in Latinum translatus.” One wonders if it is a fragment of Kiranides.
[260] See below, pp. 206, 211.
APPENDIX I
SOME MEDIEVAL JOHNS, MENTIONED IN THE MANUSCRIPTS, IN THE FIELDS OF NATURAL AND OCCULT SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND MEDICINE
Johannes Anglicus: see John of Montpellier.
Johannes Archangel: Additional 22773, 13th century, fol. 45, “Tabule Johannis Archangeli” astronomiae; said to be the same as Johannes Campanus.
Johannes de Beltone, Sloane 314, 15th century, fol. 106, Experimentum de re astrologica bonum (imperfect).
Johannes Blanchinus, BN 7268, Distinctiones in Ptolemaei almagestum; BN 7269, 7270, 7271, 7286, Tabulae astronomicae; BN 7270, 7271, de primo mobili; Perugia 1004, 15th century, “Tractatus primus de arithmetricha per Johannem de Blanchinis.... Regule conclusionum ad practicam algebre in simplicibus.... Tractatus florum Almagesti.” Professor Karpinski informs me that the Flores Almagesti of Giovanni Bianchini was discussed by L. Birkenmajer in _Bull. d. l’Acad. d. Sciences de Cracovie_, 1911.
Johannes Bonia, Valentinus, BN 7416A, translated Fachy, _Sex genera instrumentorum sive Canones Quadrantis universalis_; see Steinschneider (1905) p. 39.
John of Brescia, who translated with Profatius Judaeus at Montpellier; see Steinschneider (1905) 40.
John of Campania, BN 6948, 14th century, #1, “Abenzoaris Taysir sive rectificatio medicationis et regiminis,” translated from Hebrew into Latin.
Johannes Campanus (of Novara) is of course well known for his Theory of the Planets and translation of and commentary on Euclid. Perhaps less familiar works are: Additional 22772, 15th century, Johannis Campani Novarensis liber astronomicus de erroribus Ptolemaei, dedicated to Pope Urban IV; Amplon. Quarto 349, late 14th century, fols. 57-65, de figura sectorum; indeed, the collection of Amplonius at Erfurt is rich in works by Campanus. Concerning him see further HL XXI (1847) 248-54 and Duhem III (1915) 317-21. They hold that Campanus is not called John in the MSS. His letter to Urban IV (1261-1265) and Simon of Genoa’s dedication of this Clavis sanationis in 1292 to “master Campanus, chaplain of the pope and canon at Paris,” serve to date him in the later 13th century.
John of Cilicia (apparently the same as John of Sicily), Harleian 1, fols. 92-151, Scripta super Canones Arzachelis de tabulis Toletanis.
John Dastine (or Dastyn), among whose treatises on alchemy may be mentioned Ashmole 1446, fols. 141-54v, “Incipit epistola ... ad Papam Johannem XXII transmissa de alchimia”; also found in CU Trinity 1122, 14-15th century, fol. 94v-.
Johannes de Dondis, Laud. Misc. 620, 16th century, “Opus Planetarii Johannis de Dondis, fisici, Paduani civis.”
Iohannes Egidii Zamorensis, Berlin 934, 14th century, 242 fols., de historia naturali; it includes a reproduction of John of Spain’s 39 chapters on the astrolabe.
John of Florence, Magliabech. XI-22; XVI-66, fols. 260-301, “Incipit liber de magni lapidis compositione editus a magistro artis generalis florentino.... / ... Explicit secretum secretorum mineralis lapidis mag Io.”
Joannes de Janua (Genoa), BN 7281, 7322, Canon eclypsium; 7281, Investigatio eclipseos solis 1337; 7282, Canones Tabulares. He is classed by Duhem IV (1916) 74-, as a disciple of Jean des Linières.
Joannes de Lineriis, BN 7281, 15th century, #9, Theorica planetarum ed. anno 1335, #11, Canones tabularum Alphonsi anno 1310; and other astronomical treatises in BN 7282, 7285, 7295, 7295A, 7329, 7378A, 7405, etc. Gonville and Caius 110, 14th century, pp. 1-6, Canones super magnum almanach omnium planetarum a mag. Iohanne de Lineriis picardi ambianensis dyocesis, compositum super meridianum parisiensem. See also Duhem IV (1916) 60-68, “Jean des Linières.”
Ioannes Lodoycus Tetrapharmacus, S. Marco XIV-38, 14th century, 160 fols., “Antidotarius Galaf Albucassim Açarauni a Ioanne Lodoyco Tetrapharmaco gebenensi filio Petri fructiferi mathematici ... de arabico in latinum translatus” (1198 A. D.).
John of London, BN 7413, 14th century, fols. 19v-21r, de astrologia judicaria ad R. de Guedingue, or it may be better described as a letter, written in 1246 or shortly thereafter (“usque ad consideracionem meam que fuit anno Christi 1246”), in which John discusses various matters, including the motion of the eighth sphere and dog days, and states that he is sending a transcript of tables of the fixed stars which he verified at Paris.
The John of London who gave so many MSS to the library of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury--see James (1903)--would seem to have been of later date, since his books included works of Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and John Peckham, the chronicle of Martin which extends to 1277, translations of the astrological treatises of Abraham aben Ezra which were not made until toward the close of the 13th century, and even treatises by Joannes de Lineriis who wrote in the early 14th century and William of St. Cloud who made his astronomical observations between 1285 and 1321. It therefore seems unlikely that the donor, John of London, could be even the young lad who was spoken of in such high terms by Roger Bacon, as is suggested by James (1903) pp. lxxiv-vii. Possibly the Friar John mentioned below is Bacon’s protégé.
John Manduith, CUL 1572 (Gg. VI. 3), 14th century, astronomical treatises and tables. Other MSS, mentioned by Tanner (1748) p. 506, contain tables finished by him in Oxford in 1310.
Johannis de Mehun (Jean de Meun), de lapide minerali et de lapide vegetabili, Sloane 976, 15th century, fols. 85-108; Sloane 1069, 16th century.
Johannes de Messina, a translator for Alfonso X in 1276; perhaps identical with John of Sicily, see Steinschneider (1905) p. 51.
Fratris Joannis ord. Minorum Summa de astrologia, BN 7293A, 14th century, #3. Possibly this is Roger Bacon’s lad John following in his master’s footsteps.
John of Montpellier or Anglicus (and see John of St. Giles), a treatise on the quadrant. BN 7298, 7414, 7416B, 7437, Joannes de Montepessulano de quadrante; Firenze II-iii-22, 16th century, fols. 268-82, “Explicit quadrans magistri Iohannis Anglici in monte;” Firenze II-iii-24, 14th century, fols. 176-82, “Incipit tractatus quadrantis veteris secundum magistrum Iohannem de Montepessulano.” CUL 1707 (Qi. I. 15), fols. 10-14r, “Quadrans Magistri Johannis Anglici in Monte Pessulano.” CUL 1767 (Qi, III. 3), 1276 A. D., fols. 56-60, Tractatus quadrantis editus a magistro Johanne in monte Pessulano.
John of Meurs (Johannes de Muris), a French writer on music, mathematics and astronomy in 1321, 1322, 1323, 1339, and 1345. Parts of his works have been printed. See further L. C. Karpinski, “The ‘Quadripartitum numerorum’ of John of Meurs,” in Bibl. Math. (1912-1913) 99-114; R. Hirschfeld, Io. de Muris, 1884; Duhem (1916) IV, 30-37.
Johannes Ocreatus, see Steinschneider (1905) p. 51.
Johannes Papiensis, see Steinschneider (1905) p. 51.
Johannes Parisiensis, master in theology, besides several theological treatises wrote de yride and _super librum metheorum_. His Contra corruptum Thome shows that he wrote after Aquinas. See Denifle (1886) p. 226.
There was also a medical writer named John of Paris who perhaps, rather than Thaddeus of Florence, wrote the treatise, De complexionibus corporis humani, Amplon. Quarto 35, 1421 A. D., fols. 142-58. The remark of V. Rose may also be recalled, “Ioh. Parisiensis ist bekanntlich ein Mädchen für alles.”
John of Poland, Addit. 22668, 13th-14th century, “Liber Magistri Johannis Poloni,” medical recipes, etc.
Johannes de Probavilla, Vienna 2520, 14th century, fols. 37-50, “Liber de signis prognosticis.”
John of Procida, see De Renzi, III, 71, Placita Philosophorum Moralium Antiquorum ex Graeco in Latinum translata a Magistro Joanne de Procida Magno cive Salernitano.
Johannes de Protsschida, CLM 27006, 15th century, fols. 216-31, Compendium de occultis naturae.
Ioannes de Rupecissa, a Franciscan who wrote various works on alchemy and who was imprisoned by the pope in 1345 for his prophecies concerning the church and antichrist; it would take too long to list the MSS here.
Johannes de Sacrobosco (John Holywood), well known for his Sphere, which has been repeatedly printed and was the subject of commentaries by many medieval authors.
Joannes de S. Aegidio (John of St. Giles, also Anglicus or de Sancto Albano), Bodleian 786, fol. 170, Experimenta (medical).
John of St. Amand, a medical writer, discussed in our 58th chapter.
Johannes de Sancto Paulo, another medical writer whose best known work seems to be that on medicinal simples.
John of Salisbury; see our 41st chapter.
John of Saxony, or John Danko of Saxony, at Paris in 1331 wrote a commentary on the astrological Ysagogicus of Alchabitius, which John of Spain had earlier translated. Amplon. Quarto 354, 14th century, fols. 4-59, Commenta Dankonis scilicet magistri Iohannis de Saxonia super Alkubicium; Amplon. Folio 387, 14th century, 46 fols., Iohannis Danconis Saxonis almanach secundum tabulas Alfonsinas compositum et annis 1336-1380 meridiano Parisiensi accomodatum--also in Amplon. Folio 389 and many other MSS; BN 7197, 7281, 7286, 7295A, Canones ad motum stellarum ordinati. Duhem IV (1916) 77 and 578-81 holds that two men have been confounded as John of Saxony,--one of the 13th, the other of the 14th century.
Johannes de Sicca Villa, Royal 12-E-XXV, fols. 37-65, de principiis naturae.
Joannes de Sicilia, BN 7281, 7406, Expositio super canones Arzachelis. Steinschneider (1905) p. 51, dates it in 1290 and regards this John as “hardly to be identified” (“schwerlich identisch”) with John of Messina. See also Duhem IV (1916) 6-9.
Joannes de Toledo, perhaps identical with John of Spain, as we have said.
Iohannes de Tornamira, dean or chancellor of Montpellier, Amplon. Folio 272, 1391 A. D., fols. 1-214, Clarificatorium ... procedens secundum Rasim in nono Almansoris.
Joannes Vincentius, Presbyter, Prior Eccles. de Monast, super Ledum, BN 3446, 15th century, #2, Adversus magicas artes et eos qui dicunt artibus eisdem nullam inesse efficaciam; Incipit missing.
John of Wallingford, Cotton Julius D-V I, fols. 1-7r, an astronomical fragment.
XXXIX. BERNARD SILVESTER: ASTROLOGY AND GEOMANCY
Problem of his identity--His works--Their influence--Disregard of Christian theology--The divine stars--Orders of spirits--The stars rule nature and reveal the future--Plot of the Mathematicus--Different interpretations put upon the Mathematicus--Hildebert’s Hermaphrodite’s horoscope--The art of geomancy--Prologue of the Experimentarius--Pictures of Bernard Silvester--Problem of a spying-tube and Hermann’s relation to the Experimentarius--Text of the Experimentarius--Two versions of the 28 Judges--Other modes of divination--Divination of the physician of King Amalricus--Prenostica Socratis Basilei--Further modes of divination--Experimental character of geomancy--Various other geomancies--Interest of statesmen and clergy in the art--Appendix I. Manuscripts of the Experimentarius of Bernard Silvester.
“Nell’ ora che non può il calor diurno Intrepidar più il freddo della luna, Vinto da terra, o talor da Saturno Quando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna Veggiono in oriente, innanzi all’ alba, Surger per via che poco le sta bruno.”
Purg. XIX, 1-6.
[Sidenote: Problem of his identity.]
Bernard Silvester, of whom this chapter will treat, is now generally recognized as a different person from the Bernard of Chartres whom William of Conches followed and on whose teaching John of Salisbury looked back.[261] From John’s account it is plain that Bernard of Chartres belonged to the generation before William of Conches, and Clerval has shown reason to believe that he was dead by 1130.[262] Bernard Silvester, on the other hand, wrote his De mundi universitate during the pontificate of Eugenius III, 1145-1153. Moreover, one of his pupils informs us that he taught at Tours.[263] This last fact also makes it difficult, although not impossible, to identify him with a Breton, named Bernard de Moelan, who, after serving as canon and chancellor at Chartres, became bishop of Quimper from 1159 to 1167.[264] At least they appear to have had somewhat similar interests, and Silvester seems to have had some connection with the school of Chartres, since he dedicated the De mundi universitate to Theodoric of Chartres.[265]
[Sidenote: His works.]
A number of works are extant under the name of Bernard Silvester. His interest in rhetoric and poetry is shown by a long Summa dictaminis (or, dictaminum) and by a Liber de metrificatura, in the Titulus of which he is called “a poet of the first rank” (optimi poetae).[266] He also wrote a commentary on the first books of the Aeneid.[267] Two other treatises are ascribed to him in which we are not here further interested, namely: De forma vitae honestae and De cura rei familiaris or Epistola ad Raimundum de modo rei familiaris gubernandae.[268] The three works of especial interest to us, while no one of them is exactly a treatise on astrology, all illustrate, albeit each in a different way, the dominance of astrological doctrine in the thought of the time. One is Experimentarius, an astrological geomancy translated into verse from the Arabic.[269] Another is a narrative poem whose plot hinges upon an astrologer’s prediction and whose very title is Mathematicus.[270] The third work, variously entitled De mundi universitate, Megacosmus et Microcosmus, and Cosmographia[271] has much to say of the stars and their rule over inferior creation.[272] It is written partly in prose and partly in verse,[273] and shows that Bernard laid as much stress on literary form in his scientific or pseudo-scientific works as in those on rhetoric and meter. Sandys says of it, “The rhythm of the hexameters is clearly that of Lucan, while the vocabulary is mainly that of Ovid”; but Dr. Poole believes that the hexameters are modelled upon Lucretius.[274] He would date it either in 1145 or about 1147-1148.[275]
[Sidenote: Their influence.]
The manuscripts of these three works are fairly numerous, indicating that they were widely read, and no contemporary objection appears to have been raised against their rather extreme astrological doctrines. As was well observed concerning the De mundi universitate over one hundred and fifty years ago, “These extravagances and some other similar ones did not prevent the book from achieving a very brilliant success from the moment of its first appearance,” as is shown by the contemporary testimony of Peter Cantor in the closing twelfth century and Eberhart de Bethune in the early thirteenth century, who says that the De mundi universitate was read in the schools. Gervaise of Tilbury and Vincent of Beauvais also cited it.[276] Indeed in our next chapter we shall find a Christian abbess, saint, and prophetess of Bernard’s own time charged--by a modern writer, it is true--with making use of it in her visions. Passages from Silvester are included in a thirteenth century collection of “Proverbs” from ancient and recent writers,[277] and more than one copy of the De mundi universitate is listed in such a medieval monastic library as St. Augustine’s, Canterbury.[278]
[Sidenote: Disregard of Christian theology.]
