LV. ROBERT GROSSETESTE
Chief sources for Robert Grosseteste--Reasons for Roger Bacon’s eulogy--Grosseteste’s scholarly career--His writings: absence of magic--His scientific writings little affected by his ecclesiastical position--Reliance on experience--Theory of vision and science of perspective--Experimental discovery of lenses--Mentioned also in The Romance of the Rose--Theories formed by experimenters with lenses--Mathematical physics: the radiation of virtue--The Computus and calendar reform--Juggling with numbers--From mathematics to astronomy to astrology--Astrology in natural philosophy, agriculture, alchemy, medicine and music--Some astrological technical detail--Man and the stars--Grosseteste’s theory of comets--Alchemy--Other treatises--Summa philosophiae ascribed to Grosseteste--Its contents--Oriental origin of philosophy--Greek men of learning--Arabs and medieval Christians--Ancient and modern science compared--Criticism of Aristotle and the Arabic text--Use of the word “modern”--Theology, philosophy, and science; speculative and experimental--Astrology in the Summa--Occult virtue and alchemy--Brother Giles on the comet of 1264--Appendix I. The Perspective or Optics of Witelo.
[Sidenote: Chief sources for Robert Grosseteste.]
The fame of Robert Grosseteste,[1421] who lived from about 1175 to 1253 and was bishop of Lincoln during the last eighteen years of his life, rests largely upon the praises of his countrymen and contemporaries, Matthew Paris and Roger Bacon, and upon his own writings. The historian, Matthew Paris, depicts him especially as the man of affairs, the churchman and statesman who dared oppose either king or pope for England’s sake. But with his repeated resistance in parliament to royal financial exactions, his outspokenness against abuses at the papal court and his refusal to admit papal provisors to benefices in his diocese, his aggressive and reforming activity in his bishopric and consequent quarrels with the monastic orders and his own cathedral chapter--with all this side of his career we are little concerned. It is rather as a great scholar of his time that like Roger Bacon we shall look back upon him.
[Sidenote: Reasons for Roger Bacon’s eulogy.]
Bacon’s eulogies of Grosseteste may seem rather extravagant. Writing fourteen years after his death he thinks that no living scholar can compare with him, nay, he ranks him and Adam Marsh, another Englishman of whom we know little, as in their day what Solomon, Aristotle and Avicenna were in theirs.[1422] One reason for this high praise is presumably that Grosseteste had been Bacon’s favorite teacher, and certainly that he was interested in the same learned pursuits, Greek and Hebrew, mathematics, optics, experimental science, as the friar who followed him. Roger practically admits that he owes much in those fields to Robert and an examination of Grosseteste’s writings makes this fact still more evident.
[Sidenote: Grosseteste’s scholarly career.]
A letter by Giraldus Cambrensis written before the close of the twelfth century speaks of the then youthful Grosseteste as already proficient in law and medicine. He seems to have been born of humble and poor parents at Stradbrook in Suffolk.[1423] He was educated at Oxford where he became rector scholarum and Chancellor and in 1224 the first rector of the Franciscans at Oxford. He perhaps also studied at Paris. After holding various archdeaconries and other prebends he was elected bishop of Lincoln in 1235 but continued his interest in the welfare of the university at Oxford. Roger Bacon, in affirming that Grosseteste surpassed all others in knowledge of the sciences, gives as a reason his long life and experience as well as his enthusiasm for study;[1424] and in another passage declares that hitherto it has taken thirty or forty years for a man to become really proficient in mathematics, as the case of Robert Grosseteste among others shows.[1425] Bacon also states that it was not “until the latter portion of his life” that he undertook the work of making translations and summoned Greeks and had grammars brought from Greece and other lands. Since Grosseteste appears at first to have studied law and medicine rather than ancient languages and mathematical sciences, Bacon’s statements suggest that the works of Grosseteste which we are about to consider were written late in life. This inference is further borne out by a passage in the treatise De impressionibus aeris seu de prognosticatione which gives the positions of the seven planets in the signs of the zodiac and states the date as “the Arabic year 646 or the year of grace 1249.”[1426]
[Sidenote: His writings: absence of magic.]
Our discussion of Grosseteste will be based upon some treatises included in Baur’s edition of his philosophical works. They are mostly brief and in some cases seem rather fragmentary. We shall not be concerned with his Greek grammar or with his theological writings, which occupy half of the bibliography in Pegge’s Life.[1427] His letters contain some hints of his scientific works but nothing bearing on magic or astrology. It used to be stated that Grosseteste certainly constructed charms to expel maladies, that he invented forms of words to exorcise fiends, and that he worked cures by engraved gems.[1428] The ascription to Grosseteste of treatises on Necromancy and Sorcery, and the Philosopher’s Stone, is, however, false and grew, Baur says, from marginal glosses appended to one of his genuine works.[1429] What we shall note in Grosseteste’s works will be mainly his attitude to experimental science on the one hand and to astrology on the other.
[Sidenote: Scientific writings little affected by his ecclesiastical position.]
In these scientific treatises by Grosseteste there is little to suggest the Christian bishop. However, in the work “On the Fixity of Motion and Time” he opposes the Aristotelian doctrine that the universe or motion of the celestial bodies is eternal.[1430] And in a second treatise, “On the Order of the Emanation of Things Caused from God,” he expresses the wish that men would cease to question the scriptural account of the age and beginning of the world.[1431] A third treatise “On Freedom of the Will” also lies on the frontier of philosophy and theology.
[Sidenote: Reliance on experience.]
Grosseteste affords us further examples in a number of passages of that reliance upon experience and reason, that rejection of certain views as contrary to experience, and yet that acceptance of statements in old authors as based upon experience, which we saw in Galen and William of Auvergne’s “experimental books,” and shall see in Albertus Magnus and the other medieval scientists. Grosseteste speaks, however, not merely of experience or experimenta, but also of experimenters (experimentatores).[1432] We may first note some use of observation and experience in astronomy and geography. In his treatise on comets he alludes to “experience in natural things.”[1433] In his treatise on the Sphere[1434] Bishop Robert declares that the sphericity of the earth and of all the stars and planets “is shown both by natural reasons and astronomical experiences,” that is, in the case of the earth, by the observations of the sky by men in different parts of the earth. In the same work he says that Thabit ben Corra (836-901 A. D.) working over the operations of Ptolemy, “found by certain experiments that the motion of the fixed stars was different.”[1435] Likewise in his treatise On the Generation of the Stars Grosseteste remarks of one contention that “experience shows the contrary” and of another view that it “is against both experience and reason.”[1436] Again in writing Of the Nature of Places he adduces in support of his positions “experiments and reasons,” and “divers authors and experimenters.”[1437] The old legend of the Hyperboreans who dwell among mountains near the pole in such a salubrious and temperate climate that they live on and on until they tire of life and commit voluntary suicide by leaping off cliffs into the sea, Grosseteste introduces by the statement: “It has also been found by experience, as authors tell”--among whom he names Pliny, Solinus, and “Marcianus in his geometry.”
[Sidenote: Theory of vision and science of perspective.]
In the realm of physics Grosseteste not only mentions experience in discussing vision and what he calls Perspective but also brings to our notice a recent or approaching experimental discovery, that of magnifying lenses. In his treatise on the rainbow he makes a rather unpromising beginning. After arguing whether the sense of sight operates by the eye receiving something within itself, as natural philosophers are prone to hold, or by sending forth a visual species or rays, he decides as was usual with men of his time in favor of the latter alternative.[1438] He cites Aristotle in his last book on animals as saying that a man with deep-set eyes sees farther because his visual virtue is not spread or scattered but goes straight--as if from a long-barreled gun--to the things seen.
[Sidenote: Experimental discovery of lenses.]
Grosseteste then goes on to say that there are three parts of Perspective. The first is that concerning the sight with which he has just been dealing. The second concerns mirrors. The third has been “untouched and unknown among us until the present time. Yet we know that Aristotle completed this third part”--he of course did nothing of the sort--“and that it is much more difficult in its subtlety and far more wonderful in its profound knowledge of natures than the other parts. For this branch of Perspective thoroughly known shows us how to make things very far off seem very close at hand and how to make large objects which are near seem tiny and how to make distant objects appear as large as we choose, so that it is possible for us to read the smallest letters at an incredible distance, or to count sand or grain or grass or any other minute objects.”[1439] So far the passage reads as if it might be merely the exaggerated dream of fancy. But Grosseteste proceeds to state “how these marvels happen,” which seems to be by the breaking up of “the visual ray”--or as we should say, by the refraction of rays of light--as it passes through several transparent objects or lenses of varying nature. He explains also that great distance does not make an object invisible but the narrowness of the angle under which it is seen.[1440] This he proceeds to illustrate “by experiments” (per experimenta). Again in his treatise on comets he mentions “those who have experienced that by a transparent figure interposed between the spectator and the object seen it is possible that the thing seen should be multiplied and that great things seem small and conversely according to the shape given the interposed transparent object.”[1441] I have given as far as possible a literal translation of Grosseteste’s words on this point in order to convey his exact or inexact meaning. If these passages are not a sufficient proof that magnifying lenses of some sort were already discovered, they at least point the way to the microscope and telescope, and we know that eye-glasses for nearsightedness were in use at the latest by the end of the thirteenth century.
[Sidenote: Mentioned also in The Romance of the Rose.]
Very similar and perhaps copied from this very treatise of Grosseteste on the rainbow--or from its source (Al-Hazen)--are some verses in the continuation of the French Romance of the Rose written by Jean de Meun, probably about 1270. Besides remarking of rainbows that--the words are Ellis’ translation--[1442]
“Only he who’s learned the rule Of optics in some famous school Can to his fellow men explain How ’tis that from the sun they gain Their glorious hues;”
the poet mentions burning-glasses and various types of mirrors, and also tells us that from optics one
“... may learn the cause Why mirrors, through some subtle laws Have power to objects seen therein-- Atoms minute or letters thin-- To give appearance of fair size, Though naked unassisted eyes Can scarce perceive them. Grains of sand Seem stones when through these glasses scanned.”
The poet adds that by these glasses one can read letters from such a distance that one would not believe it unless he had seen it. Then he concludes:
“But to these matters blind affiance No man need give; they’re proved by science.”
[Sidenote: Theories formed by experimenters with lenses.]
Returning to Grosseteste and experimental method we may note his mention in the same treatise upon comets of “those who reflect and experiment in natural phenomena and form their opinions from their experiments without foundation of reasons.”[1443] Grosseteste holds that such experimenters “necessarily fall into false notions concerning the natures of comets,” because they try to explain them as reflected rays and the like after the analogy “of their varied experiments which they have employed in radiations and the producing of fires”--probably by burning glasses--“and by what is seen through the medium of lenses” (diaphanorum). The important point for us, however, is not whether these men were wrong about comets, but their varied experimentation and their basing of hypothesis upon their experiments.
[Sidenote: Mathematical physics: the radiation of virtue.]
