XLI. JOHN OF SALISBURY
His picture of the learned world--Chief events of his life--General character of the Polycraticus--Magic, maleficia, and mathematica--Use of Isidore on magic--Relation of Thomas Becket to John’s discussion--Inconsistent Christian attitude toward superstition--Divine and natural signs--Miracle and occult virtue--Interpretation of dreams--Dreams of Joseph and Daniel--The witchcraft delusion--Prevalence of astrology--John’s attack upon it--Does astrology imply fatal necessity?--John’s lame conclusion--Other varieties of magic--Thomas Becket’s consultation of diviners--Witch of Endor: exorcisms--Divination from polished surfaces--Natural science and medicine--Summary.
[Sidenote: His picture of the learned world.]
In 1159 John of Salisbury completed his two chief works, the Metalogicus and the Polycraticus.[461] In the former he tells the interesting story of his education in the schools of northern France, and describes the teachers and methods of the humanistic school of Chartres and the schools of logic at Paris. This valuable picture of educational conditions in the middle of the twelfth century has already supplied us with a number of bits of information concerning authors of whom we have treated. Its importance in the history of the study of the classics and of scholasticism has long been recognized, and its content has often been reproduced in secondary works, so that we need not dwell upon it specifically here.[462] Moreover, although John spent some twelve years in his studies in France, he appears from his own statements to have passed from the study of logic and “grammar” to that of theology without devoting much attention to natural science,[463] although he received some instruction in the Quadrivium from Richard Bishop and Hardewin the Teuton. He was, it is true, according to his own statement, a pupil of William of Conches for three years, but he always alludes to William as a grammarian, not as a writer on natural philosophy and astronomy. This one-sided description of William’s teaching warns us not to place too implicit faith in John’s account of the learned world of his times. Even if reliable as it stands, it is not in itself a complete or adequate picture. In the Polycraticus, however, he engages in a rather long discussion of magic, astrology and other forms of divination which it behooves us to note.
[Sidenote: Chief events of his life.]
John tells us that he was a mere lad when in 1136 he first came from England to Gaul to hear the famous Abelard lecture. Like many medieval students, he was or soon came to be in a needy condition and eked out a living at one time by tutoring the sons of nobles. During the time that had elapsed between his long training in the liberal arts and theology and his writing of the Metalogicus in 1159, he had led a busy life in the employ of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, crossing the Alps ten times, journeying twice all the way from England to Apulia, and frequently traveling about England and what is now France (John says, “the Gauls”--Gallias). In 1159 he addressed the Polycraticus to Thomas Becket, then absent with Henry II as his chancellor at the siege of Toulouse. Thomas was just about John’s age and, before he became chancellor in 1154 at the age of thirty-six, had been like John first a student and then in the employ of Archbishop Theobald. John sided with Thomas Becket in the struggle with Henry II, retired to France, and returned to England with him in 1170. In 1176 he crowned his career by becoming bishop of Chartres where perhaps some years of his early studies had been spent. His death was in 1180.
[Sidenote: General character of the Polycraticus.]
In the Metalogicus John tells us that he has scarcely touched a book of logic since he left the palaestra of the dialecticians so many years ago, but he returns to the subject again in that work. In the Polycraticus his literary tastes and interests are more manifest. He writes a good Latin style and shows a wide acquaintance with classical authors and ancient history as well as with patristic literature. The character and content of the Polycraticus is more clearly suggested by its sub-title, “Courtiers’ Trifles and Philosophers’ Footprints” (De nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum). In part it is satirical, although there is considerable serious discussion of the state and philosophy and much moralizing for the benefit of contemporary courts and statesmen. John confesses that the entire work is little more than a patch-work of other men’s opinions, sometimes without specific acknowledgment of the authorities. He professes to believe that Thomas will recognize the sources of these passages without being told, while other readers who are more ignorant will be thereby spurred on to wider reading. These quotations, moreover, are either from ancient classical or comparatively early Christian writers. John does not epitomize recent literature and thought, although he makes application of the thought of the past to contemporary society and politics, and although he shows some acquaintance with the works of contemporary writers such as Bernard Silvester. In the main his attitude is essentially conservative; he repeats traditional views in an attractive but somewhat dilettante literary form, with such rational criticism as a study of the classics might be expected to produce when qualified by scrupulous adherence to medieval Christian dogma. This is especially true of his discussion of the magic arts and astrology.
[Sidenote: Magic, maleficia, and mathematica.]
John begins to discuss magic in the first of the eight books of the Polycraticus after a few chapters have been taken up with such other triflings of courtiers as hunting, dicing, music, and theatrical shows and spectacles. More harmful than the illusions of the stage, he declares, are those of the magic arts and various kinds of disreputable mathematica, long since forbidden by the holy fathers who knew that all these artificia, or rather maleficia arose from a fatal familiarity of men and demons.[464] John thus takes as practically synonymous the three terms, magica, mathematica and maleficium. He presently explains that the word mathesis in one sense denotes learning in general, but that when it has a long penultima, it signifies the figments of divination,[465] which belong under magic, whose varieties are many and diverse. Thus magic is John’s most general and inclusive term for all occult arts.
[Sidenote: Use of Isidore on magic.]
The account of magic in John’s ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth chapters is largely derived without acknowledgment from that of Isidore of Seville.[466] We have already seen how this became a stock description of the subject copied with little change by successive writers and embodied in the decretals of the church. It is rather surprising that a writer as well versed in the classics as John is generally supposed to be should not have borrowed his account more directly from some such ancient Latin writers as Pliny and Apuleius. John, however, alters the wording and arrangement and consequently the emphasis considerably. He makes it seem, for example, that several magic arts, which really have nothing to do with predicting the future, are sub-varieties of divination. He also adds some new varieties to Isidore’s list of practitioners of the magic arts. The vultivoli try to affect men by making images of them from wax or clay. Imaginarii, on the other hand, make images with the intent that demons should enter these images and instruct them in regard to doubtful matters. Besides interpreters of dreams (conjectores) and chiromancers John further mentions specularii who practise divination by gazing into polished surfaces such as the edges of swords, basins, and mirrors. It was this art that Joseph is described as exercising or pretending to exercise, when he charged his brothers with having made off with the cup in which he was wont to practice divination. The thirteenth and closing chapter of John’s first book is a long list of omens from Roman history and Latin literature, especially Vergil.
[Sidenote: Relation of Thomas Becket to John’s discussion.]
In the second book he resumes the same subject after a brief and somewhat apologetic preface in which he states that all things are of use to the wise man. Therefore he responds with alacrity to Thomas Becket’s request that he publish his trifles, introducing interpreters of dreams and astrologers with some other triflers. We shall later meet with some further explanation of Thomas’ interest in such matters. It is perhaps significant that John further expresses his confidence that Thomas will faithfully protect those in whom he has inspired boldness of utterance,[467] but it would be too much to assume from it that John fears any persecution because he discusses such subjects. More likely he merely shares the common medieval fear of the envious bite of critics and reviewers, or wishes to remind Thomas of his need of his patronage. At any rate he closes the prologue with the request that Thomas will correct any mistake in either book.
[Sidenote: Inconsistent Christian attitude toward superstition.]
In opening his second book John subscribes to the proverb that he who trusts in dreams and auguries will never be secure and asks--like Cicero in his De divinatione[468]--what possible connection there can be between sneezes, yawns, and other such things accepted as signs and the events which they are supposed to signify. With Isidore and Augustine[469]--although he names neither--he rejects those empty incantations and superstitious ligatures which the entire medical art condemns, although some call them physica.[470] This seems like an admirable approach to an attitude of rational criticism, but John after all may be merely repeating others’ statements like a parrot, and he entirely spoils its effect by what he goes on to say. He believes that the cloak of St. Stephen raised the dead, and that such practices as saying the Lord’s prayer while plucking or administering medicinal herbs, or wearing or hearing or repeating the names of the four evangelists,[471] are not only allowable but most useful. He adds further that the force of all omens depends upon the faith of the recipient.
[Sidenote: Divine and natural signs.]
Although opposing faith in omens and augury, John admits that God provides signs for His creatures, such as those of the weather which sailors and farmers learn by experience and the birds are not ignorant of, or the indications by which doctors can prognosticate the course of diseases. Unfortunately the demons also are able to show signs and thus lead men astray. Mention of signs which preceded the fall of Jerusalem then leads John into a digression for several chapters concerning the horrors of the siege itself and Vespasian and Titus, a passage which was very likely inserted because Henry II and Becket were at that very time engaged in laying siege to Toulouse.
[Sidenote: Miracle and occult virtue.]
Returning to the subject of signs, John interprets the verse in Luke, “There shall be signs in sun and moon and stars” as having reference to unnatural signs, and the obscuration of the sun during Christ’s passion as not a natural eclipse.[472] John explains that by nature he means “the accustomed course of things or the occult causes of events for which a reason can be given.”[473] If, however, we accept Plato’s definition of nature as the will of God there will be no unnatural events. But John would distinguish between the gradual growth of leaves and fruit on tree or vine by means of roots drawing nutriment from earth’s vitals and sap produced within the trunk, which is indeed marvelous and has the most occult causes, and the performance of the same process without any interval of time, which he regards as a miracle and of a divine height which transcends our understanding. After drawing this distinction between divine miracle and wonders wrought by occult virtues in nature John returns again to the subject of signs.
[Sidenote: Interpretation of dreams.]
For some chapters the topic of dreams and their interpretation absorbs his attention,[474] and at first he discusses in an apparently credulous and approving tone “the varied significations of dreams, which both experience approves and the authority of our ancestors confirms.”[475] He explains that now the dream concerns the dreamer himself, now someone else, now common interests, sometimes the public or general welfare; and he quotes Nestor to the effect that “trust is put in the king’s dream concerning public matters.”[476] After referring credulously to the Sibylline verses predicting Christ’s incarnation, passion, and ascension, John continues his exposition of the interpretation of dreams. He explains that the season of year when one dreams, the place where one dreams, and the personal characteristics of the dreamer must all be taken into account; that sometimes interpretations should be by contraries, and again from like to like. But then he checks himself with the words: “But while we pursue these traditions of the interpreters, I fear lest we deservedly seem not so much to trace the art of interpretation, which is either no art at all or an idle one, as to dream ourselves.” He adds further, “Whoever fastens his credulity to the significations of dreams evidently wanders as far from sincere faith as from the path of reason.”[477]
[Sidenote: Dreams of Joseph and Daniel.]
John then attacks the Dream-Book of Daniel, which he says “circulates impudently among the hands of the curious” and gives a specific interpretation for each thing imagined by the dreamer. He denies the truth and authority of the book and argues at some length that neither Joseph nor Daniel would have composed such a work, and that they interpreted dreams by divine inspiration, not by any occult art learned in Chaldea or Egypt. In the first place, the method of interpretation set forth in this book is faulty and crude. The remainder of John’s argument is worth quoting in part:
“Daniel indeed had the grace to interpret visions and dreams, which the Lord inspired in him, but it is inconceivable that a holy man should reduce this vanity to an art, when he knew that the Mosaic law prohibited any of the faithful to heed dreams, being aware how Satan’s satellite for the subversion of men is transformed into an angel of light and how suggestions are made by bad angels. Joseph, too, won the rule of Egypt by his ability to predict.... But if this could have come from any science of human wisdom, I should think that some one of his ancestors before him would have merited it, or I should think that the saint, desirous of serving science and full of pious impulses, would have left the art as a legacy, if not to the human race at large, which would nevertheless have been just, at any rate to his brothers and sons. Besides, Moses, trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, either was ignorant of or spurned this art, since, detesting the error of impiety, he took pains to exterminate it from among God’s people. Furthermore, St. Daniel learned the studies and wisdom of the Chaldeans, which, as a saint, he would not have done, had he thought it sinful to be instructed in their lore. And he had companions in his education whom he rejoiced to have as comrades in divine law and justice. For at the same time Ananias, Axarias, Misael learned whatever a Chaldean would learn.... But notice that the privilege which man could not confer was given to Daniel alone, to bring to light the riddles of dreams and to scatter the obscurities of figures....”
Pointing out that Daniel read the king’s thoughts and prophesied “the mystery of salvation” in addition to interpreting the dream, John then concludes sarcastically: “Are the interpreters of dreams thus wont to examine thoughts and remove obscurities, to explain what is involved and illuminate the darkness of figures? If there is any who enjoys a like portion of grace, let him join Daniel and Joseph and like them ascribe to God the glory. He whom the spirit of truth does not illume vainly puts his confidence in the art of dreams.”[478]
[Sidenote: The witchcraft delusion.]
John concludes that many dreams are the work of demons.[479] Especially as of this sort he classifies the illusions of those who think that they have taken part during the night in witches’ Sabbats. “What they suffer in spirit they most wretchedly and falsely believe to have occurred in the body.”[480] And such dreams come mainly to women, feeble-minded men, and those weak in the Christian faith. Too much stress must not, however, be laid upon this apparent opposition to the witchcraft delusion.[481] John admits that the demons send dreams, and if he denies their verity, he merely repeats a hesitation as to the extent and reality of the power of demons over the body of men and the world of nature which we have frequently met in patristic literature and which is due to a natural reluctance to admit that their magic is as real as God’s miracles.
[Sidenote: Prevalence of astrology.]
From divination by dreams and demons John passes to astrology. To start with he admits the attraction which the art has for men of intellect in his own time. “Would,” he exclaims, “that the error of the mathematici could be as readily removed from enlightened minds as the works of the demons fade before true faith and a sane consciousness of their illusions. But in it men go astray with the greater peril in that they seem to base their error upon nature’s firm foundation and reason’s strength.”[482] Beginning with mathematical and astronomical truths based on nature, reason and experience, they gradually slip into error, submitting human destiny to the stars and pretending to knowledge which belongs to God alone.
[Sidenote: John’s attack upon it.]
John ridicules the astrologers for attributing sex to the stars and stating the exact characteristics and influences of each planet, when they cannot agree among themselves whether the stars are composed of the four elements or some fifth essence, and when they are confounded by a schoolboy’s question whether the stars are hard or soft.[483] He grants that the sun’s heat and the moon’s control of humors as it waxes and wanes are potent forces, and that the other heavenly bodies are the causes of many utilities, and that from their position and signs the weather may be predicted. But he complains that the astrologers magnify the influence of the stars at the expense of God’s control of nature and of human free will. “They ascribe everything to their constellations.” Some have even reached such a degree of madness that they believe that “an image can be formed in accordance with the constellations so that it will receive the spirit of life at the nod of the stars and will reveal the secrets of hidden truth.”[484] Whether John has some magic automaton or merely an engraved astrological image in mind is not entirely clear.
[Sidenote: Does astrology imply fatal necessity?]
John is aware, however, that many astrologers will deny that their science detracts in any way from divine prerogative and power, and will “appear to themselves to excuse their error quite readily” by asserting with Plotinus that God foreknew and consequently foredisposed everything that is to occur, and that the stars are as much under his control as any part of nature.[485] But John will have none of this sort of argument. “These hypotheses of theirs are indeed plausible but nevertheless venom lies under the honey. For they impose on things a certain fatal necessity under the guise of humility and reverence to God, fearing lest his intent should perchance alter, if the outcome of things were not made necessary. Furthermore, they encroach upon the domain of divine majesty, when they lay claim to that science of foreseeing times and seasons, which by the Son’s testimony are reserved to the power of the Father, even to the degree that they were hid from the eyes of those to whom the Son of God revealed whatever He heard from the Father.”[486]
John furthermore contends that divine foreknowledge does not require fatal necessity. For instance, although God knew that Adam would sin, Adam was under no compulsion to do so. God knew that by his guilt Adam would bring death into the world, but no condition of nature impelled him to this; in the beginning man was immortal. At this point John wanders off into a joust at the Stoics and Epicureans, whom he censures as equally in error, since the one subjected all to chance, the other to necessity. It is true, John argues, that I know a stone will fall to earth if I hurl it skywards, but it “does not act under necessity, for it might fall or not.” But that it does fall, “though not necessary, is true.” John presently recognizes that he has given away his previous argument against astrology and that the devotee of the stars will say that he does not care whether his predictions are necessary or not provided they are true. “‘Nor does it make any difference to me,’ says the devotee of the stars, ‘whether the affair in question might be otherwise, provided I am not doubtful that it will be (as I think.)’”[487]
[Sidenote: John’s lame conclusion.]
John accordingly resorts to other arguments and to facetious sarcasm to cover his confusion. Then he recovers sufficiently to reiterate his belief that God frequently interferes in the operation of nature by special providences; and asserts that God has been known to change His mind, while the astrologers assert that the stars are constant in their influences. Expressing doubt, however, whether Thomas Becket will be convinced by his arguments, especially the one concerning fate and Providence, or whether he will not laugh up his sleeve at such a clumsy attempt to refute so formidable a doctrine, John lamely concludes by citing Augustine and Gregory against the art, and by affirming that every astrologer whom he has known has come to some bad end,[488] in which assertion he probably simply echoes Tertullian.
[Sidenote: Other varieties of magic.]
Resuming his discussion of the varieties of magic John briefly dismisses necromancers with the bon mot that those deserve death who try to acquire knowledge from the dead.[489] A number of other terms in Isidore’s list--auspices, augurs, salissatores, arioli, pythonici, aruspices--he says it is needless to discuss further since these arts are no longer practiced in his day, or at least not openly. Turning to more living superstitions of the present, he explains that chiromancy professes to discern truths which lie hidden in the wrinkles of the hands, but that since there is no apparent reason for this belief it is not necessary to contravert it.
[Sidenote: Thomas Becket’s consultation of diviners.]
John wishes to ask Thomas one thing, however, and that is what triflers of this sort say when they are interrogated concerning uncertain future matters. He knows that Becket is familiar with such men because on the occasion of a recent royal expedition against Brittany he consulted both an aruspex and a chiromancer. John notes that a few days afterwards Thomas “lost without warning the morning-star so to speak of your race,” and warns him that such men by their vanity deserve to be consulted no more. This gentle rebuke did not avail, however, to wean Thomas entirely from his practice of consulting diviners, which he continued to do even after he became Archbishop of Canterbury. In a letter written to the future martyr and saint in 1170 John again chides Thomas for having delayed certain important letters because he had been “deluded by soothsayings which were not of the Spirit” and exhorts him “So let us renounce soothsayings in the future.”[490]
[Sidenote: Witch of Endor: exorcisms.]
Despite his previous declaration that he need not discuss the pythonici, John now proceeds to do so, listing instances of ambiguous and deceptive Delphic oracles and discussing at length the well-worn subject of Saul and the witch of Endor. He concludes the chapter by a warning against abuse of the practice of exorcism: “For such is the slyness of evil spirits that what they do of their own accord and what men do at their suggestion, they with great pains disguise so that they appear to perform it unwillingly. They pretend to be coerced and simulate to be drawn out as it were by the power of exorcisms, and that they may be the less guarded against they compose exorcisms apparently expressed in the name of God or in the faith of the Trinity or in the power of the incarnation or passion; and they transmit the same to men and obey men who use these, until they finally involve them with themselves in the crime of sacrilege and penalty of damnation. Sometimes they even transform themselves into angels of light, they teach only things of good repute, forbid unlawful things, strive to imitate purity, make provision for needs, so that, as if good and favoring, they are received the more familiarly, are heard the more kindly, are loved the more closely, are the more readily obeyed. They also put on the guise of venerable persons....”[491]
[Sidenote: Divination from polished surfaces.]
“The specularii,” John continues, “flatter themselves that they immolate no victims, harm no one, often do good as when they detect thefts, purge the world of sorceries, and seek only useful or necessary truth.”[492] He insists that the success of their efforts is none the less due to demon aid. John tells how as a boy he was handed over for instruction in the Psalms to a priest who turned out to be a practitioner of this variety of magic, who after performing various adjurations and sorceries tried to have John and another boy look into polished basins or finger-nails smeared with holy oil or chrism and report what they saw. The other boy saw some ghostly shapes but John thanks God that he could see nothing and so was not employed henceforth in this manner. He adds that he has known many specularii and that they have all suffered loss of their sight or some other evil except the aforesaid priest and a deacon, and that they took refuge in monasteries and later suffered evils above their fellows in their respective congregations.
[Sidenote: Natural science and medicine.]
John closes his second book with a chapter on natural scientists and medical men, for he seems to apply the term physici in both senses, although towards the close of the chapter he also employs the word medici. He begins by saying that it is permissible to consult concerning the future anyone who has the spirit of prophecy or who from scientific training knows by natural signs what will happen in the bodies of animals, or who “has learned experimentally the nature of the time impending,” provided only that these latter men say and do nothing prejudicial to the Christian faith. But sometimes the physici attribute too much to nature,[493] and John has heard many of them disputing concerning the soul and its virtues and operations, the increase and diminution of the body, the resurrection, and the creation, in a way far from accord with the Christian faith. “Of God Himself too they sometimes so speak, ‘As if earth-born giants assailed the stars.’”[494] John recognizes, however, their knowledge of animals and medicine, although he finds their theories sometimes in conflict. As for practicing physicians, he dares not speak ill of them, for he too often falls into their hands, and he grants that no one is more necessary or useful than a good doctor. John makes considerable use of the Natural History of Pliny and of Solinus, and sometimes for occult or marvelous phenomena, as when he cites Pliny concerning men who have the power of fascination by voice and tongue or by their glances, and adds the testimony of the Physiognomists.[495]
[Sidenote: Summary.]
It may be well to review and further emphasize some of the chief features of John’s rather rambling discussion. Despite its frequent quotations from classic poets and moralists, it is theological in tone and content to a degree perhaps greater than I have succeeded in suggesting, for to repeat all its scriptural passages would be tedious. There is even some theological jealousy and suspicion of natural science shown. John perhaps more nearly duplicates the attitude of Augustine than that of any other writer. Magic is represented as inevitably associated with, and the work of, demons. John sometimes charges the magic arts with being irrational or injurious, but these charges are in a way but corollaries of his main thesis. The arts must be harmful since demons are concerned with them, while the influence of demons seems the only rational explanation for their existence. John repeats the old Isidorian definition of magic but he adds some current superstitions and shows that the magic arts are far from having fallen into disuse. Finally he shows us how vain must have been all the ecclesiastical thunders and warnings of demons and damnation, like his own, directed against magic, from the fact that not merely kings of the past like Saul and Pharaoh, but clergy of the present themselves--a priest and a deacon, a chancellor and an archbishop of England--practice or patronize such arts. Sometimes John’s own condemnation of them seems a bit perfunctory; he takes more relish, it seems at times, in describing them. Again, as in the case of astrology, he evidently feels that his opposition will be of little avail.