In the De mundi universitate we see the same influence of Platonism and astronomy, and of the Latin translation of the Timaeus in especial, as in the Philosophia of William of Conches. At the same time, its abstract personages and personified sciences, its Nous and Natura, its Urania and Physis with her two daughters, Theoretical and Practical, remind us of the pages of Martianus Capella and of Adelard of Bath’s De eodem et diverso. The characterization by Dr. Poole that the work “has an entirely pagan complexion,” and that Bernard’s scheme of cosmology is pantheistic and takes no account of Christian theology,[279] is essentially true, although occasionally some utterance indicates that the writer is acquainted with Christianity and no true pagan. Perhaps it is just because Bernard makes no pretense of being a theologian, that at a time when William of Conches was retracting in his Dragmaticon some of the views expressed in his Philosophia and the Sicilian translator was conscious of a bigoted theological opposition, Bernard should display neither fear nor consciousness of the existence of any such opposition. And yet it does not appear that the Sicilian translator engaged in theological discussion. Yet he complains of those who call astronomy idolatry; Bernard calmly calls the stars gods, and no one seems to have raised the least objection. At least Bernard’s fearless outspokenness and its subsequent popularity should prevent our laying too much stress upon the timidity of other writers in expressing new views, and should make us hesitate before interpreting their attitude as a sure sign of real danger to freedom of thought and speech, and to scientific investigation.
[Sidenote: The divine stars.]
What especially concerns our investigation are the views concerning stars and spirits expressed by Silvester. Like William of Conches, he describes the world of spirits in a Platonic or Neo-Platonic, rather than patristic, style. He differs from William in hardly using the word “demon” at all and in according the stars, like Adelard of Bath, a much higher place in his hierarchy. “The heaven itself is full of God,” says Bernard, “and the sky has its own animals, sidereal fires,”[280] just as man, who is in part a spiritual being, inhabits the earth. Bernard does not hesitate to call the stars “gods who serve God in person,” or “who serve in God’s very presence.”[281] There in the region of purer ether which extends as far as the sun they enjoy the vision of bliss eternal, free from all care and distraction, and resting in the peace of God which passeth all understanding.[282] He also repeats the Platonic doctrine that the mind is from the sky and that the human soul, when at last it lays aside the body, “will return to its kindred stars, added as a god to the number of superior beings.”[283]
[Sidenote: Orders of spirits.]
Between heaven and earth, between God and man, comes the mediate and composite order of “angelic creation.” “With the divinity of the stars” the members of this order share the attribute of deathlessness; with man they have this in common, to be stirred by passion and impulse.[284] Between sun and moon are benevolent angels who act as mediums between God and man. Other spirits inhabit the air beneath the moon. Some of them display an affinity to the near-by ether and fire, and live in tranquillity and mental serenity, although dwelling in the air. A second variety are the genii who are associated each with some man from birth to warn and guide him. But in the lower atmosphere are disorderly and malignant spirits who often are divinely commissioned to torment evil-doers, or sometimes torment men of their own volition. Often they invisibly invade human minds and thoughts by silent suggestion; again they assume bodies and take on ghostly forms. These Bernard calls angelos desertores, or fallen angels. But there are still left to be noted the spirits who inhabit the earth, on mountains or in forests and by streams: Silvani, Pans, and Nerei. They are of harmless character (innocua conversatione) and, being composed of the elements in a pure state, are long-lived but in the process of time will dissolve again.[285] This classification of spirits seems to follow Martianus Capella.
[Sidenote: The stars rule nature and reveal the future.]
Bernard’s assertion that the stars are gods is accompanied, as one would naturally expect, by a belief in their control of nature and revelation of the future. From their proximity to God they receive from His mind the secrets of the future, which they “establish through the lower species of the universe by inevitable necessity.”[286] Life comes to the world of nature from the sky as if from God, and the creatures of the earth, air, and water could not move from their tracks, did they not absorb vivifying motions from the sky.[287] Nous or Intelligence says to Nature, “I would have you behold the sky, inscribed with a multiform variety of images, which, like a book with open pages, containing the future in cryptic letters, I have revealed to the eyes of the more learned.”[288] In another passage Bernard affirms that God writes in the stars of the sky what can come “from fatal law,” that the movements of the stars control all ages, that there already is latent in the stars a series of events which long time will unfold, and that all the events of history, even the birth of Christ, have been foreshadowed by the stars.
“Scribit enim caelum stellis totumque figurat Quod de fatali lege venire potest, Praesignat qualique modo qualique tenore Omnia sidereus saecula motus agat. Praejacet in stellis series quam longior aetas Explicet et spatiis temporis ordo suis: Sceptra Phoronei, fratrum discordia Thebae, Flammae Phaëthonis, Deucalionis aquae. In stellis Codri paupertas, copia Croesi, Incestus Paridis, Hippolytique pudor; In stellis Priami species, audacia Turni, Sensus Ulixeus, Herculeusque vigor. In stellis pugil est Pollux, et navita Typhis, Et Cicero rhetor, et geometra Thales; In stellis lepidus dictat Maro, Milo figurat, Fulgurat in latia nobilitate Nero. Astra notat Persis, Aegyptus parturit artes, Graecia docta legit, praelia Roma gerit. Exemplar specimenque Dei virguncula Christum Parturit, et verum saecula numen habent.”[289]
Yet Bernard urges man to model his life after the stars,[290] and once speaks of “what is free in the will and what is of necessity.” He thus appears, like the author of the treatise on fate ascribed to Plutarch, like Boethius, and like a host of other theologians, philosophers, and astrologers, to believe in the co-existence of free will, inevitable fate, and “variable fortune.”[291]
[Sidenote: Plot of the Mathematicus.]
Bernard Silvester’s interest and faith in the art of astrology is further exemplified by his poem Mathematicus, a narrative which throughout assumes the truth of astrological prediction concerning human fortune. Hauréau showed that it had been incorrectly included among the works of Hildebert of Tours and Le Mans, and that the theme is suggested in the fourth Pseudo-Quintillian declamation, but that Bernard has added largely to the plot there briefly outlined. A Roman knight and lady were in every respect well endowed both by nature and fortune except that their marriage had up to the moment when the story opens been a childless one. At last the wife consulted an astrologer or mathematicus, “who could learn from the stars,” we are told, “the intentions of the gods, the mind of the fates, and the plan of Jove, and discover the hidden causes and secrets of nature.” He informed her that she would bear a son who would become a great genius and the ruler of Rome, but who would one day kill his father. When the wife told her husband of this prediction, he made her promise to kill the child in infancy. But when the time came, her mother love prevailed and she secretly sent the boy away to be reared, while she assured her husband that he was dead. She named her son Patricida in order that he might abhor the crime of patricide the more. The boy early gave signs of great intellectual capacity. Among other studies he learned “the orbits of the stars and how human fate is under the stars,” and he “clasped divine Aristotle to his breast.” Later on, when Rome was hard pressed by the Carthaginians and her king was in captivity, he rallied her defeated forces and ended the war in triumph.
“And because the fatal order demands it so shall be, The fates gave him this path to dominion.... Blind chance sways the silly toiling of men; Our world is the plaything and sport of the gods.”
The king thereupon abdicated in favor of Patricida, whom he addressed in these words, “O youth, on whose birth, if there is any power in the stars, a favorable horoscope looked down.”
The mother rejoiced to hear of her son’s success, and marveled at the correctness of the astrologer’s prediction, but was now the more troubled as to her husband’s fate. He noticed her distraction and at last induced her to tell him its cause. But then, instead of being angry at the deception which she had practiced upon him, and instead of being alarmed at the prospect of his own death, he, too, rejoiced in his son’s success, and said that he would die happy, if he could but see and embrace him. He accordingly made himself known to his son and told him how he had once ordered his death but had been thwarted by the eternal predestined order of events, and how some day his son would slay him, not of evil intent but compelled by the courses of the stars. “And manifest is the fault of the gods in that you cannot be kinder to your father.”
The son thereupon determines that he will evade the decree of the stars by committing suicide. He is represented as soliloquizing as follows:
“How is our mind akin to the ethereal stars, If it suffers the sad necessity of harsh Lachesis? In vain we possess a particle of the divine mind, If our reason cannot make provision for itself. God so made the elements, so made the fiery stars, That man is not subject to the stars.”
Patricida accordingly summons all the Romans together, and, after inducing them by an eloquent rehearsal of his great services in their behalf to grant him any boon that he may ask, says that his wish is to die; and at this point the poem ends, leaving us uninformed whether the last part of the astrologer’s prediction remained unfulfilled, or whether Patricida’s suicide caused his father’s death, or whether possibly some solution was found in a play upon the word Patricida. Hauréau, however, believed that the poem is complete as it stands.
[Sidenote: Different interpretations put upon the Mathematicus.]
The purpose of the poet and his attitude towards astrology have been interpreted in diametrically opposite ways by different scholars. Before Hauréau it was customary to attribute the poem to Hildebert, archbishop of Tours, and to regard it as an attack upon astrology. The early editors of the Histoire Littéraire de la France supported their assertion that the most judicious men of letters in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had only a sovereign scorn for the widely current astrological superstition of their time by citing Hildebert as ridiculing the art in his Mathematicus.[292] A century later Charles Jourdain again represented Hildebert as turning to ridicule the vain speculations of the astrologers.[293] Bourassé, the editor of Hildebert’s works as they appear in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, seems to have felt that the poem was scarcely an outspoken attack upon astrology and tried to explain it as an academic exercise which was not to be taken seriously, but regarded as satire upon judicial astrology. Hauréau not only denied Archbishop Hildebert’s authorship, but took the common sense view that the poet believes fully in astrology. It would, indeed, be difficult to detect any suggestion of ridicule or satire about the poem. Its plot is a tragic one and it seems written in all seriousness. Even Patricida, despite his assertion that “man is not subject to the stars,” does not doubt that he will kill his father conformably to the learned astrologer’s prediction, if he himself continues to live. It is only by the tour de force of self-slaughter that he hopes to cheat fate.
[Sidenote: Hildebert’s Hermaphrodite’s horoscope.]
Even Archbishop Hildebert shows a tendency towards astrology in other poems attributed to him; for example, in his Nativity of Christ and in a short poem, The Hermaphrodite, which reads as follows, representing the fulfillment of a horoscope:
“While my pregnant mother bore me in the womb, ’tis said the gods deliberated what she should bring forth. Phoebus said, ‘It is a boy’; Mars, ‘A girl’; Juno, ‘Neither.’ So when I was born, I was a hermaphrodite. When I seek to die, the goddess says, ‘He shall be slain by a weapon’; Mars, ‘By crucifixion’; Phoebus, ‘By drowning.’ So it turned out. A tree shades the water; I climb it; the sword I carry by chance slips from its scabbard; I myself fall upon it; my trunk is impaled in the branches; my head falls into the river. Thus I, man, woman, and neither, suffered flood, sword, and cross.”[294]
This poem has always been greatly admired by students of Latin literature for its epigrammatic neatness and conciseness, and has been thought too good to be the work of a medieval writer, and has been even attributed to Petronius. Another version, by the medieval poet, Peter Riga, entitled De ortu et morte pueri monstruosi, is longer and far less elegant. Hauréau, however, regarded the Hermaphrodite as a medieval composition, since there are no manuscripts of it earlier than the twelfth century; but he was in doubt whether to ascribe it to Hildebert or to Matthew of Vendôme, who in listing his own poems mentions hic et haec hermaphroditus homo.[295]
[Sidenote: The art of geomancy.]
We turn to the association of the name of Bernard Silvester with the superstitious art of geomancy. It may be briefly defined as a method of divination in which, by marking down a number of points at random and then connecting or cancelling them by lines, a number or figure is obtained which is used as a key to sets of tables or to astrological constellations. The only reason for calling this geomancy, that is, divination by means of the element earth, would seem to be that at first the marks were made and figures drawn in the sand or dust, like those of Archimedes during the siege of Syracuse. But by the middle ages, at least, any kind of writing material would do as well. Although a somewhat more abstruse form of superstition than the ouija board, it seems to have been nearly as popular in the medieval period as the ouija board is now.
[Sidenote: Prologue of the Experimentarius.]
The name of Bernard Silvester is persistently associated in the manuscripts with a work bearing the title Experimentarius, which seems to consist of sets of geomantic tables translated from the Arabic. Its prologue is unmistakable, but it is less easy to make out what text should go with it and how the text should be arranged. Sometimes the prologue is found alone in the manuscripts,[296] and the text which accompanies it in others varies in amount and sometimes is more or less mixed up with other similar modes of divination. The prologue is sometimes headed, Evidencia operis subsequentis, and regularly subdivides into three brief sections. The first, opening with the words, Materia huius libelli, describes the subject-matter of the text as “the effect and efficacy of the moon and other planets and of the constellations, which they exert upon inferior things.” The writer’s opinion is that God permits mortals who make sane and sober inquiry to learn by subtle consideration of the constellations many things concerning the future and persons who are absent, and that astrology also gives information concerning human character, health and sickness, prosperity, fertility of the soil, the state of sea and air, business matters and journeys. In a second paragraph, opening, Utilitas autem huius libelli, the writer states that the use of his book is that one may avoid the perils of which the stars give warning by penitence and prayers and vows to God who, as the astrologer Albumasar admits, controls the stars. And through them the Creator reveals his will, as in the case of the three Magi who learned from a star that a great prophet had been born. Finally, in a paragraph of a single sentence, which opens with the words, Titulus vero talis est, we are informed that the title is the Experimentarius of Bernard Silvester, “not because he was the original author but the faithful translator from Arabic into Latin.”
[Sidenote: Pictures of Bernard Silvester.]
In one manuscript which contains the Experimentarius there is twice depicted, although the second time in different colors, a seated human figure evidently intended to represent Bernard Silvester. He is bearded and sits in a chair writing, with a pen in one hand and a knife or scalpel in the other. Neither miniature is in juxtaposition to the prologue in which Bernard is named, but in both cases the figure is accompanied by five lines of text, written alternately in red and blue colors and proclaiming that Bernard Silvester is the translator and that the number seven is the basis in this infallible book of lot-casting.[297] It would not be safe, however, to accept this miniature as an accurate representation of Bernard, since the manuscript is not contemporary and it contains similar portraits of Socrates and Plato, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Cicero.
[Sidenote: Problem of a spying-tube and Hermann’s relation to the Experimentarius.]