In view of Grosseteste’s interest in physical and astronomical matters, and his training, if we believe Bacon, for some thirty or forty years in mathematics, it is not surprising that he realized something of the value of mathematics in the study of natural science. He believed that a knowledge of geometry was of great aid to the “diligent investigator of natural phenomena” in explaining the causes of all natural effects. In a treatise “On lines, angles and figures,” or “On refraction and reflexion of rays,” Grosseteste holds that not only vision or light but every natural agent sends forth its virtue to the object affected and acts upon sense or matter along geometrical lines.[1444] This doctrine of radiation or emanation of force seems to date back at least to Plotinus, and we have heard Alkindi among the Arabs in his treatise on Stellar Rays say that the stars and all objects in the world of the four elements emit rays of this sort. From any given agent virtue radiates forth in all directions, but a perpendicular line is the shortest and strongest line of force between it and any other single point or object. From a point or center of influence to a larger surface we get pyramids or cones of radiated force. The same theory is set forth by Roger Bacon under the name “multiplication of species” but even this wording is not new with him, since Grosseteste speaks of the natural agent as “multiplying its virtue” from itself to the thing affected, and then explains that this virtue is also sometimes called “species” and sometimes “similitude” and is the same in whatever way it is named.
[Sidenote: The Computus and calendar reform.]
The Computus, or treatise on reckoning time and keeping track of Easter especially and also other church festivals, had been a variety of mathematical and astronomical exercise indulged in by the clergy even in the darkest periods of the early middle ages. The Computus of Grosseteste pointed out the need of reforming the Julian calendar then in use, and he also called attention to this need in his treatise on The Sphere. From the later use made of it by Roger Bacon[1445] and by Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly[1446] in the early fifteenth century one infers that Grosseteste’s Computus remained an authoritative work upon the subject of calendar reform.[1447]
[Sidenote: Juggling with numbers.]
On one occasion at least Grosseteste’s interest in mathematics degenerated into one of those puerile reveries on the relations and perfection of certain numbers in which so many authors since Pythagoras, if not before him, had indulged. Having stated that in “the supreme body” there are four things, namely, form, matter, composition and compound, Grosseteste states that form is represented by the number one, matter by two, and composition by three, “since there is patent in it formed matter and materialized form and the property of composition itself.”[1448] The compound besides these three things has its own nature and so is represented by four. Now 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. “Wherefore every whole and perfect thing is ten.”
[Sidenote: From mathematics to astronomy to astrology.]
That Grosseteste’s “mathematics” includes astronomy is indicated by his citing “mathematicos” as explaining that the sun burns the regions under the tropic of capricorn more than those under the tropic of cancer, because an eccentric of the sun when it is in capricorn brings it closer to the earth.[1449] These mathematicians disagree on this point with the commentator upon Aristotle who believed that the sun burned more in Cancer. If for Grosseteste mathematics included astronomy, astronomy also included astrology--although he does not usually employ the word mathematicus for an astrologer. To his attitude toward astrology we now turn.
[Sidenote: Astrology in natural philosophy, agriculture, alchemy, medicine and music.]
Grosseteste accepts astronomy or astrology as the supreme science and says in his treatise on the liberal arts that natural philosophy needs its aid more than that of the others.[1450] There is scarcely any operation whether of nature or of man, such as the planting of vegetables, or transmutation of minerals, or cure of diseases, which can dispense with astronomical assistance. For inferior nature does not act except as celestial virtue moves and directs it. He then goes on to detail the effects of the moon, Saturn, and Mars on the hour of planting, and then to emphasize the importance of selecting the favorable hours astrologically in medical practice and in alchemy where he associates the seven planets with seven metals.[1451] He also argues that the harmony of the movements of the celestial spheres is found also in their effects upon the inferior world.[1452] Therefore he who knows the due proportion of the elements in the human body and the concord of the soul with the body, can restore any lack of harmony in the same to its proper state.[1453] In other words, diseases and even wounds and deafness should be curable by music based upon a knowledge of astrology and mathematics, and one should also be able to control such emotions as joy, grief, and wrath.
[Sidenote: Some astrological technical detail.]
In another treatise on how to predict the weather (De impressionibus aeris seu de prognosticatione[1454]) Grosseteste says that one must know such things as the powers of the signs and the natures of the planets.[1455] He then relates the four elements and four qualities to the planets and signs and proceeds to such further technical astrological terms as house, exaltation, triplicitas, terminus, facies, and aspect, and to an explanation of the effect of the eccentrics of the sun and moon upon inferior objects.[1456]
[Sidenote: Man and the stars.]
Grosseteste, like most of our Christian authors, exempts man in part by virtue of his free will and rational soul from the control of the stars. One of his brief fragments is entitled “That man is a microcosm” (Quod homo sit minor mundus), that is, a replica of the surrounding universe.[1457] One of his arguments for the finiteness of this world and of the stars is that all things are made for man and that when he no longer requires the processes of generation and corruption which the movements of the heavens cause, the heaven itself will cease to move and time will be no more.[1458] In a treatise on freedom of the will, he follows Augustine in The City of God in affirming that the rational soul is sublimer than the stars and in denying that all our actions which seem to be freely willed by us are predictable from the constellations, and that fate prevails as a necessity in all inferiors from the motion of the stars. He admits, however, that the human body is subject to two forces; as part of the world of cause it is changed in many ways by the movements of the stars, but it also is subject to the control of the mind especially in voluntary actions.
[Sidenote: Grosseteste’s theory of comets.]
Grosseteste has an ingenious theory which I do not remember having met elsewhere to explain why comets are signs of great disasters. In his treatise on comets he states that a comet is sublimated fire which has been separated from terrestrial nature and assimilated to celestial nature.[1459] The cause of this separation and assimilation by which comets are generated is the virtue of the heavenly bodies. Moreover, each comet has a particular star of its own which draws it as iron is drawn by adamant. This star, even if it is one of the fixed stars, must be related to one of the planets and hence the comet is under some planet also. Grosseteste then further explains that in every earthly object there are incorporated through the action of the celestial bodies particles of a more spiritual sort assimilated to the celestial natures. The generation of a comet, a process in which these fiery or ethereal particles are released from matter and carried up on high, is therefore the first step and sign of a more general release of the spiritual nature and of the consequent corruption of the terrestrial objects and compounds concerned, namely: in the first place, those under the rule of the same planet as the comet in question, and, in the second place, those in the region from which the comet was sublimated.[1460] But it is not easy to discern over which region the comet has especial significance of all those regions which are under the same parallel in which it appears, unless, concludes Grosseteste naïvely, it is that region where men are most alarmed by it.
[Sidenote: Alchemy.]
Grosseteste makes one or two incidental allusions to alchemy which show that he was a believer in the possibility of transmuting metals. He avers that nature intended that all metals should be gold, and that they vary from it only by degrees of imperfection.[1461] In another passage[1462] he mentions a theory of “the doctors of alchemy” that in each natural object there is, besides the four elements composing it, a fifth essence, unchangeable in itself but alterable after it has descended into inferior bodies. Here again we find a connection between alchemy and astrology.
[Sidenote: Other treatises.]
It is probable that not all of Grosseteste’s astrological writings are included in Baur’s edition. He mentions but does not publish a Digby manuscript and another of the thirteenth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Both are astronomical or astrological.[1463] A fourteenth century manuscript in the British Museum contains a treatise of “Grosthede” on the medicinal virtues of herbs.[1464] After the name of each herb the word “Grosthede” is usually added as if the items were extracts from a larger work. The treatise is not included in Baur’s edition and is perhaps spurious.
[Sidenote: Summa philosophiae ascribed to Grosseteste.]
Baur includes in his edition of Grosseteste’s philosophical works a Summa philosophiae which is longer than the other scientific treatises put together but which is probably spurious. The latest authors whom it cites are Alexander of Hales who died before Grosseteste and Albertus Magnus who possibly had written many of his works and made his reputation before 1253 although he lived on until 1280. Its several mentions of Albert are much more likely, however, to have been penned by some younger man than Grosseteste.[1465] And unless a passage referring to the death of Simon de Montfort after the appearance of a comet in 1264[1466] is an interpolation, the Summa cannot be by Grosseteste, unless in the sense that it represents his teaching or is an incomplete work of his to which someone else later put the finishing touches.
[Sidenote: Its contents.]
The Summa is, like the encyclopedias of Bartholomew of England and Thomas of Cantimpré, in nineteen books,[1467] a number perhaps chosen in deference to the seven planets and twelve signs of the zodiac. These books are devoted to the following topics: 1. the rise of philosophy; 2. truth; 3. science; 4. matter; 5. form; 6. virtue; 7. the first cause; 8. the universe--one but not eternal; 9. bodies, space, and vacuum; 10. intelligence and intelligences; 11. the rational soul; 12. the sensitive soul; 13. the vegetative soul; 14. light; 15. the sphere or heavens; 16. nature, universal and particular, and natural virtue; 17. elements and compounds; 18. meteorology; 19. minerals and metals.[1468]
[Sidenote: Oriental origin of philosophy.]
The account of the rise of philosophy includes considerable mention of occult sciences, with which it would seem to have been closely associated from the first.[1469] The Chaldeans are called the first famous philosophers. Sem is regarded as the founder of astrology and Cham, whom some identify with Zoroaster, is said to have invented the seven liberal arts. Abraham’s instruction of the Egyptians in astrology and arithmetic is next mentioned and then Atlas and his nephew Mercury, and the latter’s grandson Trismegistus, of the same name, are spoken of. This second Mercurius Trismegistus was according to Albumasar an illustrious astrologer, pre-eminent in theology and alchemy and magic and a famous prophet, but according to Augustine he was very worthless (vanissimus) in many respects. Long after this Homer revealed philosophy in his stories and Solomon philosophized concerning the nature of vegetables and animals, but in parables, it is believed.
[Sidenote: Greek men of learning.]
After mention of Abrachys, the astrologer of King Nebuchadnezzar, the author then lists the Greek philosophers from Thales to Socrates.[1470] The first philosopher in Italy was Pythagoras who had been thoroughly instructed in the science of the stars and magic by the Persians, Chaldeans and Egyptians. In less than a page a good estimate and contrast of Plato and Aristotle is made,[1471] and the author tries to explain why until the time of Arabic culture Plato was almost universally preferred to Aristotle among the Greeks and Latins. There follows a list of the learned Greeks: Empedocles, Heraclitus, Hippocrates, Euclid, Archimedes, and various orators, astronomers, astrologers, and naturalists (naturales) concluding with “Callisthenes the famous alchemist.”[1472]
[Sidenote: Arabs and medieval Christians.]
Among the Arabs three groups are distinguished of philosophers, mathematici or astrologers--among whom we are amazed to find Julius Firmicus listed, and medical writers.[1473] Thebit also is classed with the Arabs, but Plato of Tivoli, Costa ben Luca, Algazel, Gundissalinus, Constantinus, Theophilus Macer, and Philaretus are distinguished as Christian, and both Rabbi Moses as Hebrews.
[Sidenote: Ancient and modern science compared.]
Approaching his own time the author says that there are many other men whose excellent works of philosophy he has inspected but of whose names he is ignorant or has his reasons for keeping silent about.[1474] He does, however, name John the Peripatetic and Alfred, and still more recently Alexander the Minorite and Albert of Cologne, the friar preacher, as eminent philosophers and yet not to be considered authorities. The author nevertheless has no uncritical veneration for the learned men of the past. He thinks that with the exception of the Peripatetics very few of them had a complete or correct knowledge of the principles of nature and causes of natural phenomena or concerning the transmutation of the elements and the composition of physical bodies.[1475] Compared with moderns he finds their comprehension slight, except as they had fewer problems to occupy them and got results by concentrating for a long time on these. But he can think of no one among them except Boethius who was not guilty of some erroneous opinion. This attitude, however, is perhaps more owing to Christian prejudice than scientific superiority on our author’s part.