FOOTNOTES:
[461] Johannis Sarisberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis Policratici sive de nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum libri VIII. Recog. C. C. I. Webb. 2 vols. Oxford, 1909. The work is also contained in Migne, PL vol. 199. For John’s life see DNB. All references are to book and chapter of the Polycraticus unless otherwise stated.
[462] The most recent discussion of it is by R. L. Poole, “The Masters of the Schools at Paris and Chartres in John of Salisbury’s Time,” in EHR XXXV (1920), 321-42.
[463] Metalog. II, 10.
[464] I, 9.
[465] At II, 18 he makes the same distinction.
[466] For Isidore’s account see PL 82, 310-14.
[467] Polycrat. II, prologus. “Alacres itaque exeant nugae nostrae quas serenitas tua prodire iubet in publicum, ut conjectores, mathematicos, cum quibusdam aliis nugatoribus introducant; quia quibus dedisti egrediendi audaciam, securitatis quoque fiduciam praestabis.” The following words, “Connectantur ergo inferiora superioribus” seem to mean that the second book goes on where the first left off, but perhaps the suggestion of astrological doctrine is an intentional play upon words on John’s part.
[468] II, 12.
[469] De doctrina Christiana, II, 20 in Migne, PL vol. 34.
[470] Thus, it will be recalled, Marcellus Empiricus and Alexander of Tralles labelled their superstitious recipes.
[471] “Capitula Evangelii.”
[472] II, 11.
[473] II, 12.
[474] II, 14-17.
[475] II, 14. Quis nescit somniorum varias esse significationes, quas et usus approbat et maiorum confirmat auctoritas.
[476] II, 15. Somnium ... gerit imagines, in quibus coniectorum praecipue disciplina versatur, et nunc suum cuiusque est, nunc alienum, modo commune, interdum publice aut generale est. Ut enim ait Nestor, de statu publico regis credatur somnio.
[477] II, 17. Sed dum has coniectorum traditiones ex(s)equimur, vereor ne merito non tam coniectoriam ex(s)equi, quae aut nulla aut inania ars est, quam dormitare videamur ... Verum quisquis credulitatem suam significationibus alligat somniorum, planum est quia tam a sinceritate fidei quam a tramite rationis exorbitat.
[478] Polycrat. II, 17. Gratian appears to refer to the same book on oneiromancy in his Decretum, Secunda pars, Causa XXVI, Quaest. vii, cap. 16, “somnialia scripta et falso in Danielis nomine intitulata.”
[479] II, 17 (Webb I, 100). Quis huius facti explicet rationem nisi quod boni spiritus vel maligni exigentibus hominum meritis eos erudiunt vel illudunt?... Quod si materiam vitiis afferat, libidinem forte accendens aut avaritiam aut dominandi ingerens appetitum aut quidquid huiusmodi est ad subversionem animae, procul dubio aut caro aut spiritus malignus immittit.
[480] II, 17 (Migne, col. 436), Webb I, 100-1.
[481] John is perhaps influenced by a similar passage in the Canon, Ut episcopi (Burchard, Decreta, X, 1).
[482] II, 18. Possit utinam tam facile mathematicorum error a praestantioribus animis amoveri quam leviter in conspectu verae fidei et sanae conscientiae istarum illusionum demonia conquiescunt. Verumtamen eo periculosius errant quo in soliditate naturae et vigore rationis suum fundare videntur errorem.
[483] II, 19.
[484] II, 19 (Migne, col. 442). Webb, I, 112. ... stellarum nutu recipiet spiritum vitae et consulentibus occultae veritatis manifestabit arcana.
[485] II, 19.
[486] II, 20.
[487] Cap. 24, nec mea, inquit astrorum secretarius, interest an aliter esse possit, dum id de quo agitur ita futurum esse non dubitem.
[488] John’s argument against astrology extends from the 18th to the 26th chapter of the second book of the Polycraticus.
[489] II, 27.
[490] Epistola 297 (Migne, cols. 345-46).
[491] II, 27; Webb, I, 155-56.
[492] II, 28.
[493] II, 29 (Migne, col. 475). Licet tamen ut de futuris aliquis consulatur, ita quidem si aut spiritu polleat prophetiae, aut ex naturalibus signis quid in corporibus animalium eveniat physica docente cognovit, aut si qualitatem temporis imminentis experimentorum indiciis colligit. Dum tamen his posterioribus nequaquam quis ita aurem accommodet ut fidei aut religioni praejudicet.... At physici, dum naturae nimium auctoritatis attribuunt, in auctorem naturae adversando fidei plerumque impingunt.
[494] Webb, I, xxxiii and xxxv.
[495] V, 15 (Webb, I, 345).
Chapter XLII
DANIEL OF MORLEY AND ROGER OF HEREFORD: OR ASTROLOGY IN ENGLAND IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY
Daniel’s education--(Bibliographical note)--Defense of Arabian learning--A moderate treatment of moot points between science and religion--The four elements and fifth essence--Superiors and inferiors--Daniel’s astronomy--Astrological argument--Astrology and other sciences--Daniel and Greek: a misinterpretation--Daniel and the church: a misinterpretation--Daniel’s future influence--Roger of Hereford--An astrology in four parts--Another astrology in four parts--Book of Three General Judgments--Summary.
[Sidenote: Daniel’s education.]
In discussing Gerard of Cremona in a previous chapter we noticed the studies at Toledo of Daniel de Merlai or of Morley, how he heard Gerard translate the Almagest into Latin and defend the fatal influence of the stars, and Galippus, the Mozarab, teach concerning the universe in “the tongue of Toledo,”--presumably Spanish. Like Adelard of Bath, Daniel had long absented himself from England in the pursuit of learning, and had first spent some time at Paris, apparently engaged in the study of Roman law. He became disgusted, however, with the instruction there and in his preface[496] speaks sarcastically of “the brutes” (bestiales) who occupied professorial chairs “with grave authority” and read from codices too heavy to carry (importabiles) which reproduced in golden letters the traditions of Ulpian. Holding lead pencils in their hands, they marked these volumes reverently with obeli and asterisks. They wished to conceal their ignorance by maintaining a dignified and statuesque silence, “but when they tried to say something, I found them most childish.” Daniel accordingly made haste away to Spain to acquire the learning of the Arabs and to hear “wiser philosophers of the universe.” Finally, however, his friends summoned him back to England and he returned “with an abundant supply of precious volumes.” On his arrival he found that the interest in Roman law had almost completely eclipsed that in Greek philosophy, and that Aristotle and Plato were assigned to oblivion. Not wishing to remain the sole Greek among Romans, he prepared to withdraw again where the studies in which he was interested flourished. But on the way he met John, bishop of Norwich (1175-1200) who asked him many questions concerning his studies at Toledo and the marvels of that city, and concerning astronomy and the rule of the superior bodies over this sublunar world. Daniel’s present treatise gives a fuller reply to these inquiries than time then permitted him to make.
In the following bibliographical note the MSS will be listed first and then the printed works by or concerning Daniel of Morley.
Arundel 377, 13th century, well-written small quarto, fols. 88-103, “Philosophia magistri danielis de merlai ad iohannem Norwicensem episcopum ... / ... Explicit liber de naturis inferiorum et superiorum.” Until very recently this was supposed to be the only MS of Daniel’s sole extant work. No other treatise has as yet been identified as his, but several other MSS may be noted of the whole or parts of the aforesaid “Philosophia” or “Liber de naturis inferiorum et superiorum.”
Corpus Christi 95, 13th century, where, according to K. Sudhoff in the publication noted below, the first two or three books ascribed to William of Conches are really the work of Daniel of Morley.
Berlin Latin Quarto 387, 12th century, 51 fols. Attention was called to it by Birkenmajer in the publication noted below. It has many slips of copyists and is regarded by him as neither the original nor a direct copy thereof. For the MS to be written in the twelfth century this would require a very rapid multiplication and dissemination of Daniel’s treatise which was at the earliest not composed until after 1175.
The remaining MSS have not hitherto been noted by writers on Daniel:
CUL 1935 (Kk. I. 1), 13th century, small folio, fols. 98r-105r (and not to 115r, as stated in the MSS catalogue, which gives Daniel Morley as the author, but De creatione mundi as the title). From rotographs of fols. 98r-v, 100r, and 105r, I judge that this copy is almost identical with Arundel 377 but somewhat less legible and accurate.
Oriel 7, 14th century folio, fols. 194v-196v (191-193, according to Coxe), extracts from De philosophia Danielis, opening, “Nos qui mistice.”... They are immediately preceded by extracts from “Adelardi Bathoniensis ... de decisionibus naturalibus.”
Corpus Christi 263, early 17thI’ll sp century, fols. 166v-67r, “Ex Daniele de Merlai” (or, “Merlac,” according to Coxe) “alias Morley in lib. de superioribus et inferioribus primo De creationis Mundi.” This MS is one of the notebooks of Brian Twyne, the Elizabethan antiquary, written in his own hand.
Twyne perhaps made his extracts from Arundel 377, for immediately after them he gives extracts “from William of Conches who is together with Daniel Merlai in our library,” and in Arundel 377 Daniel’s work is immediately followed by that of William of Conches. Moreover, of the Selden MSS which are now in the Bodleian, Supra 72 was once owned by Lord “William Howarde” who died in 1640, while Supra 77 is marked “Arundel,” referring presumably to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1646, and Supra 79 consists of astronomical and astrological treatises copied by Brian Twyne. If MSS which once belonged to the Arundel collection and to Twyne have thus passed somehow into the Selden collection and are found listed there in close proximity to one another, it is at least tempting to conjecture that the MS containing Daniel’s treatise, followed by that of William of Conches, which Twyne says was once “in our library,” somehow became Arundel 377.
BN 6415 does not contain De philosophia Danielis, as stated by C. Jourdain (1838) p. 101; Jourdain, however, regarded Adelard of Bath as the author of De philosophia Danielis, and BN 6415 does contain Adelard’s Questiones naturales.
Balliol 96, 15th century, a commentary upon Aristotle’s eight books of Physics in the form of questions and preceded by a prologue, “Expliciunt questiones super 8 libros phisicorum compilate a domino Marlo magistro in artibus Tholose ac canonico de Timsey.” This does not seem to be a work by Daniel of Morley; a cursory examination revealed no reason for thinking that domino Marlo should read Daniele Merlai, or that Tholose should be Tholeto.
I have not examined two MSS at Queen’s College, Oxford, Reg. lxxi; lxxiv, 4) containing pedigrees of the Morlay or Morley family which may possibly throw some light upon Daniel’s identity.
All the printing that has been done of Daniel’s treatise has been based upon Arundel 377. J. O. Halliwell, Rara Mathematica, 1839, and Thomas Wright, Biographia Literaria, London, 1846, II, 227-30, printed the preface and other brief extracts for the first time.
Valentin Rose reprinted the preface and also published the conclusion in his article, “Ptolemaeus und die Schule von Toledo,” Hermes VIII (1874) 327-49. Rose also gave a list of the authorities cited by Daniel which makes a very large number of omissions: for example, fol. 89r, “sicut in trismegisto repperitur” and “isidori”; fol. 90v, Aristotle, “philosophus,” “Adultimus” (?), “Platonitus”; fol. 91r, “Esiodus autem naturalis scientie professor omnia dixit esse ex terra,” and so on for “tales milesius,” Democritus, and other Greek philosophers; fol. 91v, “sicut ab inexpugnabili sententia magni hermetis”; fol. 92r, “audiat ysidori in libro differentiarum”; fol. 92v, “unde astrologus ille poeta de creatione mundi ait,” and “magnus mercurius” and “trismegistus mercurius” and “trismegistus mercurius praedicti mercurii nepos”; fol. 97r, “Aristotelis in libro de sensu et sensato,” “Albumaxar,” “Aristotelis in libro de auditu naturali”; fol. 98v, “in libro de celi et mundo”; fol. 99v, Almagest, and “Ypocrati et galieno”; fol. 100v, “liber veneris ... quem edidit thoz grecus,” and “aristoteles ... in libro de speculo adurenti.”
Karl Sudhoff, Daniels von Morley Liber de naturis inferiorum et superiorum nach der Handschrift Cod. Arundel 377 des Britischen Museums zum Abdruck gebracht, in Archiv für die Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, Band 8, 1917 (but not received at the New York Public Library until July 8, 1921). Here is printed for the first time the full text of Daniel’s treatise as contained in Arundel 377, but from photographs taken years before and apparently without further reference to the MS itself. Also according to the following article by Birkenmajer, Sudhoff sometimes renders the contractions and abbreviations incorrectly. As Sudhoff’s text comes late to my hand, I leave my references to the folios of Arundel 377 as they are. These folios (with the exception of 88v) are marked in Sudhoff’s text.
Alexander Birkenmajer, Eine neue Handschrift des Liber de naturis inferiorum et superiorum des Daniel von Merlai, in the same Archiv, December, 1920, pp. 45-51, gives some variant readings from Berlin 387.
Dr. Charles Singer has published a brief account of Daniel of Morley in a recent issue of Isis.
The article on Daniel in DNB XXXIX (1894) by A. F. Pollard is criticized by Sudhoff for failing to mention “Roses wichtigste Vorarbeit;” but I observe that Sudhoff himself similarly fails to mention the publications by Halliwell and Thomas Wright which preceded both Rose’s and his own.
[Sidenote: Defense of Arabian learning.]
Daniel warns his readers at the start not to scorn the simple language and lucid style in which the doctrines of the Arabs are set forth, or to mistake the laborious circumlocutions and ambiguous obscurities of contemporary Latins for signs of profound learning. Nor should anyone be alarmed because he presents the opinions of Gentile philosophers instead of church fathers in treating of the creation of the world. They may not have been Christians, but where their opinions seem sound, Daniel believes in taking spoils of learning even from pagans and infidels, as God instructed the Hebrews to do in the case of the golden and silver vessels of the Egyptians. Thus he borrows the theory of a triple universe from an Arabic work. The first universe exists only in the divine mind and is neither visible nor corporeal, but is eternal. The second universe is in work and is visible, corporeal, and in that state not eternal. It was created simultaneously with time. The third universe is imitative. It is the microcosm and was formed in time and is visible and corporeal, but is in part eternal.[497] In a later passage[498] Daniel again defends his use of Arabian authorities, contending that it is only just that one who is already informed concerning the opinions about things supercelestial of the philosophers in use among the Latins should also not disdain to listen attentively to the views of the Arabs which cannot be impugned. It may be perilous to imitate them in some respects, but one should be informed even on such points in order to be able to refute and avoid the errors to which they lead.
[Sidenote: A moderate treatment of moot points between science and religion.]
In general plan, tone, and content, as well as in the title, Philosophia, Daniel’s treatise roughly resembles that of William of Conches. As Daniel says in his preface, the first part deals with the inferior portion of the universe, and the second part with the superior part. The work proper opens with a discussion of the creation, in which Daniel expresses some rather original ideas, although he treats of such time-worn topics as God’s creation of the angels, of the universe, and of man in His own image, and then of man’s fall through concupiscence, virtue and vice, and like matters. Later he argues against those who hold that the world is eternal, but he is not quite ready to accept the Mosaic account of creation entire. He argues that in the beginning God created heaven and earth and cites Augustine, Isidore, and Bede to show that the meaning is that heaven and earth were created simultaneously. He then adds that philosophers are loath to accept the division of the works of creation over six days; in human works it is true that one thing must be done before another, but God could dispense everything with “one eternal word.”[499]
[Sidenote: The four elements and fifth essence.]
The four elements are discussed a good deal and it is explained that fire is hot and dry, air is hot and wet, and so on.[500] To fire correspond cholera, the light of the eyes, and curiosity; to air, blood, words, and loquacity; to water, phlegm, abundance of natural humors, and lust; to earth, melancholy, corpulence, and cruelty.[501] Daniel, like Adelard of Bath and William of Conches, repeats the doctrine that the four elements are not found in a pure state in any bodies perceptible to our sense, that no one has ever touched earth or water, or seen pure air or fire, and that the four elements are perceptible only to the intellect. Daniel differs from Adelard and William, however, in denying that the stars are made merely out of the purer parts of the four elements. He declares that the Arabs will not agree to this, but that the higher authorities in astrology assert that the stars are composed of a fifth essence.[502] Daniel furthermore speaks of three bonds existing between the four elements, stating that scientists call the relation between fire and air, obedience; that between air and water, harmony; and that between water and earth, necessity.[503] This faintly reminds one of the three relationships between the four principles of things which were associated with the names of the three fates in the essay on fate ascribed to Plutarch.
[Sidenote: Superiors and inferiors.]
But the greatest bond in nature is that existing between the superior and inferior worlds. An oft-repeated and fundamental principle of Daniel’s philosophy, and one which explains the division of his work into two parts, is the doctrine that superiors conquer inferiors, that the world of the sky controls the world of the four elements, and that the science of the stars is superior to all other disciplines.[504] “The sages of this world have divided the world into two parts, of which the superior one which extends from the circle of the moon even to the immovable heaven is the agent. The other, from the lunar globe downwards, is the patient.”[505] Much depends, however, not only upon the force emitted by the agent but upon the readiness of the patient to receive the celestial influence.
[Sidenote: Daniel’s astronomy.]
Daniel of course believed in a spherical earth and a geocentric universe. Influenced probably by the Almagest, he explains the eccentrics of the five planets in a way which he regards as superior to what he calls the errors of Martianus Capella and almost all Latins, and to the obscure traditions which the Arabs have handed down but scarcely understood themselves.[506] He affirms that there are not ten heavens or spheres, as some have said, but only eight, as Alphraganus truly teaches.[507]
[Sidenote: Astrological argument.]
There are some men who deny any efficacy to the motions of the stars, but Daniel charges that they for the most part condemn the science without knowing anything about it, “and hold astronomy in hatred from its name alone.”[508] He replies that it is useful to foreknow the future and defends astrology in much the usual manner. He details the qualities of the seven planets[509] whom the Arabs call “lords of nativities.”[510] Also he takes up the properties and attributes of the signs of the zodiac and how the Arabs divide the parts of the human body among them.[511]
[Sidenote: Astrology and other sciences.]
Daniel interprets the scope of astrology very broadly, asserting that it has eight parts: the science of judgments, or what we should call judicial astrology; medicine; nigromancy according to physics; agriculture; illusions or magic (de praestigiis); alchemy, “which is the science of the transmutation of metals into other species; the science of images, which Thoz Grecus set forth in the great and universal book of Venus; and the science of mirrors, which is of broader scope and aim than the rest, as Aristotle shows in the treatise on the burning glass.”[512] Except that magic illusions have replaced navigation, this list of eight branches of learning is the same as that which Gundissalinus repeated from Al-Farabi, but which they called branches of natural science rather than of astrology. At any rate we see again the close association of natural science and useful arts with astrology and magic, and necromancy and alchemy, and with pseudo-writings of Aristotle and Hermes Trismegistus. In other passages Daniel cites genuine Aristotelian treatises[513] and speaks of “the great Mercury” and of the other “Mercury Trismegistus, the nephew of the aforesaid.”[514] Despite his subordination of alchemy to astrology in the above passage, Daniel does not seem to have it in mind when he remarks that there are “some who assign diverse colors of metals to the planets,” as lead to Saturn, silver to Jupiter, white to Venus, and black to Mercury.[515] He goes on to deny that the stars are really colored any more than the sky is.
[Sidenote: Daniel and Greek: a misinterpretation.]
Some modern scholars have drawn inferences from Daniel’s treatise with which I am unable to agree. Mr. S. A. Hirsch in his edition of Roger Bacon’s Greek Grammar follows Cardinal Gasquet[516] in observing concerning Daniel’s preface, “There can be no clearer testimony than this to the complete oblivion into which Greek had in those days fallen in western Europe, including England.” It may be granted that there was and had been little knowledge of Greek grammar and the Greek language in twelfth century England, but that is not what Daniel is talking about: indeed, there seems to be no reason for believing Daniel himself proficient in either Greek grammar or Greek literature, although he was shrewd enough to question whether Chalcidius always interpreted Plato aright.[517] When he calls himself “the only Greek among Romans,” he means the only one interested in Greek philosophy and astronomy and in translations of the same made largely from the Arabic. But earlier in the same century we have seen Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, and Bernard Silvester interested either in Platonism or Arabic science, and the anonymous Sicilian translator of the Almagest from the Greek, and before him Burgundio of Pisa and other translators from the Greek. Therefore all that Daniel’s remarks seems to indicate is that there was less interest in Greek philosophy in England after his return than before he went away, owing to the temporary popularity of the study of Roman law. But he knew where the studies in which he was interested still flourished.
[Sidenote: Daniel and the church: a misinterpretation.]
A more serious misinterpretation of Daniel’s relation to his age is Valentin Rose’s assertion that, because of Daniel’s addiction to Arabian and astrological doctrines, “his book found no favor in the eyes of the church and was shunned like poison. It has left no traces in subsequent literature; no one has read it and no one cites it.”[518] Rose spoke on the assumption that only one copy of Daniel’s treatise had reached us, whereas now we know of several manuscripts of it. If it did not become so widely known as some works, the more probable reason for this may well be that his brief résumé of Arabic and astrological doctrines appeared too late, when the fuller works of Ptolemy and of the Arabic astrologers were already becoming known through complete Latin translations. Brief pioneer treatises, like those of Adelard of Bath and William of Conches, which had appeared earlier in the century, had had time to become widely known during a period when there was perhaps nothing fuller and better available. But Daniel’s little trickle of learning from Toledo, which does not represent any very considerable advance over Adelard and William, might well be engulfed in the great stream of translations that now poured from Spain into Christian western Europe.[519] It is unreasonable to conjecture that Daniel’s book, which is rather mild anyway in its astrological doctrine, and which was called forth by the favoring questions of a bishop, was then crushed by bitter ecclesiastical opposition; when we know that William’s book, which actually encountered an ecclesiastical opposition of which we have no evidence in Daniel’s case, nevertheless continued in circulation and was much cited in the next century; and when we know that both Arabic and astrological doctrines and books were widespread in Christian western Europe both in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Treatises with more poison of astrology in them than his were read and cited and seem to have weathered successfully, if not to have escaped unscathed, whatever ecclesiastical censure may have been directed against them. If Daniel’s own composition did not secure a wide circle of readers, the chances are that “the multitude of precious volumes” which he imported from Spain to England did. And if the work of the pupil remained little cited, the translations of the master, Gerard of Cremona, who had taught him astrology at Toledo, became known throughout western Europe. Thus, while Daniel’s personal influence may not have been vast, he reflects for us the progress of a great movement of which he was but a part.