Both in the manuscript which we have just been describing and another of older date[298] is a picture of two persons seated. In both manuscripts one is called Euclid, in the older manuscript only is the other named, and designated as Hermann. According to Black’s description Euclid “uplifts a sphere with his right hand, and with his left holds a telescope through which he is observing the stars; towards whom ‘Hermannus,’ on the other side, holds forth a circular instrument hanging from his fingers, which is superscribed ‘Astrolabium.’” The picture in the other manuscript is similar, but in view of the fact that they were written in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the rod along which, or tube through which ‘Euclid’ is squinting, can scarcely be regarded as a telescope without more definite proof of the invention of that instrument before the time of Galileo. Perhaps it is a dioptra[299] or spying-tube of the sort described by the ancients, Polybius and Hero, and used in surveying. But I mention the picture for the further reason that Clerval[300] asserted a connection between Hermann of Dalmatia, the twelfth century translator, and Bernard Silvester, affirming that Hermann sent Bernard his work on the uses of the astrolabe and that he really translated the Experimentarius from the Arabic and sent it to Bernard who merely versified it. But we have already proved that it was Hermann the Lame of the eleventh century who wrote on the astrolabe and that he did so a century before Bernard Silvester. The aforesaid picture is clearly of him and not of Hermann the Dalmatian. And whether the “B” at whose request Hermann wrote on the astrolabe be meant for Berengarius or Bernard, it certainly cannot be meant for Bernard Silvester, who was not born yet.
[Sidenote: Text of the Experimentarius.]
Apparently the text proper of the Experimentarius opens with the usual instructions of geomancies for the chance casting of points and drawing of lines. The number of points left over as a result of this procedure is used as a guide in finding the answer to the question which one has in mind. In a preliminary table are listed 28 subjects of inquiry such as life and death, marriage, imprisonment, enemies, gain. One turns to the topic in which one is interested and, according as the number of points obtained by chance is over or under seven, reckons forward or backward that many times from the number opposite his theme of inquiry, or, if exactly seven points were left over, takes the number of the theme of inquiry as he finds it. In one manuscript the new number thus obtained is that of the “Judge of the Fates” to whom one should next turn. There are 28 such judges, whose names are the Arabic designations for the 28 divisions of the circle of the zodiac or mansions of the moon, which spends a day in each of them.[301] A page is devoted to each judge, under whose name are twenty-eight lines containing as many responses to the twenty-eight subjects of inquiry. The inquirer selects a line corresponding to his number of points and the tables are so arranged that he thus always receives the answer which fits his inquiry. But most of the manuscripts, instead of at once referring the inquirer to his Judge as we have described, insert other preliminary tables in which he is first referred to a planet and then to a day of the moon. This unnecessarily indirect and complicated system is probably intended to mystify the reader and to emphasize further the supposedly astrological basis of the procedure, whereas it is in reality purely a matter of lot-casting.
[Sidenote: Two versions of the 28 judges.]
Now in most of the manuscripts which I have examined there are two versions of these twenty-eight pages of Judges of the Fates, worded differently, although the corresponding lines always seem to answer the same questions and apply to the same topics of inquiry as before. In the version which comes first, for example, the first line under the first Judge, Almazene or the belly of Aries, is
Tuum indumentum durabit tempore longo
while in the second version the same line reads,
Hoc ornamentum decus est et fama ferentum.[302]
Both versions seem to be regarded as the Experimentarius of Bernard Silvester, for in the manuscripts where they occur together the first usually follows its prologue, while the second is preceded by his picture and the line, Translator Bernardus Silvester.[303] In one manuscript[304] the prologue is immediately followed by the second version and the first set of Judges does not occur. In some manuscripts,[305] however, the second version occurs without the first and without the prologue, in which cases, I think, there is nothing to indicate that it is by Bernard Silvester or a part of the Experimentarius. The first version ends in several manuscripts with the words, Explicit libellus de constellationibus[306] rather than some such phrase as Explicit Experimentarius. Furthermore in some manuscripts where it occurs alone this first set of Judges is called the book of Alchandiandus or Alkardianus.[307] He may, however, have been the Arabic author and Bernard his translator, and the liber alkardiani phylosophi opens in at least one manuscript with words appropriate to the title, Experimentarius, “Since everything that is tested by experience is experienced either for its own sake or on some other account.”[308]
[Sidenote: Other modes of divination.]
There are so many treatises of this type in medieval manuscripts and they are so frequently collected in one codex that they are liable to be confused with one another. Thus in two manuscripts a method of divination ascribed to the physician of King Amalricus[309] is in such juxtaposition to the Experimentarius that Macray takes it to be part of the Experimentarius, while the catalogue of the Sloane Manuscripts combines the two as “a compilation ‘concerning the art of Ptolemy.’” Macray also includes in the Experimentarius a Praenostica Socratis Basilei, which is of frequent occurrence in the manuscripts, and other treatises on divination which are either anonymous or ascribed to Pythagoras and, judging from the miniatures prefixed to them, to Anaxagoras and Cicero, who thus again is appropriately punished for having written a work against divination. I doubt if these other modes of divination are parts of the Experimentarius, which often is found without them, as are some of them without it. But they are so much like it in general form and procedure that we may consider them now, especially as they are of such dubious date and authorship that it would be difficult to place them more exactly.
[Sidenote: Divination of the physician of King Amalricus.]
The treatise which is assigned to the physician of King Amalricus and which is said to have been composed in memory of that monarch’s great victory over the Saracens and Turks in Egypt, obtains its key number by revolution of a wheel[310] rather than by the geomantic casting of points, and introduces a trifle more of astrological observance. If on first applying the inquirer receives an unfavorable reply, he may wait for thirty days and try again, but after the third failure he must desist entirely. “It is not allowed to inquire concerning one thing more than three times.” The twenty-eight subjects of inquiry are divided in groups of four among the seven planets, and the inquirer is told to return on the weekday named after the planet under which his query falls. On the day set the astrologer must further determine with the astrolabe when the hour of the same planet has arrived, and not until then may the divination by means of the wheel take place, as a result of which the inquirer is directed as before to one of 28 Judges who in this case, however, are said to be associated with mansions of the sun[311] rather than moon. At the close of the treatise of the physician of King Amalricus in both manuscripts[312] that I have examined is inserted some sceptical person’s opinion to the effect that these methods of divination are subtle trifles which are not utterly useless as a means of diversion, but that faith should not be placed in them. The more apparent the devil’s nets are, concludes the passage, the more wary the human bird will be.
[Sidenote: Prenostica Socratis Basilei.]
In the Prenostica or Prenosticon Socratis Basilei--Prognostic of Socrates the King--a number from one to nine is obtained by chance either by geomancy or by revolving a wheel on which an image of “King Socrates” points his finger. The inquirer then consults a table where sixteen questions are so arranged in compartments designated by letters of the alphabet that each question is found in two compartments. Say that the inquirer finds his question in A and E. He then consults another table where 144 names of birds, beasts, fish, stones, herbs, flowers, cities, and other “species” are arranged in nine rows opposite the numbers from one to nine and in sixteen columns headed by the sixteen possible pairs of letters such as the AE of our inquirer. Looking in the row corresponding to his number and the column AE he obtains a name. He must then find this name in a series of twelve circular tables where the aforesaid names are listed under their proper species, each table containing twelve names. He now is referred on to one of sixteen kings of the Turks, India, Spain, Francia, Babylonia, the Saracens, Romania, etc. Under each king nine answers are listed and here at last under his original number obtained by lot he finds the appropriate answer.[313]
[Sidenote: Further modes of divination.]
In the Prenostica Pitagorice we are assured that we may rest easy as to the integrity of the Catholic Faith being observed, “for that does not happen of necessity which human caution forewarned, can avoid.” It answers any one of a list of thirty-six questions by means of a number obtained by chance between one and twelve. The inquirer is referred to one of 36 birds whose pictures are drawn in the margins with twelve lines of answers opposite each bird. Other schemes of divination found with the Experimentarius in some manuscripts differ from the foregoing only in the number of questions concerning which inquiry can be made, the number of Judges and the names given them, the number of lines under each Judge, and the number of intermediate directory tables that have to be consulted before the final Judge is reached. As Judges we meet the twelve sons of Jacob, the thirty-six decans or thirds of the twelve signs, and another astrological group of twenty made up of the twelve signs, seven planets, and the dragon.[314]
[Sidenote: Experimental character of geomancy.]
In one manuscript[315] the directions for consulting this last group of Judges are given under the heading, Documentum experimenti retrogradi, which like Bernard’s Experimentarius suggests the experimental character of the art of geomancy or the arts of divination in general. Later we shall hear Albertus Magnus in the Speculum astronomiae call treatises of aerimancy,[316] pyromancy, and hydromancy, as well as of geomancy “experimental books.”
[Sidenote: Various other geomancies.]
Geomancies are of frequent occurrence in libraries of medieval manuscripts.[317] Many are anonymous[318] but others bear the names of noted men of learning. The art must have had great currency among the Arabs,[319] for not only are treatises current in Latin under such names as Abdallah,[320] Albedatus,[321] Alcherius,[322] Alkindi,[323] and Alpharinus,[324] but almost every prominent translator of the time seems to have tried his hand at a geomancy. In the manuscripts we find geomancies attributed to Gerard of Cremona,[325] Plato of Tivoli,[326] Michael Scot,[327] Hugo Sanctelliensis,[328] William of Moerbeke,[329] William de Saliceto of Piacenza,[330] and Peter of Abano,[331] and even to their medical confrère and contemporary, Bernard Gordon, who is not usually classed as a translator.[332] Some of these, however, were translators from the Greek or the Hebrew rather than Arabic, and some of the geomantic treatises in the manuscripts claim an origin from India.[333] But a Robert or Roger Scriptoris who compiled a geomancy towards the close of the medieval period thinks first among his sources of “the Arabs of antiquity and the wise moderns, William of Moerbeke, Bartholomew of Parma, Gerard of Cremona, and many others.”[334] These other geomancies are not necessarily like the Experimentarius of Bernard Silvester[335] and we shall describe another sort when we come to speak of Bartholomew of Parma in a later chapter.
[Sidenote: Interest of statesmen and clergy in the art.]
In the fifteenth century such intellectual statesmen as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Henry VII of England displayed an interest in geomancy, judging from a manuscript de luxe of Guido Bonatti’s work on astrology which was made for Henry VII and contains a picture of him, and also Plato’s translation of the geomancy of Alpharinus and geomantic “tables of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.”[336] The interest of the clergy in this superstitious art is attested not only by the translation of such a person as William of Moerbeke, who was papal penitentiary and later archbishop of Corinth, but by a geomancy which we find in two fifteenth century manuscripts written by Martin, an abbot of Burgos, at the request of another abbot of Paris.[337] Treatises on geomancy continue to be found in the manuscripts as late as the eighteenth century, that of Gerard of Cremona especially.
FOOTNOTES:
[261] Clerval, Les Écoles de Chartres, Paris, 1895, pp. 158-63. The point was for a time contested by Ch. V. Langlois, “Maître Bernard,” in Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, LIV (1893) and by Hauréau. The two Bernards are still identified in EB, 11th edition, while Steinschneider (1905), p. 8, still identified Bernard of Chartres with the author of De mundi universitate.
[262] Dr. R. L. Poole, EHR (1920), p. 327, does not regard this as absolutely certain but agrees at p. 331 “that the evidence of place and time make it impossible to identify Bernard Silvester with Bernard of Chartres,” as he had done earlier in Illustrations of Medieval Thought (1884), pp. 113-26.
[263] B. Hauréau, Le Mathematicus de Bernard Silvestris, Paris, 1895, p. 11.
[264] Clerval (1895), pp. 158, 173.
[265] BN 6415, fol. 74v, “Terrico veris scientiarum titulis doctori famosissimo bernardus silvestris opus suum.”
[266] Clerval (1895), pp. 173-4.
[267] BN 16246, 15th century. Extracts from it are printed by Cousin, Fragments philosophiques, II, 348-52. John of Salisbury in 1159 used it in the Polycraticus, ed. Webb (1909) I, xxx, xlii-xliii.
[268] Many MSS at Paris, BN 3195, 5698, 6395, 6477, 6480, 7054, 8299, 8513, and probably others. MSS catalogues often ascribe it to St. Bernard.
[269] Attention was first called to it by Langlois, Maître Bernard, 1893. It has not been printed. A description of some of the MSS of it will be found in Appendix I at the close of this chapter.
[270] B. Hauréau, Le Mathematicus de Bernard Silvestris, Paris, 1895, contains the text and lists the following MSS: BN 3718, 5129, 6415; Tours 300; Cambrai 875; Bodleian A-44; Vatican 344, 370, 1440 de la Reine; Berlin Cod. Theol. Octavo 94. Printed in Migne PL 171, 1365-80, among the poems of Hildebert of Tours.
[271] Ed. by Wrobel and Barach, in Bibl. Philos. mediae aetatis, Innsbruck, 1876, from two MSS, Vienna 526 and CLM 23434. HL XII (1763), p. 261 et seq., had already listed six MSS in the then Royal Library at Paris (now there are at least eight, BN 3245, 6415, 6752A, 7994, 8320, 8751C, 8808A, and 15009, 12-13th century, fol. 187), four at the Vatican, and many others elsewhere. The following may be added:
Cotton Titus D-XX, fols. 110v-115r, Bernardi Sylvestris de utroque mundo, majore et minore.
Cotton Cleopatra A-XIV, fols. 1-26, Bernardi Sylvestris cosmographia proso-metrice in qua de multis rebus physicis agitur.
Additional 35112, Liber de mundi philosophia, author not named.
Sloane 2477 and Royal 15-A-XXXII.
CU Trinity 1335, early 13th century, fols. 1-25v, Bernardi Silvestris Cosmographia.
CU Trinity 1368 (II), late 12th century, 50 leaves, Bernardi Silvestris Megacosmus et Microcosmus.
[272] Clerval’s (1895) pp. 259-61, “Le système de Bernard Silvester,” is limited to the De mundi universitate and says nothing of his obvious astrological doctrine, although at p. 240 Clerval briefly states that in that work Bernard takes over many figures from pagan astrology.
[273] HL XII (1763) p. 261 et seq., besides the De mundi universitate mentioned “two poems in elegiacs written expressly in defense of the influence of the constellations.” These were very probably the Mathematicus and Experimentarius, or the two parts or versions of the latter.
[274] History of Classical Scholarship (1903) I, 515; Illustrations of Medieval Thought (1884) p. 118.
[275] EHR (1920) p. 331.
[276] HL XII (1763) p. 261 et seq.
[277] Berlin 193 (Phillips 1827), fol. 25v, “Proverbia.”
[278] Indeed, the 15th century catalogue of that abbey lists one MS, 1482, which contains both the Megacosmus and Mathematicus, with the treatise of Valerius to Rufinus on not getting married sandwiched in between.
[279] Poole (1884) pp. 117-18.
[280] De mundi universitate, II, 6, 10, “Caelum ipsum Deo plenum est.... Sua caelo animalia ignes siderei....”
[281] Ibid., I, 3, 6-7,
“Motus circuitus numina turba deum Dico deos quorum ante Deum praesentia servit.”
Also II, 4, 39, “deos caelumque.”
[282] Ibid., II, 6, 49, “Qui quia aeternae beatitudinis visione perfruuntur, ab omni distrahentis curae sollicitudine feriati in pace Dei quae omnem sensum superat conquiescunt.”
[283] De mundi universitate, II, 4, 49-50.
“Corpore iam posito cognata reibit ad astra Additus in numero superumdeus.”