[Sidenote: Criticism of Aristotle and the Arabic text.]
Even Aristotle does not escape criticism. We are told that we should not accept his statement concerning the number of movers of the heavenly spheres, for, as Avicenna and Rabbi Moses have pointed out, the science of astronomy was little developed in his time.[1476] Nor are the Arabian commentators upon Aristotle left uncensured. It is said that some of the works of Aristotle in their present form smack more of Arabic loquacity than of Greek eloquence or the Aristotelian style, and that, especially in the Arabic text, interpolations and additions and alterations have been made involving patent anachronisms. Probably there have also been corresponding omissions.[1477] These criticisms of the Arabic text of Aristotle remind us of those which Roger Bacon said Grosseteste made.
[Sidenote: Use of the word “modern.”]
The author of this Summa is quite fond of employing the word “modern” which we heard him use above. He also tells how “Ptolemy, and other more modern mathematici” introduce epicycles in the orbits of the planets to save appearances, but have not fully determined “whether it is really so.”[1478] He also speaks of “Avenalpetras and the more modern Arabs” and calls Albertus Magnus “the most famous of the more modern theologians.”[1479]
[Sidenote: Theology, philosophy, and science; speculative and experimental.]
It is rather outside the limits of our investigation, but I cannot refrain from noting the Summa’s division of theologians into three classes: first, those who are original and have been made saints by the pope; second, those who are original and have not been sainted; third, the unoriginal minds who compile Summae from the works of the other two classes.[1480] The author believes that theology may utilize philosophy to refute heretics but that it must beware of making philosophy its chief end and should use theological terms as far as it can.[1481] Later he states that there are eight celestial spheres, according to the philosophers, nine according to the theologians who include the waters above the firmament as one.[1482] The author divides science into theoretical or speculative and practical or operative. He also has a touch of experimental science, asserting that very many experiences have proved that water will harden into stone,[1483] that the rules of genethlialogy and the predictions of astrologers are based upon the many specific cases observed and classified from experience by past astrologers,[1484] that many experiences in his own age--some of which he presently mentions--have shown that terrible events always follow the appearance of a comet,[1485] and that the alchemists had learned from many experiments that metals can be transmuted.
[Sidenote: Astrology.]
This favoring attitude toward astrology and alchemy is about all that there is left for us to notice in the Summa. The author thinks that no one has ever adequately treated the virtues appropriate to each planet, but quotes Rabbi Moses and Albumasar somewhat on this point.[1486] He has no difficulty in believing simultaneously in freedom of the will and genethlialogy.[1487] He also cites the passage in Albumasar concerning the astrological prediction of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.[1488] In discussing comets, instead of attempting to explain their signifying disaster to whole regions naturally, as we heard Grosseteste do in his treatise on comets, the author of the Summa holds that “they appear of necessity by the will of God alone, not by chance or nature, but by the ministry of intelligences.”[1489] This was also the case with the star seen at Christ’s nativity. It may be, however, that this entire passage about comets and other astrological matters is an interpolation in the Summa, since it is in it that the mention of the date 1264 occurs to which we before alluded. The writer then goes on to say that his master, who was “most skilled in natural and mathematical science and most perfect in theology and most holy in life and religion,” taught him that Noah’s flood was necessitated by a constellation which God had foreordained for the wickedness of the then world.[1490] This, too, is perhaps a sign of an addition by some disciple of Grosseteste.
[Sidenote: Occult virtue and alchemy.]
The author of the Summa believes in occult virtue in nature and attributes it to the stars.[1491] He accepts Albertus Magnus’s explanation of the marvelous virtues of gems as due to celestial influence.[1492] He believes that metals are generated in the earth by the same force and are seven in number according to the seven planets, and thinks that this process can be simulated by alchemy.[1493] In discussing that subject Hermes is his chief authority. The Summa terminates by explaining the superiority of steel to iron and listing various salts.[1494]
[Sidenote: Brother Giles on the comet of 1264.]
Since we have mentioned the comet of 1264, we may note farther that it was the occasion of a treatise by Brother Giles of the Order of Dominicans, on the essence, motion, and signification of comets,[1495] in which he cites Grosseteste De iudiciis and alludes to the death of Pope Urban IV in that year. The comet was seen in the kingdom of France from mid-July to October and “stupefied the minds of many.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1421] References to Grosseteste’s works, unless otherwise stated, will be to Ludwig Baur, Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Münster, 1912, in Baeumker’s Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, Vol. IX. This edition seems to make little effort to correct errors of case or number in the MSS, so that much of the text is far from being smooth reading. Baur discussed Die Philosophie des Robert Grosseteste in Vol. XVIII (1917) of the same series. The life of Grosseteste is treated briefly in DNB, and more fully in the old and pedantic work of Samuel Pegge, The Life of Robert Grosseteste, London, 1793, 385 quarto pages with many foot-notes and appendices, which however are based mainly on the works of preceding antiquaries, the author stating in his preface, “my private station as a country clergyman would not permit me to have much access to public libraries, but the materials were chiefly to be sought for in a book-room which, you will easily suppose, cannot be very richly or amply furnished.” Pegge’s Life was already described in 1861 as “one of the scarcest of modern works”; but the British Museum possesses two copies. Other biographies are by J. Felten, Freiburg, 1887, and F. Stevenson, London, 1889. The letters of Grosseteste, which do not especially concern us, are edited by H. R. Luard in RS XXV, 1861.
Not to be confused with Grosseteste is Robertus Anglicus who wrote a commentary on the Sphere of Sacrobosco in 1271, a Tractatus quadrantis at Montpellier in 1276 (printed 1508), and Canons for the Astrolabe (printed at Colle about 1478): see Duhem, III (1915), pp. 292, 298.
[1422] Brewer, 70 and 75.
[1423] Pegge (1793), p. 8, and Appendix II.
[1424] Brewer, 91; Bridges, I. 67.
[1425] Brewer, 472.
[1426] Baur, 49-50. If, on the other hand, the mention of an Arabic year indicates that the treatise is a translation of an Arabic work, the date would seem almost too late for Grosseteste to have effected the translation. It will be recalled that Bartholomew of England included “Robert of Lincoln” in his bibliography.
[1427] Pegge (1793), 267-91.
[1428] Wharton, Anglia Sacra, II, 325-41, de vita Grosteste auctore Richardo monacho Bordenienso. This life was apparently written about 1500.
[1429] Baur, 124.
[1430] Baur, 105.
[1431] Baur, 150.
[1432] Baur, 68.
[1433] Baur, 36.
[1434] In Sacro Bosco, Joannes de, Sphera, cum commentis, 1518, Reverendissimi Episcopi Roberti Lincolinensis Sphere Compendium, fol. 131 (B1). Baur, 13. De sphaera.
[1435] Baur, 25, De sphaera; Sacro Bosco, fol. 133 (F2).
[1436] De generatione stellarum, Baur, 33 and 34.
[1437] De natura locorum, Baur, 68.
[1438] De iride, seu de iride et speculo, Baur, 72-73.
[1439] Baur, 74.
[1440] Baur, 75.
[1441] Baur, 41.
[1442] In the Temple classics, vol. III, pp. 113-4.
[1443] Baur, 40.
[1444] Baur, 60.
[1445] See below, chapter 61, p. 644.
[1446] See the frequent citations of Grosseteste in his De Correctione Kalendarii, in an edition of the works of d’Ailly and Gerson printed about 1480.
[1447] On the general subject, Kaltenbrunner, Die Vorgeschichte der gregorianischen Kalendarreform, 1876.
[1448] De luce seu de inchoatione formarum, Baur, 58.
[1449] De natura locorum, Baur, 69.
[1450] De artibus liberalibus, Baur, 5.
[1451] Baur, 6-7.
[1452] Baur, 3.
[1453] Baur, 4-5.
[1454] Dover Priory, 409, fol. 80r, Pronostica Roberti Grosteste, would seem from its opening words, “Hoc ornamentum ...” to be the geomancy ascribed to various authors rather than this treatise by Grosseteste.
[1455] Baur, 42.
[1456] Baur, 44.
[1457] Baur, 59.
[1458] Baur, 106.
[1459] Baur, 38.
[1460] Baur, 39-40.
[1461] De artibus liberalibus, Baur, 6.
[1462] De generatione stellarum, Baur, 36.
[1463] Baur, 143.
[1464] Sloane 3468, fols. 43v-64r.
[1465] Baur, 280, 505, 633.
[1466] Following the passage in question, 587-88, other events mentioned are in the life of Emperor Frederick II and Louis IX’s departure from Aigues-Mortes to Egypt in 1248.
[1467] In Erh Ya, the earliest Chinese dictionary, the entries are arranged for ready reference under nineteen heads.
[1468] These headings are not given in the text but are made up by me to indicate its contents.
[1469] I, 1, (Baur, 275-77). For the origins of “mathematical science” see also XV, 12, (Baur, 561).
[1470] I, 2, (Baur, 277).
[1471] I, 3, (Baur, 278).
[1472] I, 4, (Baur, 278-79).
[1473] 1, 6, (Baur, 279).
[1474] Baur, 280.
[1475] I, 7, (Baur, 281).
[1476] X, 25, (Baur, 457).
[1477] I, 10, (Baur, 283): see too XV, 5, (Baur, 551).
[1478] XV, 14, (Baur, 565), Ptolemaeus etiam, ceterique moderniores mathematici: see also XV, 16, (Baur, 567), nonnullisque etiam modernioribus mathematicis.
[1479] XV, 5, (Baur, 551): XII, 17, (Baur, 505).
[1480] I, 11, (Baur, 284-85).
[1481] I, 13, (Baur, 288).
[1482] XV, 12, (Baur, 560).
[1483] XIX, 2, (Baur, 627).
[1484] XV, 30, (Baur, 588).
[1485] XV, 29, (Baur, 586).
[1486] XV, 28, Baur, 583. “De effectibus planetarum famossisimis et de eorum qualitatibus.”
[1487] XV, 30, (Baur, 588-89).
[1488] I, 9, (Baur, 282).
[1489] XV, 29, (Baur, 586).
[1490] Baur, 589.
[1491] XVI, 5, (Baur, 594).
[1492] XIX, 6, 7, (Baur, 633-34).
[1493] XIX, 8-9 and 13, (Baur, 635-36, and 641).
[1494] XIX, 13-14, (Baur, 641-3).
[1495] Pembroke 227, 14-15th century, fol. 250. “Inc. tract. fratris Egidii ordinis fratrum predicatorum de essencia motu et significacione cometarum. Quoniam multorum animos andivi stupefactos ... occasione ... stelle caudate ... que apparuit in regno francie ... a 19º kal. aug. usque 5º non. oct. a. d. 1264.” CUL 2022 (Kk. IV. 7) 15th century, fols. 91-96r. Fratris Egidii de cometis.
APPENDIX I
THE PERSPECTIVE OR OPTICS OF WITELO
[Sidenote: Emphasis upon experimental method.]