[Sidenote: Daniel’s future influence.]
But Rose was further mistaken in his assertion that Daniel’s De philosophia “has left no trace in subsequent literature; no one has read it and no one cites it.” Not only is the work found complete in three manuscripts of which Rose did not know, and of which one appears to be twice removed from the original. In a manuscript of the fourteenth century at Oriel College, Oxford,[520] in the fitting company of excerpts from Adelard of Bath and Gundissalinus, are over three double column folio pages of extracts drawn from various portions of the Philosophia. These begin with Daniel’s excuse for borrowing the eloquence and wisdom of the infidels and with some of his utterances anent the creation of the world. They include a number of his citations of other writers, his story of the two fountains outside the walls of Toledo which varied in fulness with the moon’s phases and contained salt water although remote six days journey from the sea, and other bits of his astrological doctrine. A similar, although not identical, selection of pearls from Daniel’s philosophy is found in one of the notebooks of Brian Twyne,[521] the Elizabethan antiquary, who gives the title of Daniel’s work as De superioribus et inferioribus and makes extracts both from its first and second books. Both Twyne and the Oriel manuscript’s writer seem to have been particularly impressed with Daniel’s views concerning the creation, rather than his retailing of astrological doctrine. Twyne first repeats his statement that the quantity of the universe reveals the power of its Maker; its quality, His wisdom; and its marvelous beauty, His unbounded good will. Twyne also notes Daniel’s phrase, “court of the world,” for the universe. Both Twyne and the Oriel manuscript note the passage concerning the triple universe, and another in which Daniel tells how the three human qualities, reason, irascibility, and desire, may be either used to discern and resist evil, or perverted to evil courses. Both also notice his contention that the chaos preceding creation was not hyle or matter but a certain contrariety present in matter.
[Sidenote: Roger of Hereford.]
In the same manuscript with Daniel’s treatise is a work by another Englishman, Roger of Hereford,[522] who was contemporary with him, who wrote treatises both in astronomy and astrology, and who, again like Daniel, was encouraged by a bishop. We are not, I believe, directly informed whether any of his works were translations from the Arabic or whether he was ever in Spain, but some of them sound as if they might be at least adaptations from the Arabic. At any rate Alfred of England dedicated to Roger the translation which he made from the Arabic of the pseudo-Aristotelian De vegetabilibus. Astronomical tables which Roger calculated for the meridian of Hereford in 1178 are based upon tables for Marseilles and Toledo, and the manuscript of one of his works is said by the copyist of 1476 to have been taken by him from an ancient codex written in Toledo in the year 1247.[523] Other astronomical treatises attributed to Roger are a Theory of the Planets, a Treatise concerning the rising and setting of the Signs, and a Compotus which dates itself in 1176 and is addressed to a Gilbert[524] who seems to be no other than Foliot, bishop of Hereford until 1163 and thereafter bishop of London. The signature of Roger of Hereford attests one of his documents in 1173-1174. In 1176 in the preface to the Compotus[525] Roger speaks of himself as iuvenis, and the heading in the manuscript even calls him “Child Roger” or “Roger Child,”[526] but he also says that he has devoted many years to learning, so that we need not regard him as especially youthful at that time. The definite dates in his career seem to fall in the decade from 1170 to 1180, although his association with Alfred of England may well have been later.
[Sidenote: An astrology in four parts.]
Professor Haskins ascribes one or more astrological works to Roger of Hereford and lists a number of manuscripts with three different Incipits.[527] Some of these manuscripts I have examined. One at Paris has the Titulus, “In the name of God the pious and merciful, here opens the book of the division of astronomy and its four parts composed by the famous astrologer Roger of Hereford.”[528] Roger explains that the first part is general and concerned with such matters as “peoples, events, and states, changes of weather, famine, and mortality.” The second is special and deals with the fate of the individual from birth to life’s close. The third deals with interrogations and the fourth with elections. The first chapter of the first part is entitled, “Of the properties of the signs and planets in any country,” and opens with the statement that it has been proved by experience that the signs Aries and Jupiter have dominion in the land “baldac and babel and herach,” Libra and Saturn in the land of the Christians, Scorpion and Venus in the land of the Arabs, Capricorn and Mercury in India, Leo and Mars over the Turks, Aquarius and the Sun in Babylonia, Virgo and the Moon in Spain. The other five signs seem to be left without a country.[529] Chapter two tells how to find what sign dominates in any villa; three, of the powers of the planets in universal events; four, of the science of the annual significance of the planets; five, knowledge of rains for the four seasons; six, knowledge of winds in any villa;[530] nine, the twenty-eight mansions of the moon. After the tenth chapter distinguishing these mansions as dry and wet and temperate, the second part on nativities opens with the retrospective statement, “Now we have treated of the first part of this art, omitting what many astrologers have said without experience and without reason.”[531] After a dozen chapters on the significance of the twelve houses in nativities, the author again asserts that in his discussion of that subject he has said nothing except what learned men agree upon and experience has tested.[532] After devoting three chapters to the familiar astrological theme of the revolution of years, he takes up in the third and fourth books[533] interrogations according to the twelve houses and elections, which are made in two ways according as the nativity is or is not known. The invocation of God the pious and compassionate in the Titulus and the list of countries and peoples in the first chapter have a Mohammedan and oriental flavor and suggest that the work is a translation.
[Sidenote: Another astrology in four parts.]
Different from the foregoing is another work dealing with four parts of judicial astrology which the manuscripts ascribe to Roger of Hereford. Its opening words[534] and the subjects of its four parts all differ from those of the other treatise. Its first part deals with “simple judgment”; its fourth part, with “the reason of judgment”; while its second and third parts instead of third and fourth, as in the foregoing treatise, deal with interrogations, now called Cogitatio, and elections.[535] I know of no manuscript where this second work is to be found complete; in fact, I am inclined to surmise that usually the manuscripts give only the first of its four parts.[536] It professes at the start to be a brief collection of rules of judicial astrology hitherto only to be found scattered through various works. Astrology is extolled as an art of incomparable excellence without which other branches of learning are fruitless. “They appear to a few through experiments; ... it gives most certain experiments.”[537] The first book treats of the properties of the signs and planets, of the twelve houses, and defines a long list of astrological terms such as respectus, applicatio, separatio, periclitus, solitudo, allevatio, translatio, collatio, redditio, contradictio, impeditio, evasio, interruptio, compassio, renuntiatio, and receptio.[538] Some tables are also given, in connection with one of which we are told that the longest hour at Hereford exceeds the shortest by eleven degrees and forty minutes.[539]
[Sidenote: Book of Three General Judgments.]
To Roger is also ascribed a Book of Three General Judgments of Astronomy, from which all others flow, which sometimes is listed separately in the manuscripts and apparently is found alone as a distinct work,[540] but in other manuscripts[541] seems to be an integral part of the work of four parts which we have just described. Its three general judgments are: gaining honors and escaping evils; intentio vel meditacio, which, like the cogitacio mentioned above, refers to interrogations; and comparatio vel electio which of course is elections. Thus the second and third parts of this Book of Three General Judgments deal with the same subjects as the second and third books of the work in four parts, which makes it difficult to distinguish them. I am inclined to think that in those manuscripts where the Book of Three General Judgments seems an integral part of the work in four parts, we really have simply the first of the four parts, followed by the Book of Three General Judgments.[542] At any rate it seems clear that most of Roger’s astrological composition is on the theme of interrogations and elections. Iudicia Herefordensis,[543] found in more than one manuscript, may come from a fourth work of his or be portions of the foregoing works.
[Sidenote: Summary.]
In this chapter we have treated of two Englishmen of the latter half of the twelfth century who are not generally known.[544] They were not, however, without influence, as we have already shown in the case of Daniel of Morley and as the number of manuscripts of the works of Roger of Hereford sufficiently attests for him. Daniel and Roger show that the same interest in astrology and astronomy from Arabic sources prevails at the close of the century in England as at its beginning in the cases of Walcher, prior of Malvern, and Adelard of Bath. Daniel, like Adelard, illustrates the relation of science to Christian thought; Roger, like Walcher, is an astronomer who makes and carefully records observations of his own,[545] while he trusts in astrology as based upon experience. As Alfred of England dedicated his translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian De vegetabilibus to Roger, so he dedicated his De motu cordis (On the Motion of the Heart) to a third Englishman, Alexander Neckam, to whom we turn in the next chapter for a picture of the state of science and his work On the Natures of Things (De naturis rerum) in his time.
FOOTNOTES:
[496] Fol. 88r.
[497] Fols. 88v-89r.
[498] Fol. 95v.
[499] Fol. 96.
[500] Fol. 94v.
[501] Fol. 89v.
[502] Fol. 95v.
[503] Fol. 93v.
[504] Fols. 95r-96.
[505] Fol. 92r.
[506] Fol. 101v.
[507] Fol. 100v.
[508] Idem.
[509] Fol. 99v.
[510] Fol. 102v.
[511] Fol. 102r.
[512] Fol. 100v.
[513] De sensu et sensato at fols. 97r and 98v; De coelo et mundo, ibid.; De auditu naturali, fol. 97r. I do not know if Al-Farabi’s De ortu scientiarum is meant by (fol. 96r) “Aristotiles in libro de assignanda ratione unde orte sunt scientie.”
[514] Fols. 92v, 91v, and 89r.
[515] Fol. 99r.
[516] Edmund Nolan and S. A. Hirsch, The Greek Grammar of Roger Bacon, Cambridge, 1902, p. xlvii. Gasquet, “English Scholarship in the Thirteenth Century,” and “English Biblical Criticism in the Thirteenth Century,” in The Dublin Review (1898), vol. 123, pp. 7 and 362.
[517] Fol. 89v, “Calcidius, forte minus provide exponens Platonem, dixit....” We have so often been assured that the Middle Ages knew Plato only through Chalcidius’ translation of the Timaeus that I think it advisable to note this bit of evidence that the medievals did not swallow their Chalcidius whole.
[518] Rose (1874), p. 331. Sudhoff (1917), p. 4, although himself calling attention to a second manuscript of Daniel’s treatise, continues to hold that it “scheint wenig Verbreitung gefunden zu haben.”
[519] Sudhoff (1917), p. 4, expresses a similar opinion. He still, however, repeats with respect Rose’s assertion that the treatise “wie ein Gift beseitigt worden,” but would explain this as less due to Daniel’s astrological doctrine than his employing Arabian authorities instead of the church fathers.
[520] Oriel 7, fols. 194v-96v: see bibliographical note at beginning of this chapter for a fuller description of it and the following MS of Brian Twyne.
[521] Corpus Christi 263, fols. 166-7.
[522] Professor Haskins’ account of Roger’s life and works in his “Introduction of Arabic Science into England,” EHR (1915), XXX, 65-8, supplements and supersedes the article in DNB. Where I do not cite authorities for statements that follow in the text, they may be found in Haskins’ article.
[523] BN 10271, fol. 203v, quoted by Haskins (1915), p. 67. It seems to me, however, from an examination of the MS that Roger’s work concludes at fol. 201v, “Explicit liber,” and that this extract, “Ad habendam noticiam quis est vel erit dominus anni,” at fol. 203v, may be another matter.
[524] The initial letters of the table of contents form the acrostic, “Gilleberto Rogerus salutes H. D.”
[525] Printed in part by T. Wright, Biograph. Lit., p. 90 et seq.
[526] Digby 40, fol. 65, “Prefatio magistri Rogeri Infantis in compotum”; Haskins conjectures that Infantis may be a corruption for Hereford, or an equivalent for the iuvenis of the text; but Leland took it as Roger’s surname and called him Roger Yonge.
[527] Haskins is not quite accurate in saying (p. 67), “Royal MS 12 F, 17 of the British Museum, catalogued as ‘Herefordensis iudicia’ is really the treatise of Haly, De iudiciis,” for while the MS does contain Egidius de Tebaldis’ translation of Haly de iudiciis in a fourteenth century hand, on its fly-leaves are inserted in a fifteenth century hand both “iudicia Herfordensis” and a treatise on conjunctions of John Eschenden. Moreover, all these items are listed both in the old and the new catalogue of the Royal MSS.
[528] BN 10271, written in 1476, 1481 A. D., etc., fol. 179-, “In nomine dei pii et misericordis Incipit liber de divisione astronomie atque de eius quatuor partibus compositus per clarum Rogerium Herfort Astrologum.” The text proper opens: “Quoniam principium huic arti dignum duximus de quatuor eius partibus agamus.”
[529] This chapter is almost exactly like the first chapter of the first book of the printed edition of John of Seville’s Epitome totius astrologiae, and the general plan of the two treatises and their emphasis upon experience are very similar, although there also seem to be considerable divergences. For instance, the next chapter in the printed text is different, “De coniunctionibus planetarum, quae sunt numero c.xx.” Unfortunately I have not been able to compare edition and manuscript in detail. Both may represent texts of late date which have rearranged or added variously to the original, whether it be by John or Roger. Or both John and Roger may have taken similar liberties with a common Arabic source. John’s authorship appears to be supported by more MSS than Roger’s.
[530] Caps. 7 and 8, at fol. 182r-v, are, “De proprietate signorum in qualibet terra” and “De cognitione de bono anno vel malo.”
[531] Fol. 183v, “Iam egimus de prima parte huius arte omissis que astrologi multi sine experimento et ratione dixerunt.”
[532] Fol. 190v (cap. 14, de revolutione annorum nativitatis), “Iam radicem nativitatis sermone complevimus nec diximus nisi in quibus sapientes convenerunt et experimentum ex ipsis habetur.” The same sentence occurs in John of Spain, Epitome totius astrologiae, 1548, II, xx, fol. 62v.
[533] Book 3, fols. 192v-199r, has 16 chapters; Book 4, fols. 199v-201v, has ten. The division into chapters is different in the printed text ascribed to John of Spain.
[534] Berlin 964, 15th century, fol. 87-, “Quoniam regulas artis astronomie iudicandi non nisi per diversa opera dispersas invenimus universali astrologorum desiderio satisfacere cupientes....” Other MSS similar.
[535] Selden supra 76, fol. 3v, de simplici iudicio, de cogitatione, de electione, de ratione iudicii.
[536] Digby 149, 13th century, fols. 189-95, “Liber de quatuor partibus astronomie iudiciorum editus a magistro Rogero de Herefordia. Quoniam regulas astronomie artis ... / ... Explicit prima pars.”
CUL 1693, 14th century, fols. 40-51, “Liber Magistri Rogeri de Herfordia de iudiciis Astronomie. Quoniam Regulas artis Astronomice ... / ... oportet inspicere diligenter et completur Liber primus.”
I shall presently show reason for thinking that Selden supra 76 and MS E Musaeo 181 also give only the first part.
[537] Selden supra 76, fol. 3r.
[538] Selden supra 76, fol. 6, has only those terms from redditio on; the others will be found in MS E Musaeo 181.
[539] Selden supra 76, fol. 5r.
[540] BN 7434, 14th century, #5, de tribus generalibus iudiciis astronomie ex quibus certa (cetera?) defluunt....
Dijon 1045 (the same, I judge, as that numbered 270 by Haskins), 15th century, fol. 172v-, “Quoniam circa tria fit omnis astronomica consideratio ... / ... sed non respiciens 3. Explicit.”
In the following MS it follows the first book of the work in four parts but is listed as distinct therefrom in the catalogue:
CUL 1693, 14th century, fols. 51-59, “Liber de tribus generalibus iudiciis astronomie ex quibus cetera omnia defluunt editus a Magistro Rogero de Herfordia. Quoniam circa tria sit (fit?) omnis astronomica consideratio ... / ... minimus vero septem horarum et 20 minutorum etc.” This last is not the same ending as in Dijon 1045, but would seem to refer to the length of the shortest day.
[541] Selden supra 76 and MS E Musaeo 181.
[542] As we have already seen to be the case in CUL 1693, fols. 40-51-59. In Selden supra 76, the work in four parts begins at fol. 3r, “Liber magistri Rogeri Hereford de iudiciis astronomicis. Quoniam regulas artis....” At fol. 10v, Liber de tribus generalibus iudiciis astronomie ex quibus cetera omnia defluunt, editus a magistro Rogero Hereford. In three books and a prologue, opening, “Quoniam circa tria fit omnis astronomica consideracio....” The question then arises, do fol. 14v, “Incipit liber secundus de cogitatione. Sed quum iam de intentione et cogitatione tractandum...”; and fol. 18r, “Incipit liber tercius de electione vel operatione per quod fiat electio”; have reference to the last two books of Three General Judgments or to the two middle books of the work in four parts? Apparently the former, since there is no fourth part given; at fol. 20 seems to open another treatise, Liber de motibus planetarum.
MS E Musaeo 181 has the same arrangement as Selden supra 76, fols. 10-18, but ends with the second book De cogitacione. For the first of the four parts it is fuller than Selden supra 76, fols. 3-9.
Laud. Misc. 594, fols. 136-137r, beginning mutilated, opens “illius signi et duodenarie ostendentis” and ends “secunda si vero respiciens tertia. Explicit liber de quatuor partibus iudiciorum astronomiae editus a magistro Rogero de Hereford.” But the closing words, “respiciens tertia,” are those connected with the Incipit of the Book of Three General Judgments in Dijon 1045, a good illustration of the complexities of the problem.
[543] Besides the fly-leaf of Royal 12-F-17, mentioned above in a note, Ashmole 192, #2, pp. 1-17, “Expliciunt iudicia Herfordensis multum bona et utilia.” It will be noted that in Selden supra 76 the title De iudiciis is applied to the work in four parts.
[544] Neither name, for example, despite the devotion of both to astrology, appears in the index of T. O. Wedel’s, The Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology particularly in England, Yale University Press, 1920.
[545] For example, in the same MS with Daniel of Morley’s work, Arundel 377, fol. 86v, de altitudine Solis etc. apud Toletum et Herefordiam; Ibid., “Anni collecti omnium planetarum compositi a magistro Rogero super annos domini ad mediam noctem Herefordie anno ab incarnatione domini mclxxviii post eclipsim que contigit Hereford eodem anno” (13 September).
XLIII. ALEXANDER NECKAM ON THE NATURES OF THINGS
Birth and childhood--Education--The state of learning in his time--Popular science and mechanical arts--His works--De naturis rerum--Neckam’s citations--His knowledge of Aristotle--Use of recent authors--Contemporary opinion of Neckam--His attitude toward natural science--Science and the Bible--His own knowledge of science--Incredible stories of animals--A chapter on the cock--Effect of sin upon nature--Neckam on occult virtues--Fascination--His limited belief in astrology--Neckam’s farewell.
[Sidenote: Birth and childhood.]
In the year 1157 an Englishwoman was nursing two babies. One was a foster child; the other, her own son. During the next fifty years these two boys were to become prominent in different fields. The fame of the one was to be unsurpassed on the battlefield and in the world of popular music and poetry. He was to become king of England, lord of half of France, foremost of knights and crusaders, and the idol of the troubadours. He was Richard, Cœur de Lion. The other, in different fields and a humbler fashion, was none the less also to attain prominence; he was to be clerk and monk instead of king and crusader, and to win fame in the domain of Latin learning rather than Provençal literature. This was Alexander Neckam. Of his happy childhood at St. Albans he tells us himself in Latin verse somewhat suggestive of Gray’s lines on Eton:
Hic locus aetatis nostrae primordia novit Annos felices laetitiaeque dies Hic locus ingenuis pueriles imbuit annos Artibus et nostrae laudis origo fuit,
[Sidenote: Education.]
A number of years of his life were spent as teacher at Dunstable in a school under the control of the monastery of St. Albans. It was at Paris, however, that he received his higher education and also taught for a while. Scarcely any place, he wrote late in life, was better known to him than the city in whose schools he had been “a small pillar” and where he “faithfully learned and taught the arts, then turned to the study of Holy Writ, heard lectures in Canon Law, and upon Hippocrates and Galen, and did not find Civil Law distasteful.” This passage not only illustrates his own broad education in the liberal arts, the two laws, medicine, and theology, but also suggests that these four faculties were already formed or forming at Paris. Neckam visited Italy, as his humorous poem bidding Rome good-by attests, and from two of the stories which he tells in The Natures of Things[546] we may infer that he had been in Rouen and Meaux. In 1213 Neckam was elected abbot of Cirencester, and died in 1217. An amusing story is told in connection with Neckam’s first becoming a monk. He is said to have first applied for admission to a Benedictine monastery, but when the abbot made a bad pun upon his good name, saying, Si bonus es, venias; si nequam, nequaquam (If you are a good man you may come; if Neckam, by no means), he joined the Augustinians instead.[547]
[Sidenote: The state of learning.]
Neckam gives us a glimpse of the learned world of his time as well as of his own education. He thinks past times happy, when he recalls that “the greatest princes were diligent and industrious in aiding investigation of nature,” and that it was then commonly said, “An illiterate king is a crowned ass.”[548] But he is not ashamed of the schools of his own day. After speaking of the learning of Greece and Egypt in antiquity and stating that schools no longer flourish in those lands, he exclaims, “But what shall I say of Salerno and Montpellier where the diligent skill of medical students, serving the public welfare, provides remedies to the whole world against bodily ills? Italy arrogates to itself proficiency in the civil law, but celestial scripture and the liberal arts prefer Paris to all other cities as their home. And in accord with Merlin’s prophecy the wisdom now flourishes at Oxford which in his time was in process of transfer to Ireland.”[549] Neckam’s assertion that there were no schools in the Greece and Egypt of his day is interesting as implying the insignificance of Byzantine and Mohammedan learning in the second half of the twelfth century. He perhaps does not think of Constantinople as in “Greece,” but in Egypt he must certainly include Cairo, where the mosque el-Azhar, devoted in 988 to educational purposes, “has been ever since one of the chief universities of Islam.”[550] At any rate it is clear that to his mind the intellectual supremacy has now passed to western Europe.