[284] Ibid., II, 6, 36-, “Participatenim angelicae creationis numerus cum siderum divinitate quod non moritur; cum homine, quod passionum affectibus incitatur.”
[285] Ibid., II, 6, 92 et seq.
[286] De mundi universitate, II, 6, 47-.
[287] Ibid., I, 4, 5-.
[288] Ibid., II, 1, 23-.
[289] Ibid., I, 3, 33 et seq.
[290] De mundi universitate, II, 4, 31-50; and II, 1, 30-32.
[291] Ibid., II, 1, 33-35.
“Parcarum leges et ineluctabile fatum Fortunaeque vices variabilis Quae sit in arbitrio res libera quidve necesse.”
[292] HL VII (1746) p. 137.
[293] C. Jourdain, Dissertation sur l’état de la philosophie naturelle etc., Paris, 1838, p. 116, note.
[294] Migne, PL 171, 1446. Juno here stands for the planet Venus: see Hyginus II, 42, “Stella Veneris, Lucifer nomine, quam nonnulli Junonis esse dixerunt”; and other passages cited by Bouché-Leclercq, L’Astrologie grecque, 1899, p. 99, note 2.
[295] J. B. Hauréau, Les mélanges poétiques d’Hildebert, 1882, pp. 138-47. In Digby 53, a poetical miscellany of the end of the 12th century, no author is named for the “De Ermaphrodito” nor for some other items which appear in the printed edition of Hildebert’s poems, although Hildebert’s name is attached to a few pieces in the MS.
[296] Ashmole 345, late 14th century, fol. 64. Bodleian Auct. F. 3. 13, fol. 104v. For a summary of the MSS see Appendix I at the close of this chapter.
[297] Digby 46, 14th century, fol. 1v, the first line is blue, the next red, etc.
An sors instabilis melius ferat ars docet eius In septem stabis minus una petens numerabis Post septem sursum numerando perfice cursum Translator Bernardus Silvester Hic infallibilis liber incipit autem peius.
At fol. 25v, the same five lines except that the last line is put first, where it would seem to belong, and is accordingly colored red instead of blue as before, the colors of the other four lines remaining the same as before.
[298] Ashmole 304, 13th century, fol. 2v.
[299] In this connection the following MS might prove of interest: CU Trinity 1352, 17th century, neatly written, Dioptrica Practica. Fol. 1 is missing and with it the full title. Cap 1, de Telescopiorum ac Microscopium Inventione, diversitate, et varietati. Quaestio I, Quid sunt Telescopia et quomodo ac quando inventa. After fol. 90 is a single leaf of diagrams.
[300] Clerval (1895), pp. 169, 190-91.
[301] These 28 Judges, or mansions of the moon, are seldom spelled twice alike in the MSS, but are somewhat as follows: Almazene, Anatha, Albathon, Arthura, Adoran, Almusan, Atha, Arian, Anathia, Althare, Albuza, Alcoreten, Arpha, Alana, Asionet, Algaphar, Azavenu, Alakyal, Alcalu, Aleum, Avaadh, Avelde, Cathateue, Eadabula, Eadatauht, Eadalana, Algafalmar, Algagafalui.
[302] In the MSS, which are very carelessly and often slovenly written, the wording of these lines varies a good deal, for instance, in Digby 46, fol. 11r, “Sum (sic) monumentum durabit tempore longo,” and in CU Trinity 1404 (II), fol. 2r, “Hoc ornamentum est et fama parentum.”
[303] Digby 46, fol. 25v; in Ashmole 304 the corresponding leaf has been cut out, probably for the sake of the miniature; Sloane 3857, fol. 181v, omits the picture but has the phrase, “Translator Bernardus Silvester.”
[304] Sloane 3554, fol. 13v-.
[305] Ashmole 342, early 14th century, #2.
Ashmole 399, late 13th century, fols. 54-8.
Royal 12-C-XII, fols. 108-23.
CU Trinity 1404 (II), 14-15th century, fols. 2-16.
Some of these MSS I have not seen.
[306] Digby 46, fol. 24v; Ashmole 304, fol. 16v; Sloane 3857, fol. 180v.
[307] Additional 15236, English hand of 13-14th century, fols. 130-52r, “libellus Alchandiandi”; BN 7486, 14th century, fol. 30v, “Incipit liber alkardiani phylosophi. Cum omne quod experitur sit experiendum propter se vel propter aliud....” And see above, the latter pages of Chapter 30.
[308] See the preceding note.
[309] Sloane 3554, fol. 1-; Digby 46, fols. 3r-5v, and fol. 90r. But in both MSS it precedes the prologue of the Experimentarius. Macray was probably induced to regard everything in Digby 46 up to fol. 92r as Experimentarius by the picture of Bernard Silvester which occurs at fol. 1v with the accompanying five lines stating that he is the translator of “this infallible book.” But the picture is probably misplaced, since it occurs again at fol. 25v before the second version of the 28 Judges.
[310] Inset inside the thick cover of Digby 46 are two interlocking wooden cogwheels for this purpose, with 28 and 13 teeth respectively.
[311] In Digby 46 diagrams showing the number of stars in each are given.
[312] Digby 46, fol. 5v; Sloane 3554, fol. 12r.
[313] I have described the Prenostica as it is found in Digby 46, fol. 40r-, with a picture at fol. 41v of Socrates seated and Plato standing behind him and pointing. Ashmole 304 has the same text and picture; and the text is practically the same in Sloane 3857, fols. 196-207, “Documentum subsequentis considerationis quae Socratica dicitur.” In Additional 15236, 13-14th century, fols. 95r-108r, the inquirer is first directed to implore divine aid and repeat a Paternoster and Ave Maria, and some details are slightly different, but the general method is identical. The final answers are given in French. In BN 7420A, 14th century, fol. 126r- (or clxxxxvi, or col. 451), “Liber magni solacii socratis philosophi” is also essentially the same; indeed, its opening words are, “Pronosticis Socratis basilii.” Preceding it are similar methods of divination, beginning at fol. 121v (or clxxxxii or col. 440), “Si vis operare de geomancia debes facere quatuor lineas....” Evidently the following is also our treatise: CU Trinity 1404 (IV), 14-15th century, Iste liber dicitur Rota fortune in qua sunt 16 questiones determinate in pronosticis sententiat’. (sic) basilici que sub sequentibus inscribuntur et sunt 12 spere et 16 Reges pro iudicibus constituti et habent determinare veritatem de questionibus antedictis cum auxilio sortium. James (III, 423) adds, “The questions, tables, spheres, and Kings follow....” Our treatise is also listed in John Whytefeld’s 1389 catalogue of MSS in Dover Priory, No. 409, fol. 192v, Pronostica socratis phi.
[314] These tracts of divination are found in Digby 46, fols. 52r-92r, and partially in Ashmole 304, Sloane 3857, and Sloane 2472.
[315] Sloane 2472, fol. 22r.
[316] The word seems to be regularly so spelled in the middle ages, although modern dictionaries give only aeromancy.
[317] For instance, at Munich the following MSS are devoted to works of geomancy: CLM 192, 196, 240, 242, 276, 392, 398, 421, 436, 456, 458, 483, 489, 541, 547, 588, 671, 677, 905, 11998, 24940, 26061, 26062.
[318] For instance, Amplon. Quarto 174, 14th century, fol. 120, Geomancia parva; Qu. 345, 14th century, fols. 47-50, geomancia cum theorica sua; Qu. 361, 14th century, fols. 62-79, five treatises; Qu. 365, fol. 83; Qu. 368, 14th century, fol. 30; Qu. 374, 14th century, fols. 1-60; Qu. 377, 14th century, fols. 70-76; Amplon. Octavo 88, 14th century, fols. 5-10; Amplon. Duodecimo 17, 14th century, fols. 27-35. Harleian 671; 4166, 15th century; Royal 12-C-XVI, 15th century; Sloane 887, 16th century, fols. 3-59; 1437, 16th century; 2186, 17th century; 3281, 13-14th century, fols. 25-34, “Liber 28 iudicum” or “Liber parcarum sive fatorum.”
[319] Additional 9600 is a geomancy in Arabic, and Addit. 8790, La Geomantia del S. Christoforo Cattaneo, Genonese, l’inventore di detta Almadel Arabico.
[320] Vatic. Urbin. Lat. 262, 14-15th century, Abdallah geomantiae fragmenta. Amplon. Folio 389, 14th century, fols. 56-99, Geomantia Abdalla astrologi cum figuris; perhaps the same as Math. 47, Geomancia cum egregiis tabulis Abdana astrologi, in the 1412 catalogue.
Amplon. Quarto 380, early 14th century, fols. 1-47, geomancia optima Abdallah filii Ali.
Magliabech. XX-13, 15th century, fols. 208-10, “Il libro di Zaccheria ebrio il quale compuose le tavole de giudici. Disse il famiglio di Abdalla....”
[321] Amplon. Octavo 88, early 14th century, fols. 1-5, geomancia Albedato attributa, fols. 107-10, Albedatii de sortilegiis.
CLM 398, 14th century, fols. 106-14, “Belio regi Persarum vates Albedatus salutem.”
BN 7486, 14th century, fol. 46r-, Albedaci philosophi ars punctorum; here the work is addressed to “Delyo regi Persarum” and is said to be translated by “Euclid, king and philosopher.” It immediately follows another geomancy by Alkardianus, of whom we have spoken elsewhere.
Berlin 965, 16th century, fol. 64-, “Incipit liber Albedachi vatis Arabici de sortilegiis ad Delium regem Persarum / Finis adest libri Algabri Arabis de sortilegiis”; similarly Amplonius in 1412 listed Math, 8, “liber subtilis valde Algabre geomanticus ad futurorum negociaciones.”
[322] Vienna 5508, 14-15th century, fols. 200-201v, “Ego Alcherius inter multa prodigia / nudus postea quolibet subhumetur.” Is this the Alcherius mentioned by Mrs. Merrifield (1849) I, 54-6 as copying in 1409 “Experiments with Color,” from a MS which he had borrowed?
[323] CLM 489, 16th century, fols. 207-22, Alchindi libellus de geomantia; also in CLM 392, 15th century.
[324] Arundel 66, 15th century, fols. 269-77, “Liber sciencie arienalis de judicis geomansie ab Alpharino filio Abrahe Judeo editus et a Platone de Hebreico sermone in Latinum translatus.”
CLM 11998, anno 1741, fol. 209-, Alfakini Arabici filii quaestiones geomantiae a Platone in Latinum translatae anno 1535 (which cannot be right).
CU Magdalene College 27 (F. 4. 27, Haenel 23) late 14th century, fols. 120-125v, “Incipit liber arenalis sciencie ab alfarino abizarch editus et a Platone Tiburtino de Arabico in latinum translatus.”
[325] Bologna University Library 449, 14th century, “Geomantia ex Arabico translata per Magistrum Gerardum de Cremona. Si quis partem geomanticam / multum bonum signi.”
Magliabech XX-13, fol. 61.
Digby 74, 15-16th century, fols. 1-52.
Sloane 310, 15th century.
Amplon. Quarto 373, 14th century, fols. 1-31, with notes at 32-37.
CLM 276, 14th century, fols. 69-75, Geomantia mag. Gerardi Cremonensis ab auctoribus via astronomice conposita.
Also printed under the title Geomantia astronomica in H. C. Agrippa, Opera, 1600, pp. 540-53.
[326] See note 324.
[327] CLM 489, 16th century, fol. 174-, Michaelis Scoti geomantia.
[328] MSS of Hugo’s geomancy have already been listed in chapter 38, p. 86.
[329] CLM 588, 14th century, fols. 6-58, “Incipit geomantia a fratre gilberto (?) de morbeca domini pape penitentionario compilata quam magistro arnulfo nepoti suo commendavit.”
CLM 905, 15th century, fols. 1-64, Wilhelmi de Morbeca Geomantia.
Wolfenbüttel 2725, 14th century, “Geomantia fratris Guilhelmi de Marbeta penitenciarii domini pape dedicata Arnulpho nepoti. Anno domini millesimo ducentesimo octuagesimo octavo. Hoc opus est scientie geomancie.”
Vienna 5508, 14-15th century, fol. 1-, “Liber geomancie editus a fratre Wilhelmo de Morbeta. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus / querenti vel in brevi.”
Amplon. Quarto 373, 14th century, fols. 39-118; Qu. 377, 62-67; Qu. 384.
For MSS in Paris see HL 21; 146.
Magliabech. XX-13, 15th century, fol. 101-, in Italian.
CU Trinity 1447, 14th century, fols. 1-112r, a French translation made by Walter the Breton in 1347. He states that Moerbeke’s Latin version was translated from the Greek.
[330] Magliabech, XX-13, 15th century, fol. 210-, “del detto Çacheria Albiçarich,” translated from Hebrew into Latin by “maestro Saliceto.”
[331] CLM 392, 15th century; 489, 16th century, fol. 222, Petri de Abano Patavini modus iudicandi quaestiones; in both MSS accompanied by the geomancy ascribed to Alkindi. Printed in Italian translation, 1542.
[332] BN 15353, 13-14th century, fol. 87-, Archanum magni Dei revelatum Tholomeo regi Arabum de reductione geomancie ad orbem, tr. de Bernard de Gordon, datée de 1295.
[333] Harleian 2404, English hand, two geomancies (Indeana).
Sloane 314, 15th century, fols. 2-64, Latin and French, “Et est Gremmgi Indyana, que vocatur filia astronomie quam fecit unus sapientum Indie.”
With the opinions of Siger of Brabant in 1277 was condemned a book of geomancy which opened “Estimaverunt Indi”; Chart. Univ. Paris, I, 543.
CU Magdalene College 27 (F. 4. 27), late 14th century, fols. 72-88, “Hec est geomantia Indiana.”
[334] Sloane 3487, 15th century, fols. 2-193, Geomantia Ro. Scriptoris, fol. 2r, “... arabes antiquissimi et sapientes moderni Guillelmus de morbeca, Bartholomeus de Parma, Gerardus Cremonensis, et alii plures.”
[335] A geomancy by Ralph of Toulouse, however, preserved in a 14th century MS, has, like Bernard’s, the four pages of key followed by the twenty-eight pages of “judges of the fates,” from “Almatene” to “Algagalauro.” Berlin 969, fol. 282-, “Divinaciones magistri Radulfi de Tolosa.”
[336] Arundel 66 (see above, p. 119, note 5); the portrait of Henry is at fol. 201, at fols. 277v-87, “Tabulae Humfridi Ducis Glowcestriae in judiciis artis geomansie.”
[337] Corpus Christi 190, fols. 11-52, “Explicit liber Geomancie compilatus per magistrum Martinum Hispanum phisicum abbatem de Cernatis in ecclesia Vurgensi quam composuit ad preces nobilis et discreti viri domini Archimbaldi abbatis sancti Asteensis ac canonici Parisiensis.”
Ashmole 360-II, fols. 15-44, Explicit as above except “Burgensi,” “Archibaldi,” and “Astern.”
Also by the listing of geomancies in the medieval catalogues of monastic libraries. See James, Libraries of Canterbury and Dover.