In the work on the science of Perspective or Optics, which was composed later in the thirteenth century by Witelo[1496] who calls himself a son of Thuringians and Poles,[1497] we meet again with much the same attitude as that shown in the corresponding works of Grosseteste. The experimental character of the subject is repeatedly emphasized;[1498] we hear much of experimenting with instruments;[1499] and such words as “experimenter” and “experimentation” are used.[1500] Similar passages, however, are also found in Witelo’s main source, the work of the Arab Alhazen on the same subject.[1501] But Witelo also encourages his readers to go farther and experiment for themselves, assuring them that “experience more than books will teach the varied possibilities of images”[1502] from mirrors, suggesting, “Let then the ingenuity of moderns and men of the future add what it shall please,”[1503] and again affirming in the case of burning-glasses, “But in experimentation with these too there is the greatest latitude which we leave to those who are curious in such matters.”[1504]
[Sidenote: Occult and astral virtue.]
Witelo also resembles Grosseteste in his favorable attitude toward astrology and the conception of the radiation of virtue. Already in his preface to William of Moerbeke he speaks of that “influence of divine virtues which is made in marvelous wise in inferior bodies through the virtues of superior bodies,”[1505] of that “divine light” which is “the sensible medium of corporal influences,”[1506] marvelously assimilating and connecting inferior bodies with superior bodies, while he compares the influence of the celestial constellations upon subject bodies to the process of reflection in a mirror.[1507] At the beginning of his tenth book, stating that the virtues of natural forms increased by refraction act more strongly, he adds that universally an increase of the virtue of the rays of the stars or of other forms at the same natural point or about the same point results in stronger action. Such passages suggest that perspective or optic was studied not only for its own sake but for its supposed analogy to the operation of occult and astral virtue. Indeed in his preface he represents William of Moerbeke as versed in such occult research,[1508] and William translated not only astrological treatises but also probably the so-called Ptolemaei de speculis which is really Hero’s Catoptrica. Baeumker believes that Witelo for his part was strongly affected by the metaphysical theory in favor with the Neo-Platonists and Gnostics of primitive light as the origin of intelligence, space, and so on.
[Sidenote: Marvelous effects.]
In Witelo’s work may also be noticed something of that element of thaumaturgy which we noted in Hero of Alexandria. Thus in his eighth book on concave mirrors he speaks of the “marvelous diffusion of natural forms and the multiform deception of the visions beheld,” while in the ninth book on burning glasses we are promised the production of astonishing effects. But as a rule Witelo’s presentation of his subject is geometrical rather than sensational, and his first book, not paralleled in Alhazen, is a geometry of 137 propositions as a basis for the ensuing “universal axioms of this science.” As we have seen, however, Witelo employs the experimental as well as the mathematical method and instruments as well as theorems.
[Sidenote: Further characteristics.]
Unlike Grosseteste, Witelo regards vision by extramission of rays from the eye as impossible,[1509] wherein he follows Alhazen. Of magnifying lenses he seems to display only a theoretical knowledge,[1510] and to add little to Alhazen on this point and less to Grosseteste. In general, however, he is believed by collecting the tradition of the past and filling in the gaps therein to have made the whole subject clearer to the Latin world and to have produced a work which served for several centuries as an excellent text book in the field of optical science.[1511] Its original portion consists especially of observations made by the author at Padua and Viterbo,[1512] which latter town was also the scene of several of William of Moerbeke’s translations. The Perspective was probably dedicated to him about 1270.[1513]
FOOTNOTES:
[1496] I have used the edition of 1572, Vitellionis Thurinopoloni Opticae libri decem, ed. F. Risner, Basel, 1572, where the text of Witelo, occupying 474 pages, is preceded by a Latin translation of Alhazen in 288 pages. The chief modern study on Witelo is C. Baeumker, Witelo, ein Philosoph und Naturforscher des XIII Jahrhunderts, Münster, 1906.
[1497] In his preface to William of Moerbeke. “Veritatis amatori fratri Guilielmo de Morbeta vitello filius thuringorum et polonorum....”
[1498] II, 43, “Experimentaliter etiam et hoc propositum theorema potest declarari ...;” II, 46, “Sed et id quod nunc proponitur potest experimentaliter declarari ...;” X, 43, “Hoc autem potest sic experimento declarari ...” etc.
[1499] II, 42, “Huius propositionis probatio plus experientiae instrumentorum innititur quam alteri demonstrationum. Cum ergo quis experiri voluerit....” II, 44, “Instrumentaliter similiter experientia propositum theorema potest declarari....” II, 45, “Hoc quod nunc hic proponitur est conformiter prioribus per instrumentalem experientiam declarandum....” II, 47, “Illud quod particularibus experientiis hactenus instrumentaliter probatum est naturali demonstratione.... intendimus.... adiuvare....”
[1500] See especially IV, 108.
[1501] Compare Witelo IV, 108 and X, 5 with Alhazen III, 12 and VII, 10.
[1502] IX, 35, “et plus experientia quam scriptura docebit imaginum diversitates....”
[1503] IX, 35, “Ingenium vero modernorum et futurorum addat quod libuerit....”
[1504] X, 48, “Sed et in horum experimentatione est maxima latitudo quam relinquimus ad talia curiosis.”
[1505] “... divinarum virtutum influentiam inferioribus rebus corporalibus per virtutes corporales superiores modo mirabili fieri....”
[1506] “Corporalium vero influentiarum divinum lumen sensibile est medium.”
[1507] “Et dum sic per figuras speculorum discurrimus celestes et omnes naturales influentias a subiectis corporibus sub quodam reflexionis modo ad alia corpora declaramus.”
[1508] “Placuit tibi in illius rei occulta indagine versari,” in the 1572 edition; but in Quetif-Echard (1719) I, 389, “in illius rei occultae indagine.”
[1509] III, 5-6.
[1510] X, 43 et seq.
[1511] Baeumker (1908), p. 237.
[1512] Ibid., p. 224.
[1513] Such is Baeumker’s opinion; why Dr. Charles Singer in his lecture on “Science” in Medieval Contributions to Modern Civilisation, (p. 140), speaks of Witelo as “the earliest” of the group of forward-looking scientific thinkers which culminated in Roger Bacon and dates him “(c. 1250)” I do not know.
LVI. VINCENT OF BEAUVAIS
The Speculum Maius--Events of his life--Was the Speculum naturale finished in 1250?--Order of the three Mirrors--Chronological relation to Albert and Aquinas--General character of the Speculum naturale--Vincent’s method of compilation--Use of Pliny and Aristotle--More recent authorities--Credulity concerning the barnacle birds--A sign of his scientific inferiority--Demons, magic, and superstition--Divination from dreams--The stars--Their influence--Virtues of gems--A chapter on the jasper--Alchemy--Virtues of plants--Animals--The tree of life and the bodies of the damned--Who sinned the more, Adam or Eve?--Classification of the sciences--Concluding estimate of the Speculum naturale.
[Sidenote: The Speculum Maius.]
Of medieval encyclopedists and compilers Vincent of Beauvais may be ranked as chief by reason of his Speculum Maius, which really consists of three voluminous “Mirrors,” the Speculum naturale, with which we shall be chiefly concerned,[1514] and the Speculum doctrinale and Speculum historiale. The Speculum morale, once attributed to him, has been shown to be a later production. The Speculum naturale may be regarded as capping the series begun with Neckam’s De naturis rerum and continued by Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum and Bartholomew of England’s De proprietatibus rerum. The Mirror of History is a world chronicle written from the Christian standpoint. The Mirror of Doctrine is not merely concerned with doctrine in the theological sense but with all fields of art and learning, industry and society, beginning with a discussion of schools of philosophy and educational method and a dictionary of some 3200 words, and running through grammar, logic, rhetoric, poetics, monastic and economic and political institutions, the useful and military arts, medicine, physics, and natural philosophy, mathematics and metaphysics, and finally reaching theology in its seventeenth and last book. Indeed, Vincent himself well described it as concerned with “all arts,” as the other two Mirrors reflect “all things” and “all times.”[1515] It is considerably briefer than the Mirror of Nature which contains almost twice as many books.
[Sidenote: Events of his life.]
Little is known of Vincent’s life and the years of his birth and death are uncertain. He speaks of himself as “Vincent of Beauvais of the Order of Preachers,” and in 1246 was a sub-prior of the Dominican monastery at Beauvais. Like another learned friar of his time, Roger Bacon, he speaks of laborious duties which interrupted his literary activities and forced him to employ copyists. Probably the most important external circumstance of his career was his connection with the royal family of St. Louis. Although a Dominican, Vincent held the post of reader in the Cistercian abbey of Royaumont which Louis had founded in 1228. Vincent seems to have served Louis IX in the triple capacity of royal librarian, chaplain, and tutor of the king’s children. His treatise On the Education of the Royal Children was composed at some time after the return of St. Louis from the Holy Land in 1254, and his Consolatory Letter dealt with the death of Prince Louis in 1260. The date 1264, often mentioned as that of Vincent’s death, rests on the statement of Louis à Valleoleti who wrote in the early fifteenth century. Ptolemy of Lucca who wrote a century nearer to Vincent’s time cites him concerning the three year vacancy in the papacy following the death of Clement IV, which would bring the completion of the Speculum historiale down to 1271 at least, but Daunou showed that this citation was incorrect and that the passage in question was from Martin of Poland, not Vincent of Beauvais. This is perhaps also the case with another passage in Ptolemy of Lucca which Daunou failed to note and which says, “Historians in general state, but Vincent in particular writes” of a comet which portended the death of Pope Urban IV in 1264. Although the duration of the comet was three months, the pope sickened as soon as it appeared and died on the very day that it disappeared.[1516] If the citation is from Vincent, he must have lived beyond 1264.
[Sidenote: Was the Speculum naturale finished in 1250?]
It has been customary to give 1250 as the precise date for the completion of the Speculum naturale, because its last book, which is geographical and historical, states that it will bring the history of the world down to the present year, 1250. Valentin Rose accepted this date so confidently as to argue on the basis of it that, because Vincent did not cite the work of Albertus Magnus on minerals,[1517] that treatise was not written until after 1250. But that such statements of the current year in Vincent’s works cannot be relied upon too implicitly is shown in his Mirror of History. From the list of popes given in its eighth book we should infer that it was composed in 1244 or 1245, since it speaks of Innocent IV as having now sat on the throne for two years; and again the closing chapter of its thirty-first[1518] book states that the author has brought the history of the sixth age of the world down to the current year, that is, the eighteenth of Louis IX and the second of Innocent IV and the thirty-fourth of Frederick II. But other events are mentioned which happened in 1250 and 1254.[1519]
[Sidenote: Order of the three Mirrors.]
It is also difficult to determine the order in which the three Mirrors were completed. Daunou assumed that the Speculum naturale was finished first, and that the Speculum doctrinale treated again of some topics which had already been discussed in the other. He also placed the Speculum historiale later than the Mirror of Nature, believing that it was published at some time after 1254 rather than ten years earlier, and pointing out that in its ninth book Vincent mentioned having used Pliny’s Natural History in his Speculum naturale. On the other hand, the revised edition of Potthast’s Wegweiser regards the Mirror of History as completed about 1244 before the Mirror of Nature. As an intermediate work it mentions Memoriale omnium temporum, an extract in eighty chapters made by Vincent himself from the Speculum historiale. This extract was then embodied in the last book of the Speculum naturale, where an account of the years 1242-1250 was added to it. And in the last chapter of the Speculum naturale, where the coming of antichrist and the last judgment are discussed, we are told that these matters are more fully treated at the close of the Speculum historiale. Thus we have both the Mirror of History looking back on the Mirror of Nature as an earlier work, and vice versa. Thus we apparently have to do with a revised edition of one or both of the works, or with later additions and interpolations which a study of the manuscripts would be necessary to unravel, although very likely it would fail to do so. One might hazard the conjecture that the Mirror of History was first issued in 1244, as it says, and that this edition was the one cited in the Mirror of Nature; that after 1254 a revised edition of the Mirror of History was issued and that in this the Speculum naturale was referred to. There are further objections even to this view, however, as we shall presently see.