[Sidenote: Popular science and mechanical arts.]
In his praises of learning Neckam is a little too inclined, like many other Latin writers, to speak slightingly of the vulgus or common crowd. In antiquity, he affirms, the liberal arts were the monopoly of free men; mechanical or adulterine arts were for the ignoble.[551] This does not mean, however, that his eyes are closed to the value of practical inventions, since both in The Natures of Things and his De utensilibus we find what are perhaps the earliest references to the mariner’s compass[552] and to glass mirrors.[553] Indeed, he often entertains us with popular gossip and superstition, mentioning for the first time the belief in a man in the moon,[554] and telling such stories of daily life as that of the lonely sailor whose dog helped him reef the sails and manage the ropes of the boat in crossing the Channel,[555] or of the sea-fowl whose daily cry announced to the sheep in the tidal meadow that it was time to seek higher pasture, until one day its beak was caught by the shell of an oyster it tried to devour and the sheep were drowned for lack of warning.[556]
[Sidenote: His works.]
Neckam’s writings were numerous, and, as might have been expected from his wide studies, in varied fields. They include grammatical treatises,[557] works on Ovid and classical mythology, commentaries upon the books of the Bible such as the Psalms and Song of Songs, and the writings of Aristotle, and other works of a literary, scientific, or theological character.[558] Most of them, however, if extant, are still in manuscript. Only a few have been printed;[559] among them is The Natures of Things which we shall presently consider.
Neckam is a good illustration of the humanistic movement in the twelfth century. He wrote Latin verse[560] as well as prose; took pains with and pride in his Latin style; and shows acquaintance with a large number of classical authors. He had some slight knowledge, at least, of Hebrew. He was especially addicted, according to Wright,[561] to those ingenious but philologically absurd derivations of words in which the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville had dealt, explaining, for example, the Latin word for corpse (cadaver) as compounded from the three roots seen in the words for flesh (caro), given (data), to worms (vermibus). Yet in one chapter of The Natures of Things Neckam attacks “the verbal cavils” and use of obsolete words in his time as “useless and frivolous,” and asks if one cannot be a good jurist or physician or philosopher without all this linguistic and verbal display.[562] Wright, moreover, was also impressed by Neckam’s interest in natural science, calling him “certainly one of the most remarkable English men of science in the twelfth century,”[563] and noting that “he not infrequently displays a taste for experimental science.”[564]
[Sidenote: De naturis rerum.]
The Natures of Things, however, is not primarily a scientific or philosophical dissertation, as Alexander is careful to explain in the preface, but a vehicle for moral instruction. Natural phenomena are described, but following each comes some moral application or spiritual allegory thereof. The spots on the moon, for instance, are explained by some as due to mountains and to depressions which the sun’s light cannot reach, by others as due to the greater natural obscurity of portions of the moon. Neckam adds that they are for our instruction, showing how even the heavenly bodies were stained by the sin of our first parents, and reminding us that during this present life there will always be some blot upon holy church, but that when all the planets and stars shall stand as it were justified, our state too will become stable, and both the material moon and holy church will be spotless before the Lamb.[565] Neckam intends to admire God through His creatures and in so doing humbly to kiss as it were the feet of the Creator. Despite this religious tone and the moralizing, Wright regarded the work “as an interesting monument of the history of science in western Europe and especially in England during the latter half of the twelfth century,”[566] and as such we shall consider it. That it was written before 1200 is to be inferred from a quotation from it by a chronicler of John’s reign.[567] It seems to have been the best known of Neckam’s works. The brevity of The Natures of Things, which consists of but two books, if we omit the other three of its five books which consist of commentaries upon Genesis and Ecclesiastes, hardly allows us to call it an encyclopedia; but its title and arrangement by topics and chapters closely resemble the later works which are usually spoken of as medieval encyclopedias. Later in life Neckam wrote a poetical paraphrase of it with considerable changes, which is entitled De laudibus divinae sapientiae.
[Sidenote: Neckam’s citations.]
The citations of authorities in the De naturis rerum are of much interest. A number of references to the law books of Justinian show Neckam’s knowledge of the Roman law,[568] and, as we should expect after hearing of his commentary upon Ovid’s Metamorphoses, allusions to that work, the Fasti, and the Ars amandi are frequent. Claudian is once quoted for two solid pages and considerable use is made of other Latin poets such as Vergil, Lucan, Martial, and Juvenal. Neckam believed that the diligent investigator could find much that was useful in the inventions of the poets and that beneath their fables moral instruction sometimes lay hid.[569] Neckam quotes Plato, perhaps indirectly, and repeats in different words the fable of the crow and fox, as given in Apuleius.[570] The church fathers are of course utilized--Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Basil, and a more recent theologian like Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury; and familiarity is shown with the early medieval standard authorities, such as Boethius, Cassiodorus, Bede, and Isidore. Of writers who may be regarded as dealing more particularly with natural science there are mentioned Pliny and Solinus on animals--but he seems to use Pliny very little and Solinus a great deal, Macer and Dioscorides on the properties and effects of herbs,[571] while works in the domain of astronomy or astrology are attributed to Julius (perhaps really Firmicus) and Augustus Caesar as well as to Ptolemy.[572]
[Sidenote: His knowledge of Aristotle.]
But what is most impressive is the frequent citation from Euclid and Aristotle, especially the latter. Not only the logical treatises are cited, but also the History of Animals[573] and the Liber Coeli et Mundi, while allusion is also made to Aristotle’s opinions concerning vision, motion, melancholy, waters, and various astronomical matters.[574] Such passages--as well as the fact that commentaries on Aristotle are ascribed to Neckam--suggest that Roger Bacon was mistaken in the much-quoted passage in which he states that the works of Aristotle on natural philosophy were first introduced to the medieval (Latin) learned world in Latin translations by Michael Scot about 1230. Neckam perhaps cites the History of Animals indirectly: at any rate he makes little use of it; but his numerous mentions of Aristotle’s views on nature make it evident that “the truth of Aristotelian” doctrine is already known in the twelfth century. And he already regards “the most acute Aristotle” as the pre-eminent authority among all philosophers. After stating that “all philosophers generally seem to teach” that the planets move in a contrary direction to the firmament like flies walking on a rushing wheel, Neckam adds a number of objections to this view, and adds, “It therefore was the opinion of Aristotle, the most acute, that the planets moved only with the firmament.” He then expresses his amazement that the other philosophers should have dared to oppose Aristotle, should have presumed to set their opinions against so great a philosopher. It is as if a peacock spread its spotted tail in rivalry with the starry sky, or as if owls and bats should vie with the eagle’s unblinking eye in staring at the mid-day sun.[575]
[Sidenote: Use of recent authors.]
That Neckam had some acquaintance with Arabic and Jewish writers is indicated by his citing Alfraganus and Isaac. Of Christian writers of the century before him Neckam quotes from Hildebert, and four times from Bernard Silvester. He cites the Pantegni or Tegni of Constantinus Africanus more than once.[576] He does not mention Adelard of Bath by name but in discussing experiments with vacuums repeats the experiment of the water jar. In another chapter he states that, if the earth were perforated, an enormous weight of lead would fall only to the center. Neckam’s chapter on “Why in the same earth plants grow of contrary effects” is similar to the third chapter of the Natural Questions of Adelard, and his chapter on “Why certain animals ruminate” is like Adelard’s seventh in the same work.[577]
[Sidenote: Contemporary opinion of Neckam.]
Roger Bacon, whose estimates of his contemporaries have sometimes been accepted at too high a value, wrote of Neckam some fifty years after Alexander’s death: “This Alexander wrote true and useful books on many subjects, but he cannot with justice be named as an authority.”[578] Bacon himself, however, seems on at least one occasion to have used Neckam as an authority without naming him.[579] On the other hand, another Englishman of note in science, Alfred of Sarchel or Sareshel, dedicated his book on The Movement of the Heart (De motu cordis) to Neckam.
[Sidenote: His attitude toward natural science.]
Whatever Neckam’s own scientific attainments may have been, there can be no doubt that he had a high regard for scientia and that he was not wanting in sympathetic appreciation of the scientific spirit. This fact shines out in the pages of the De naturis rerum amid its moral lessons and spiritual illustrations, its erroneous etymologies and popular anecdotes. “Science is acquired,” he says in one passage, “at great expense, by frequent vigils, by great expenditure of time, by sedulous diligence of labor, by vehement application of mind.”[580] But its acquisition abundantly justifies itself even in practical life and destructive war. “What craftiness of the foe is there that does not yield to the precise knowledge of those who have tracked down the elusive subtleties of things hidden in the very bosom of nature?”[581] He often cites these experts in natural science, whom he always seems to regard with respect as authorities.[582] Not that he believes that they have solved all problems. Some things forsooth are so hidden that it seems as if Nature is saying, “This is my secret, this is my secret!”[583] On the other hand, there are many natural phenomena too familiar through daily use and experience to need mention in books, since even those who do not read are acquainted with them. Neckam consequently will follow a middle course in selecting the contents of his volume.
[Sidenote: Science and the Bible.]
Although a Christian clergyman, Neckam seems to experience little difficulty in adopting the scientific theories of Aristotle; or, if there are Aristotelian doctrines known to him with which he disagrees, he usually quietly disregards them.[584] But he does raise the question several times of the correctness of Biblical statements concerning nature. He explains that Adam’s body was composed of all four elements and not made merely from earth, as the account of creation in the Book of Genesis might seem to imply.[585] And of the scriptural assertion that “God made two great lights” he says, “The historical narrative follows the judgment of the eye and the popular notion,” but of course the moon is not one of the largest planets.[586] In a third chapter entitled, “That water is not lower than earth,” he notes that the statement of the prophet that “God founded the earth upon the waters” does not agree with Alfraganus’ dictum that there is one sphere of earth and waters.[587] Wright quite unreasonably interprets this chapter as showing “to what a degree science had become the slave of scriptural phraseology.”[588] What it really shows is just the contrary, for even the Biblical expositors, Neckam tells us, say that the passage is to be taken in the sense that one speaks of Paris as located on the Seine. Neckam then makes a suggestion of his own, that what is really above the waters is the terrestrial paradise, since it is even beyond the sphere of the moon, and Enoch, translated thither, suffered no inconvenience whatever from the waters of the deluge. Moreover, the terrestrial paradise symbolizes the church which is founded on the waters of baptism. All of which is of course far-fetched and fanciful, but in no way can be said to make science “the slave of scriptural phraseology.” On the contrary it makes scriptural phraseology the slave of mysticism, while it subjects Enoch’s translation to somewhat material limitations. Possibly there may be used here some of the apocryphal books current under Enoch’s name.[589] On one occasion Neckam does accept a statement of the Bible which seems inconsistent with the views of philosophers concerning the four elements. This is the assertion that after the day of judgment there will be neither fire nor water but only air and earth will be left. To an imaginary philosopher who seems unwilling to accept this assertion Neckam says, “If you don’t believe me, at least believe Peter, the chief of the apostles, who says the same in his canonical epistle. Says what? Says that fire and water will not exist after the judgment day.”[590] But if Neckam prefers to believe his Bible as to what will occur in the world of nature after the day of judgment, he prefers also, as we have seen, to follow natural science in regard to present natural phenomena. Moreover, in neither the canonical nor apocryphal books can I find any such statement in the Epistles of Peter as Neckam here credits him with, unless after the elements have melted with fervent heat, the new heavens and a new earth are to be interpreted as made respectively of air and earth!
[Sidenote: His own knowledge of science.]
We may agree at least with Wright that Neckam’s scientific attainments are considerable for his time. In physics and astronomy he shows himself fairly well versed. He knows something of vacuums and syphoning; he argues that water tends naturally to take a spherical shape;[591] he twice points out that the walls of buildings should not be exactly parallel, since they should ultimately meet, if prolonged far enough, at the center of the earth;[592] and he asserts that the so-called “antipodes” are no more under our feet than we are under theirs.[593] He gives us what is perhaps our earliest information of some medieval inventions, such as the mariner’s compass and mirrors of glass.[594] But he does not attempt to explain differences in the images in convex and concave mirrors.[595] He is modest in regard to his biological attainments, saying that he “is not ashamed to confess” that there are species of which he does not even know the names, to say nothing of their natures.[596] But when Wright calls Neckam’s account of animals “a mere compilation” and says that “much of it is taken from the old writers, such as Solinus, Isidore, and Cassiodorus,”[597] he is basing his conclusion simply on the fact that marginal notes in the medieval manuscripts themselves ascribe a number of passages to these authors. This ascription is correct. But there are many passages on animals where the manuscripts name no authorities, and with one exception--the chapter on the hyena from Solinus--Wright fails to name any source from which Neckam has borrowed these other passages. It is easy to show that Neckam is a compiler when he himself or others have stated his authorities but it is equally fair to suppose that he is honest and original when he cites no authorities or has not been detected in borrowing. And he sometimes criticizes or discriminates between the earlier writers. After quoting Bernard Silvester’s statement that the beaver castrates itself to escape its hunters, he adds, “But those who are more reliably informed as to the natures of things assert that Bernard has followed the ridiculous popular notion and not reached the true fact.”[598] Neckam also questions the belief that a lynx has such keen sight that it can see through nine walls. This is supposed to have been demonstrated experimentally by observing a lynx with nine walls between it and a person carrying some raw meat. The lynx will move along its side of the walls whenever the meat is moved on the other side and will stop opposite the spot where the person carrying the meat stops. Neckam does not question the accuracy of this absurd experiment, but remarks that some natural scientists attribute it rather to the animal’s sense of smell than to its power of vision.[599]
[Sidenote: Incredible stories of animals.]
But as a rule Neckam’s treatment of animals is far more credulous than sceptical. He believes that the barnacle bird is generated from fir-wood which has been soaked in the salt water for a long time,[600] and that the wren, after it has been killed and is being roasted, turns itself on the spit.[601] He tells a number of delightful but incredible stories in which animals display remarkable sagacity and manifest emotions and motives similar to those of human beings. Some of these tales concern particular pets or wild beasts; others are of the habits of a species. The hawk, for example, keeps warm on wintry nights by seizing some other bird in its claws and holding it tight against its own body; but when day returns it gratefully releases this bird and satisfies its morning appetite upon some other victim.[602] Neckam also shares the common belief that animals were acquainted with the medicinal virtues of herbs. When the weasel is wounded by a venomous animal, it hastens to seek salubrious plants. For “educated by nature, it knows the virtues of herbs, although it has neither studied medicine at Salerno nor been drilled in the schools at Montpellier.”[603]
[Sidenote: A chapter on the cock.]
Neckam’s chapter on the barnyard cock perhaps will illustrate the divergences between medieval and modern science as well as any other. As a rooster approaches old age, he sometimes lays an egg upon which a toad sits, and from which is hatched the basilisk. How is it that the cock “distinguishes the hours by his song”? From great heat ebullition of the humors within the said bird arises, it produces saltiness, the saltiness causes itching, from the itching comes tickling, from the tickling comes delectation, and delectation excites one to song. Now nature sets certain periods to the movements of humors and therefore the cock crows at certain hours. But why have roosters crests and hens not? This is because of their very moist brains and the presence near the top of their heads of some bones which are not firmly joined. So the gross humor arising from the humidity escapes through the openings and produces the crest.[604]
[Sidenote: Effect of sin upon nature.]
Neckam harbored the notion, which we met long before in the pagan Philostratus, in the Hebraic Enoch literature, in the Christian Pseudo-Clementines and Basil’s Hexaemeron, and more recently in the writings of Hildegard, that man’s sin has its physical effects upon nature. To Adam’s fall he attributes not only the spots on the moon but the wildness of most animals, and the existence of insects to plague, and venomous animals to poison, and diseases to injure mankind.[605] But for the fall of man, moreover, all living creatures would be subsisting upon a vegetarian diet.
[Sidenote: Neckam on occult virtues.]
Magic is hardly mentioned in the De naturis rerum. In a passage, however, telling how Aristotle ordered some of his subtlest works to be buried with him, Neckam adds that he so guarded the neighborhood of his sepulcher “by some mysterious force of nature or power of art, not to say feat of the magic art, that no one in those days could enter it.”[606] But Neckam is a believer in occult virtues and to a certain extent in astrology. He would also seem to believe in the force of incantations from his assertion that “in words and herbs and stones diligent investigators of nature have discovered great virtue. Most certain experience, moreover, makes our statement trustworthy.”[607] He mentions a much smaller number of stones than Marbod, but ascribes the same occult virtues to those which he does name. In the preface to his first book he says that some gems have greater virtue when set in silver than when set in gold. A tooth separated from the jaw of a wild boar remains sharp only as long as the animal remains alive, an interesting bit of sympathetic magic.[608] The occult property of taming wild bulls possessed by the fig-tree which we have already seen noted by various authors is also remarked by Neckam.[609] A moonbeam shining through a narrow aperture in the wall of a stable fell directly on a sore on a horse’s back and caused the death of a groom standing nearby. Out-of-doors the effect would not have been fatal, since the force of the moon’s rays would not have been so concentrated upon one spot and the humidity would have had a better chance to diffuse through space.[610]
[Sidenote: Fascination.]
After telling of the fatal glances of the basilisk and wolf, Neckam says that fascination is explained as due to evil rays from someone who looks at you. He adds that nurses lick the face of a child who has been fascinated.[611]
[Sidenote: His limited belief in astrology.]
Neckam will not believe that the seven planets are animals.[612] He does believe, however, that they not merely adorn the heavens but exert upon inferiors those effects which God has assigned to them.[613] Each planet rules in turn three hours of the day. As there are twenty-four hours in all, the last three hours of each day are governed by the same planet which ruled the first three. Hence the names of the days in the planetary week, Sunday being the day when the sun governs the first three and last three hours, Monday the day when the moon controls the opening and closing hours of day, and so on.[614] But the stars do not impose necessity upon the human will which remains free. Nevertheless the planet Mars, for instance, bestows the gift of counsel; and science is associated with the planet Venus which is hot and moist, as are persons of sanguine temperament in whom science is wont to flourish. Neckam also associates each of the seven planets which illuminate the universe with one of the seven liberal arts which shed light on all knowledge.[615] He alludes to the great year of which the philosophers tell, when after 36,000 years the stars complete their courses,[616] and to the music of the spheres when, to secure the perfect consonance of an octave, the eighth sphere of the fixed stars completes the harmony of the seven planets. But he fears that someone may think he is raving when he speaks with the philosophers of this harmony of the eight spheres.[617]
[Sidenote: Neckam’s farewell.]
At Jesus College, Oxford, in a manuscript of the early thirteenth century, which is exclusively devoted to religious writings by Neckam,[618] there occurs at the close an address of the author to his work, which is in the same hand as the rest of the manuscript, which we may therefore not unreasonably suppose to have been Neckam’s own writing. As he is spoken of in the manuscript as abbot of Cirencester, perhaps these are also actually the last words he wrote. We may therefore appropriately terminate our account of Neckam by quoting them.
“Perchance, O book, you will survive Alexander, and worms will eat me before the book-worm gnaws you; for my body is due the worms and book-worms will demolish you. You are the mirror of my soul, the interpreter of my meditations, the surest index of my meaning, the faithful messenger of my mind’s emotions, the sweet comforter of my grief, the true witness of my conscience. To you as faithful depositary I have confided my heart’s secrets; you restore faithfully to me those things which I have committed to your trust; in you I read myself. You will come, you will come into the hands of some pious reader who will deign to pour forth prayers for me. Then indeed, little book, you will profit your master; then you will recompense your Alexander by a most grateful interchange. There will come, nor do I begrudge my labor, the devotion of a pious reader, who will now let you repose in his lap, now move you to his breast, sometimes place you as a sweet pillow beneath his head, sometimes gently closing you with glad hands, he will fervently pray for me to Lord Jesus Christ, who with Father and Holy Spirit lives and reigns God through infinite cycles of ages. Amen.”
FOOTNOTES:
[546] I, 37 and II, 158.
[547] For references to the sources for the above facts of Neckam’s life see the first few pages of the preface to Thomas Wright’s edition of the De naturis rerum, and the De laudibus divinae sapientiae, in Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, vol. 34, London, 1863. All references in this chapter, unless otherwise noted, will be to this volume, and to the book and chapter of the De naturis rerum.
[548] II, 21.
[549] II, 174.
[550] S. Lane-Poole, The Story of Cairo, London, 1902, p. 124.
[551] II, 21.
[552] II, 98. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, p. 96.
[553] II, 154, and Wright, Preface, p. 1, note. Wright gives no authority for his further observation, “The employment of glass for mirrors was known to the ancients, but appears to have been entirely superseded by metal.”
[554] I, 14.
[555] II, 20.
[556] II, 36.
[557] Such as his “Corrogationes Promethei” found at Oxford in the following MSS: Laud. Misc. 112, 13th century, fols. 9-42; Merton College 254, 14th century; Bodleian (Bernard 4094) and 550 (Bernard 2300), middle of 13th century.
[558] HL XVIII (1835), 521 was mistaken in saying that the De naturis rerum is the only one of Neckam’s works found in continental libraries, for see Evreux 72, 13th century. Alexandri Neckam opuscula, fol. 2. “Correctiones Promethei,” fol. 26v, “super expositione quarundem dictionum singulorum librorum Bibliothece scilicit de significatione eorum et accentu.” And there is a copy of his De utensilibus in BN 15171, fol. 176.