APPENDIX I
MANUSCRIPTS OF THE EXPERIMENTARIUS OF BERNARD SILVESTER
Digby 46, 14th century, fols. 7v-39v.
Ashmole 304, 13th century, fols. 2r-30v.
Sloane 3857, 17th century, fols. 164-95.
These three MSS are much alike both in the Experimentarius proper and the other tracts of divination which accompany it. Digby 46 has more of them than either of the others and more pictures than Ashmole 304. Sloane 3857 has no pictures. I have given the numbers of the folios only for the Experimentarius proper.
Sloane 2472, a quarto in skin containing 30 leaves, dated in the old written catalogue as late 12th, but in Scott’s printed Index as 14th century, fols. 3r-14v, the prologue and 22 of 28 Judges of the first version; fols. 15r-21v, the last part of the method of divination by the 36 decans, “Thoas Iudex X” to “Sorab Iudex XXXVI”; fols. 23r-30v, divination by planets and signs as in Digby 46.
Sloane 3554, 15th century, contains the divination of the physician of King Amalricus, the prologue of the Experimentarius, and the second set only of 28 Judges.
The following MSS also contain only this second version:
Ashmole 342, early 14th century, #2.
Ashmole 399, late 13th century, fols. 54-8.
CU Trinity 1404 (II), 14-15th century, fols. 2-16.
Royal 12-C-XII, fols. 108-23, has the second version of the Experimentarius but also a few of the other items of divination found in Ashmole 304.
The first set of 28 Judges is found without mention of Bernard Silvester in the following MSS:
BN 7486, 14th century, fol. 30v-, “Incipit liber alkardiani phylosophi. Cum omne quod experitur sit experiendum propter se vel propter aliud.”
Additional 15236, 13-14th century, English hand, fols. 130-52r, “libellus Alchandiandi”; and at fols. 95r-108r, Prenosticon Socratis Basilei.
The prologue of the Experimentarius is found alone in
Ashmole 345, late 14th century, fol. 64, “Bernardinus.”
Bodleian (Bernard 2177, #6) Auct. F. 3. 13, fol. 104v, “Bernardini silvestris.”
XL. SAINT HILDEGARD OF BINGEN: 1098-1179
Was Hildegard influenced by Bernard Silvester?--(Bibliographical note)--Her personality and reputation--Dates of her works--Question of their genuineness--Question of her knowledge of Latin--Subject-matter of her works--Relations between science and religion in them--Her peculiar views concerning winds and rivers--Her suggestions concerning drinking-water--The devil as the negative principle--Natural substances and evil spirits--Stars and fallen angels; sin and nature--Nature in Adam’s time; the antediluvian period--Spiritual lessons from natural phenomena--Hildegard’s attitude toward magic--Magic Art’s defense--True Worship’s reply--Magic properties of natural substances--Instances of counter-magic--Ceremony with a jacinth and wheaten loaf--Her superstitious procedure--Use of herbs--Marvelous virtues of gems--Remarkable properties of fish--Use of the parts of birds--Cures from quadrupeds--The unicorn, weasel, and mouse--What animals to eat and wear--Insects and reptiles--Animal compounds--Magic and astrology closely connected--Astrology and divination condemned--Signs in the stars--Superiors and inferiors; effect of stars and winds on elements and humors--Influence of the moon on human health and generation--Relation of the four humors to human character and fate--Hildegard’s varying position--Nativities for the days of the moon--Man the microcosm--Divination in dreams.
[Sidenote: Was Hildegard influenced by Bernard Silvester?]
The discussion of macrocosm and microcosm, nous and hyle, by Bernard Silvester in the De mundi universitate is believed by Dr. Charles Singer, in a recent essay on “The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard,” to have influenced her later writings, such as the Liber vitae meritorum and the Liber divinorum operum. He writes “The work of Bernard ... corresponds so closely both in form, in spirit, and sometimes even in phraseology to the Liber divinorum operum that it appears to us certain that Hildegard must have had access to it.”[338] Without subscribing unreservedly to this view, we pass on from the Platonist and geomancer of Tours to the Christian “sibyl of the Rhine.”[339]
[Sidenote: Her personality and reputation.]
From repeated statements in the prefaces to Hildegard’s works, in which she tells exactly when she wrote them and how old she was at the time,--for not only was she not reticent on this point but her different statements of her age at different times are all consistent with one another--it is evident that she was born in 1098. Her birthplace was near Sponheim. From the age of five, she tells us in the Scivias, she had been subject to visions which did not come to her in her sleep but in her wakeful hours, yet were not seen or heard with the eyes and ears of sense. During her lifetime she was also subject to frequent illness, and very likely there was some connection between her state of health and her susceptibility to visions. She spent her life from her eighth year in religious houses along the Nahe river, and in 1147 became head of a nunnery at its mouth opposite Bingen, the place with which her name was henceforth connected. She became famed for her cures of diseases as well as her visions and ascetic life, and it is Kaiser’s opinion that her medical skill contributed more to her popular reputation for saintliness than all her writings. At any rate she became very well known, and her prayers and predictions were much sought after. Thomas Becket, who seems to have been rather too inclined to pry into the future, as we shall see later, wrote asking for “the visions and oracles of that sainted and most celebrated Hildegard,” and inquiring whether any revelation had been vouchsafed her as to the duration of the existing papal schism. “For in the days of Pope Eugenius she predicted that not until his last days would he have peace and grace in the city.”[340] It is very doubtful whether St. Bernard visited her monastery and called the attention of Pope Eugenius III to her visions, but her letters[341] show her in correspondence with St. Bernard and several popes and emperors, with numerous archbishops and bishops, abbots and other potentates, to whom she did not hesitate to administer reproofs and warnings. For this purpose and to aid in the repression of heresy she also made tours from Bingen to various parts of Germany. There is some disagreement whether she died in 1179 or 1180.[342] Proceedings were instituted by the pope in 1233 to investigate her claims to sainthood, but she seems never to have been formally canonized. Gebenon, a Cistercian prior in Eberbach, made a compendium from her Scivias, Liber divinorum operum, and Letters, “because few can own or read her works.”[343]
[Sidenote: Dates of Hildegard’s works.]
As was stated above, we can date some of Hildegard’s works with exactness. In her preface to the one entitled Scivias[344] she says that in the year 1141, when she was forty-two years and seven months old, a voice from heaven bade her commit her visions to writing. She adds that she scarcely finished the book in ten years, so we infer that she was working at it from 1141 to 1150. This fits exactly with what she tells us in the preface to the Liber vitae meritorum, which she was divinely instructed to write in 1158, when she was sixty years old. Moreover, she says that the eight years preceding, that is from 1151 to 1158, had been spent in writing other treatises which also appear to have been revealed in visions and among which were “subtilitates diversarum naturarum creaturarum,” the title of another of her works with which we shall be concerned. On the Liber vitae meritorum she spent five years, so it should have been completed by 1163. In that year, the preface to the Liber divinorum operum informs us,--and the sixty-fifth year of her life--a voice instructed her to begin its composition, and seven more years were required to complete it. This leaves undated only one of the five works by her which we shall consider, namely, the Causae et curae, or Liber compositae medicinae as it is sometimes called, while the Subtilitates diversarum naturarum creaturarum bears a corresponding alternative title, Liber simplicis medicinae.
[Sidenote: Question of their genuineness.]
“Some would impugn the genuineness of all her writings,” says the article on Hildegard in The Catholic Encyclopedia, “but without sufficient reason.”[345] Kaiser, who edited the Causae et curae, had no doubt that both it and the Subtilitates were genuine works. Recently Singer has excluded them both from his discussion of Hildegard’s scientific views on the ground that they are probably spurious, but his arguments are unconvincing. His objection that they are full of German expressions which are absent in her other works is of little consequence, since it would be natural to employ vernacular proper names for homely herbs and local fish and birds and common ailments, while in works of an astronomical and theological character like her other visions there would be little reason for departing from the Latin. Anyway Hildegard’s own assertion in the preface of the Liber vitae meritorum is decisive that she wrote that work. The almost contemporary biography of her also states that she wrote “certain things concerning the nature of man and the elements, and of diverse creatures,”[346] which may be a blanket reference to the Causae et curae as well as the Subtilitates diversarum naturarum creaturarum. The records which we have of the proceedings instituted by the pope in 1233 to investigate Hildegard’s title to sainthood mention both the Liber simplicis medicinae and Liber compositae medicinae as her works; and later in the same century Matthew of Westminster ascribed both treatises to her, stating further that the Liber simplicis medicinae secundum creationem was in eight books and giving the full title of the other as Liber compositae medicinae de aegritudinum causis signis et curis.[347] Kaiser has pointed out a number of parallel passages in it and the Subtilitates, while its introductory cosmology seems to me very similar to that of Hildegard’s other three works. Indeed, as we consider the contents of these five works together, it will become evident that the same peculiar views and personality run through them all.
[Sidenote: Question of Hildegard’s knowledge of Latin.]
In the preface to the Liber vitae meritorum Hildegard speaks of a man and a girl who gave her some assistance in writing out her visions.[348] From such passages in her own works and from statements of her biographers and other writers[349] it has been inferred that she was untrained in Latin grammar and required literary assistance.[350] Or sometimes it is said that she miraculously became able to speak and write Latin without having ever been instructed in that language.[351] Certainly the Causae et curae is a lucid, condensed, and straightforward presentation which it would be very difficult to summarize or excerpt. One must read it all, for further condensation is impossible. One can hardly say as much for her other works, but a new critical edition of them such as the Causae et curae has enjoyed might result in an improvement of the style. But our concern is rather with their subject-matter.
[Sidenote: Subject-matter of Hildegard’s works.]
Three of the five works which we shall consider are written out in the form of visions, and are primarily religious in their contents but contain considerable cosmology and some human anatomy, as well as some allusions to magic and astrology. The other two deal primarily with medicine and natural science, and give no internal indication of having been revealed in visions, presenting their material in somewhat didactic manner, and being divided into books and chapters, like other medieval treatises on the same subjects. As printed in Migne, the Subtleties of Different Natural Creatures or Book of Medicinal Simples is in nine books dealing respectively with plants, elements, trees, stones, fish, birds, animals, reptiles, and metals. In this arrangement there is no plan evident[352] and it would seem more logical to have the books on plants and trees and stones and metals together. In Schott’s edition of 1533 the discussion of stones was omitted--perhaps properly, since Matthew of Westminster spoke of but eight books--and the remaining topics were grouped in four books instead of eight as in Migne. First came the elements, then metals, then a third book treating of plants and trees, and a fourth book including all sorts of animals.[353] That the Subtleties was a widely read and influential work is indicated by the number of manuscripts of it listed by Schmelzeis and Kaiser. Of the five books of the Causae et curae the first, beginning with the creation of the universe, Hyle, the creation of the angels, fall of Lucifer, and so forth, deals chiefly with celestial phenomena and the waters of the sea and firmament. The second combines some discussion of Adam and Eve and the deluge with an account of the four elements and humors, human anatomy, and various other natural phenomena.[354] With book three the listing of cures begins and German words appear occasionally in the text.
[Sidenote: Relations between science and religion in them.]
So much attention to the Biblical story of creation and of Adam and Eve as is shown in the first two books of the Causae et curae might give one the impression that Hildegard’s natural science is highly colored by and entirely subordinated to a religious point of view. But this is not quite the impression that one should take away. A notable thing about even her religious visions is the essential conformity of their cosmology and physiology to the then prevalent theories of natural science. The theory of four elements, the hypothesis of concentric spheres surrounding the earth, the current notions concerning veins and humors, are introduced with slight variations in visions supposed to be of divine origin. In matters of detail Hildegard may make mistakes, or at least differ from the then more generally accepted view, and she displays no little originality in giving a new turn to some of the familiar concepts, as in her five powers of fire, four of air, fifteen of water, and seven of earth.[355] But she does not evolve any really new principles of nature. Possibly it is the spiritual application of these scientific verities that is regarded as the pith of the revelation, but Hildegard certainly says that she sees the natural facts in her visions. The hypotheses of past and contemporary natural science, somewhat obscured or distorted by the figurative and mystical mode of description proper to visions, are embodied in a saint’s reveries and utilized in inspired revelation. Science serves religion, it is true, but religion for its part does not hesitate to accept science.
[Sidenote: Peculiar views concerning winds and rivers.]
We cannot take the time to note all of Hildegard’s minor variations from the natural science of her time, but may note one or two characteristic points in which her views concerning the universe and nature seem rather daring and unusual, not to say crude and erroneous. In the Scivias she represents a blast and lesser winds as emanating from each of four concentric heavens which she depicts as surrounding the earth, namely, a sphere of fire, a shadowy sphere like a skin, a heaven of pure ether, and a region of watery air under it.[356] In the Liber divinorum operum she speaks of winds which drive the firmament from east to west and the planets from west to east.[357] In the Subtilitates Hildegard seems to entertain the strange notion that rivers are sent forth from the sea like the blood in the veins of the human body.[358] One gets the impression that the rivers flow up-hill toward their sources, since one reads that “the Rhine is sent forth by the force of the sea”[359] and that “some rivers go forth from the sea impetuously, others slowly according to the winds.”
Since Hildegard lived on the Nahe or Rhine all her life she must indeed have been absorbed in her visions and monastic life not to have learned in which direction a river flows; and perhaps we should supply the explanation, which she certainly does not expressly give in the Subtilitates, that the sea feeds the rivers by evaporation or through subterranean passages. Perhaps a passage in the Causae et curae may be taken as a correction or explanation of the preceding assertions, in which case that work would seem to be of later date than the Subtilitates. In it too Hildegard states that “springs and rivers” which “flow from the sea” are better in the east than in the west, but her next sentence straightway adds that they are salt and leave a salt deposit on the sands where they flow which is medicinal.[360] The waters rising from the southern sea are also spoken of by her as salt.[361] Even in the Causae et curae she speaks of the water of the great sea which surrounds the world as forming a sort of flank to the waters above the firmament.[362]
[Sidenote: Suggestions concerning drinking-water.]
On the subject of whether waters are wholesome to drink or not Hildegard comes a trifle nearer the truth and somewhat reminds us of the discussions of the same subject in Pliny and Vitruvius.[363] She says that swamp water should always be boiled,[364] that well water is better to drink than spring-water and spring-water than river water, which should be boiled and allowed to cool before drinking;[365] that rain-water is inferior to spring-water[366] and that drinking snow-water is dangerous to the health.[367] The salt waters of the west she regards as too turbid, while the fresh waters of the west are not warmed sufficiently by the sun and should be boiled and allowed to cool before using.[368] The salt waters arising from the south sea are venomous from the presence in them of worms and small animals. Southern fresh waters have been purged by the heat, but make the flesh of men fatty and of black color.[369] Hildegard is not the first author to advise the boiling of drinking-water,[370] but she certainly lays great stress on this point.
[Sidenote: The devil as the negative principle.]