[Sidenote: Chronological relation to Albert and Aquinas.]
If the Speculum naturale as we have it was completed by 1250, it would aid us in dating works of Albertus Magnus and Aquinas which it cites. Vincent cites Albert a great deal, especially for the Aristotelian psychology, often without definite mention of the title of the work cited, but sometimes such titles are mentioned as De anima, De sensu et sensato, De somno et vigilia, De animalibus.[1520] Evidently Albert had already completed many of his commentaries upon and elaborations of the Aristotelian philosophy, and had made an established reputation for himself. It is quite possible that this had been already accomplished by 1250, since, while Albert lived on until 1280, he was then an old man. But what is surprising to find in a work written in 1250 are Vincent’s citations of Thomas Aquinas on such questions as “How an angel instructs the soul?” and “What prophecy is?”[1521] In 1250 Aquinas would have been only twenty-three and would scarcely have attained the rank of an authority upon advanced theological problems of this sort, since he did not receive his doctorate in theology, precocious as he was, until 1257. Either then these citations are later interpolations, or Vincent did not complete the Speculum naturale in 1250. But this problem again calls for an examination of the earliest manuscripts.
[Sidenote: General character of the Speculum naturale.]
The Speculum naturale may be described as a sort of over-grown Hexaemeron; indeed, in some of the manuscripts it is entitled, Speculum in Hexemeron libris 32, ex dictis innumerabilium tam christianorum quam gentilium.[1522] That is to say, its consideration of nature follows the order of the six days of creation. But the mass of scientific data is so voluminous as to obscure this underlying Biblical plan, and the work is divided not into six books, but thirty-two and a prologue, or thirty-three in all. The work is, however, more marked by a theological aim, tone, and interest than others that we have considered or shall consider. This is not quite so noticeable as in the Speculum historiale, described by Daunou as “a work planned and executed in an essentially theological spirit,”[1523] and one of whose four books on the twelfth century consists entirely of extracts from the writings of St. Bernard. But as the prologue of the Mirror of Nature ranks the philosophers and doctors of the Gentiles as of the third and lowest grade of authority, as its next book discusses the Trinity and angels as well as the universe, and the third deals with demons as well as elements and atoms, so its twenty-fourth book is largely concerned with the soul and its immortality, the thirtieth with the seventh day of rest and such topics as fate and providence, sin and penitence, and the thirty-first with Paradise, the creation and fall of man, marriage, and so on. We have had other writers begin with the Trinity and angels and demons but thereafter deal more exclusively with purely physical phenomena. We have seen other writers start out with the professed object of explaining the Scriptures but end by discussing nature in a purely scientific way. Vincent, on the other hand, sets out to compile a Mirror of History or a Mirror of Nature but cannot keep his mind off such themes as the fall of man and the last judgment.
[Sidenote: Vincent’s method of compilation.]
Vincent also adheres rather more strictly to his professed rôle of a mere compiler than some of our other medieval writers. He says that he will distinguish his own statements by the word Actor or Auctor, author or editor, and such passages are of minor importance and make little or no new contribution to scientific knowledge. His superiority to other medieval compilers or encyclopedists consists almost entirely in the fact that he has had access to a larger library and has made longer and more numerous excerpts from his authorities than they. As a rule he does not attempt to reconcile conflicting statements in the authorities, warning his readers in the prologue that he is a mere excerptor and not to be held responsible for such inconsistencies. Indeed, he is to such an extent a mere excerptor that it is perhaps more important to note the authors whom he uses[1524] than the subject-matter which he takes from them and which we have already been over in large measure, since we have already considered separately many of his main sources.
[Sidenote: Use of Pliny and Aristotle.]
Vincent is easily indebted to Pliny, with whose entire Natural History he seems acquainted,[1525] more than to any other single source and the Speculum naturale is as much an imitation of it as a development from patristic Hexaemerons. Another constant reliance is Isidore, who of course in his turn had used Pliny extensively. Aristotle and various Arabian authorities--Rasis, Avicenna, Albumasar, Averroes--are frequently cited, but sometimes at least indirectly through Albertus Magnus. In his preface Vincent apologizes for often giving Aristotle’s views not in his own words but in transposed order for the sake of condensation and clearness. Incidentally he reveals that he had the service of assistants in compiling his encyclopedia, since he states that he has not made these renditions of Aristotle himself but that they have been “excerpted by certain brothers.” At the same time he shows how familiar the wording of Aristotle’s text had become by his time and how precise the standards of medieval scholarship were in some respects, when he adds that there are some scholars who will not tolerate the alteration of one iota or the order of a single word of the authority.[1526]
[Sidenote: More recent authorities.]
Vincent is also not ashamed “to learn from modern doctors”[1527] and employs many works of his medieval Latin predecessors from Constantinus Africanus, whom he cites a great deal as Bartholomew did, to Albertus Magnus and perhaps Thomas Aquinas. He makes some use of the Natural Questions of Adelard of Bath, which treatise he once cites as “Adelardus ad nepotem,”[1528] and for matters astronomical he makes much use of the De philosophia or Dragmaticon of William of Conches. He also repeats its locus classicus concerning the waters above the firmament where the view of Bede is rejected for “the more probable opinion of the moderns in this matter.”[1529]
[Sidenote: Credulity concerning barnacle birds.]
While Vincent shows a wide and commendable acquaintance not only with a large number of names of authors and titles, but in many cases with a part or the whole of the contents of the books themselves, it sometimes appears that he has not got all that he might have from the authority in question, and he sometimes does not display the soundest of judgment in what he includes and what he omits in making his selections. The case of the barnacle birds may serve as an illustration. Now Vincent cites the work of Albertus Magnus on animals concerning falcons in the very same seventeenth book in which this chapter on the barnacle birds occurs. With his broad bibliographical attainments Vincent should have realized the worth of Albert’s work and should have imbibed some of its sceptical and critical attitude toward stories of strange and outlandish animals. Albert had branded as liars those who said that birds were born from trees, hanging from the trunk and branches and being nourished by the sap beneath the bark, or that birds were generated from driftwood at sea, and that no one had ever seen such birds lay eggs or have sexual intercourse. Albert and many of his associates had seen them doing both and feeding their young.[1530] Yet Vincent continues to discuss these barnacle birds most credulously. They feed on driftwood. At birth they are naked but gradually grow feathers and float through the sea hanging to the driftwood by their beaks until they come to maturity and bestir themselves and break away. “And we ourselves have seen many of them and trustworthy men have testified that they have seen them hanging thus.” Jacques de Vitry tells of them in his Oriental History: “It is further to be noted that they do not hang in the tops of trees but on the bark of the boughs and trunks. And they grow on the sap of the tree and the infusion of dew until they have feathers and strength and break off from the bark. It may be said with certainty of these birds that in our part of the world around Germany they neither generate by sexual concourse nor are generated. Nor has any man among us ever seen their sexual congress. Consequently some Christians in our time in those places where birds of this sort abound are accustomed to eat their flesh in Lent. But Pope Innocent III in the general council at the Lateran forbade them to do this any more.”[1531] After stating that the barnacle birds eat herbs and grain like geese and cannot go for long without drink, Vincent cites a “Philosopher,” but it is not clear whether as authority for the foregoing statements or the ensuing assertion that the barnacle bird which is born from trees is found also in certain parts of Flanders.[1532] “Philosopher” in this case can therefore scarcely be Aristotle. Despite what was said of the bird’s thirst, it is now added that like trees it has no superfluity.
[Sidenote: A sign of his scientific inferiority.]
Perhaps Vincent had read but little of Albert’s work on animals; possibly the citations of it in the Speculum naturale are later interpolations; but in any case the passage suggests a difference in scientific attitude between the two men. It should be added, however, in Vincent’s favor that his descriptions of fish were in Cuvier’s opinion more precise and correct than those of Albert.[1533] But in general it seems to me that he was neither the personal observer of nature that Albert was, nor did he possess as much scientific discrimination. This defect is bound to affect his whole selection of material and use of authorities, and, together with his somewhat excessive theological bias, makes his compilation, extensive as it is, scarcely representative of medieval natural science at its best. At the same time we see that in the very process of excerpting he gives his compilation a certain character and tone of its own. It will therefore be well, in view of its widespread and enduring influence, attested by numerous manuscripts and printed editions, to give some attention to its contents, and see what attitude it reflects on the subjects of magic, astrology, divination from dreams, and occult virtue in nature.
[Sidenote: Demons, magic, and superstition.]
Vincent’s mentions of magic[1534] are incidental to his discussion of demons and the marvels, transformations, and divination which they are able to work. On these points he repeats the views of Augustine, Peter Lombard, and other like-minded ecclesiastical authorities, and we need not dwell upon them further, except to note that he makes the demons inhabit the lower and misty air, and that his citation of The Golden Ass of Apuleius is probably indirect through Augustine. We should also note, however, a passage in the Mirror of Doctrine[1535] which seems to be largely derived from the Summa of a “brother William,” which may possibly be the De universo of William of Auvergne, although he does not seem to have been a friar. The passage states that incantations may be used to enchant the sick or children or animals, provided no superstitious practice which the church has prohibited is involved, and only licit prayers, adjurations, and such symbols as the sign of the cross are used. Perhaps the practice of hypnotism is involved here. Vincent believes that men and women who introduce many useless and superstitious ceremonies should be forbidden to continue these practices, which should be confined to priests and to laymen and women of excellent life and proved discretion. But he does not object to employment of the divine symbol in plucking an herb or to writing the Lord’s prayer on a scroll and placing it near the patient.
[Sidenote: Divination from dreams.]
In his discussion of dreams and their significance Vincent combines such varied authorities as Aristotle, Avicenna, Albert, Aquinas, and Pope Gregory the Great, who accounted for dreams by a full or empty stomach, the thoughts of the dreamer, the illusions of demons, and the revelations of angels. While recognizing with the Bible that dreams make many err, Vincent agrees “with the saints and prophets that dreams frequently signify something concerning the future.” Dreams are powerfully affected by the motion of the stars in the sky, which is scarcely noticed when we are awake but is manifest in sleep. Dispositions, too, on the part of the sleeper make themselves felt in dreams which are not observed in waking hours, a medieval statement of the Freudian theory. Dreams are not causes but simply signs of the future. Since the events which they forecast are not yet in existence, they obviously cannot portray them plainly but suggest them obscurely in a manner requiring interpretation. Thus to dream of fire is a sign of future anger, to see a great foul mouth in a dream indicates a false criminal accusation, to dream of a scorpion portends secret detraction. It is commonly stated by philosophers that the signification of a dream varies as it occurs at the full moon or the new moon or in the sunshine, and also according to the positions of the planets in the signs.[1536]
[Sidenote: The stars.]