[559] The De utensilibus was also edited by Thomas Wright in 1857 in A Volume of Vocabularies. Professor Haskins has printed “A List of Text-books from the Close of the Twelfth Century” in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XX (1909), 90-94, which he argues is from a work by Neckam (Gonville and Caius College MS 385, pp. 7-61). In 1520 there was printed under the name of Albericus a work which is really by Neckam, as a MS at Oxford bears witness, Digby 221, 14th century, fol. 1. “Mithologie Alexandri Neckam et alio nomine Sintillarium appellatur”; Incipit, “Fuit vir in Egipto ditissimus nomine Syrophanes.” In the same MS, fols. 34v-85, follows another work, “Alexander Nequam super Marcianum de nuptiis Mercurii et Philologie.” See also in the Bodleian (Bernard 2019, #3, and 2581, #6) Scintillarium Poiseos in quo de diis gentium et nominibus deorum et philosophorum de eis opiniones ubi et de origine idolatriae.
[560] See M. Esposito, “On Some Unpublished Poems Attributed to Alexander Neckam,” in English Historical Review, XXX (1915), 450-71. He prints several poems on wine, etc., and gives a bibliography of Neckam’s works, five printed and eleven in MSS.
[561] P. xiii.
[562] II, 174.
[563] P. ix.
[564] P. xii.
[565] I, 14.
[566] Pp. xiv-xv.
[567] Wright (p. lxxvii) used four MSS of the 13th or very early 14th century. At Corpus Christi College, Oxford, there is a beautifully written twelfth century copy which he did not use, MS 45, folio, 186 fols., double columns. Comment, in Genesim et Ecclesiasten, sive de naturis rerum libri quinque; “Explicit tract. mag. Alex. Neckam super Ecclesiasten de naturis rerum.” Although Wright used two MSS from the Royal Library, he fails to note a third, MS 3737 in the Harleian collection of the British Museum. It is of the 13th century according to the catalogue and contains this interesting inscription, “Hic est liber S. Albani quam qui abstulerit aut titulum deleverit anathema sit. Amen.” (This book belongs to St. Albans. May he who steals it or destroys the title be anathema. Amen.)
[568] I, 75; II, 155, 173.
[569] II, 11; II, 107; II, 12; II, 126.
[570] In H. E. Butler’s translation, Oxford, 1909, given as Florida, cap. 26; in the MSS and in Hildebrand’s text, part II, Lipsiae, 1842, included in the prologus to the De Deo Socratis, with which we may therefore infer that Neckam was acquainted. Indeed there is a twelfth century manuscript of the De Deo Socratis in the British Museum--Harleian 3969.
[571] II, 166.
[572] II, 12.
[573] II, 44. Narcos piscis est tantae virtutis, ut dicit Aristoteles.... II, 159. Ut docet Aristoteles, omnia mula sterilis est. While the substance of these two passages is found in Pliny’s Natural History, he does not mention Aristotle in these connections nor use the Greek word “narcos.” Moreover, Neckam seems to give credit as a rule to his immediate sources and not to copy their citations; as we have seen, he credited the fable of the fox and crow to Apuleius and not to Aesop to whom Apuleius credits it.
[574] II, 153. Sed Aristoteli magis credendum esse reor quam vulgo. I, 39. Dicit tamen Aristoteles quod nihil habet duos motus contrarios. I, 7. Aristoteles qui dicit, “Solos melancholicos ingeniosos esse.” II, 1. Secundum veritatem doctrinae Aristotelicae omnes aquae sunt indifferentes secundum speciem. I, 9. Placuit itaque acutissimo Aristoteli planetas tantum cum firmamento moveri. Sed quid? Aristoteli audent sese opponere?... etc.
[575] It would therefore seem that Professor Haskins (EHR, 30, 68) is scarcely justified in saying that “the natural philosophy and metaphysics of Aristotle” are “cited in part but not utilized by Alexander Neckam,” especially since he states presently that “Neckam himself seems to have been acquainted with the Metaphysics, De Anima, and De generatione et corruptione” (Ibid., 69, and “A List of Textbooks,” Harvard Studies, XX (1909), 75-94). Professor Haskins, however, believes that the new Aristotle was by this time penetrating England, but gives the main credit for this to Alfredus Anglicus or Alfred of Sareshel, the author of the De motu cordis, and the translator of the Pseudo-Aristotelian De vegetabilibus and of an appendix to the Meteorologica consisting of three chapters De congelatis, also translated from the Arabic. Alfred was no isolated figure in English learning, since he dedicated the De vegetabilibus to Roger of Hereford and the De motu cordis to Neckam: ed. Baruch, Innsbruck, 1878; and see Baeumker, Die Stellung des Alfred von Sareshel ... in der Wissenschaft des beginnenden XIII Jahrts., München, Sitzber. (1913), No. 9. On the whole it is probably safe to assume that his knowledge of Aristotle was soon at least, if not from the start, shared with others. Grabmann (1916), pp. 22-25, adds nothing new on the subject of Neckam’s knowledge of Aristotle.
[576] I, 39; II, 11; I, 49; II, 129, 140, 157; II, 157 and 161.
[577] I, 19; I, 16; II, 57; II, 162.
[578] Fr. Rogeri Bacon, Opera Inedita, ed. Brewer, p. 457 in RS, vol. 15.
[579] As I shall point out when I come to Roger Bacon, there are one or two rather striking resemblances between his interests and method and those of Neckam.
[580] II, 155.
[581] II, 174.
[582] For instance, II, 148. “Qui autem in naturis rerum instructi sunt.”
[583] II, 99.
[584] I, 16, a citation from Aristotle gives him a little trouble.
[585] II, 152.
[586] I, 13. “Sed visus iudicium et vulgarem opinionem sequitur historialis narratio.”
[587] II, 49.
[588] Preface, p. xxx.
[589] See I Hermas, iii, 42. “Hear therefore why the tower is built upon the water: because your life is and shall be saved by water....”
[590] I, 16.
[591] II, 14. Vitruvius, VIII, v. 5, ascribes this doctrine to Archimedes.
[592] II, 172; and p. 109 of De utensilibus.
[593] II, 49.
[594] Wright points out (p. 1, note) that in Beckman’s History of Inventions no instances are given of allusions to glass mirrors earlier than the middle of the thirteenth century.
[595] II, 154.
[596] II, 99.
[597] P. xxxix.
[598] II, 140.
[599] II, 138.
[600] I, 48.
[601] I, 78.
[602] I, 25.
[603] II, 123. This reminds one of the account of the tunny fish by Plutarch which we noted in our chapter on Plutarch, where he says that the tunny fish needs no astrological canons and is familiar with arithmetic; “Yes, by Zeus, and with optics, too.” It is unlikely that Neckam was acquainted with Plutarch’s Essays.
[604] I, 75; the reasoning is somewhat similar to Adelard of Bath’s explanation why his nephew wept for joy.
[605] II, 156.
[606] II, 189.
[607] II, 85.
[608] II, 139.
[609] II, 80.
[610] II, 153; this item is also found in the De Natura rerum of Thomas of Cantimpré.
[611] II, 153.
[612] I, 9.
[613] I, 7.
[614] I, 10. See p. 670 for Bacon’s different account of this point.
[615] II, 173.
[616] I, 6.
[617] I, 15.
[618] Jesus 94. The MS includes a gloss on the psalter, a commentary on the proverbs of Solomon, two sermons, and three books on “Who can find a virtuous woman?” by Bede.
XLIV. MOSES MAIMONIDES (MUSA IBN MAIMUN) 1135-1204
His life--His works in the west--His works in Latin--Attitude to science and religion--Attitude to magic--Towards empiricism--Abuse of divine names--Occult virtue and empirical remedies in his work on poisons--Attitude to astrology--Divination and prophecy--Marvels in the Aphorisms.
[Sidenote: His life.]
In this chapter we turn to consider perhaps the leading representative of Hebrew learning in the middle ages, Moses Maimonides[619] or Musa ibn Maimum or Moses ben Maimon, as he is variously briefly styled, not to entangle ourselves in the intricacies of his full Arabic name. In the Latin versions of his works he is spoken of as Rabbi Moyses of Cordova[620] or is made to call himself an Israelite of Cordova,[621] but it seems to have been not much more than the scene of his birth and childhood, since the invasion of the fanatical Almohades in 1148 forced his father to flee with his family first from place to place in Spain, in 1160 to Fez, later to Syria and Egypt. From about 1165 on Maimonides seems to have lived most of the time at Cairo and there to have done most of his work. After the deaths of his father and brother forced him to earn a livelihood by practicing medicine, he became physician to the vizier of Saladin and head of the Jewish community in Cairo.
[Sidenote: His works in the west.]
Whether or not he returned to Spain before his death in 1204, he was certainly known to the western world of learning. In 1194 he wrote a letter on the subject of astrology in response to inquiries which he had received from Jews of Marseilles.[622] In it he tells them that his Repetition of the Law (Iteratio legis) has already spread through the island of Sicily. But he apparently was still in Cairo, where in July, 1198, he wrote his treatise on Poisons for the Cadi Fadhil.[623] After his death, however, it was between the conservative and liberal parties among the Jews of France and Spain that a struggle ensued over the orthodoxy of his works, which was finally settled, we are told, by reference in 1234 to the Christian authorities, who ordered his books to be burned. His Guide for the Perplexed, first published in Egypt in Arabic in 1190, had been translated into Hebrew at Lunel in southern France before the close of the twelfth century, and then again by a Spanish poet.[624] But the rabbis of northern France opposed the introduction of Maimonides’ works there and, when they were anathematized for it by those of the south, are said to have reported the writings to the Inquisition. The Maimonist party then accused them of delation and several of them were punished by having their tongues cut out.[625]
[Sidenote: His works in Latin.]
If certain Christian authorities really did thus burn the books of Maimonides, their action was unavailing to check the spread of his writings even in Christian lands, and certainly was not characteristic of the attitude of Christian Latin learning in general. The Guide of the Perplexed had already been translated into Latin before 1234,[626] and we find Moses of Cordova cited by such staunch churchmen as Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus,[627] Thomas Aquinas, and Vincent of Beauvais. It was for Pope Clement V himself that Ermengard Blasius of Montpellier translated at Barcelona Maimonides’ work on Poisons at the beginning of the fourteenth century from Arabic into Latin.[628]
[Sidenote: Attitude to science and religion.]
It was not surprising that Albert and Aquinas should cite Maimonides, for he did for Jewish thought what they attempted for Christian, namely, the reconciliation of Aristotle and the Bible, philosophy and written revelation. If he anteceded them in this and perhaps to some extent showed them the way, we must remember that William of Conches, who was earlier than he, had already faced this difficulty of the relations between science and religion, the scriptures and the writings of the philosophers, although he of course did not know all the books of Aristotle. As for Maimonides, continuing the allegorical method of Philo, he tried to discover in the Old Testament and Talmud all the Aristotelian philosophy, and was convinced that the prophets of old had received further revelations of a philosophical character, which had been transmitted orally for a time but then lost during the periods of Jewish wandering and persecution.[629] He defended Moses from the slurs of Galen who had charged the lawgiver with an unscientific attitude.[630] He denied the eternity of matter[631] and of the heavens,[632] but held that the celestial bodies were living animated beings and that the heavenly spheres were conscious and free.[633] He spoke of belief in demons as “idle and fallacious,” holding that evil is mere privation and that the personal Devil of Scripture was an allegory for this, while the possession by demons was merely the disease of melancholy.[634] Yet he believed that God does nothing without the mediation of an angel and that belief in the existence of angels is only second in importance to a belief in God.[635] Thus the rationalism and scepticism which modern Jewish admirers have ascribed to Maimonides had their decided limitations.
[Sidenote: Attitude to magic.]
An interesting discussion of magic occurs in the Guide for the Perplexed[636] in connection with the precepts of the Mosaic law against idolatry. Maimonides holds that magicians and diviners are closely akin to idolaters, and this part of his discussion is very similar to patristic treatments which we have already encountered. He goes on, however, to say that astrology and magic were especially characteristic of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Canaanites, and to distinguish three varieties of magic: one employing the properties of plants, animals and metals; a second determining the times when these works should be performed; a third employing gesticulations, actions, and cries of the human operator himself. Thus he recognizes the three elements of materials, times, and rites in magic. He sees that they may be combined in one operation, as when an herb is plucked when the moon is in a specified degree. He notes that magic is largely performed by women, towards whom men are more merciful than towards their own sex. He also notes that magicians claim to do good or at least to ward off evils such as snakes and wild beasts or the blight from plants. But the lawgiver forbade “all those practices which contrary to natural science are said to produce utility by special and occult virtues and properties, ... such forsooth as proceed not from a natural cause but a magical operation and which rely upon the constellations to such a degree as to involve worship and veneration of them.”[637]
[Sidenote: Towards empiricism.]
But then Maimonides goes on to say that “everything is licit in which any natural cause appears.” And he goes farther than that. He says that the reader need not feel uneasy because the rabbis have allowed the use in suspensions of a nail from the yoke worn by criminals or the tooth of a fox. “For in those times they placed faith in these things because they were confirmed by experience and served in the place of medicine.” Similarly in Maimonides’ own day Galen’s remedy of the suspension of a peony from the patient’s neck was employed in cases of epilepsy, dog’s dung was used against pustules and sore throat, and so forth. “For whatever is proved by experience to be true, although no natural cause may be apparent, its use is permitted, because it acts as a medicine.” Thus he condemns magic, but approves of empirical medicine as well as of natural science, and evidently does not regard the employment of occult virtues as necessarily magical and forbidden.
[Sidenote: Abuse of divine names.]
In another passage of the Guide Maimonides cautions, however, against the abuse of divine names, and, while he holds to the Tetragrammaton “which is written but is not pronounced as it is spelled,” deplores the many inventions of meaningless and inefficacious names which superstitious and insane men have too often imposed upon the credulity of good men as possessed of peculiar sanctity and purity and having the virtue of working miracles. He therefore warns his readers against such “amulets or experimental charts.”[638]
[Sidenote: Occult virtue and empirical remedies in his work on poisons.]
Maimonides again approves of empirical remedies and of occult virtues in his treatise on poisons. He holds that counter-poisons do not act by any physical or chemical quality but by their entire substance or by a special property.[639] Lemon pips, peeled and applied in a compress; a powdered emerald, which should be a beautiful green, quite transparent, and of good water; and the animal bezoar, which comes from the eyes or gall bladder of deer; these are antidotes whose efficacy is proved by incontestible experimentation. When terra sigillata cannot be had, a powdered emerald of the sort just described may be substituted for it as an ingredient in the grand theriac.[640] Maimonides believes that this last named remedy is the outcome of experiments with vipers carried on through the course of centuries by ancient philosophers and physicians.[641] As for the stone bezoar, the writings of the moderns are full of marvelous tales concerning it, but Galen does not mention it, and Maimonides has tried all the varieties which he could obtain against scorpion bites without the least success. But experience confirms the virtue of the bezoar of animal origin, as has been stated. Maimonides’ observations concerning cures for the bites of mad dogs are interesting. He states that at first the bite of a mad dog does not feel any different from that of a dog who is not mad. He also warns his readers not to trust to books to distinguish between the two, but unless they are sure that the dog was not mad, to keep on the safe side by taking the remedies against the bite of a mad dog.[642] He also states that all of the various remedies listed for the cure of the bite of a mad dog must be employed before hydrophobia manifests itself, “for after the appearance of that symptom, I have never seen a patient survive.”[643] In speaking of sucking the venom from a wound, Maimonides affirms that it is better to have this done by a fasting person, since the spittle of such a person is itself hostile to poisons.[644]
[Sidenote: Attitude to astrology.]
That Maimonides was well acquainted with the art of astrology may be inferred from his assertion that he has read every book in Arabic on the subject.[645] Maimonides not only believed that the stars were living, animated beings and that there were as many pure intelligences as there were spheres,[646] but he states twice in the Guide for the Perplexed[647] that all philosophers agree that this inferior world of generation and corruption is ruled by the virtues and influences of the celestial spheres. While their influence is diffused through all things, each star or planet also has particular species especially under its influence. According to Lévy[648] he further held not only that the movement of the celestial sphere starts every motion in the universe, but that every soul has its origin in the soul of the celestial sphere. In his letter on astrology to the Jews of Marseilles he repeats that all the philosophers have held, and that Hebrew masters of the past have agreed with them, that whatever is in this inferior world the blessed God has brought about by that virtue which arises from the spheres and stars. As God performs signs and miracles by angels, so natural processes and operations by the spheres and stars which are animated and endowed with knowledge and science. All this is true and in no way derogates from the Jewish faith. But Maimonides regards as folly and not wisdom the doctrine found in Arabic works of astrology that a man’s nativity compels everything to happen to him just as it does and in no otherwise. He regards this doctrine as derived from the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Canaanites and makes the rather rash assertion that no Greek philosopher ever wrote a book of this sort. This doctrine would make no distinction between a man whom a lion meets and tears limb from limb and the mouse which a cat plays with. It would make men warring for kingdoms no different from dogs fighting over a carcass. These illustrations may seem to the reader rather favorable to the doctrine which Maimonides is endeavoring to combat, but he upholds human free will and man’s responsibility for his actions, which he declares are fundamental tenets of the Jewish law. For some reason which is not clear to me he identifies the doctrine of nativities and the control of human destiny by the constellations with the rule of blind chance and the happening of everything fortuitously, which would seem quite a different matter and third alternative.[649] Maimonides holds that God planned all human affairs beforehand, and that just as He planned the course of nature so as to allow for the occurrence of miracles, so He planned human affairs in such a way that men could be held responsible and punished for their sins. Maimonides regards the rule of chance and the doctrine of nativities as incompatible with this.
[Sidenote: Divination and prophecy.]
Yet Maimonides believed in a human faculty of natural divination, stating that the ability to conjecture and divine is found in all men to some degree, and that in some imagination and divination are so strong and sure that they correctly forecast all future events or the greater part of them.[650] The difference between true prophets and the diviners and observers of times “is that the observers of times, diviners, and such men, some of their words may be fulfilled and some of them may not be fulfilled.”[651]
[Sidenote: Marvels in the Aphorisms]
In his Aphorisms which are drawn largely from the works of Galen Maimonides repeats many marvelous stories, instances of belief in occult virtue, and medical methods bordering upon the practice of magic.[652] Most of these have already been mentioned in our chapters upon Galen and need not be reiterated here. It is perhaps worth noting that Maimonides displays some critical sense as to the authenticity of works ascribed to Galen. He does not accept as his a treatise forbidding the burial of a man until twenty-four hours after his supposed death, although the patriarch who translated it from Greek into Arabic regarded it as Galen’s. Maimonides suggests that it may be by some other Galen than the great physician “whose books are well known.” Maimonides also notes that in the work of Hippocrates on female ailments which Galen commented upon and Hunain translated there have been added many statements of a marvelous character by some third hand.
FOOTNOTES:
[619] In English, besides the article on Maimonides in the Jewish Encyclopedia, there is a rather good essay by Rabbi Gottheil in Warner’s Library of the World’s Best Literature. Recent works in French and German are: L. G. Lévy, Maimonide, 1911; Moses ben Maimon, sein Leben, seine Werke, und sein Einfluss, zur Erinnerung an den siebenhundertsten Todestag des Maimonides, herausg. v. d. Gesell. z. Förderung d. Wiss. d. Judenthums durch W. Bacher, M. Brann, D. Simonsen, J. Guttmann, 2 vols., containing twenty essays by various contributors, Leipzig, 1908 and 1914. L. Finkelscherer, Mose Maimunis Stellung zum Aberglauben und zur Mystik, Breslau, 1894; a Jena doctoral dissertation, full of somewhat juvenile generalizations, and which fails to appraise Maimonides’ attitude towards magic, astrology, and superstition comparatively. See also D. Joël, Der Aberglaube und die Stellung des Judenthums zu demselben, 1881-1883. Other older works on Maimonides are listed in the bibliography in the Jewish Encyclopedia. The Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh Nebukim) was translated by M. Friedländer, second edition, 1904, and I have also used the Latin translation of 1629. The Yad-Hachazakah was published in 1863; The Book of Precepts, in 1849; the Commentary on the Mishnah, in 1655. Other works will be listed in the four following foot-notes.
[620] “Rabymoyses Cordubensis,” fols. 1r and 13v of the Latin translation of his work on Poisons by Ermengard Blasius of Montpellier in an Oxford MS, Corpus Christi College 125.
[621] “Moysi israhelitici,” on the first page of a Latin translation printed in 1477 (?)--numbered IA.27063 in the British Museum--from his “Yad Hachazakah,” under the title, “De regimine sanitatis omnium hominum sub breviloquio compilatus.” In the Latin version of the Aphorisms printed in 1489 (numbered IA.28878 in the British Museum), “ait Moyses filius servuli dei israeliticus cordubensis,” and “Incipiunt aphorismi excellentissimi Raby Moyses secundum doctrinam Galieni medicorum principis.”
[622] Moses ben Maimon, De astrologia ... epistola, 1555, Hebrew text and Latin translation.
[623] See the preface as given in the French translation by I. M. Rabbinowicz, Paris, 1865. There is a German translation by M. Steinschneider, Gifte und Ihre Heilungen, Berlin, 1873.
[624] Lévy (1911), 237.
[625] Lévy (1911), 233, who cites “pour le détail” Kobéç III; Henda ghenonza, 18, Königsberg, 1856; Taam zeqanim, Frankfurt, 1854.
[626] Lévy (1911), 261, “Le Guide avait dû être traduit en latin au début du XIIIe siècle, attendu que, dès ce moment, on relève des traces de son influence dans la scolastique.... Moïse de Salerno déclare qu’il a lu le Guide en latin avec Nicolo Paglia di Giovenazzo, qui fonda en 1224 un convent dominicain à Trani.”
According to Gottheil, it was this Latin translation of the Guide which the Jewish opponents of Maimonides’ teaching induced the church to consign to the flames.
The Latin translation in CUL 1711 (Qi. I. 19), fols. 1-183, is ascribed in the catalogue to Augustinus Justinianus, Nebiensium Episcopus, and is said to have been printed in Paris, 1520.
[627] M. Joël, Verhältnis Albert des Grossen zu Moses Maimonides, 1863. A. Rohner, Das Schöpfungsproblem bei Moses Maimonides, Albertus Magnus, und Thomas von Aquin, 1913.
[628] See his preface in Corpus Christi 125, fol. 1r.
[629] Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 74.