While the scheme of the universe put forward by ancient and medieval science is, as we have seen, on the whole adopted even in Hildegard’s most visionary writings, it is equally true that the religious interest is by no means absent from her two works of medicine and natural history. In the first place, the devil is a force in nature which she often mentions. Her opening the Causae et curae with a discussion of creation--of course a usual starting-point with the medieval scientist--soon leads her to speak of the fall of Lucifer. She has a rather good theory that Lucifer in his perverse will strove to raise himself to Nothing, and that since what he wished to do was Nothing, he fell into nothingness and could not stand because he could find no foundation under him.[371] But after the devil was unable to create anything out of nothing and fell from heaven, God created the firmament and sun, moon, and stars to show how great He was and to make the devil realize what glory he had lost.[372] Other creatures who willingly join themselves to the devil lose their own characteristics and become nothing.[373] Lucifer himself is not permitted to move from Tartarus or he would upset the elements and celestial bodies, but a throng of demons of varying individual strength plot with him against the universe.[374] But in other passages Hildegard seems to admit freely the influence, if not the complete presence, of the devil in nature. And he has the power of deceiving by assumed appearances, as Adam was seduced by the serpent.
[Sidenote: Natural substances and evil spirits.]
Indeed, the dragon to this day hates mankind and has such a nature and such diabolical arts in itself that sometimes when it emits its fiery breath, the spirits of the air disturb the air.[375] This illustrates a common feature of Hildegard’s natural history and pharmacy; namely, the association of natural substances with evil spirits either in friendly or hostile relationships. In the preface to the first book of the Subtleties she states that some herbs cannot be endured by demons, while there are others of which the devil is fond and to which he joins himself. In mandragora, for example, “the influence of the devil is more present than in other herbs; consequently man is stimulated by it according to his desires, whether they be good or bad.”[376] On the other hand, the holm-oak is hostile to the spirits of the air; one who sleeps under its shade is free from diabolical illusions, and fumigating a house with it drives out the evil spirits.[377] Certain fish, too, have the property of expelling demons, whether one eats them or burns their livers or bones.[378] Finally, stones and metals have their relations to evil spirits. It is advisable for a woman in childbirth to hold the gem jasper in her hand, “in order that malignant spirits of the air may be the less able to harm her and her child; for the tongue of the ancient serpent extends itself towards the perspiration of the child, as it emerges from the mother’s womb.”[379] Not only does the touch of red-hot steel weaken the force of poison in food or drink, but that metal also signifies the divinity of God, and the devil flees from and avoids it.[380]
[Sidenote: Stars and fallen angels: sin and nature.]
It is perhaps not very surprising that we should find in Hildegard’s works notions concerning nature which we met back in the Enoch literature, since some of her writings take the same form of recorded visions as Enoch’s, while one of them, the Liber vitae meritorum, is equally apocalyptic. At any rate, in the Scivias in the second vision, where Lucifer is cast out of glory because of his pride, the fallen angels are seen as a great multitude of stars, as in the Book of Enoch, and we are told that the four elements were in harmony before Lucifer’s fall.[381] The disturbing effect of sin, even human, upon nature is again stated in the Causae et curae, where it is said that normally the elements serve man quietly and perform his works. But when men engage in wars and give way to hate and envy, the elements are apt to rage until men repent and seek after God again.[382] In the Liber vitae meritorum, too, the elements complain that they are overturned and upset by human depravity and iniquity.[383]
[Sidenote: Nature in Adam’s time: the antediluvian period.]
The influence of the Christian religion is further shown and that of the Bible in particular is manifested by numerous allusions to Adam and the earliest period of Biblical history, but very few of them find any justification in the scriptural narrative. Thus the Liber divinorum operum states[384] that after the fall of Adam and before the deluge the sun and moon and planets and other stars were “somewhat turbulent from excessive heat,” and that the men of that time possessed great bodily strength in order that they might endure this heat. The deluge reduced the temperature and men since have been weaker. In the preface to the fifth book of the Subtleties we are told that there are certain plants which fish eat, and which, if man could procure and eat, would enable him to go without food for four or five months. Adam used to eat them at times after he had been cast out of Eden, but not when he could get enough other food, as they make the flesh tough. In the preface to the eighth book Hildegard says that all creatures were good before Adam’s fall, but when Abel’s blood stained the soil noxious humors arose from which venomous and deadly reptiles were generated. These perished in the deluge, but others were generated from their putrefying carcasses. In the Causae et curae, too, the names of Adam and Eve occasionally appear in the chapter headings, for instance, “Of Adam’s fall and of melancholy.”[385]
[Sidenote: Spiritual lessons from natural phenomena.]
Hildegard also held the view, common among medieval Christian writers, that one purpose of the natural world about us is to illustrate the spiritual world and life to come, and that invisible and eternal truths may be manifested in visible and temporal objects. In the Scivias she hears a voice from heaven saying, “God who established all things by His will, created them to make His Name known and honored, not only moreover showing in the same what are visible and temporal, but also manifesting in them what are invisible and eternal.”[386] But neither Hildegard nor medieval Christians in general thought that the only purpose of natural phenomena and science was to illustrate spiritual truth and point a moral. But this always constituted a good excuse which sounded well when one of the clergy wished to investigate or write about things of nature. Not that we mean to question the sincerity of the medieval writers one whit more than that of certain “Christian colleges” of the present which deem it wise to demonstrate their piety and orthodoxy by maintaining compulsory chapel attendance and holding an occasional “Convocation.” But certainly our abbess of Bingen in the course of her writings, especially the Subtleties and Causae et curae, lists many natural phenomena and medical recipes without making any mention of what spiritual truth they may or may not illustrate.
[Sidenote: Hildegard’s attitude toward magic.]
Associating natural substances as much with the devil or spirits of the air as she does, it is not surprising that Hildegard believes in the reality of magic and has something to say about it. Magic is regarded by Hildegard as an evil and diabolical art. She describes it in a vision of the Scivias, where God Himself is represented as speaking, as the art of seeing and hearing the devil, which was taught to men by Satan himself.[387] Similarly in the Liber divinorum operum it is stated that Antichrist will excel “in all diabolical arts” and in “the magic art.”[388] This was of course the usual Christian view. In the Liber vitae meritorum with more apparent originality Magic or Maleficium is presented as one of the personified Vices and is allowed to speak for itself. It is represented as having the body of a dog, the head of a wolf, and the tail of a lion. This beast or image speaks in its own praise and defense as follows.
[Sidenote: Magic Art’s defense.]
“Of Mercury and other philosophers I will say many things, who by their investigations harnessed the elements in such wise that they discovered most certainly everything that they wished. Those very daring and very wise men learned such things partly from God and partly from evil spirits. And why shouldn’t they? And they named the planets after themselves, since they had made many investigations and learned a great deal concerning the sun and moon and stars. I, moreover, rule and reign wherever I list in those arts, forsooth in the heavenly luminaries, in trees and herbs and all that grows in the earth, and in beasts and animals upon the earth, and in worms both above and below the earth. And on my marches who is there that resists me? God created all things, so in these arts I do Him no injury. For He wishes it, as is proved in His scriptures and perfect works. And what would be the advantage, if His works were so blind that no cause could be studied in them? There wouldn’t be any.”[389]
[Sidenote: True Worship’s reply to Magic.]
To this bold attempt of Magic to identify itself with scientific investigation, the True Worship of God responds with the counter question, “Whether it is more pleasing to God to adore Him or His works?” and reminds Maleficium that mere creatures which proceed from God can give life to no one and that man is the only rational created being. “You, moreover, O Magic Art, have the circle without the center, and while you investigate many problems in the circle of creation ... you have robbed God of His very name.” This reply does not seem to separate magic and scientific investigation or to deny Magic’s claim that they are identical, and its force would seem about as cogent against science as against magic. But a little later in the same work Hildegard reverts to her former charge that maleficium is “by diabolical arts,” and that its devotees “by directing all their works to impurity turn their science also to the pursuit of evils.” “For they name demons as their gods and worship them instead of God.”[390]
[Sidenote: Magic properties of natural substances.]
That magic, however diabolical it may be, does employ natural forces and substances, is not only asserted by Magic Art itself, but freely admitted by Hildegard in her discussions of the properties of animals, plants, and minerals in her other two works, the Subtleties of Diverse Creatures and Cases and Cures. In the latter work she states that while herbs in the east are full of virtue and have a good odor and medicinal properties, those in the west are potent in the magic art and for other phantasms but do not contribute much to the health of the human body.[391] In the former work she tells that the tree-toad is much employed in diabolical arts, especially when the trees are beginning to leaf and blossom, since at this time the spirits of the air are especially active.[392] Sometimes, however, there is a way to remove this magic virtue from a natural substance. The root mandragora “is no longer efficacious for magic and fantastic purposes,” if it is purified in a fountain for a day and a night immediately after it has been dug from the earth.[393]
[Sidenote: Instances of counter-magic.]
There are also substances which counteract magic. It has little force in any place where a fir-tree grows, for the spirits of the air hate and avoid such spots.[394] In the Causae et curae Hildegard tells how to compound a powder “against poison and against magic words.”[395] It also “confers health and courage and prosperity on him who carries it with him.” First one takes a root of geranium (storkesnabil) with its leaves, two mallow plants, and seven shoots of the plantagenet. These must be plucked at midday in the middle of April. Then they are to be laid on moist earth and sprinkled with water to keep them green for a while. Next they are dried in the setting sun and in the rising sun until the third hour, when they should once more be laid on moist earth and sprinkled with water until noon. Then they are to be removed and placed facing the south in the full sunshine until the ninth hour, when they should be wrapped in a cloth, with a stick on top to hold them in place, until a trifle before midnight. Then the night begins to incline towards day and all the evils of darkness and night begin to flee. A little before midnight, therefore, they should be transferred to a high window or placed above a door or in some garden where the cool air may have access to them. As soon as midnight is passed, they are to be removed once more, pulverized with the middle finger, and put in a new pill-box with a little bisemum to keep them from decaying but not a sufficient quantity to overcome the scent of the herbs. A little of this powder may be applied daily to the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, or it may be bound on the body as an antiaphrodisiac, or it may be held over wine without touching it but so that its odor can reach the wine, which should then be drunk with a bit of saffron as a preventive of indigestion, poison, magic, and so forth.
[Sidenote: Ceremony with a jacinth and wheaten loaf.]
In the Subtilitates[396] the following procedure is recommended, if anyone is bewitched by phantasms or magic words so that he goes mad. Take a wheaten loaf and cut the upper crust in the form of a cross. First draw a jacinth through one line of the cross, saying, “May God who cast away all the preciousness of gems from the devil when he transgressed His precept, remove from you N. all phantasms and magic words and free you from the ill of this madness.” Then the jacinth is to be drawn through the other arm of the cross and this formula is to be repeated, “As the splendor which the devil once possessed departed from him because of his transgression, so may this madness which harasses N. by varied phantasies and magic arts be removed from you and depart from you.” The ceremony is then completed by the bewitched person eating the bread around the cross.
[Sidenote: Hildegard’s superstitious procedure.]
These two illustrations make it apparent that Hildegard has a licit magic of her own which is every whit as superstitious as the magic art which she condemns. It is evident that she accepts not only marvelous and occult virtues of natural substances such as herbs and gems, but also the power of words and incantations, and rites and ceremonies of a most decidedly magical character. In the second passage this procedure assumed a Christian character, but the plucking and drying of the herbs in the first passage perhaps preserves the flavor of primitive Teutonic or Celtic paganism. Nor is such superstitious procedure resorted to merely against magic, to whose operations it forms a sort of homeopathic counterpart. It is also employed for ordinary medicinal purposes, and is a characteristic feature of Hildegard’s conception of nature and whole mental attitude. This we may further illustrate by running through the books of the Subtilitates.
[Sidenote: Use of herbs.]
Except for passages connecting the devil with certain herbs which we have already noted, Hildegard’s discussion of vegetation is for the most part limited to medicinal properties of herbs, which are effective without the addition of fantastic ceremonial. Sometimes nevertheless the herbs are either prepared or administered in a rather bizarre fashion. Insanity may be alleviated, we are told, by shaving the patient’s head and washing it in the hot water in which agrimonia has been boiled, while the hot herbs themselves are bound in a cloth first over his heart and then upon his forehead and temples.[397] An unguent beneficial alike for digestive and mental disorders is made of the bark, leaves, and bits of the green wood of the fir-tree, combined with saliva to half their weight. This mess is to be boiled in water until it becomes thick, then butter is to be added, and the whole strained through a cloth.[398] The mandragora root should first be worn bound between the breast and navel for three days and three nights, then divided in halves and these bound on the thighs for three days and three nights. Finally the left half of the root, which resembles the human figure, should be pulverized, camphor added to it, and eaten.[399] If a man is always sad and in the dumps, after purifying the mandragora root in a fountain, let him take it to bed with him, hold it so that it will be warmed by the heat of his body, and say, “God, who madest man from the dust of the earth without grief, I now place next me that earth which has never transgressed”--Hildegard has already stated that the mandragora is composed “of that earth of which Adam was created”--“in order that my clay may feel that peace just as Thou didst create it.” That the prayer or incantation is more essential than the virtue of the mandragora in this operation, is indicated by the statement that shoots of beech, cedar, or aspen may be used instead of the mandragora.
[Sidenote: Marvelous virtues of gems.]
Other marvelous effects than routing the devil, which Hildegard attributes to gems in the course of the fourth book of the Subtilitates, are to confer intellect and science for the day, to banish anger and dulness, bestow an equable temper, restrain lust, cure all sorts of diseases and infirmities, endow with the gift of sound speech, prevent thefts at night, and enable one to fast. These marvelous results are produced either by merely having the stone in one’s possession, or by holding it in the hand, placing it next the skin, taking it to bed with one and warming it by the heat of the body, breathing on it, holding it in the mouth especially when fasting, suspending it about the neck, or making the sign of the cross with it. In the cure of insanity by use of the magnet the stone should be moistened with the patient’s saliva and drawn across his forehead while an incantation is repeated.[400] A man may be brought out of an epileptic fit by putting an emerald in his mouth.[401] Having recovered, he should remove the gem from his mouth and say, “As the spirit of the Lord filled the earth, so may His grace fill the temple of my body that it may never be moved.” This ceremony is to be repeated on nine successive mornings, and that here the gem is as important as the prayer is indicated by the direction that the patient should have the gem with him each time and take it out and look at it as he repeats the incantation. Different is the procedure for curing epilepsy by means of the gem achates.[402] In this case the stone should be soaked in water for three days at the full moon; this water should be slightly warmed, and then preserved, and all the patient’s food cooked in it dum luna tota crescat. The gem should also be placed in everything that he drinks. This astrological procedure is to be repeated for ten months.
[Sidenote: Remarkable properties of fish.]
We have already heard that certain fish have the property of expelling demons. Fish also have other remarkable virtues. The eye of a copprea, worn in a gold or silver ring so that it touches one’s finger, arouses a sluggish intellect.[403] The lung of a tunny fish, taken in water, is good for a fever, and it keeps one in good health to wear shoes and a belt made of its skin.[404] Pulverized salmon bones are recommended for bad teeth.[405] But eating the head of a barbo gives one a headache and fever.[406] Hildegard also tells some wonderful stories concerning the modes of generation of different varieties of fish. In the Causae et curae[407] for dimness of the eyes it is recommended to dry some walrus skin in the sun, soften it in pure wine, and apply it in a cloth between the eyes at night. It should be removed at midnight and applied only on alternate nights for a week. “Either it will remove dimness of the eyes, or God does not permit this to be done.”