From the influence of the stars upon dreams we may next turn to Vincent’s attitude toward astrology in general. It is a mixture of passages from church fathers against the errors of the genethlialogists and mathematici, and of passages from the philosophers, ancient and recent, affirming the control of the stars over the world of nature. Vincent, however, attempts to combine and reconcile these, and makes his own standpoint fairly evident. He holds that the brief, vague utterances of Aristotle whence the commentators have inferred that the stars are alive do not necessarily imply this.[1537] They are nevertheless superior in certain ways to all inferior life, and are of an unalterable and incorruptible nature.[1538] Vincent undertakes to reconcile the assertion of holy doctors that the heavens neither have souls nor are animals with the doctrines of the philosophers.[1539] He holds that there are Intelligences in the spheres of the heavens who serve the First Cause or Mover and that, although the saints abhor giving these the name of souls, yet they concede that intelligences or angels move the heavens and the stars at the nod of God.
[Sidenote: Their influence.]
From sages and men of old Vincent reiterates such doctrine as that “the movement of the heavens and superior bodies is the cause of all natural motions” and of generation and corruption; that there is no plant on earth which does not have its controlling star; and that “all things which are renewed in the inferior world, except such as are caused by the superior form of our reason, have their efficient causes in the inalterable and incorruptible superior world.”[1540] Vincent devotes much of his sixteenth book to astrological technique, detailing the good and evil qualities of the planets, and describing their houses, exaltations, triplicitates, termini, facies, and their virtues in the different signs of the zodiac.[1541] Like Bartholomew he also reproduces Constantinus Africanus’ account of the control by the planets of the formation of the human foetus in the womb.[1542] In a later book[1543] he repeats the views of Albumasar and an unnamed astrologer concerning the influence of the sun and other planets in human generation. Against their control of such matters as sex, however, Vincent cites the authority of Augustine and some physiological arguments. He further warns us not to subject human reason and free will to fatal necessity of the constellations, citing such authorities as Gregory’s homily for epiphany and Chrysostom’s sixth homily on Matthew anent the Magi and the star, and repeating such time-worn and time-honored arguments as the case of Esau and Jacob or the fact that in fishless inland provinces men are born under the sign Pisces.[1544] Vincent repeats the general medieval belief that comets signify pestilence, famine, or war.[1545] His discussion of Egyptian days we have considered elsewhere. He seems to accept the efficacy of astrological images, repeating the attribution of medicinal virtue and influence on human character to “stones on which you find engraved Aries or Leo or Sagittarius,”[1546] and citing Thetel,[1547] perhaps indirectly through Thomas of Cantimpré, concerning the virtues of engraved gems. But to the virtues of gems let us turn.
[Sidenote: Virtues of gems.]
For the virtues of gems Vincent combines authorities from the Pseudo-Aristotle and Pliny down to Arnold of Saxony and Thomas of Cantimpré. The extreme powers credited to gems by the Magi and Marbod play a prominent part in his ninth book. Selecting by lot five[1548] out of seventy odd chapters we read that the agate averts storms and thunderbolts, gives victory in war, routs venomous animals, aids the sight, slakes the thirst, and promotes fidelity. The balagius stimulates conjugal affection, burns the right hand grasping it, strengthens weak eyes if one drinks water in which it has lain, and protects one against enemies. Coral checks hemorrhage, reduces corpulence, draws harmful humors from the eye, cures ulcers, and benefits heart, intestines, and spleen. Suspended over the mouth it stops stomachache; suspended from the neck it prevents epileptic fits. Suspended from trees or sown with seed it protects the fruit or crops from hail storms. Decayed teeth are filled with it in order to extract them, and it is terrible to demons because it is so often found in the form of the cross. The gem heliotrope makes one invincible in battle and invisible, if it is combined with the herb of the same name and certain incantations. It makes water boil, reddens the sun, prevents loss of blood, is an antidote to poison, assures its bearer long life, and aids in prediction of the future.
[Sidenote: A chapter on the jasper.]
The chapter on the jasper is a good example of Vincent’s method of combining excerpts from varied authors. First he cites the monkish chronicler Helinandus who died in 1227 to the effect that the jasper worn chastely dispels fever and dropsy, and that application of it aids child-birth. The Lapidary of the pseudo-Aristotle repeats this last assertion and adds that the gem clarifies the human sight and checks bleeding. Arnold says it makes a man safe and drives away phantasms, resists luxury, prevents conception, and checks the flow of blood or the menstrual discharge. From Pliny we learn that magicians use it in public assemblies. Philosopher affirms that it renders its wearer chaste, safe, and agreeable, if it has been consecrated, and that it dispels noxious phantasms. Thetel is cited concerning the potency of a jasper found inscribed with a man having a shield about his neck or in one hand, a spear in the other, and a snake underfoot. When the image on the gem is that of a man with a bundle of herbs about his neck, the stone should be set in silver and it will possess the virtue of distinguishing between diseases and checking bleeding. Galen is said to have worn this stone on his finger, and Rabanus says that it drives away idle fears. Thus the same properties of the gem are repeated over and over from the mouths of various authorities.
[Sidenote: Alchemy.]
Before treating of gems in his ninth book Vincent had discussed other minerals and metals in the eighth. There he often alludes to alchemy,[1549] which he regards as a practical art related to the science of mineralogy as agriculture is to botany. He also believes that “by the art of alchemy mineral bodies are transmuted from their own species into others, especially metals.”[1550] It is true that the fourth book of the Meteorology of Aristotle contains the statement that artificers cannot alter species but can only make other metals seem like silver or gold. But some say that this passage is not Aristotle’s but an addition from some other author. Avicenna in the alchemical treatise De anima[1551] represents Aristotle and Plato as favorable to alchemy. So Vincent persists in maintaining that, “while the aforesaid words make alchemy seem false in a way, yet it has been proved true both by the ancient philosophers and the artificers of our time,” and that “transmutation, or rather disintegration” of metals is truly effected through alchemy. The baser metals may be reduced to their simplest form and then reformed into more precious metals.[1552] Vincent also devotes some chapters to “the stone, elixir, by which art imitates nature.”[1553] Avicenna and an unnamed Alchemist seem to be Vincent’s two chief authorities on the subject of alchemy in the Speculum naturale. In the Speculum doctrinale[1554] he again discussed the subject, this time quoting liberally from a treatise De aluminibus et salibus attributed to Rasis. A separate treatise seems to have been formed from these chapters of Vincent.[1555] Vincent’s discussion of alchemy has already been reviewed by Berthelot[1556] who noted the theories that everything has an occult quality opposed to its natural one; that four spirits, mercury, sulphur, arsenic, and sal ammoniac, and six metals, gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, and iron, are generated in the bowels of the earth; and that the metals are generated by mercury and sulphur. The last doctrine in its developed form Berthelot regarded as not earlier than the twelfth century. Berthelot was unable to identify the “Alchemist” cited by Vincent. One can hardly accept Berthelot’s hypothesis that a work which contains ideas not found in the Speculum naturale is later than the thirteenth century. The Speculum naturale was written, if not by 1250, at least many years before the close of the century, and, voluminous as are its extracts, it is very far from being all-inclusive of the ideas of the time.
[Sidenote: Virtues of plants.]
Like Pliny, Vincent devotes much more space to the vegetable than to the mineral kingdom.[1557] But the virtues ascribed to plants are much less marvelous than those credited to stones, and the methods of making use of them are seldom superstitious. In this we have, of course, not merely Vincent’s attitude; he reflects his sources and conforms to the usual medieval position. The virtues ascribed to plants are mainly medicinal; many are doubtless false, however, and Vincent, with his voluminous extracts and citations, magnifies the customary ancient and medieval tendency to make each herb a cure for a long list of very miscellaneous and unrelated ailments. Cinnamon and pepper,[1558] for example, he appears to regard as panaceas, an interesting side-light on medieval fondness for spices. A fair sample of his ordinary treatment is provided by the chapter on the herb Cameleon or Camelea. Pliny says that it purges the stomach and removes phlegm and bile. Ulcers are purged by cooking its leaves in two parts of wormwood and drinking them with syrup of honey, at the same time making a poultice of the leaves. They say that if anyone plucks it before sunrise and states that he takes it for white growths of the eyes, the ailment will be removed by its application. Indeed, gathered in any way it is wholesome for the eyes of the young. Dioscorides says that it removes phlegm and makes a healing poultice for foul wounds. Avicenna holds that it should be used only in external applications, where it has cleansing, soothing, and softening properties. It is beneficial for morphea, scab, ringworm, and corrosive ulcers. By this point the citation from Avicenna must have terminated, since we are informed that the roots of the white variety taken in wine as a drink help a patient suffering from dropsy. These roots of the white variety also kill worms, while the black kind kills any venomous creature. Vincent then cites the Herbarium, presumably of the pseudo-Apuleius, to the effect that the Cameleon has the force of tyriac or theriac, that a decoction of it solves difficulty in urinating and cures intestinal worms and dropsy.[1559] Besides the authors cited in the foregoing chapter Vincent makes use on the subject of vegetation of such writers as Solinus, Isidore, the Hexaemeron of Ambrose, the work of Isaac on diet, Platearius, and Constantinus Africanus. He apparently does not use Galen’s work on medicinal simples directly.
[Sidenote: Animals.]
Vincent discusses animals at even greater length than vegetation, devoting a book each to birds, fish, and snakes; two to quadrupeds; others to animal life and processes in general; and still others to human physiology and psychology. Again we encounter the marvelous virtues, medicinal and otherwise, inherent in parts of animals, and amusing accounts of their ways and instinctive sagacity. The eagle places certain stones in its nest to counteract its own excessive heat in the hatching process; the bird called “goat-milker” steals milk from goats’ udders by night; the cormorant dips its head beneath the wave to collect signs of the weather and flies shoreward clamorously, if it detects a storm approaching; the parrot bites rocks and drinks wine.[1560] Pope Alexander had a cloak made of the wool of salamanders which, whenever it became soiled, was cleansed by casting it into the flames instead of washing it in water.[1561] Vincent borrows his statements of the virtues of animals and their parts to a large extent from Pliny, whose contents we have earlier sufficiently presented. The medicinal virtues of the human body and its different parts are also set forth in much the usual fashion. Vincent’s considerable number of citations from Physiologus are, like Bartholomew’s, difficult to identify with those of any existing Bestiary. Some seem connected with Scriptural Glosses. It is remarkable that while he cites Physiologus a good deal concerning birds and serpents,[1562] in the book on quadrupeds he does not cite Physiologus for the lion, onager, and other such animals as figure prominently in the so-called Physiologus and Bestiaries.
[Sidenote: The tree of life and the bodies of the damned.]
In the thirty-first book on paradise and the fall of man Vincent quotes Peter Comestor who, unlike Philo Judaeus, believes in the actual existence of both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He states that the tree of life was so called from its natural effect, which was so to strengthen in perpetual solidity the body of him who ate of it that he would suffer no infirmity, anxiety, or old age.[1563] Thus Vincent encourages belief not only in transmutation of metals but some natural method of maintaining perpetual youth and health. In the Mirror of History he quotes “the sayings of a certain simple and good man,” to whom, among other revelations concerning the end of the world, the information had been vouchsafed that the torments of the damned would largely consist in the removal from their bodies of all the good qualities which now temper the contrariety of the bad, which would thus be left to vex them unopposed and unassuaged.[1564]
[Sidenote: Who sinned the more, Adam or Eve?]