[630] Aphorismi (1489), partic. 25. “Et ostendam hac demonstratione quod insipientia quam attribuit Moysi erat attribuenda ipsi Galieno vere et ponam dictum meum inter eos sicut inter duos sapientes unum compilatiorem alio....”
[631] JE, p. 77.
[632] Lévy (1911), p. 86.
[633] Lévy (1911), p. 84.
[634] Finkelscherer (1894), pp. 40-51.
[635] Lévy, pp. 89-90.
[636] More Nevochim (1629), III, 37.
[637] “... interdixit omnia ea quae contra speculationem naturalem specialibus et occultis viribus ac proprietatibus utilitatem afferre asserunt ... talia videlicet quae non ex ratione naturali sed ex opere magico sequuntur et stellarum dispositionibus ac rationibus innituntur, unde necessario ad colendas et venerandas illas devenitur.”
[638] More Nevochim (1629), I, 61-62.
[639] French translation (1865), p. 26.
[640] Ibid., pp. 27-28, 53-4.
[641] Ibid., p. 38.
[642] Poisons (1865), p. 43.
[643] Ibid., p. 40.
[644] Ibid., p. 21.
[645] So he states at the beginning of his De astrologia (1555).
[646] Lévy (1911), pp. 84-5.
[647] II, 5 and 10.
[648] Lévy (1911), p. 87.
[649] And the following passage seems quite confused and illogical; but perhaps the fault is with the Latin translator: “Ad haec omnes illae tres sectae philosophorum qui asseverant omnia per sphaeras et stellas fieri etiam dicunt quicquid mortalibus contingit id casu temere et fortuito fieri et nullam de supernis causam habere, nec ea in re quicquam.”
[650] More Nevochim (1629), II, 38.
[651] Yad-Hachazakah, (1863), I, i, x, pp. 63-4.
[652] These occur in the 24th section which is devoted to medical marvels: “Incipit particula xxiiii continens aphorismos dependentes a miraculis repertis in libris medicorum.” It is rather to Maimonides’ credit that he segregated these marvels in a separate chapter.
XLV. HERMETIC BOOKS IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Prince Khalid ibn Jazid and The Book of Morienus--Robert of Chester’s preface--The story of Morienus and Calid--The secret of the philosopher’s stone--Later medieval works of alchemy ascribed to Hermes--Medieval citations of Hermes otherwise than as an alchemist--Astrological treatises--Of the Six Principles of Things--Liber lune--Images of the seven planets--Book of Venus of Toz Graecus--Further mentions of Toz Graecus--Toz the same as Thoth or Trismegistus--Magic experiments.
[Sidenote: Prince Khalid ibn Jazid and The Book of Morienus.]
Al-Mas’udi, who lived from about 885 to 956 A. D., has preserved a single recipe for making gold from the alchemical poem, The Paradise of Wisdom, originally consisting of some 2315 verses and written by the Ommiad prince, Khalid ibn Jazid (635-704 A. D.) of Alexandria. Other Arabic writers of the ninth and tenth centuries represent this prince as interested in natural science and medicine, alchemy and astrology, and as the first to promote translations from the Greek and Coptic. Thus the alchemistic Book of Crates is said to have been translated either by him or under his direction. The Fihrist further states that Khalid was instructed in alchemy by one Morienes, who was himself a disciple of Adfar.[653] There is still extant, but only in Latin translation, what purports to be the book of this same Morienes, or Morienus as he is called in Latin, addressed to this same Khalid. The book cites or invents various Greek alchemists but claims the Thrice-Great Hermes as its original author. It is of this work that we shall now treat as the first of a number of medieval Hermetic books.
[Sidenote: Robert of Chester’s preface.]
One of the earliest treatises of alchemy translated from Arabic into Latin would appear to be this which Morienus Romanus, a hermit of Jerusalem, edited for “Calid, king of the Egyptians,” and which Robert of Chester turned into Latin[654] on the eleventh day of February in the year 1182 of the Spanish era or 1144 A. D. Of Robert’s other translations we have spoken elsewhere.[655] He opens his preface to the present treatise with an account of three Hermeses--Enoch, Noah, and the king, philosopher, and prophet who reigned in Egypt after the flood and was called Hermes Triplex. This account is very similar to one which we shall presently find prefixed to an astrological treatise by Hermes Trismegistus. It was this Hermes, Robert continues, who rediscovered and edited all the arts and sciences after the deluge, and who first found and published the present work, which is a book divine and most replete with divinity, and which is entitled, The Book of the Composition of Alchemy. “And since,” says Robert, “what alchemy is and what is its composition, your Latin world does not yet know truly,[656] I will elucidate the same in the present treatise.” Alchemy is that substance which joins the more precious bodies which are compounded from one original matter and by this same natural union converts them to the higher type. In other words, it is the philosopher’s stone by which metals may be transmuted. Although Robert is a relatively young man and his Latinity perhaps not of the best, he essays the task of translating this so great and important a work and reveals his own name in the preface lest some other person steal the fruits of his labor and the praise which is his due. Lippmann dismisses the translation rather testily as “surpassed by no later work for emptiness, confusion, and sheer drivel,”[657] but we shall attempt some further description.
[Sidenote: The story of Morienus and Calid.]
Following Robert’s preface comes an account, in the usual style of apocryphal and occult works, told partly in the first person by Morienus and partly of him in the third person by someone else. Long after Christ’s passion an Adfar of Alexandria found the book of Hermes, mastered it after long study, and himself gave forth innumerable precepts which were spread abroad and finally reached the ears of Morienus, then a young man at Rome. This reminds us of the opening of the Recognitions of Clement. Morienus left his home, parents, and native land, and hastened to Alexandria to the house of Adfar. When Adfar learned that Morienus was a Christian, he promised to divulge to him “the secrets of all divinity,” which he had hitherto kept concealed from nearly everyone. When Adfar died, Morienus left Alexandria and became a hermit at Jerusalem. Not many years thereafter a king arose in Egypt named Macoya. He begat a son named Gezid who reigned after his father’s death and in his turn begat a son named Calid who reigned after his death. This Calid was a great patron of science and searched all lands for someone who could reveal this book of Hermes to him. Morienus was still living, and when a traveler brought him news of Calid and his desire, he came to his court, not for the sake of the gifts of gold which the king had offered, but in order to instruct him with spiritual gifts. Saluting Calid with the words, “O good king, may God convert you to a better,” he asked for a house or laboratory in which to prepare his masterpiece of perfection, but departed secretly as soon as it was consummated. When Calid saw the gold which Morienus had made, he ordered the heads to be cut off of all the other alchemists whom he had employed for years, and grieved that the hermit had left without revealing his secret.
[Sidenote: The secret of the philosopher’s stone]
More years passed before Calid’s trusty slave, Galip, learned the identity and whereabouts of Morienus from another hermit of Jerusalem and was despatched with a large retinue to bring him back. The king and the hermit at first engaged in a moral and religious discussion, and many days passed before Calid ventured to broach the subject of alchemy. He then put to Morienus a succession of questions, such as whether there is one fundamental substance, and concerning the nature and color of the philosopher’s stone, also its natural composition, weight and taste, cheapness or expensiveness, rarity or abundance, and whether there is any other stone like unto it or which has its effect. This last query Morienus answered in the negative, since in the philosopher’s stone are contained the four elements and it is like unto the universe and the composition of the universe. In the process of obtaining it decay must come first, then purification. As in human generation, there must first be coitus, then conception, then pregnancy, then birth, then nutrition. To such general observations and analogies, which are commonplaces of alchemy, are finally added several pages of specific directions as to alchemistic operations. Such enigmatic nomenclature is employed as “white smoke,” and “green lion,” but Morienus later explains to Calid the significance of most of these phrases. “Green lion” is glass; “impure body” is lead; “pure body” is tin, and so on.
[Sidenote: Later works of alchemy ascribed to Hermes.]
In so far as I have examined the alchemical manuscripts of the later middle ages,[658] which I have not done very extensively owing to the fact that most of them consist of anonymous and spurious compositions which are probably of a later date than the period with which we are directly concerned,[659] I have hardly found as many treatises ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus as might be expected. Perhaps as many works are ascribed to Aristotle, Geber, and other famous names as to Hermes or Mercury. Thus out of some forty items in an alchemical miscellany of the fourteenth or fifteenth century[660] two are attributed to Hermes and Mercury, two to Aristotle, one to Plato, three to Geber, two to Albertus Magnus, and others to his contemporaries like Roger Bacon, Brother Elias, Bonaventura, and Arnald of Villanova. Of the two titles connected with Hermes one is simply a Book of Hermes; the other, A Treatise of Mercury to his disciple Mirnesindus. Other specimens of works ascribed to Hermes in medieval Latin manuscripts are: The Secrets of Hermes the philosopher, inventor of metals, according to the nature of transmutation[661] or in another manuscript, “inventor of transformation,”[662] a treatise on the fountain of youth by Trismegistus;[663] and a work on alcohol ascribed to “father Hermes.”[664] The Early English Text Society has reprinted an English translation of the Latin treatise on the fifth essence “that Hermes, the prophet and king of Egypt, after the flood of Noah, father of philosophers, had by revelation of an angel of God to him sent,” which was first published “about 1460-1476 by Fred J. Furnival.”[665] “The book of Hermogenes” is also to be accredited to Hermes Trismegistus.[666]
[Sidenote: Medieval citations of Hermes]
Among the Arabs and in medieval Latin learning the reputation of Hermes continued not only as an alchemist, but as a fountain of wisdom in general. Roger Bacon spoke of “Hermes Mercurius, the father of philosophers.”[667] Daniel of Morley we have heard cite works of Trismegistus and distinguish between “two most excellent authorities,” the “great Mercury,” and his nephew, “Trismegistus Mercurius.”[668] Albertus Magnus cited “The so-called Sacred Book of Hermes to Asclepius,”[669] an astrological treatise of which the Greek version has been mentioned in our earlier chapter on Hermes, Orpheus, and Zoroaster. And Albert’s contemporary, William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, makes use several times[670] of the dialogue between Mercurius Trismegistus, “the Egyptian philosopher and magician,” and Asclepius from a Liber de hellera or De deo deorum, which is presumably the Greek Ἱερὰ βίβλος. Trismegistus is represented as affirming that there is divine power in herbs and stones. In the Speculum astronomiae[671] Albert listed a number of bad books on necromantic images[672] by Hermes of which Christians were to beware: a book of images for each of the seven planets, an eighth treatise following them, a work on The seven rings of the seven planets, a book of magical illusions (liber praestigiorum),[673] and a book addressed to Aristotle. William of Auvergne seems to allude to the same literature when he twice repeats a story of two fallen angels from Hermes, citing his Seven Planets in one case and Book of Venus in the other.[674] Albertus Magnus also cites “books of incantations” by Hermes in his work on vegetables and plants;[675] and a Liber Alcorath is ascribed to Hermes in the Liber aggregationis or Experimenta Alberti which is current under Albert’s name. The astrologer Cecco d’Ascoli in the early fourteenth century cites a treatise by Hermes entitled De speculis et luce (Of mirrors and light).[676] These few instances of medieval citation of Hermes could of course be greatly multiplied but suffice to suggest the importance of his name in the later history of magic and astrology as well as of alchemy.
[Sidenote: Astrological treatises.]
We may, however, briefly examine some specimens of the works themselves, chiefly, as in the citations, of a magical and astrological character, which are current under Hermes’ name in the medieval manuscripts. A treatise on fifteen stars, fifteen stones, fifteen herbs, and fifteen images to be engraved on the stones, is ascribed sometimes to Hermes and sometimes to Enoch.[677] The number fifteen is difficult to relate to planets, signs, or decans; in fact the fifteen stars are fixed stars supposed to exceed others in virtue. John Gower in the fourteenth century treated of the same subject in his Confessio amantis.[678] In the middle ages a Centiloquium, or series of brief astrological dicta, was ascribed to Hermes as well as to Ptolemy. Some manuscripts imply that the Centiloquium of Hermes was a selection from the astrological treatises of Hermes put together by Stephen of Messina for Manfred, king of Sicily.[679] In a fifteenth century manuscript is ascribed to Hermes a Latin astrological treatise of considerable length opening with the thirty-six decans and their astrological influence[680] but dealing with various other matters bearing upon the prediction of nativities; and a much briefer but equally astrological work on Accidents, which we are told was rewritten by Haly before it was translated into Latin.[681] Two books of “Hermes the Philosopher” on the revolutions of nativities by some unspecified translator were printed by H. Wolf in 1559.[682] A work on medical diagnosis of diseases from the stars without inspection of urine which is ascribed to Hermes in a Wolfenbüttel manuscript[683] would probably turn out upon examination to be the treatise on that theme of William of England.
[Sidenote: Of the Six Principles of Things.]
By the thirteenth century, if not before, a treatise was in existence by “Hermes Mercurius Triplex” on the six principles of things[684] with a prologue concerning the three Mercuries,[685] of whom we have already heard Robert of Chester speak in his preface. Here too the first is identified with Enoch, the second with Noah, and the third is called triplex because he was at once king, philosopher, and prophet, ruling Egypt after the flood with supreme equity, renowned in both the liberal and mechanical arts, and the first to elucidate astronomy. He wrote The Golden Bough, Book of Longitude and Latitude, Book of Election, Canons on the Planets, and a treatise on the astrolabe. Among his pastimes he brought to light alchemy which the philosopher Morienus developed in his writings. The Six Principles of Things is a treatise part astronomical and part astrological, considering the natures of the signs and the powers of the planets in their houses. Citations of such authors as Zahel and Dorotheus show that the work is much later than Hermes. It is followed by four other brief treatises, of which the first discusses time, the winds, pestilences, divination from thunder, and eclipses of the sun and the moon; the second and the third deal with the astrological topics, Of the triple power of the celestial bodies, and Of the efficacy of medicines according to the power of the planets and the effect of the signs. The fourth treatise tells how to use the astrolabe.
[Sidenote: Liber lune.]
Of the books of bad necromantic images for each of the seven planets by Hermes, which the Speculum astronomiae censured, at least one seems to have been preserved for our inspection in the manuscripts, since it has the same Incipit as that cited by Albert, “Probavi omnes libros ...,” and the same title, Liber lune,[686] or Book of the Moon, or, as it is more fully described, of the twenty-eight mansions and twenty-eight images of the moon and the fifty-four angels who serve the images. And as Albert spoke of a treatise of magic illusions which accompanied the seven books of necromantic images for the planets, so this Liber lune is itself also called Mercury’s magic illusion.[687] It probably is the same Book of Images of the Moon which William of Auvergne described as attempting to work magic by the names of God. The treatise opens in the usual style of apocryphal literature by narrating how this marvelous volume came to be discovered. After some “investigator of wisdom and truth and friend of nature had read the volumes of many wise men,” he found this one in a golden ark within a silver chest which was in turn placed in a casket of lead,--a variant on Portia’s method. He then translated it into Arabic for the benefit of the many. Nevertheless we have the usual caution to fear God and not show the book to anyone nor allow any polluted man to touch it, since with it all evils as well as all goods may be accomplished. It tells how to engrave images as the moon passes through each of its twenty-eight houses. The names of angels have to be repeated seven times and suffumigations performed seven times in the name of God the merciful and pious. Just as the moon is nearer to us than other planets and more efficacious, so this book, if we understand it aright, is more precious than any other. Hermes declares that he has proved all the books of the seven planets and not found one truer or more perfect than this most precious portion. Balenuch, however, a superior and most skilful philosopher, does much of the talking for his master Hermes. The Latin text retains the Arabic names for the mansions of the moon, the fifty-four angels also have outlandish names, and a wood that grows in an island in India is required in the suffumigations. Instructions are given for engraving images which will destroy villa, region, or town; make men dumb; restrain sexual intercourse within a given area; heat baths at night; congregate ten thousand birds and bees; or twist a man’s limbs. Four special recipes are given to injure an enemy or cause him to sicken.
[Sidenote: Hermes on images of the seven planets.]
We shall leave until our chapter on the Pseudo-Aristotle “The book of the spiritual works of Aristotle, or the book Antimaquis, which is the book of the secrets of Hermes ... the ancient book of the seven planets.” But in at least one manuscript the work of Hermes on the images of the moon is accompanied by another briefer treatise ascribed to him on the images of the seven planets, one for each day of the week, to be made in the first hour of that day which is ruled by the planet after which the day is named. This little treatise begins with the words, “Said Hermes, editor of this book, I have examined many sciences of images.”[688] Altogether I have noted traces of it in four manuscripts.
[Sidenote: Book of Venus of Toz.]
In two of these manuscripts the work of Hermes on images of the seven planets is immediately followed by a work of Toc or Toz Graecus on the occult virtues of stones called the Book of Venus or of the twelve stones of Venus.[689] The first part of the treatise, however, consists of instructions, largely astrological in character but also including use of names of spirits and suffumigations, for casting a metal image in the name of Venus. Astrological symbols are to be placed on the breast, right palm, and foot of the image.
In the discussion of stones each paragraph opens with the words, “Said Toz.” The use of these stones is mainly medicinal, however, and consists usually in taking a certain weight of the stone in question. Of astrology, spirits, and power of words there is little more said. Some marvelous virtues are attributed to stones nevertheless. With one, if you secretly touch two persons who have hitherto been firm friends, you will make them enemies “even to the end of the world. And if anyone grates from it the weight of one argenteus and mixes it with serpent’s blood (possibly the herb of that name) and gives it to anyone to drink, he will flee from place to place.”
[Sidenote: Further mentions of Toz Graecus.]
Toz Graecus was cited by more than one medieval writer and the work which we have just been describing was not the only one that then circulated under his name, although it seems to be cited by Daniel Morley in the twelfth century.[690] Albertus Magnus in his list of evil books on images in the Speculum astronomiae included a work on the images of Venus,[691] another on the four mirrors of Venus, and a third on stations for the cult of Venus. This last is also alluded to by William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, in his De universo, and ascribed by him to “Thot grecus.”[692] There also was once among the manuscripts of Amplonius at Erfurt a “book of Toz Grecus containing fifty chapters on the stations of the planets.”[693] Cecco d’Ascoli, the early fourteenth century astrologer, mentions together “Evax king of the Arabs and Zot grecus and Germa of Babylon.” Which reminds one of Albert’s allusion in his theological Summa[694] to “the teachings of that branch of necromancy” which treats of “images and rings and mirrors of Venus and seals of demons,” and is expounded in the works of Achot of Greece--who is probably our Toz Graecus, Grema of Babylon, and Hermes the Egyptian. And again in his work on minerals[695] Albert lists together as authorities on the engraving of gems with images the names of Magor Graecus, Germa of Babylon, and Hermes the Egyptian.
[Sidenote: Toz the same as Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus.]
Moreover, not only is the work of Toz closely associated both in the extant manuscripts and by Albertus Magnus with that of Hermes, but William of Auvergne’s spelling “Thot” shows what has perhaps already occurred to the reader, that this Toc or Toz Graecus is no other than the Greek equivalent of the Egyptian god Thoth; in other words, Hermes Trismegistus himself. I have not yet mentioned one other treatise found in a seventeenth century manuscript, and which, while very likely a later invention, shows at least that Toz remained a name to conjure with down into modern times.[696] The work is called A commentary by Toz Graecus, philosopher of great name, upon the books of Solomon to Rehoboam concerning secrets of secrets. A long preface tells how Solomon summed up all his vast knowledge in this book for the benefit of his son Rehoboam, and Rehoboam buried it in his tomb in an ivory casket, and Toz after its discovery wept at his inability to comprehend it, until it was revealed to him through an angel of God on condition that he explain it only to the worthy.
[Sidenote: Magic experiments.]
The text is full of magic experiments: experiments of theft; experiments in invisibility; love experiments; experiments in gaining favor; experiments in hate and destruction; “extraordinary experiments”; “playful experiments”; and so on. These with conjurations, characters, and suffumigations make up the bulk of the first book. The second book deals chiefly with “how exorcists and their allies and disciples should conduct themselves,” and with the varied paraphernalia required by magicians: fasts, baths, vestments, the knife or sword, the magic circle, fumigations, water and hyssop; light and fire, pen and ink, blood, parchment, stylus, wax, needle, membrane, characters, sacrifices, and astrological images. Two of its twenty-two chapters deal with “the places where by rights experiments should be performed” and with “all the precepts of the arts or experiments.” In another seventeenth century manuscript are Seven Books of Magical Experiments of Hermes Trismegistus. “And they are magic secrets of the kings of Egypt,” drawn, we are told, from the treasury of Rudolph II, Holy Roman emperor from 1576 to 1612.[697] Another manuscript at Vienna contains a German translation of the same work.[698]
FOOTNOTES:
[653] For detailed references for this and the preceding statements see Lippmann (1919), pp. 357-9.
[654] I have used the edition of Paris, 1564, Liber de compositione alchemiae quem edidit Morienus Romanus Calid Regi Aegyptiorum Quem Robertus Castrensis de Arabico in Latinum transtulit. A number of MSS of the work will be found listed in the index of Black’s Catalogue of the Ashmolean MSS, and elsewhere, as in Sloane 3697 and Digby 162, 13th century, fols. 21v and 23r. Other editions are Basel, 1559; Basel, 1593, in Artis Auriferae quam Chemiam vocant, II, 1-54; and Geneva, 1702, in J. J. Manget, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, I, 509-19.
[655] See above, chapter 38, p. 83.
[656] Berthelot (1893) I, 234, took the date to be 1182 A. D. and so, on the basis of this remark, placed the introduction of Arabic alchemy into Latin learning 38 years too late. It is rather amusing that Lippmann, who elsewhere avails himself of petty pretexts to belittle the work of Berthelot, should have overlooked this error. He still (1919), pp. 358 and 482, states the date as 1182 A. D., although he is puzzled how to reconcile it with that of 1143 A. D. for Robertus Castrensis or Robert de Retines. He also is at a loss as to the identity of this Robert or the meaning of “Castrensis,” and has no knowledge of the publications of Karpinski (1915) and Haskins, EHR (1915).
[657] Lippmann (1919), p. 358.