[Sidenote: Use of the parts of birds.]
To render available or to enhance the occult virtues of birds Hildegard suggests a great amount of complicated ceremonial. The heart of a vulture, split in two, dried before a slow fire and in the sun, and worn sewn up in a belt of doeskin, makes one tremble in the presence of poison.[408] This is explained by the vulture’s own antipathy to poison, which is increased and purified by the fire, sun, and especially by the belt, for the doe is swifter and more sensitive than other animals. Mistiness is marvelously removed from the eyes by catching a nightingale before day-break, adding a single drop of dew found on clean grass to its gall, and anointing the eyebrows and lashes frequently with the same.[409] Another eye-cure consists in cooking a heron’s head in water, removing its eyes, alternately drying them in the sun and softening them in cold water for three successive times, pulverizing and dissolving them in wine, and at night frequently touching the eyes and lids with the tip of a feather dipped in this concoction.[410] The blood of a crane, dried and preserved, and its right foot are employed in varied ways to facilitate child-birth.[411] Hildegard also often tells how to make a medicinal unguent by cooking some bird in some prescribed manner and then pulverizing certain portions of the carcass with various herbs or other animal substances.[412] Even without the employment of ceremonial sufficiently remarkable powers are attributed to the bodies or parts of birds. Eating the flesh of one reduces fat and benefits epileptics, while eating its liver is good for melancholy.[413] The liver of a swan has the different property of purifying the lungs, while the lung of a swan is a cure for the spleen.[414] Again, a heron’s liver cures stomach trouble, while a cure for spleen is to drink water in which its bones have been stewed, and if one who is sad eats its heart, it will make him glad.[415]
[Sidenote: Cures from quadrupeds.]
Hildegard’s chapters on quadrupeds are so delightfully quaint that I cannot pass them over, although the properties which she attributes to them and the methods by which their virtues are utilized are not essentially different from those in examples already given. The camel, however, is peculiar in that its different humps have quite different virtues.[416] The one next to its neck has the virtues of the lion; the second, those of the leopard; the third, those of the horse. A cap of lion’s skin cures ailments of the head whether physical or mental.[417] Deafness may be remedied by cutting off a lion’s right ear and holding it over the patient’s ear just long enough to warm it and to say, “Hear adimacus by the living God and the keen virtue of a lion’s hearing.” This process is to be repeated many times. The heart of a lion is somewhat similarly employed, but without any incantation, to make a stupid person prudent. Burying a lion’s heart in the house is regarded as fire insurance against its being struck by lightning, “for the lion is accustomed to roar when he hears thunder.” Digestion is aided by drinking water in which the dried liver of a lion has been left for a short time. Placing a bit of the skin from between a bear’s eyes over one’s heart removes timidity and anxiety.[418] If anyone suffers from paralysis or one of those changeable diseases which wax and wane with the moon like lunacy, let him select a spot where an ass has been slain, or has died a natural death, or has wallowed, and let him spread a cloth on the grass or ground and repose there a short time and sleep if he can. Afterwards you should take him by the right hand and say, “Lazarus slept and rested and rose again; and as Christ roused him from foul decay, so may you rise from this perilous pestilence and the changing phases of fever in that conjunction in which Christ applied Himself to the alleviation of such complaints, prefiguring that He would redeem man from his sins and raise him from the dead.” With a brief interval of time allowed between, the same performance is to be repeated thrice in the same place on the same day, and then again thrice on the next and the third days, when the patient will be cured.[419]
[Sidenote: The unicorn, weasel, and mouse.]
The liver and skin of the unicorn have great medicinal virtues, but that animal can never be caught except by means of girls, for it flees from men but stops to gaze diligently at girls, because it marvels that they have human forms, yet no beards. “And if there are two or three girls together, it marvels so much the more and is the more quickly captured while its eyes are fixed on them. Moreover, the girls employed in capturing it should be of noble, not peasant birth, and of the middle period of adolescence.”[420] When one weasel is sick, another digs up a certain herb and breathes and urinates on it for an hour, and then brings it to the sick weasel who is cured by it.[421] But what this herb is is unknown to men and other animals, and it would do them no good if they did know it, since its unaided virtue is not efficacious, nor would the action of their breath or urine make it so. But the heart of a weasel, dried and placed with wax in the ear, benefits headache or deafness, and the head of a weasel, worn in two pieces in a belt next the skin, strengthens and comforts the bearer and keeps him from harm. The mouse, besides being responsible for two other equally marvelous cures, is a remedy for epilepsy. “For inasmuch as the mouse runs away from everything, therefore it drives away the falling disease.”[422] It should be put in a dish of water, and the patient should drink some of this water and also wash his feet and forehead in it.
[Sidenote: What animals to eat and wear.]
Hildegard gives some strange advice what animal products to eat and wear. “Sheepskins are good for human wear, because they do not induce pride or lust or pestilence as the skins of certain other animals do.”[423] Pork is not good for either sick or healthy persons to eat, in her opinion, while beef, on account of its intrinsic cold, is not good for a man of cold constitution to eat.[424] On the other hand, she recommends as edible various birds which would strike the modern reader as disgusting.[425]
[Sidenote: Insects and reptiles.]
Fleas remain underground in winter but come forth to plague mankind when the sun dries the soil in summer. But one may be rid of them by heating some earth until it is quite dry and then scattering it upon the bed.[426] Hildegard also describes a complicated cure for leprosy by use of the earth from an ant-hill.[427] If a man kills a certain venomous snake just after it has skinned itself in the cleft of a rock, and cautiously removes its heart and dries the same in the sun, and then preserves it in a thin metal cover, it will serve as an amulet. Holding it in his hand will render him immune to venom and cheer him up if he becomes gloomy or sorrowful.[428]
[Sidenote: Animal compounds.]
In the Causae et curae Hildegard combines the virtues of parts of a number of animals into one composite medicine for epilepsy.[429] Four parts of dried mole’s blood are used because the mole sometimes shows himself and sometimes hides, like the epilepsy itself. Two parts of powdered duck’s bill are added because the duck’s strength is in its beak, “and because it touches both pure and impure things with its bill, it is repugnant to this disease which is sudden and silent.” One portion of the powdered claws of a goose, minus the skin and flesh, is added for much the same reason, and the claw of a goose rather than a gander is required because the female bird is the more silent of the two. These constituents are bound together in a cloth, placed for three days near a recent molecast,--for such earth is more wholesome, then are put near ice to cool and then in the sun to dry. Cakes are then to be made with this powder and the livers of some edible animal and bird and a little meal and cummin seed, and eaten for five days. Against diabolical phantasms is recommended a belt made of the skin of a roebuck, which is a pure animal, and of the skin of the helun, which is a brave beast, and hence both are abhorred by evil spirits.[430] The two strips of skin are to be fastened together by four little steel[431] nails, and as each is clasped one repeats the formula, “In the most potent strength of almighty God I adjure you to safeguard me”; only in the second, third, and fourth instance instead of saying “I adjure” (adiuro), the words benedico, constituo, and confirmo are respectively substituted. One should be girded with this belt night and day, and magic words will not harm one.
[Sidenote: Magic and astrology closely connected.]
We have already encountered more than one instance of observance of the phases of the moon in Hildegard’s medicinal and magical procedure, and have met in one of her formulae a hint that Christ employed astrological election of a favorable conjunction in performing His miracles. Thus as usual the influence of the stars is difficult to separate from other occult virtues of natural substances, and we may complete our survey of Hildegard’s writings by considering her views concerning the celestial bodies and divination of the future.
[Sidenote: Astrology and divination condemned.]
In the passage of the Scivias to which we have already referred God condemned astrology and divination as well as magic.[432] Mathematici are called “deadly instructors and followers of the Gentiles in unbelief,” and man is reproved for believing that the stars allot his years of life and regulate all human actions, and for cultivating in the place of his Creator mere creatures such as the stars and heavens, which cannot console or help him, or confer either prosperity or happiness. Man should not consult the stars as to the length of his life, which he can neither know beforehand nor alter. He should not seek signs of the future in either stars or fire or birds or any other creature. “The error of augury” is expressly rebuked. Man should abstain not only from worshiping or invoking the devil but from making any inquiries from him, “since if you wish to know more than you should, you will be deceived by the old seducer.”
[Sidenote: Signs in the stars.]
It is true that sometimes by divine permission the stars are signs to men, for the Son of God Himself says in the Gospel by Luke that “There shall be signs in the sun and moon and stars,” and His incarnation was revealed by a star. But it is a stupid popular error to suppose that other men each have a star of their own, and, continues God, speaking through the medium of Hildegard, “That star brought no aid to My Son other than that it faithfully announced His incarnation to the people, since all stars and creatures fear Me and simply fulfill My dictates and have no signification of anything in any creature.” This last observation receives further interpretation in a passage of the Causae et Curae[433] which explains that the stars sometimes show many signs, but not of the future or hidden thoughts of men, but of matters which they have already revealed by act of will or voice or deed, so that the air has received an impression of it which the stars can reflect back to other men if God allows it. But the sun and moon and planets do not always thus portray the works of men, but only rarely, and in the case of some great event affecting the public welfare.
[Sidenote: Superiors and inferiors; effect of stars and winds on elements and humors.]
If the stars do not even signify the fate and future of man, they are none the less potent forces and, under God, causes in the world of nature. “God who created all things,” writes Hildegard in the Liber divinorum operum,[434] “so constituted superiors that He also strengthens and purifies things below through these, and in the human form introduces also those things allotted for the soul’s salvation.” This passage has two sides; it affirms the rule of superiors over inferiors, but it makes special provision for the salvation of the human soul. And thus it is a good brief summary of Hildegard’s position. Sun, moon, and stars are represented as by the will of God cooperating with the winds--which play an important part in Hildegard’s cosmology--in driving the elements to and fro;[435] and the humors in the human body now rage fiercely like the leopard, now move sluggishly like the crab, now proceed in other ways analogous to the wolf or deer or bear or serpent or lamb or lion--animals whose heads, belching forth winds, are seen in the vision about the rim of the heavenly spheres.[436] They suggest the influence of the signs of the zodiac, although there appears to be no exact correspondence to these in Hildegard’s visionary scheme of the universe as detailed in the Liber divinorum operum. In the Causae et curae, on the other hand, she gives a detailed account of how pairs or triplets of planets accompany the sun through each of the twelve signs.[437] In other passages[438] she affirms that the sun and moon serve man by divine order, and bring him strength or weakness according to the temper of the air.
[Sidenote: Influence of the moon on human health and generation.]
Hildegard more especially emphasizes the influence of the moon, in which respect she resembles many an astrologer. In the Causae et curae[439] she states that some days of the moon are good, others bad; some, useful and others, useless; some, strong and others, weak. “And since the moon has this changeability in itself, therefore the moisture in man has its vicissitudes and mutability in pain, in labor, in wisdom, and in prosperity.” Similarly in the Liber divinorum operum[440] it is noted that human blood and brain are augmented when the moon is full and diminish as it wanes, and that these changes affect human health variously. Sometimes one incurs epilepsy when the moon is in eclipse.[441] The moon is the mother of all seasons. Hildegard marvels in the Causae et curae[442] that while men have sense enough not to sow crops in mid-summer or the coldest part of winter, they persist in begetting offspring at any time according to their pleasure without regard either to the proper period of their own lives or to the time of the moon. The natural consequence of their heedlessness is the birth of defective children. Hildegard then adds[443] by way of qualification that the time of the moon does not dominate the nature of man as if it were his god, or as if man received any power of nature from it, or as if it conferred any part of human nature. The moon simply affects the air, and the air affects man’s blood and the humors of his body.
[Sidenote: Relations of the four humors to human character and fate.]
Hildegard, however, not only believed that as the humors were perturbed and the veins boiled, the health of the body would be affected and perhaps a fever set in,[444] but also that passions, such as wrath and petulance, were thereby aroused and the mind affected.[445] This is suggested in a general way in the Liber divinorum operum, but is brought out in more detail in the Causae et curae, where various types of men are delineated according to the combinations of humors in their bodies, and their characters are sketched and even their fate to some extent predicted therefrom. In one case[446] “the man will be a good scholar, but headlong and too vehement in his studies, so that he scatters his knowledge over too wide a field, as straw is blown by the wind; and he seeks to have dominion over others. In body he is healthy except that his legs are weak and he is prone to gout; but he can live a long while, if it so please God.” Such a passage hardly sounds consistent with Hildegard’s statement elsewhere already noted that man cannot know the length of his life beforehand. In the case of choleric, sanguine, melancholy, and phlegmatic men[447] Hildegard states what the relations of each type will be with women and even to some extent what sort of children they will have. She also discusses four types of women in very similar style.[448] These are not exactly astrological predictions, but they have much the same flavor and seem to leave little place for freedom of the will.
[Sidenote: Hildegard’s varying position.]
In one passage, however, Hildegard comfortingly adds that nevertheless the Holy Spirit can penetrate the whole nature of man and overcome his mutable nature as the sun dispels clouds, and so counteract the moist influence of the moon. She also states concerning the significations of the stars concerning man’s future, “These significations are not produced by the virtue of the planets themselves alone or stars or clouds, but by the permission and will and decree of God, according as God wished to demonstrate to men the works of the same, just as a coin shows the image of its lord.”[449] In another passage, on the other hand, Hildegard recognizes, like Aquinas later, that it is only rarely and with difficulty that the flesh can be restrained from sinning.[450]
[Sidenote: Nativities for the days of the moon.]
Finally, the Causae et curae close with predictions for each day of the moon of the type of male or female who will be conceived on that day.[451] Selecting the eighteenth day by lot as an example of the others, we read that a male conceived then will be a thief and will be caught in the act and will be deprived of his landed property so that he possesses neither fields nor vineyards, but strives to take from others what is not his. He will be healthy in body and live a long life, if left to himself. A woman conceived on that day will be cunning and deceitful of speech and will lead upright men to death if she can. She too will be sound of body and naturally long-lived, but sometimes insane. Hildegard then seems to feel it advisable to add, “But such morals, both in men and in women, are hateful to God.”
[Sidenote: Man the microcosm.]