Vincent ventures on some amusing theological speculation of his own in discussing the interesting question whether Adam or Eve sinned more in eating the apple.[1565] As might be expected of a medieval man and clergyman, he decides against the woman. Eve sinned in four respects and Adam in only two. First she sinned in doubting the divine warning; second, in wishing to steal divinity for herself; third, in eating contrary to the prohibition; fourth, in tempting man to eat. Adam was not seduced into thinking that he could become divine by this method, but was led astray by a certain amiable good-will, fearing to offend his wife if he did not eat the apple which she offered him. Thus Eve’s intention in sinning was the worse and woman has been punished for it the more severely. Yet Adam sinned in two respects, namely, in secret pride and in eating what had been forbidden. Another reason why Eve was the greater sinner was that she sinned against more persons; against God, against herself, and against her neighbor. But in one respect Adam’s sin was the graver; he knew better, while Eve sinned in a certain measure from ignorance and feminine incapacity.
[Sidenote: Classification of the sciences.]
We may also note Vincent’s classification of the sciences. As he adopted the common Christian division of the world’s history into six ages, as in the Speculum naturale he followed the order of the six days of creation, so in the third Mirror of Doctrine he made six fields of knowledge; literary, moral, mechanical, physical, mathematical, and theological.[1566] This suggests Roger Bacon’s selection of the five most essential subjects leading up to the study of theology, namely, the languages, mathematics, perspective or optics, experimental or applied science, and moral philosophy.
[Sidenote: Concluding estimate of the Speculum naturale.]
Such is the Speculum maius or more particularly the Speculum naturale, a work impressive by its very voluminousness and multitude of citations of authorities, valuable as a work of reference, a great storehouse of medieval lore, providing somewhat the same retrospect upon previous medieval and Latin science as Pliny’s Natural History afforded for Hellenistic science. We can, however, recover more of its sources than in the case of Pliny; and when we have read them, Vincent’s excerpts from them drop to a secondary place in our esteem. We see how much of his work had been done for him by previous compilers like Bartholomew of England and Thomas of Cantimpré, and how large a portion of his work is a repetition of Pliny himself. Vincent’s volumes suggest the use of scissors and paste a little too manifestly. On the other hand, his work does not include everything that is in previous medieval writers on nature, to say nothing of others that were to come after him, and the assumption made even by specialists in the study of medieval culture, like Rose, Berthelot, and Mâle, that the Speculum naturale alone is an adequate reflection of medieval natural science and that Vincent is sure to mention any previous writer or treatise,--this assumption is far from true. His Mirror is a glass through which we see darkly and not face to face.
FOOTNOTES:
[1514] Our two chief accounts of Vincent’s life and works are still the long article by Daunou in HL XVIII (1835), 449-519, and M. l’Abbé J. B. Bourgeat, Études sur Vincent de Beauvais, Paris, 1856. A little more recent is E. Boutaric, Vincent de Beauvais et la Connaissance de l’antiquité classique au XIIIe siècle, in Revue des Questions Historiques, XVII (1875), 5-57.
I have used the following edition of the Mirror of Nature: Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum naturale, sine nota (Nurembergae, Anth. Koburger, 1485), in two huge folio volumes. Later editions than this are apt to be very faulty. I have used an edition of the Speculum doctrinale of 1472 (?) and one of the Speculum historiale of 1473.
[1515] Prologue, cap. 17; cited HL XVIII, 475.
[1516] Ptolemy of Lucca XXII, 26, in Muratori, X, 1155. I unfortunately omitted to verify the citation from the Speculum historiale, at the time that I had access to that work.
[1517] As a matter of fact Vincent cites Albert concerning the odors of certain metals (V, 106) without naming any book.
[1518] Or thirty-second book in some editions. As a matter of fact the date 1244-1245 is also indicated at the close of the preceding book.
[1519] In book XXXII, edition of 1473, he mentions the death of Edmund Rich, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1247; and (cap. 102) tells how St. Louis in 1250 sent his brothers Alphonse of Poitou and Charles of Anjou back to console their mother; while in caps. 103-4 we read of Peter of Milan being canonized by Innocent IV in the tenth year of his pontificate or about 1254.
[1520] Vincent does not seem to know or use Albert’s De vegetabilibus et plantis in seven books, citing instead apparently Alfred of England’s translation of the two books of the De plantis. I doubt, however, if Vincent’s failure to cite a work by Albertus Magnus can be taken as sure proof that the work had not yet been written. Vincent was far from noting or including everything that was known in his time or had been written before, although some lazy investigators of the past have seen fit to assume that his work adequately depicted the entirety of medieval natural science.
[1521] Spec, nat., XXVII, 74 and 82; see also 101.
[1522] HL XVIII, 485.
[1523] HL XVIII, 504.
[1524] His use of classical authors has already been treated by E. Boutaric, Vincent de Beauvais et la Connaisance de l’Antiquité classique au XIIIe siècle, in Revue des Questions Historiques, XVII (1875), 5-57; also printed separately.
Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, 1718-1728, XIV, 107-25, gives a list of about 350 names of authors or titles cited in the Speculum naturale; of these 254 are repeated by Daunou in HL XVIII, 483-4.
Unfortunately, at least in the printed edition of 1485, it is often not clear where quotations begin and end, or to just what passages the names of the authorities who are cited apply.
[1525] Daunou (HL XVIII, 486) asserts that Vincent had better MSS of Pliny than Albertus Magnus had.
[1526] Spec. nat., I, 10, Apologia de modo excerpendi de quibusdam libris Arestotelis.
[1527] Ibid., I, 3.
[1528] Ibid., VII, 6-7.
[1529] Ibid., IV, 93-4.
[1530] De animalibus, XXIII, 14. Frederick II, in his De arte venandi cum avibus, was equally sceptical and based his disbelief on personal investigation: Haskins in EHR XXXVI (1921) 351.
[1531] Spec. nat., XVII, 40.
[1532] This treatment and the previous quotation sound rather like Thomas of Cantimpré, but I did not notice such a passage in his De natura rerum at the time that I had access to MSS of it, although at that time I was not searching for this particular topic.
[1533] Hist. des Poissons, I, 35; cited HL XVIII, 489.
[1534] Spec. nat., III, 101-11; I, 19; V, 114; XXXII, 122.
[1535] Spec. doctr., X, 121.
[1536] The passages cited will be found in Spec. nat., XXVII, 52-61, but I have altered Vincent’s order of presentation.
[1537] Spec. nat., XXV, 42-44.
[1538] Ibid., cap. 45.
[1539] Ibid., IV, 26-27.
[1540] Ibid., IV. 37 and 83; XVI, 43.
[1541] Ibid., XVI, 27-42.
[1542] Spec. nat., XVI, 49.
[1543] Ibid., XXXII, 38-39.
[1544] Ibid., XVI, 50-51.
[1545] Ibid., XVI, 58.
[1546] Ibid., IX, 35.
[1547] Ibid., IX, 77.
[1548] Caps. 37, 47, 57, 67, 77.
[1549] See caps. 60, 67, 70, 81-84. etc.
[1550] This passage has already been quoted in HL XVIII, 488.
[1551] Latin text printed Basel, 1572, in Artis Chemicae principes; no Arabic original has yet been discovered.
[1552] Spec. nat., VIII, 84-85. In our chapter on The Pseudo-Aristotle we have discussed the addition of the passage to the fourth book of the Meteorology.
[1553] Spec. nat., VIII, 81-83.
[1554] Spec. doctr., XI, 105-107 and 132.
[1555] HL XVIII, 459.
[1556] Berthelot (1893), I, 280-87.
[1557] Books X-XV deal with herbs and trees, while only VIII-IX are devoted to metals, minerals, and gems.
[1558] Spec. nat., XIV, 70; XV, 65.
[1559] Spec. nat., X, 50.
[1560] Ibid., XVII, 35, 45, 105, 135.
[1561] Ibid., XXI, 63.
[1562] Spec. nat., XVII, 22, 28, 29, 32, 36, 41, 42, 50, 148; XXI, 13, 20, 21, 39, 44, 47, 48, 54, 172.
[1563] Ibid., XXXI, 5.
[1564] Spec. hist., XXXII, 119.
[1565] Spec. nat., XXXI, 73.
[1566] HL XVIII, 517.
Chapter LVII
EARLY THIRTEENTH CENTURY MEDICINE: GILBERT OF ENGLAND AND WILLIAM OF ENGLAND
Representatives of thirteenth century medicine--Question of Gilbert’s date--Works ascribed to Gilbert--The Compendium medicinae--General character of his medicine--An estimate of it by a modern physician--Picturesque compounds--Empirica and an old wife’s remedy--Use of red for small-pox; occult virtue--Magical treatment of epilepsy--Poisons and snake-oil--Eye cures--Influence of the stars--The soul, number, and geometry; physiognomy--Astrological medicine in William of England’s De urina non visa--Other works by William of England or by other Williams.
[Sidenote: Representatives of thirteenth century medicine.]
Medical writers of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century are so numerous and their writings so similar, that it will be advisable to treat of only two or three of them as examples of the rest. At the close of the thirteenth century Peter of Abano and Arnald of Villanova were such important personalities and so addicted, the one to astrology, and the other to occult science, that we must devote an entire chapter to each. Of the writers before them it will perhaps be sufficient if we consider in some detail, first Gilbert of England, who seems to have flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century and who was much cited by the later medical writers; next, a brief but significant work in astrological medicine composed in 1219 by a William of England (or of Aragon?); and finally in a second chapter Petrus Hispanus, who terminated his brilliant career in 1277 as Pope John XXI, and to whose account of “the way of experience” we shall add briefly something concerning the similar discussion of medical experiment in John of St. Amand who seems to have written between 1262 and 1280.[1567]
[Sidenote: Question of Gilbert’s date.]
It seems certain from the citation of Gilbert by Petrus Hispanus and other writers--possibly by Bartholomew of England--that he must have written rather early in the thirteenth century.[1568] Haeser,[1569] who dated him about 1290, and Freind, who dated him about 1270, are both certainly wrong. But his date has not yet been fixed with exactness, and it is doubted whether he was physician to Hubert Walter who died in 1205, as Bale, Pits, and Leland tell us. It is also disputed whether a Master Richard whom he cites was Richard of Salerno, who flourished at the close of the twelfth century, or Richard of Wendover and Paris, who was physician to Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) and died himself in 1252 or 1256. Because our Gilbert cites Averroes it has been argued[1570] that he did not flourish until the middle of the thirteenth century but Michael Scot had translated Averroes’ commentary on the metaphysics of Aristotle early in the century.
[Sidenote: Works ascribed to Gilbert.]
A manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris contains Experiments of Master Gilbert, Chancellor of Montpellier,[1571] and there was a chancellor of that university named Gillibertus in 1250. It remains uncertain, however, whether he was the same as Gilbert of England, and whether the Experiments are by Gilbert of England or perhaps a later compilation made partly from his Compendium and partly from other sources. The Dictionary of National Biography describes the Experiments as “a collection of receipts, many of which bear Gilbert’s name and are certainly his, for they agree closely with passages in his Compendium without being identical.” If “Experiments of a Chancellor and Cardinal” in a manuscript at Madrid[1572] were the same work, there would be reason for thinking that Gilbert of England became a cardinal. “A secret of Gilbert the cardinal” is contained in an alchemistic manuscript of the fifteenth century at Cambridge.[1573] We also hear of a Gilbertus Anglicus who was a great theologian and wrote a commentary upon the oracle of Cyril the Carmelite.[1574] It would not be strange to have in the course of a century or two more than one writer from England named Gilbert. But it also at that time would not be strange to have the same man write on medicine and theology, and such a man is just the one who might be expected to fill both the posts of chancellor at Montpellier and cardinal at the papal court. We shall see that Peter of Spain wrote on logic as well as medicine and became pope. But to note one or two other treatises that have been ascribed to Gilbert of England. An Antidotarium which is ascribed to him in a thirteenth century manuscript[1575] is perhaps a portion of the Compendium, but the commentary of Gilbert on the Verses of Giles concerning Urines was an independent and well-known work.[1576]
[Sidenote: The Compendium medicinae.]