[658] Berthelot is a poor guide in any such matter since his pretentious volumes on medieval alchemy are based on the study of a comparatively small number of MSS at Paris. He made little or no use of the Sloane collection in the British Museum which is very rich in alchemical MSS, a subject in which Sir Hans Sloane was apparently much interested, or of the Ashmolean collection at Oxford, although Elias Ashmole edited the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, 1652, “containing several poetical pieces of our famous English philosophers who have written the hermetic mysteries in their own ancient language,”--a work in which Ashmole himself is called Mercuriophilus Anglicus.
[659] The two earliest MSS used by Berthelot for medieval Latin alchemy were BN 6514 and 7156 of the late 13th or early 14th century. In an earlier chapter we have mentioned Berlin 956 of the 12th century, fol. 21, “Hic incipit alchamia,” and probably a fairly long list could be made of alchemical MSS of the 13th century, like Digby 162 mentioned in a previous note to this chapter. However, as a rule the numerous alchemical collections in the Sloane MSS--a majority of the MSS numbered from about 3600 to about 3900 are in whole or part concerned with alchemy, as well as a number of earlier numbers--are not earlier than the 14th and 15th centuries, and many are subsequent to the invention of printing.
[660] Riccard. 119.
[661] Sloane 1698, 14th century, fol. 53-, “Hic incipiunt secreta Hermetis inventoris metallorum secundum transmutationis naturam ... / ... Explicit Hermes de salibus et corporibus.”
Corpus Christi, 125, fols. 39-42, “Incipiunt secreta Hermetis philosophi inventoris metallorum secundum mutacionis naturam.”
[662] Library of the Dukes of Burgundy 4275, 13th century, Secreta Hermetis philosophi “Inventor transformationis.” The preceding item 4274 is in the same MS and consists of an exposition of Hermes’ words, “Quoniam ea quae ...” etc.
[663] Vienna 2466, 14th century, fols. 85-88, Trismegistus, aqua vite.
[664] Wolfenbüttel 2841, anno 1432, fols. 138-44v, De aque ardentis virtutibus mirabilibus que de vino utique fit....
[665] Reprinted London, 1866; revised, 1889. Treatises of alchemy are also ascribed to Hermes in Sloane 2135, 15th century, and 2327, 14th century.
[666] Arezzo 232, 15th century, fols. 1-14, “Liber transmissus ab Alexandro rege ex libra Hermogenis”; Bodleian 67, fol. 33v (Secret of Secrets of the pseudo-Aristotle), “Et pater noster Hermogenes qui triplex est in philosophia optime philosophando dixit.”
[667] Opus minus, ed. Brewer (1859), in RS XV, 313.
[668] Arundel 377, 13th century, Philosophia magistri danielis de merlai, fols. 89r, 92v; these citations, like many others, are not included in V. Rose’s faulty list of Daniel’s authorities in his article, “Ptolemaeus und die Schule von Toledo,” Hermes, VIII (1874), 327-49.
[669] De animalibus, XX, i, 5, “dicit Hermes ad Esclepium.”
[670] The passages are mentioned in the chapter on William of Auvergne; see below, p. 350.
[671] Spec. astron., cap. 11 (Opera, ed. Borgnet, X, 641).
[672] A book on necromantic images by Hermes is listed in the 1412 A. D. catalogue of MSS of Amplonius: Math. 54.
[673] See in the same catalogue, Math. 9, Mercurii Colotidis liber prestigiorum.
[674] Opera, Venetiis, 1591, pp. 831, 898.
[675] De veget. et plantis, V, ii, 6.
[676] P. G. Boffito, Il Commento di Cecco d’Ascoli all’ Alcabizzo, Firenze, 1905, p. 43.
[677] Catalogue of Amplonius (1412 A. D.) Mathematica 53, “Liber Hermetis de quindecim stellis, tot lapidibus, tot herbis, et totidem figuris.” But in Amplon. Quarto 381, fols. 43-5, the work is ascribed to Enoch, whom it is not surprising that Robert of Chester classed as one of three Hermeses.
Ashmole 1471, 14th century, fols. 50r-55, “Incipit liber Hermetis de 15 Stellis, 15 lapidibus, 15 herbis et 15 ymaginibus.”
Ashmole 341, 13th century, fols. 120v-28.
Corpus Christi 125, fols. 70-75.
Royal 12-C-XVIII, 14th century.
Harleian 80, 14th century.
Harleian 1612.
Sloane 3847, 17th century.
BN 7440, 14th century. No. 4.
Vienna 5311, 14-15th century, fols. 37-40.
Vienna 3124, 15th century, fols. 161-2, De Stellis fixis, translatus a Mag. Salione, is perhaps the same work. This Salio, who seems to have been a canon at Padua, also translated Alchabitius on nativities from Arabic into Latin: Ibid., fols. 96-123; BN 7336, 15th century, #13; S. Marco XI-110, 15th century, fols. 40-111.
By the fourteenth century the work had been translated into French:
CU Trinity 1313, early 14th century, fol. 11-, “Cy commence le livre Hermes le Philosofre parlaunt des 15 esteilles greyndres fixes et 15 pierres preciouses,” etc.
[678] Sloane 3847, fol. 83. “What stones and hearbes are appropriated unto the 15 Starres accordinge to John Gower in his booke intituled De confessione amantis.”
[679] Amplon. Quarto 354, mid 14th century, fols. 1-3, “Centiloquium Hermetis ... domino Manfrido inclito regi Cicilie Stephanus de Messana has flores de secretis astrologie divi Hermetis transtulit.”
CLM 51, 1487-1503 A. D., fols. 46v-49, Hermetis divini Propositiones sive flores Stephanus de Messana transtulit. Other MSS are numerous.
Printed before 1500; I have used an edition numbered IA.11947 in the British Museum. It was printed behind Ptolemy at Venice in 1493.
[680] Harleian 3731, 15th century, fols. 1r-50r, “Incipit liber hermetis trismegisti de XXXVI decanis XII signorum et formis eorum et de climatibus et faciebus quas habent planete in eisdem signis.” After this rubric the text opens, “Triginta sex autem decani”; closes, “... aspexerit illum dictis prius mori.” It is obviously different from the Dialogue with Asclepius included in the works of Apuleius and longer than the Greek astrological text dealing with the thirty-six decans published by J. B. Pitra, Analecta Sacra, V, ii, 284-90. The discussion of the decans terminates at the bottom of fol. 2.
[681] Harleian 3731, fols. 170v-172v, “Incipiunt sermones hermetis de accidentibus. Ordina significationes fortiorem ... / ... erit res egritudo. Explicit sermo hermetis de accidentibus rescriptus ab Haly.”
[682] Hermetis philosophi de revolutionibus nativitatum libri duo incerto interprete, in an astrological collection by H. Wolf, Basel, 1559, pp. 201-79.
[683] Wolfenbüttel 2841, anno 1432 fols. 380-2. Liber Hermetis philosophi de iudiciis urine sine visu eiusdem urine et de prognosticatione in egritudinibus secundum astronomiam.
Vienna 5307, 15th century, fol. 150, has a “Fragmentum de iudicio urinae” ascribed to Hermes, but it follows the treatise of William of England.
[684] Digby 67, end of 12th century according to the catalogue but I should have placed it in the next century, fols. 69-78, “Hermes Mercurius Triplex de vi rerum principiis multisque aliis naturalibus; partibus quinque; cum prologo de tribus Mercuriis.”
Bodleian 464, 1318 A. D., fols. 151-162r, Hermetis Trismegisti opuscula quaedam; primum de 6 rerum principiis, is almost identical.
[685] A Liber mercurii trismegisti de tribus mercuriis appears in the 15th century catalogue of the MSS of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury.
[686] Corpus Christi 125, fols. 62-68 (“Liber lunae” is written in the upper margin of fol. 62), “Hic incipit liber ymaginum tr. ab Hermete id est Mercurio qui latine prestigium Mercurii appellatur, Helyanin in lingua Arabica ... / ... Explicit liber lune de 28 mansionibus lune translatus ab Hermete.”
Digby 228, 14th century, fols. 54v-55v, incomplete. Macray describes it as “‘Liber lune’; tractatus de 28 mansionibus et 28 imaginibus lunae, et de 54 angelis ‘qui serviunt ymaginibus.’”
Florence II-iii-214, 15th century, fol. 8-, “Dixit Hermes huius libri editor, lustravi plures imaginum”; fol. 9-, “Hec sunt ymagines septem planetarum et characteres eorum”; fols. 9-15, “liber ymaginum lune”.... fols. 33-43, “Liber planetarum inventus in libris Hermetis.”
[687] The Incipit, however, which Albert gave for Hermes’ Liber praestigiorum, namely, “Qui geometriae aut philosophiae peritus, expers astronomiae fuerit,” identifies it with Thebit ben Corat’s work on images.
[688] See Florence II-iii-214, fols. 8-9, already listed with Incipits among the MSS of the Liber lune on p. 223, note 1 above. Also Bodleian 463, 14th century, written in Spain, fol. 77v, “Dixit hermes editor huius libri lustranti plures imaginum (?) scientias invenit.” The work is mutilated at the end, as a leaf has been torn out between those now numbered 77 and 78. See also Sloane 3883, 17th century, fol. 95-; Arundel 342, fol. 78v, “Hermetis ut fertur liber de imaginibus et horis.”
[689] Owing to the missing leaf above mentioned only the latter part of the Liber Toc is now contained in Bodleian 463. Sloane 3883, fols. 96r-99, “Liber Toc; et vocatur liber veneni (sic), et liber de lapidibus veneris. Dixit Toc Graecus observa Venerem cum perveniret ad pliades et coniuncta fuerit.” In the text and Explicit, however, the author’s name is often spelled Toz. This MS seems to be directly copied from Bodleian 463, for not only is it preceded by the Hermes on images for the seven planets and also by an “Instructio ptholomei” which deals with the subject of astrological images, but furthermore it exactly reproduces its text, down even to such a manuscript copyist’s pi as “ad dumtanpo itulia” for “alicui ad potandum.”
[690] Arundel 377, fol. 100v, “Thoz Grecus Liber Veneris.”
[691] Spec. astron., cap. 11 (Borgnet, X, 641), “Toz Graeci, de stationibus ad cultum Veneris” opening “Commemoratio historiarum”; “de quatuor speculis eiusdem” opening “Observa Venerem cum pervenerit ad Pleiades”;--this is the Incipit of our treatise in Sloane 3883, but the title does not seem to fit very well; perhaps Albert, who says that he last looked at these bad books long ago and then with abhorrence, so that he is not sure he always has the titles and Incipits exact, has exchanged the Incipit with that of the third treatise, “de imaginibus veneris,” which opens, “Observabis Venerem cum intrabit Taurum.”
[692] De universo II, ii, 96 (p. 895, ed. 1591), “Thot grecus in libro quern scripsit de cultu veneris dixit quandam stationem cultus illius obtinere ab ipsa venere colentes septem qui illi et veneri serviant.”
[693] Math. 8 in the catalogue of 1412 A. D., Liber Toz Greci continens 50 capitula de stacionibus planetarum.
[694] II, 30.
[695] II, iii, 3.
[696] BN 15127, fols. 1-100, Toz Graeci philosophi nominatissimi expositio super libros salomonis de secretis secretorum ad Roboam.
[697] Wolfenbüttel 3338, 17th century, 43 fols.
[698] Vienna 11267, 17-18th century, fols. 2-31.
XLVI. KIRANIDES
Question of the origin of the work--Its prefaces--Arrangement of the text--Virtues of a tree--Feats of magic--An incantation to an eagle--Alchiranus--Treatises on seven, twelve, and nineteen herbs--Belenus.
[Sidenote: Question of the origin of the work.]
The virtues, especially medicinal, of plants and animals comprise the contents of a work in Latin of uncertain date and authorship, usually called the Kiranides of Kiranus, King of Persia.[699] Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Inquiry into Vulgar Errors, included in his list of “authors who have most promoted popular conceits, ... Kiranides, which is a collection out of Harpocration the Greek and sundry Arabick writers delivering not only the Naturall but Magicall propriety of things, a work as full of vanity as variety, containing many relations, whose invention is as difficult as their beliefs, and their experiments sometime as hard as either.”[700] The work purports to be a translation from the Greek version which in its turn was from the Arabic,[701] and Berthelot affirms[702] that in antiquity Kiranides was cited by Galen and by Olympiodorus, the historian and alchemist of the early fifth century, while Kroll cites a Greek manuscript at Paris as ascribing the third book of Kiranides to Hermes Trismegistus.[703]
[Sidenote: Its prefaces.]
The preface of the medieval Latin translator is by “a lowly cleric” who addresses some ecclesiastical or scholastic superior, possibly the Chancellor at Paris.[704] He marvels that the mind of his patron, which has penetrated beyond the seven heavens to contemplate supernatural things above our sphere, should nevertheless not disdain an interest in the most lowly of terrene “experiments.” The master has asked him to translate this medical book from Greek into Latin, a task easier to ask than to execute. There are several Greek versions of it, all professedly translations from some oriental original, but the volume which his patron gave him to translate into Latin is that translated into Greek at Constantinople in 1168[705] or 1169[706] by order of the Byzantine emperor, Manuel Comnenus, whom we shall also find associated with the Letter of Prester John of which we shall treat in the next chapter. The translator speaks of the work as The Book of Natural Virtues, Complaints, and Cures, but adds that it is a compilation from two other books, namely, The Experience of the Kiranides of Kiranus, King of Persia, and The Book of Harpocration[707] of Alexandria to his Daughter. There then follows the preface of Harpocration to his daughter, which tells of a certain city and of encountering an aged sage there, of great towers and of precious writing on a column which Harpocration proceeds to transcribe. We are given to understand that the original was written in “antique archaic Syriac” and was as old as the Euphrates.
[Sidenote: Arrangement of the text.]
The text is divided into four books, each arranged alphabetically. The first book subdivides into “Elements.” For example, Elementum XII is devoted to a tree, a bird, a stone, and a fish, each of which begins with the letter M. Most, however, of the virtues and medicinal prescriptions which follow have to do with the tree or herb only. The second book treats of beasts or quadrupeds, the third of birds, and the fourth of fish.
[Sidenote: Virtues of a tree.]
Much superstition and magical procedure is found scattered through, or better, crowded into, the book. For instance, in a medicinal application of the cyme of the tree Μορέα, one is to face the southwest wind, use two fingers of the left hand to remove the cyme, then look behind one toward the east, wrap the cyme in purple or red silk (vera?), and touch the patient with it or bind it about her. In another recipe the fruit of this tree is to be compounded in varying proportions with such substances as an Indian stone and the tips of the wings of crows and is then to be stirred with a crow’s feather until the mixture is “soft and sticky.” In a third prescription a stone engraved with an image of the fish mentioned under the letter M--μόρμυρος, and enclosed in an iron box, is to be combined with the “eyes” (buds?) of the tree Morea as an amulet against certain ills.
[Sidenote: Feats of magic.]
In some cases the end sought as well as the procedure employed is magical rather than medicinal. In another chapter of the first book, for example, the reader is instructed how to make a licinium or combustible compound in whose light those present will appear to one another like flaming demons. Or in book two the reader is told that wearing the dried tongue of a weasel inside his socks will close the mouths of his enemies. The weasel’s testicles, right and left, are used as charms to stimulate and prevent conception respectively.
[Sidenote: An incantation to an eagle.]
Incantations are employed in connection with the eagle, the first of forty-four birds taken up in the third book. Catch one, collect the dung it makes during the first day and night of its captivity, then bind its feet and beak and whisper in its ear, “Oh, eagle, friend of man, I am about to slay you for the cure of every infirmity. I conjure you by the God of earth and sky and by the four elements that you efficaciously work each and every cure for which you are oblated.” The eagle is then decapitated with a sword composed entirely of iron, all its blood is carefully caught in a bowl, its heart and entrails are removed and placed in wine, and other directions observed. The discussion of the virtues of fish in the fourth and last book is essentially identical in character with the examples already given for plants, birds, and beasts.
[Sidenote: Alchiranus.]
In a sixteenth century manuscript at Venice[708] is a Latin version which would seem to be translated from the Arabic since it gives the author’s name as Alchiranus, although some scholiast has interpolated and added to the words of this author and of Harpocration. As described by Valentinelli the arrangement into books is the same as that which we have noted. Valentinelli also was impressed by the fact that “medical substances are used to produce not merely physical but moral effects, such as prescience of the future, dispelling demons and evil phantoms, avoiding shipwreck by binding the heart of a foca to the mast of the vessel; discovering what sort of life a woman has led, becoming invisible, averting storms, perils, wild beasts, robbers.” And further that “the efficacy of the medicaments is dependent upon their mode of preparation or application, at the rising or setting of the sun, at the waning or waxing of the moon, by uttering certain words or engraving stones.”[709]
[Sidenote: Treatises on seven, twelve, and nineteen herbs.]
The Latin translator of the Kiranides says that it should be preceded by the book of Alexander the Great concerning seven herbs and the seven planets, and by the Mystery of Thessalus to Hermes about twelve herbs for the twelve signs of the zodiac and seven herbs for the seven stars. And in what is left of the preface to the latter treatise in an Erfurt manuscript we are told that after discovering the volumes of the Kyranides the writer found also in the city of Troy the present treatise enclosed in a monument along with the bones of the first king named Kyrannis.[710] The first treatise on seven herbs, however, seems to be more often ascribed in the manuscripts to an Alexius Affricus[711] or Flaccus Africanus[712] than to Alexander the Great.[713] Alexius or Flaccus seems to address his work to a Claudius or Glandiger of Athens. The work of Thessalus, whose name is sometimes corrupted to Tesalus or Texilus, and whose work is variously styled of twelve or of nineteen herbs, usually is found with the other treatise in the manuscripts.[714] It was one of the authorities acknowledged by Jacobus de Dondis in his Aggregatio Medicamentorum, written in 1355.[715] The treatise on seven herbs of Alexander or Flaccus Africanus closes with the direction that the herbs should be gathered from the twenty-first to twenty-seventh day of the moon, with Mercury rising during the entire first hour of the day. As they are plucked, the passion of our Lord should be mentioned, and they should be preserved in barley or wheat. But one manuscript adds, “But do not put credulity in them beyond due measure.”[716] We have, of course, already met with similar treatises ascribed to Enoch and Hermes.[717]
[Sidenote: Belenus.]
The Belenus, as whose disciple Flaccus Africanus is represented, is also the reputed author of a work on astrological images found in several manuscripts of the British Museum.[718] Albertus Magnus in the Speculum astronomiae attributed to Belenus two reprehensible books of necromantic images.[719] The Turba philosophorum, a medieval work of alchemy consisting in large measure of Latin re-translation of Arabic versions from Greek alchemists, also cites a Belus or Belinus. The name is believed to be a corruption from Apollonius of Tyana, with whom Apollonius of Perga, the mathematician, is perhaps also confused.[720] One of the Incipits of the tracts listed in the Speculum astronomiae is, “Said Belenus who is also called Apollo.” However, many medieval Latin manuscripts attribute works to Apollonius under that name, as in the case of a work on the Notory Art which we shall mention in another chapter.[721]
FOOTNOTES:
[699] I know of no very early printed editions, but have consulted a copy published at Leipzig in 1638, and two MSS, Ashmole 1471, late 14th century, fols. 143v-167r, and Arundel 342, 14th century, in an Italian hand. The work is also contained either in toto or brief excerpt in several Sloane MSS, and was printed in English in 1685 as The Magick of Kiranus. See also Wolfenbüttel 1014, 15th century, fol. 102, De libro Kyranidis Kyrani, regis Persarum. I have not seen P. Tannery, Les Cyranides, in Congrès international d’histoire des sciences, Geneva, 1904.
[700] I, 8.
[701] See Black’s description of Ashmole 1471, “Translator qui libros tres operis huius ... e Gracca versione (ex Arabico textu anno 377 facta) ... Latinos fecit.”
[702] Berthelot (1885) p. 47.
[703] Article Hermes Trismegistus in PW 798.
[704] Ashmole 1471, fols. 143v-167r, “Incipit liber Kirannidarum in quo premittitur tale prohemium. Prudentissimo domino Magistro Ka. Parissen. infimus clericus salutem.” The translator’s address to his patron sounds a little like Hugh of Santalla, but a date after 1168 is rather late either for Hugh or the anonymous Sicilian translator of the Almagest, whom the association in this case with Paris also tends to preclude. Possibly the translator may be Philip, the cleric of Tripoli, who speaks of himself in a similarly humble style, and of whom we shall speak in the next two chapters.
[705] According to the printed text of 1638.
[706] Ashmole 1471, “anno Christi 1280 aliter 1169.”
[707] Harpocration is cited by Galen: see Kühn XII, 629, “ad aures purulentas Harpocration.”
[708] S. Marco XIV, 37, fols. 11-73 Alchirani, liber de proprietatibus rerum. Liber physicalium virtutum, compassionum et curationum, collectus ex libris duobus.
[709] Bibliotheca Manuscripta ad S. Marci Venetiarum, Codices MSS Latini, V (1872) 109-10 ....“medicamina proponuntur ad effectus non tantum physicos sed et morales progignendos. Eiusmodi sunt ad praescienda futurorum; ad fugandos daemones et phantasmata mala; ad naufragium evitandum, dummodo cor focae in arbore navis ligetur; ad sciendum quid mulier egerit in vita sua; ad corpus invisible reddendum; ad avertendum tempestates, pericula, feras, latrones. Medicaminum autem efficacitas pendet ab eorum confectione vel applicatione, in ortu vel occasu solis, sub augmento aut diminutione lunae, verbis quibusdam prolatis vel lapidibus insculptis.”
[710] Amplon. Quarto 217, No. 5, “Post antiquarum kyrannidarum volumina ... inveni in civitate troiana in monumento reclusum presentem libellum cum ossibus primi regis kyrannis qui compendium aureum intitulatur eo quod per discussionem (or distinctionem?) factam a maiorum kyrannidarum volumine diligenter compilatum et studio vehementi tractat de vii herbis vii planetis attributis secundum illas impressiones.” See also Vienna 5289, 15th century, fol. 21, “Tractatus de septem herbis et septem planetis qui dicitur inventus in ciuitate Trojana in monumento primi Regis Kyrani” sive “aureum compendium.”