The theory of macrocosm and microcosm had a considerable attraction for Hildegard. At the beginning of the Causae et curae she exclaims, “O man, look at man! For man has in himself heavens and earth ... and in him all things are latent.”[452] Presently she compares the firmament to man’s head, sun, moon, and stars to the eyes, air to hearing, the winds to smelling, dew to taste, and “the sides of the world” to the arms and sense of touch. The earth is like the heart, and other creatures in the world are like the belly.[453] In the Liber divinorum operum she goes into further detail. Between the divine image in human form which she sees in her visions and the wheel or sphere of the universe she notes such relationships as these. The sun spreads its rays from the brain to the heel, and the moon directs its rays from the eyebrows to the ankles.[454] Elsewhere she says, “The eyebrows of man declare the journeyings of the moon, namely, the one route by which it approaches the sun in order to restore itself, and the other by which it recedes after it has been burnt by the sun.”[455] Again, from the top of the cerebral cavity to “the last extremity of the forehead” there are seven distinct and equal spaces, by which are signified the seven planets which are equidistant from one another in the firmament.[456] An even more surprising assumption as to astronomical distances is involved in the comparison[457] that as the three intervals between the top of the human head and the end of the throat and the navel and the groin are all equal, so are the spaces intervening between the highest firmament and lowest clouds and the earth’s surface and center. Corresponding to these intervals Hildegard notes three ages of man, infancy, adolescence, and old age. One more passage may be noted, since it also involves a similar explanation of weeping for joy to that given by Adelard of Bath. As the heart is stirred by emotion, whether of joy or of sorrow, humors are excited in the lungs and breast which rise to the brain and are emitted through the eyes in the form of tears. And in like manner, when the moon begins to wax or wane, the firmament is disturbed by winds which raise fogs from the sea and other waters.[458]
[Sidenote: Divination in dreams.]
If Hildegard resorts to a magic of her own in order to counteract the diabolical arts, and if she accepts a certain amount of astrological doctrine for all her censure of it, it is not surprising to find her in the Causae et curae saying a word in favor of natural divination in dreams despite her rejection of augury and such arts. She believes that, when God sent sleep to Adam before he had yet sinned, his soul saw many things in true prophecy, and that the human soul may still sometimes do the same, although too often it is clouded by diabolical illusions.[459] But when the body is in a temperate condition and the marrow warmed in due measure, and there is no disturbance of vices or contrariety of morals, then very often a sleeper sees true dreams.[460] Hildegard’s own visions, as we have seen, came to her in her waking hours.
FOOTNOTES:
[338] Singer (1917) p. 19.
[339] Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 197. This volume contains the account of Hildegard in the Acta Sanctorum, including the Vita sanctae Hildegardis auctoribus Godefrido et Theodorico monachis, etc.; the Subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum libri novem, as edited by Daremberg and Reuss; the Scivias and the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis. I shall cite this in the following chapter simply as Migne without repeating the number of the volume.
Pitra, Analecta sacra, vol. VIII (1882). This volume contains the only printed edition of the Liber vitae meritorum, pp. 1-244,--Heinemann, in describing a thirteenth century copy of it (MS 1053, S. Hildegardis liber meritorum vite) in 1886 in his Catalogue of Wolfenbüttel MSS, was therefore mistaken in speaking of it as “unprinted,”--an imperfect edition of the Liber compositae medicinae de aegritudinum causis signis atque curis, and other works by Hildegard.
A better edition of the last named work is: Hildegardis causae et curae, ed. Paulus Kaiser, Leipzig, Teubner, 1903.
Earlier editions of the Subtilitates were printed at Strasburg by J. Schott in 1533 and 1544 as follows:
Physica S. Hildegardis elementorum fluminum aliquot Germaniae metallorum leguminum fructuum et herbarum arborum et arbustorum piscium denique volatilium et animantium terrae naturas et operationes IV libris mirabili experientia posteritati tradens, Argentorati, 1533.
Experimentarius medicinae continens Trotulae curandarum aegritudinum muliebrum ... item quatuor Hildegardis de elementorum fluminum aliquot Germaniae metallorum ... herbarum piscium et animantium terrae naturis et operationibus, ed. G. Kraut, 1544.
F. A. Reuss, De libris physicis S. Hildegardis commentatio historico-medica, Würzburg, 1835.
F. A. Reuss, Der heiligen Hildegard Subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum libri novem, die werthvolleste Urkunde deutscher Natur- und Heilkunde aus dem Mittelalter. In Annalen des Vereins für Nassau. Alterthumskunde und Geschichtsforschung, Bd. VI, Heft i, Wiesbaden, 1859.
Jessen, C. in Sitzb. Vienna, Math, naturw. Klasse, (1862) XLV, i. 97.
Jessen, C. Botanik in kulturhistorischer Entwickelung, Leipzig, 1862, pp. 124-26.
Jessen, C. in Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, (1875), p. 175.
Von der Linde, Die Handschriften der Kgl. Landesbibl. in Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, 1877.
Schmelzeis, J. Ph. Das Leben und Wirken der hl. Hildegardes, Freiburg, 1879.
Battandier, A. “Sainte Hildegarde, sa vie et ses œuvres,” in Revue des questions historiques, XXXIII (1883), 395-425.
Roth, F. W. E. in Zeitsch. für kirchl. Wissenschaft u. kirchl. Leben, Leipzig, IX (1888), 453.
Kaiser, P. Die Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften der hl. Hildegard, Berlin, 1901. (Schulprogramm des Königsstädtischen Gymnasiums in Berlin.) A pamphlet of 24 pages. See also his edition, mentioned above, of the Causae et curae.
Singer, Chas. “The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard,” in Studies in the History and Method of Science, Oxford, 1917, pp. 1-55. Dr. Singer seems unacquainted with the above work by Kaiser, writing (p. 2) “The extensive literature that has risen around the life and works of Hildegard has come from the hands of writers who have shown no interest in natural knowledge.” Yet see also
Wasmann, E. “Hildegard von Bingen als älteste deutsche Naturforscherin,” in Biologisches Zentralblatt XXXIII (1913) 278-88. Herwegen in the Kirchl. Handlexicon (1908), I, 1970.
[340] Migne, 28, citing Baronius, Ann. 1148, from Epist. S. Thomas, I, 171.
[341] I have noted one MS of them in the British Museum, Harleian 1725.
[342] Migne, 84-85, 129-130.
[343] CLM 2619, 13th century, Gebenonis prioris Cisterc. in Eberbach, Speculum futurorum temporum sive Compendium prophetiarum S. Hildegardis; also, at Rome, Bibl. Alex. 172, 14th century, fols. 1-29.
[344] Early MSS of the Liber Scivias simplicis hominis are Palat. Lat. 311, 12th century, 204 fols.; Merton 160, early 13th century.
[345] Citing Preyer, Gesch. d. deutsch. Mystik. 1874; Hauck, Kirchengesch, Deutsch. IV, 398; Von Winterfeld, Neue Archiv, XXVII, 297.
[346] Migne, 101, quaedam de natura hominis et elementorum, diversarumque creaturarum. Singer, taking the words as an exact title of one work, tries to deny that they apply even to the Subtilitates; but the writer of the Vita is obviously simply giving a general idea of the subjects treated by Hildegard.
[347] In what is so far the only known extant copy, a thirteenth century MS at Copenhagen, which Jessen discovered in 1859 and called attention to in 1862 (Act. Acad. Vindob., XLV, i. 97-116), the Titulus is Causae et curae (shown in facsimile by Singer (1917), Plate 5a.)
[348] Pitra, 7-8, “Et ego testimonio hominis illius quem ut in prioribus visionibus praefata sum occulte quaesieram et inveneram et testimonio cuiusdam puellae mihi assistentis manus ad ascribendum posui.”
[349] Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, XXVII, 83, and other actors cited from the Acta Sanctorum in Migne, col. 197.
[350] This may be a further explanation of the use of German words in some of her works and their absence in others.
[351] Migne, 17, 19-20, 73-74, 93, 101.
[352] It is, however, the order in at least one of the MSS, Wolfenbüttel 3591, 14th century, fols. 1-174, except that the second book is called Of rivers instead of, Of elements: “B. Hildegardis Physica seu liber subtilitatum de diversis creaturis, scilicet f. 2 de herbis, f. 62 de fluminibus, f. 67 de arboribus, f. 90 de lapidibus preciosis, f. 106v de piscibus, f. 120 de volatilibus, f. 141 de animalibus, f. 162 de vermibus, f. 168 de metallis.”
[353] It was, however, subdivided into three parts, treating respectively of fish, fowl, and other animals.
[354] The variety and confusing order of its contents may be best and briefly indicated by a list of chapter heads (pp. 33-52): De Adae casu, de spermate, de conceptu, quare homo hirsutus est, de reptilibus, de volatilibus, de piscibus, de conceptus diversitate, de infirmitatibus, de continentia, de incontinentia, de flegmaticis, de melancholis, de melancholice morbo, de elementorum commixtione, de rore, de pruina, de nebula, quod quatuor sunt elementa tantum, de anima et spiritibus, de Adae creatione, de capillis, de interioribus hominis, de auribus, de oculis et naribus, quod in homine sunt elementa, de sanguine, de carne, de generatione, de Adae vivificatione, de Adae prophetia, de animae infusione, de Adae somno, de Evae malitia, de exilio Adae, quare Eva prius cecidit, de diluvio, quare filii Dei, de lapidum gignitione, de iri, de terrae situ, quod homo constat de elementis, de flegmate diversitate, de humoribus, de frenesi, de contractis, de stultis, de paralysi.
[355] Causae et curae, pp. 20 and 30.
[356] Migne, 403-4.
[357] Migne, 791-95.
[358] Subtilitates, II, 3 (Migne, 1212), Mare flumina emittit quibus terra irrigatur velut sanguine venarum corpus hominis.
[359] Subtilitates, II, 5 (Migne), Rhenus a mari impetu emittitur. Singer (p. 14) is so non-plussed by this that he actually interprets mari as the lake of Constance, and asks, questioning Hildegard’s authorship of the Subtilitates, “How could she possibly derive all rivers, Rhine and Danube, Meuse and Moselle, Nahe and Glan, from the same lake, as does the author of the Liber subtilitatum?”
That all waters, fresh or salt, came originally from the sea is asserted in the Secretum Secretorum of the Pseudo-Aristotle, as edited by Roger Bacon: Steele (1920), p. 90.
[360] Causae et curae (1903), p. 24.
[361] Ibid., p. 25.
[362] Ibid., p. 23.
[363] See Vitruvius, Book VIII, chapters 2-4, on “Rain-water,” “Various Properties of Different Waters,” and “Tests of Good Water.” Pliny, NH, Book XXXI, chapters 21-23, on “The Wholesomeness of Waters,” “The Impurities of Water,” “Modes of Testing Water.”
[364] Causae et curae (1903), p. 27.
[365] Ibid., p. 28.
[366] Vitruvius held that rain-water was unusually wholesome, but Pliny disputed this notion.
[367] Causae et curae (1903), p. 30, “si quis eam bibit, ulcera et scabies in eo saepissime crescunt ac viscera eius livore implentur.” Pliny noted the belief that ice-water and snow-water were unhealthy, and both he (XXXVII, 11) and Vitruvius speak of Alpine streams which cause diseases or swellings in the throat.
[368] Causae et curae (1903), pp. 24-25.
[369] Causae et curae (1903), p. 26.
[370] Both Vitruvius and Pliny mention the practice, and the latter calls it an invention of the emperor Nero. A note, however, in Bostock and Riley’s translation of the Natural History states that Galen ascribed the practice to Hippocrates and that Aristotle was undoubtedly acquainted with it. When Pliny goes on to say, “Indeed, it is generally admitted that all water is more wholesome when it has been boiled,” another translator’s note adds, “This is not at all the opinion at the present day,” that is, 1856. But apparently the progress of medical and biological science since 1856 has been in this respect a retrogression to Pliny’s view.
[371] Causae et curae (1903), p. 1. Somewhat similarly Moses Maimonides, the Jewish philosopher, who was born thirty-seven years after Hildegard, held that evil was mere privation and that the personal devil of scripture was an allegorical representation thereof. He also denied the existence of demons, but considered belief in angels as second only in importance to a belief in God. See Finkelscherer (1894) pp. 40-51; Mischna Commentary to Aboda-zara, IV, 7; Lévy (1911) 89-90.
[372] Causae et curae (1903), p. 11.
[373] Ibid., p. 5.
[374] Causae et curae, pp. 57-58.
[375] Subtleties, VIII, 1.
[376] Ibid., I, 56.
[377] Ibid., III, 25.
[378] Ibid., V, 1 and 4.
[379] Ibid., IV, 10.
[380] Ibid., IX, 8.
[381] Migne, 387-9.
[382] (1903) p. 57.
[383] II, 1, “Querela elementorum. ‘Nam homines pravis operibus suis velut molendinum subvertunt nos.’” III, 23, “Quod elementa humanis iniquitatibus subvertuntur.”
[384] Migne, 966.
[385] (1903), p. 143.
[386] Migne, 404-405.
[387] Vision III, Migne, 410.
[388] Vision X, 28 and 32, Migne, 1028 and 1032.
[389] Pitra (1882) Vitae meritorum, V, 6-7.
[390] Vitae meritorum, V, 32.
[391] Causae et curae (1903) 31-32.
[392] Subtleties, VIII, 6.
[393] Subtleties, I, 56.
[394] Ibid., III, 23.
[395] (1903), p. 196.
[396] IV, 2.
[397] Subtleties, I, 114.
[398] Ibid., III, 23.
[399] Ibid., I, 56.
[400] Subtleties, IV, 18.
[401] Ibid., IV, 1.
[402] Ibid., IV, 16.
[403] Ibid., V, 8.
[404] Ibid., V, 1.
[405] Subtleties, V, 5.
[406] Ibid., V, 10.
[407] (1903), pp. 193-4.
[408] Subtleties, VI, 7.
[409] Ibid., VI, 49.
[410] Ibid., VI, 6.
[411] Ibid., VI, 4.
[412] Ibid., VI, 5, 20, 40.
[413] Subtleties, VI, 2.
[414] Ibid., VI, 5.
[415] Ibid., VI, 6.
[416] Ibid., VII, 2.
[417] Ibid., VII, 3.
[418] Ibid., VII, 4.
[419] Subtleties, VII, 9.
[420] Ibid., VII, 5.
[421] Ibid., VII, 38.
[422] Ibid., VII, 39.
[423] Subtleties, VII, 16.
[424] Ibid., VII, 17.
[425] Ibid., VII, 14.
[426] Ibid., VII, 42.
[427] Ibid., VII, 43.
[428] Ibid., VIII, 2.
[429] (1903), pp. 206-7.
[430] (1903), pp. 194-5.
[431] (1903), p. 195, “Nam calibs est firmamentum et ornamentum aliarum rerum et est quasi quaedam adiunctio ad vires hominis quemadmodum homo fortis est.”
[432] Migne, 409-14; I alter the order somewhat in my summary.
[433] (1903), p. 15.
[434] Migne, 807.
[435] Migne, 791 and 798.
[436] Migne, 732 et seq.
[437] (1903), pp. 11-14.
[438] Migne, 778.
[439] (1903), pp. 16-17.
[440] Migne, 779.
[441] Migne, 793.
[442] (1903), pp. 17-18; and again 77-78; see also p. 97, “de concepta in plenilunio.”
[443] (1903), p. 19.
[444] Migne, 793.
[445] (1903), p. 19.
[446] (1903), p. 54.
[447] Causae et curae (1903), pp. 70-76.
[448] Ibid., pp. 87-9.
[449] Ibid., pp. 19-20.
[450] Ibid., p. 84.
[451] Ibid., pp. 235-42.
[452] (1903), p. 2.
[453] (1903), p. 10.
[454] Migne, 779.
[455] Migne, 833.
[456] Migne, 819.
[457] Migne, 943.
[458] Migne, 829.
[459] (1903), p. 82.
[460] (1903), p. 83.