[711] Ashmole 1450, 15th century, fol. 31v, “Incipit quidam tractatus de vii herbis vii planetis attributis. Alexius Affricus, discipulus Belbeis, Claudio Artheniensi epylogiticis studium continuare et finem cum laude. Post etiam antiquorum Kirannidarum volumina”; only the first page of the treatise now remains in this MS.
All Souls 81, 15-16th century, fols. 133v-45, “De virtutibus et operationibus septem herbarum secretarum per ordinem, et quomodo per eas fiunt mirabilia”; the treatise, however, here appears in English and by “Alaxus Affrike, disciple of Robert Claddere of the worthye studie.”
CLM 405, 14-15th century, fol. 98, Fracii Africii liber de vii herbis vii planetis attributis.
[712] Amplon. Q. 217, 14th century, fols. 51-54, Incipit tractatus de vii herbis vii planetis attributis Flacti Africani discipuli Belbenis.... Glandegrio Atthoniensi epylogitico studium.
Sloane 1754, 14th century, fols. 45-57, “Flacius Affricus discipulus Bellenis Glandigero Atthonensi epilogitico.”
Sloane 75, 15th century, fols. 131-2, “Inquit Flaccus Affricanus discipulus Beleni septem sunt herbe.”
See also Sloane 73, fols. 4-7; Sloane 3092, 14th century, fols. 2-6.
Berlin 900 (Latin Octavo 42), anno 1510, Compendium aureum des Flaccius Africanus.
[713] Ashmole 1448, 15th century, pp. 44-45, “Virtutes septem herbarum et septem planetarum secundum Alexandrum imperatorem.”
Vienna 3124, 15th century, fol. 49, Alexander is given as the author in the catalogue, but I do not know if the name actually appears in the MS.
[714] Berlin Folio 573, fol. 22, Liber Thesali philosofi de virtutibus 19 herbarum.
Amplon. Quarto 217, #5.
Montpellier 277, 15th century.
Vienna 3124, 15th century, fols. 49-53, Texili, “Liber secretorum de virtutibus 12 herbarum secundum influentiam quam recipiunt a 12 celestibus signis.”
Judging by their varying length, I should imagine that some of the MSS listed in the preceding notes contain the Thessalus also.
[715] “Tesalus in secretis de xii herbis per signa celi et de vii secundum planetas.”
[716] Digby 147, 14th century, fol. 106.
[717] See above chapters 13, 45.
[718] Royal 12-C-XVIII, 14th century (?), Baleni de imaginibus.
Sloane 3826, 17th century, fols. 100v-101, Liber Balamini sapientis de sigillis planetarum.
Sloane 3848, 17th century, fols. 52-8, 59-62, liber sapientis Balemyn de ymaginibus septem planetarum.
[719] Opera ed. Borgnet, X, 641, “Belenus, liber de horarum opere, ‘Dixit Belenus qui et Apollo dicitur, imago....;’ liber de quatuor imaginibus ab aliis separatis, ‘Differentia in qua fiunt imagines magnae....’”
[720] Berthelot (1893) I, 257-8.
[721] See below, chapter 49, pp. 281-3.
XLVII. PRESTER JOHN AND THE MARVELS OF INDIA
Medieval notions of the marvels of India--India’s real contribution to knowledge--The legend of Prester John--Miracles of the Apostle Thomas--Otto of Freising on Prester John--Prester John’s letter to the Emperor Manuel--Marvels recounted by Prester John--Additional marvels in later versions--The letter of Pope Alexander III--Philip, the papal physician.
[Sidenote: Medieval notions of the marvels of India.]
In a twelfth century manuscript at Berlin a treatise on precious stones and their medicinal and other marvelous virtues which is ascribed to St. Jerome,[722] opens with a prologue describing a voyage to India, the home of the carbuncle, emerald, and other gems, and the land of mountains of gold guarded by dragons, griffins, and other monsters. According to this prologue the navigation of the Red Sea is extremely dangerous and takes six months, while another full year is required to cross the ocean to India and the Ganges.
India was still a distant land of wonders and home of magic to the minds of medieval men, as it had been in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and as even to-day many westerners are credulous concerning its jugglers, fakirs, yogis, and theosophists. So William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, writing in the first half of the thirteenth century, states that feats of magic are very seldom wrought in the Europe of his time. For one thing, as Origen and other early church fathers had already explained, the demons since the coming of Christ to earth had largely ceased their magical activities in Christian lands. But another reason was that the materials for working natural magic, the gems and herbs and animals with marvelous virtues, were seldom found in European lands. In India and other countries adjacent to it, on the contrary, such materials were abundant. Hence natural magic still flourished there and it was a land of many experimenters and of skilful marvel-workers.[723] Similarly Albertus Magnus, discussing the marvelous powers of astrological images, states that the best gems upon which to engrave them are those from India.[724] Costa ben Luca says in his work on physical ligatures that doctors in India are firm believers in the efficacy of incantations and adjurations; and about 1295 Peter of Abano speaks in his Phisionomia of the wise men of India as prolix on astrological themes. Medieval geomancies, too, often claim a connection with India.[725]
[Sidenote: India’s real contribution to knowledge.]
It should also be kept in mind, however, that medieval men believed that they derived from India learning which seems to us even to-day as sound and useful as it did to them then; for example, the Hindu-Arabic numerals.[726] Leonardo of Pisa, the great arithmetician of the early thirteenth century, tells us in the preface to his Liber Abaci[727] how, summoned as a boy to join his father who was a customs official at a trading station in Algeria, he was introduced to the art of reckoning “by a marvelous method through the nine figures of the Indians.” Thus we see that India’s marvels were not always false. Later he traveled in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence and studied their various methods of reckoning, but vastly preferred the Indian method to all others, returned to a more intensive study of it, and developed it further by additions from Euclid and contributions of his own. Not always, it is true, were medieval mathematicians as favorable to Indian methods as this. Jordanus Nemorarius in one passage characterizes an Indian theorem as “nothing but mere credulity without demonstration.”[728] But to return to the natural marvels of India.
[Sidenote: The legend of Prester John.]
In the extraordinary accounts of Prester John,[729] which are first met in the twelfth century and were added to with succeeding centuries and which had great currency from the start, as the number of extant manuscripts shows, the natural marvels of India vie in impressiveness and wonderment with the power of Prester John himself and with the miracles of the Apostle Thomas.
[Sidenote: Miracles of the Apostle Thomas.]
Odo, Abbot of St. Rémy from 1118 to 1151, states in a letter in response to the inquiry of a Count Thomas what had happened when he was recently in Rome. Byzantine ambassadors introduced to the pope an archbishop of India who had already had the extraordinary and disconcerting experience of having to return a third time to Constantinople for a new prince for his country, each previous Byzantine nominee having died on his hands. This archbishop said that the body of the Apostle Thomas was preserved in his country in a church rich in treasure and ornaments and surrounded by a river fordable only at the time of the saint’s festival. On that solemn occasion the Apostle’s body was shown to believers and the Apostle would raise his arm and open his hand to receive their gifts, but close it and refuse to receive any gift offered by a heretic. When this tale reached the pope’s ears he forbade the archbishop to disseminate such falsehoods further under pain of anathema, but the archbishop finally convinced the pope by taking an oath on the holy gospels.
Another longer and anonymous account has come down from manuscripts going back to the twelfth century of the visit of a Patriarch John of India to Rome under Pope Calixtus II (1119-1124). It is this account which is often joined in the manuscripts and early printed editions with the Letter of Prester John of which we shall presently speak. In this account the Patriarch John told “of memorable matters of his Indian region that were unknown to the Romans,” such as of the gold and gems in the river Physon which flows from Paradise, “but especially of the miracles of the most holy Apostle Thomas.” Without going into further details, such as that of the miraculous balsam lamp, which differ a good deal from Odo’s account, it may be noted that in this account the Apostle’s hand ministers the Eucharist to believers and refuses it to infidels and sinners.
[Sidenote: Otto of Freising on Prester John, the descendant of the Magi.]
We have progressed from an archbishop of India to a Patriarch John; we now come to Prester John the monarch. The historian, Otto of Freising, learned in 1145 from a Syrian bishop at Rome of a great victory recently gained over the Moslems by “a certain John who lived beyond Persia and Armenia in the extreme East, a king and priest, since he was a Christian by race but a Nestorian ... Prester John, for so they are wont to call him.” He was of the ancient progeny of the Magi mentioned in the Gospel, ruled the same races as they, and enjoyed such glory and abundance that he was said to use only an emerald scepter. After his victory he would have come to the aid of the crusaders at Jerusalem, but could not cross the Tigris, although he marched north along its eastern bank and waited for some years in the hope that it would freeze over.[730]
[Sidenote: Prester John’s letter to the Emperor Manuel.]
This Prester John was to be heard from again, however, for in the same century there appeared a letter purporting to have been written by him to the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel (1143-1180).[731] It is in this letter that the natural and artificial marvels of India and adjacent territories--Prester John’s dominion reaches from farther India to the Babylonian desert--are especially recorded. This letter even in its earliest and briefest form seems without doubt a western forgery and bears the marks of its Latin origin,[732] since despite the use of a few Greek ecclesiastical and official terms[733] and the attempt to rehearse unheard-of wonders, the writer indulges in a sneer at Greek adoration of the emperor[734] and is unable to conceive of Prester John except as a feudal overlord[735] with the usual kings, dukes and counts, archbishops, bishops and abbots under him. The letter then is of value chiefly as showing us what ideas prevailed concerning India and the orient in the Latin world of the twelfth and succeeding centuries, for the letter received many additions and variations, was translated into the vernacular languages, and appeared in print before 1500.[736] In the following account of its contents, however, I shall try to describe the letter as it existed in the twelfth century, after which I shall mention what seem to be interpolations of the thirteenth or later centuries.
[Sidenote: Marvels recounted by Prester John.]
But while different copies of the work vary, all have the same general character. Prester John tells what a mighty and Christian potentate he is and describes his marvelous palaces and contrivances or the natural marvels, strange beasts and serpents, monstrous races of men, potent herbs, stones, and fountains, to be found in the lands owning his sway. In one province is the herb assidios which enables its bearer to rout an impure spirit and force him to disclose his name and whence he comes. “Wherefore impure spirits in that land dare not take possession of anyone.”[737] A fountain flows from Mount Olympus not three days’ journey from Paradise whence Adam was expelled. Three draughts from it taken fasting insure one henceforth from all infirmity, and however long one may live, one will seem henceforth but thirty years of age.[738] Then there are some little stones which eagles often bring to Prester John’s territories and which worn on the finger preserve or restore the sight, or if consecrated with a lawful incantation, make one invisible and dispel envy and hatred and promote concord.[739] After a description of a sea of sand in which there are various kinds of edible fish and a river of stones, Prester John soon mentions the worms which in his language are called salamanders, who cannot live except in fire, and from whose skins he has robes made which can be cleansed only by fire.[740] After some boasting concerning the absence of poverty, crime, and falsehood in his country and about the pomp and wealth with which he goes forth to war, Prester John then comes to the description of his palace, which is similar to that which the Apostle Thomas built for Gundaphorus, King of India. Its gates of sardonyx mixed with cornu cerastis (horn of the horned serpents) prevent the secret introduction of poison; a couch of sapphire keeps John chaste; the square before the palace where judicial duels are held is paved with onyx “in order that the courage of the fighters may be increased by the virtue of the stone.”[741] Near this square is a magic mirror which reveals all plots in the provinces subject to Prester John or in adjacent lands.[742] In some manuscripts of the twelfth century is a description of another palace which before Prester John’s birth his father was instructed in a dream to build for his son. One feature of it is that no matter how hungry one may be on entering it, he always comes out feeling as full as if he had partaken of a sumptuous banquet.[743]
[Sidenote: Additional marvels in later versions.]
To such marvels in the early versions of the Letter of Prester John were added others in the course of the thirteenth century and later middle ages:--the huge man-eating ants who mined gold by night;[744] the land where men lived on manna, a substance which we shall find somewhat similarly mentioned by Michael Scot and Thomas of Cantimpré;[745] the tale, which we shall also hear from Roger Bacon, of men who tame flying dragons by their incantations and magic, saddle and bridle them, and ride them through the air;[746] the five marvelous stones that froze or heated or reduced to an even state of temperature or made light or dark everything within a radius of five miles; the second five stones, of which two were unconsecrated and turned water to milk or wine, while three were consecrated and would respectively cause fish to congregate, wild beasts to follow one, and, sprinkled with hot lion’s blood, produce a conflagration which could only be quenched by sprinkling the stone with hot dragon’s blood;[747] the marvelous mill operated by the occult virtue of the stone adamant;[748] the wonderful tree on which the wonderful healing apple grew;[749] the marvelous chapel of glass, always just big enough for as many persons as entered it;[750] and the stone and the fountain that served as fireless heaters.[751] In another case a marvel is wrought by stone and fountain combined. Two old men guard a large stone and admit to its hollow only Christians or those who desire to become Christians. If this profession of faith is genuine, the water in the hollow which is usually only four fingers deep thrice rises above the head of the person admitted, who thereupon emerges recovered from all sickness.[752]
[Sidenote: The letter of Pope Alexander III.]
How real Prester John was to the men of the twelfth century may be seen from the fact that Pope Alexander III on September 27, 1177, addressed from the Rialto in Venice a letter to him or to some actual eastern potentate whom he had confused with him.[753] The Pope does not expressly mention Prester John’s letter to Manuel but says that he has heard of him from many persons and common report, and more especially from “Master Philip, our friend and physician,” who had talked “with great and honourable men of your kingdom,” by whom he had been informed of their ruler’s desire for a church and altar at Jerusalem. It is this Philip whom the Pope now sends with his letter to Prester John and to instruct him in the doctrine of the Roman church. But it is a long and laborious journey involving many hardships and vicissitudes and the traversing of many countries with barbarous and unknown languages.
[Sidenote: Philip, the papal physician.]
Whether Philip ever succeeded in delivering the letter is not known and he has himself been regarded as a mysterious personage of whom nothing further was known.[754] I would suggest, however, that, as he seems to have been conversant with Syria and the Holy Land, he may have been the Philip of whose translation of the Secret of Secrets of the Pseudo-Aristotle we shall treat in the next chapter, a work which he found in Antioch and dedicated to the bishop of Tripoli. Or, if we do not meet this particular Philip again, we shall find in close relations with other popes other physicians whose names are prominent in the natural and occult science of the age.
FOOTNOTES:
[722] Berlin 956, 12th century, fols. 24-25.
[723] Gulielmi Alverni ... Opera Omnia, 1591, p. 1003, De universo, II, iii, 23.
[724] Mineral. II, iii, 4.
[725] One condemned at Paris in 1277 began, “The Indians have believed....”; two in a Harleian MS 2404 are called Indeana; a third, part Latin and part French, in Sloane MS 314 of the 15th century, opens, “This is the Indyana of Gremmgus which is called the daughter of astronomy and which one of the sages of India wrote.” See also CU Magdalene 27 (F. 4. 27, Haenel 23), late 14th century, fols. 72-88, “Hec est geomentia Indiana que vocatur filia Ast ... quam fecit unius (sic) sapientum Indie....”
[726] See D. E. Smith and L. C. Karpinski, The Hindu-Arabic Numerals, Boston, 1911; S. R. Benedict, A Comparative Study of the Early Treatises introducing into Europe the Hindu Art of Reckoning, Concord, 1914; L. C. Karpinski, “Two Twelfth Century Algorisms,” Isis, III (1921) 396-413. For “newly discovered evidence showing that the Hindu numerals were known to and justly appreciated by the Syrian writer Severus Sebokht, who lived in the second half of the seventh century,” see F. Nau in Journal asiatique, 1910, and J. Ginsburg, “New Light on our Numerals,” in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, XXIII (1917) 366-9. On the question of the debt of Arabic algebra to India, especially in the case of Muhammad. b. Musa al-Hwarazmi, who was also an astrologer, see J. Ruska Zur ältesten arabischen Algebra und Rechenkunst, in Sitzb. d. Heidelberger Akademie d. Wiss. Philos. hist. Klasse, 1917.
[727] Scritti di Leonardo Pisano, vol. I, 1857.
[728] Jordani Nemorarii Geometria vel De triangulis libri IV, ed. M. Curtze, Thorn, 1887, pp. 43-44.
[729] A good brief summary of the results of d’Avezac, Zarncke, and others will be found in Sir Henry Yule’s article on “Prester John,” EB. For the various texts to be here considered, with later interpolations and additions distinguished, see Friedrich Zarncke, Der Priester Johannes, in Abhandl. d. Kgl. Sächs. Gesells. d. Wiss. VII (1879), 627-1030; VIII (1883) 1-186.
[730] In Yule (1903) I, 231-7, Cordier discusses whether this monarch was Gurkhan of Kara Khitai (as urged by d’Avezac and Oppert) who “in 1141 came to the aid of the King of Khwarizmi against Sanjar, the Seljukian sovereign of Persia, ... and defeated that prince with great slaughter,” or whether he was “John Orbelian ... for years the pride of Georgia and the hammer of the Turks” (as urged by Professor Bruun of Odessa).
[731] For its text, with interpolations distinguished from the original text, see Zarncke (1879) 909-924. Some of the passages which Zarncke regards as interpolations are, however, already found in 12th century MSS. On the other hand, his text does not include all the interpolations and variations to be found even in the MSS which he describes. For instance, in BN 6244A, fol. 130r, just before the description of the herb assidios, occurs a passage which may be translated as follows: “You should know also that in our country we do not need doctors, for we have precious stones, herbs, fountains, and trees of so great virtue that they prevail against every infirmity and against poisons and wounds. And we have books which instruct us and distinguish between the potencies and virtues of the herbs.” In this MS Prester John is also more voluble on the theme of his devotion to the Christian faith than appears in Zarncke’s text, and (fols. 127v-128r) repeats the story of the administration of the Eucharist by the hand of the body of the Apostle Thomas. Zarncke lists about one hundred MSS of the letter but fails to use or mention any of those in the Bodleian Library where, for instance, Digby 158, fols. 2r-5v, is of the twelfth century. Another twelfth century MS not in his list is Paris Arsenal 379A, fol. 34. Zarncke also does not list the MSS of the letter at Madrid and Wolfenbüttel.
[732] In many MSS. nothing is said of its being a translation or when or by whom it was translated; others state that it was translated into Greek and Latin, or, in at least one case, from Arabic into Latin. Only from the thirteenth century on, I think, is Christian, Archbishop of Mainz, sometimes said to have translated it from Greek into Latin. Often it is simply stated that Manuel transmitted the letter to the Emperor Frederick, to whom also it is sometimes represented as sent direct by Prester John. Sometimes it is to the Pope to whom the letter comes from Manuel or Prester John.
The statement that Manuel transmitted the letter to the Emperor Frederick makes one wonder whether Anselm, Bishop of Havelberg and later of Ravenna, can have had anything to do with it. He was sent by Frederick on an embassy to Manuel in 1153, which seems to identify him with the author of a “Liber de diversitate nature et persone proprietatumque personalium non tam Latinorum quam ex Grecorum auctoritatibus extractus”--CUL 1824 (Qi. vi. 27), beautiful 13th century hand, fols. 129-76,--who states in his preface that he collected his Greek authorities in Constantinople where he was sent by Frederick on an embassy to Manuel, and on his return to Germany showed them to “Petro venerabili Tusculano episcopo.”
[733] Such as Apocrisarius and Archimandrite, a word however not entirely unknown in the west; see Ducange.
[734] “Cum enim hominem nos esse cognoscamus, te Graeculi tui Deum esse existimant, cum te mortalem et humanae corruptioni subiacere cognoscamus,” Zarncke (1879) 910.
[735] For instance, the writer twice alludes to the square before Prester John’s palace where he watches the combatants in judicial duels or wager of battle, Zarncke (1879) 918, 919.
[736] I have seen a copy in the British Museum (IA.8685), De Mirabilibus Indiae, where the account given Calixtus II of miracles of the Apostle Thomas is run together with the letter of Prester John.
[737] Zarncke, 912; Digby 158, fol. 2v; BN 2342, fol. 191v; BN 3359, fol. 144v.
[738] Zarncke, 912-913; MSS as before. This fountain of youth was little improved upon by another inserted later (Zarncke, 920-21; BN 3359, fol. 146v; not in the other two MSS), which one had to taste thrice daily on a fasting stomach for three years, three months, three weeks, three days, and three hours, in order to live and remain youthful for three hundred years, three months, three weeks, three days, and three hours.
[739] Zarncke, 913; Digby 158, fol. 3r, etc.
[740] Zarncke, 915; Digby 158, fol. 3v; BN 2342, fol. 192r; BN 3359, fol. 145r. It will be recalled that Charlemagne is said to have had such a garment. Pliny discussed both salamanders and asbestos but did not connect the two. Marco Polo, however, says (I 42, Yule (1903) I, 212-3), “The real truth is that the salamander is no beast, as they allege in our part of the world, but is a substance found in the earth.... Everybody must be aware that it can be no animal’s nature to live in fire, seeing that every animal is composed of all four elements.” Polo confirms, however, the report of robes made of incombustible mineral fibre and cleansed by fire.
[741] Zarncke, 918; Digby 158, fol. 4r; BN 2342, fol. 192r; BN 3359, fol. 145v.
[742] Zarncke, 919-20; Digby 158, fols. 4v-5r; BN 2342, fol. 192v; BN 3359, fol. 146r.
[743] Zarncke, 920-22; Digby 158 fol. 5v; BN 2342, fol. 192v; BN 3359, fol. 146r-v.
[744] Zarncke, 911.
[745] Ibid., 913. For Michael Scot, see Chapter 51, page 324; for Thomas of Cantimpré, Chapter 53, Page 393.
[746] Zarncke, 913. For Roger Bacon, see Chapter 61, page 657.
[747] Zarncke, 915-16.
[748] Ibid., 918-19.
[749] Zarncke, 921.
[750] Ibid., 922.
[751] Ibid., 923.
[752] Ibid., 914.
[753] Text of the letter in Zarncke, 941-44.
[754] Zarncke, 945, “Der Philippus, den der Papst seinen familiaris nennt, ist bis jetzt nicht nachgewiesen.”