Gilbert’s chief work, and the one which we shall discuss, is the Compendium medicinae,[1577] a medical compilation in seven books. Its quotations from the Surgery (Chirurgia) of Roger of Parma inclined Dr. Handerson to date it about 1240 and not before 1230.[1578] It seems to have set the style for such works as the Lilium medicinae of Bernard Gordon and the Rosa medicinae of John of Gaddesden.[1579] The first book deals with fevers, the second begins with the hair, the third treats of diseases of the eyes, the fourth of ills of the neck and throat, the fifth discusses the appetite, the sixth the liver, and the seventh the private parts. The seven books of Gordon’s Lilium cover the same ground respectively, except that Gordon omits the surgical passages which Gilbert incorporated in his work.[1580] E. Littré in the Histoire Littéraire has described Gilbert’s work as “abounding in superstitious or ridiculous or childish formulas.” To these Gilbert often adds such expressions as “This has been proved,” or copies the accounts in his authorities even to such phrases as “in our presence.” But we have already seen this to be the practice in the far-off days of Aëtius of Amida. Gilbert also often calls this or that assertion false, but here again the scepticism probably does not always originate with him. His work is of course professedly a compilation. Gilbert nevertheless seems at times to speak from his own experience and medical practice.
[Sidenote: General character of his medicine.]
If one were to attempt a brief general characterization of Gilbert’s medicine, it would be that he combines Aristotelian principles and reasoning, and the hypothesis of four elements and four qualities, with a practical regimen of bathing, diet, bleeding, plasters, rubbing with ointments, and the like--which is perhaps largely Salernitan. His procedure is vitiated by a large residuum from early magic as well as by incorrect scientific hypotheses handed down from the Greek philosophers. His pharmacy, however, makes more use of herbs than of gems or of parts of animals. But his recipes are legion and many of them include an absurdly large number of ingredients. He also discusses the signs of diseases, their course and character, and the processes of the human body.
[Sidenote: An estimate of it by a modern physician.]
Since I wrote the preceding paragraph, a rather detailed presentation of the contents of Gilbert’s Compendium has fortunately been published in English from the pen of one better fitted than I to judge its medical defects and merits. Dr. Handerson’s eminently sane conclusions may be briefly indicated by two quotations. “It is not difficult, of course, to select from the Compendium a charm or two, a few impossible etymologies and a few silly statements, to display these with a witty emphasis and to draw therefrom the easy conclusion that the book is a mass of crass superstition and absurd nonsense. This, however, is not criticism. It is mere caricature.”[1581] “The book is, undoubtedly, the work of a famous and strictly orthodox physician, possessed of exceptional education in the science of his day, a man of wide reading, broadened by extensive travel and endowed by the knowledge acquired by a long experience, honest, truthful, and simple minded, yet not uncritical in regard to novelties, firm in his own opinions but not arrogant, sympathetic, possessed of a high sense of professional honor, a firm believer in authority and therefore credulous, superstitious after the manner of his age, yet harboring, too, a germ of ... healthy scepticism.”[1582]
[Sidenote: Picturesque compounds.]
Some of Gilbert’s over-elaborate compounds possess picturesque names as well, for instance, the potion of St. Paul and the ladder of Hermes.[1583] The latter was composed at Heliopolis on the altar of the sun and written not in letters but figures. It consists of sixty different simples and is called a ladder because the amount of these simples used in the compound is increased step by step. First one takes one ounce each of four simples, then two ounces each of four more, and so on for four species at a time, until the quantity of fifteen ounces is reached and the list of sixty simples is exhausted. This compound is asserted to be beneficial for rather more than fifteen ailments.[1584] Gilbert employs various Salernitan pills and they usually contain from ten to twenty ingredients each.
[Sidenote: Empirica and an old-wife’s remedy.]
When other remedies fail Gilbert has recourse, like Marcellus, to empirica. One by which many “under our charge” (in manu nostra) who were thought sterile have borne children is as follows.[1585] In the vigil of St. John the Baptist[1586] dig certain herbs by the roots from the earth before the third hour, repeating the Lord’s Prayer thrice and not speaking to anyone going or returning. In silence, too, extract the juice from the herbs and write on a piece of parchment these words, “The Lord said, ‘Increase’ x Uthiboth x ‘and multiply’ x thabechay x ‘and fill the earth’ x amath x.” If the man wears this writing about his neck, a boy will be born; if the woman wears it, a girl. Other empirica employ suffumigations with a tooth of a dead man and an herb that has grown through a hole in a stone. In another passage to aid child-bearing Gilbert recommends the water in which a murderer has washed his hands.[1587] He repeats the good old remedies for gout of binding frogs’ legs or asses’ hoofs or tortoises’ feet upon the patient’s extremities, right on right and left on left, but cites therefor the mysterious authority “Torror,” while “Funeius” is his source for the use of the magnet in the same way. Gilbert states, however, that he has little inclination towards these things, but that it is just as well not to omit what the ancients have said.[1588] In another passage he tells that a certain old woman has freed many persons from jaundice with the cooked juice of the plantagenet.[1589]
[Sidenote: Use of red for small-pox: occult virtue.]
Gilbert is credited with being the first to mention the employment of red colors in the treatment of small-pox.[1590] It is interesting to note that the passage in which he does this has to do also with the practices of old-wives and with the conception of occult virtue. He writes, “Old women of the countryside give burnt purple in drink, for it has the occult nature of curing variolae. The same is true of dyed cloths.”[1591] Here again therefore we seem to have a real discovery developed from or concealed beneath a bit of experimental magic. John of Gaddesden is said to have used scarlet cloths to cure a son of Edward I of small-pox.
[Sidenote: Magical treatment of epilepsy.]
The following very magical procedure is used for epilepsy and is called expertissimum.[1592] At the first access of the disease, when the patient falls to the ground, all his clothes except his shirt should be removed and placed at his feet. The nails of all his fingers and toes should next be clipped and wrapped in a cloth. A long white thorn is then to be split and the patient dragged feet first through the cleft as far as his middle. The thorn should then be cut into small bits and placed with the nail parings. Next the patient’s hair should be cut in three places. These clippings of hair and the knife used in the operation are then to be added to the other paraphernalia wrapped in the cloth, and the whole is to be buried underground, and the following words uttered. In the patient’s right ear, “Christ conquers”; in his left ear, “Christ reigns”; and to his face, “Christ commands.” Others perform the ceremony differently, cutting the patient’s shoe latchet into four pieces and burying them in the form of a cross at his head, feet, and either hand with some of his nails and hair. And the names of the three kings--that is, the Magi who came to adore Christ--should be worn about his neck.
[Sidenote: Poisons and snake oil.]
Gilbert’s account of poisons repeats such usual statements as that the saliva of a fasting man is poison for snakes,[1593] that the viper deposits its venom on a stone by the shore when entering the water to have commerce with the fish, and that there was a girl fed on poison who caused the deaths of kings who loved her and whose saliva killed animals who approached her.[1594] Gilbert cites for the last “Ruffus,” however, and not the Secret of Secrets. A medicinal unguent is made by cutting off the heads and tails of snakes, as in Galen’s directions for preparing theriac, and distilling an oil from them.[1595]
[Sidenote: Eye cures.]
Parts of animals are much employed in corrosives for eye complaints. Green lizards, all gall, but especially that of birds of prey, omne stercus but human especially, all salts but especially nitrates, the inner skin of a hen’s liver, the blood of a black fly, and many other similar substances are recommended.[1596] For spots in the eyes Gilbert suggests administering whole in drink the little worms with many feet which are found between the bark and trunk of trees. “But they should be taken with the Lord’s Prayer.”[1597]
[Sidenote: Influence of the stars.]
Occasionally a passage evinces Gilbert’s belief in the influence of the stars. He speaks of the participation of the heavens in the process of human generation[1598] and of the influence of the various planets on the formation of the embryo in the womb.[1599] In arguing that a poisonous compound multiplies its potency through the union of the species composing it, and that it “has a stronger action than if it were simple”[1600]--a passage in which there is a close approach to our conception of chemical change--Gilbert adduces the influence of the heavens as a factor in increasing the strength of the compound. He holds that the celestial bodies resemble terrestrial mineral substances in not feeling pain, but that unlike them they are sentient, sensible, and unchangeable. They are bodies, but uncorruptible.[1601] Arnald of Villanova[1602] at the end of the century cites Gilbert’s warning in his first book on fevers against bleeding the patient during dog days or the Egyptian days or when the moon is in conjunction with a malevolent planet. Gilbert adds that the wise doctor will always observe the moon.
[Sidenote: The soul, number, and geometry; physiognomy.]
In the midst of his discussion of dropsy Gilbert digresses to treat of the soul, “because ignorance gives birth to shame and stupidity to poverty.” Some traces of numerical and geometrical mysticism are seen in his discussion.[1603] He represents Pythagoras as saying that the soul is number moving itself, and that of its four properties or functions intellect is like the number one because it comprehends simple matters and so is compared to a point. Reason is like two or a line since it comprehends form as it exists in bodies. Opinion is like four or a surface because it comprehends form as form. Science is like eight or a cube because it comprehends form ut est in subiecto. Gilbert further explains that the three souls assigned to man by Aristotle are really the triple power of one soul.[1604] He compares the vegetative soul to a triangle, the sensible soul to a square, and the rational soul to a circle. Gilbert regards the disagreement between Aristotle and Plato concerning the movement of the soul as verbal rather than real. “Aristotle discusses matters truly, essentially, and philosophically; Plato, figuratively, casually, and mathematically.” Gilbert occasionally embodies the dicta of the physiognomists in his Compendium, for instance: “He whose eyes are large and tremulous is lazy and a braggart and fond of women”; and “He who has large ears is stolid and long lived.”[1605]
[Sidenote: Astrological medicine in William of England’s De urina non visa.]
Because perhaps of Gilbert’s commentary upon the verses of Giles concerning urines, a Master G. of England who is the author of “a book in which he tells how to know the character of the urine without inspecting it and many other things by means of astrology,” in a Vienna manuscript is called in the catalogue Gilbertus instead of Guilelmus Anglicus.[1606] As many other manuscripts[1607] of the treatise show, the work is really the Of Urine Unseen written in 1219 by William of England, a citizen of Marseilles, by profession a medical man, by merit of science an astronomer, as he himself states. Indeed, there are extant other astronomical works by him, one of which is dated 1231.[1608] The object of the brief treatise is how to tell the nature of the patient’s disease and the outcome of it from the stars and signs of the zodiac without inspection of the patient’s urine. The nine chapters deal with (1) “the quadruple way of astrological speculation,” that is, nativities, revolutions, interrogations, and elections; (2) “the comprehension of the effects of superior bodies” on the human body for each sign of the zodiac and the use of astrology in medicine; (3) the division of the human body among the planets and their natures and properties with the diseases appropriate to them; (4) the houses of the planets; (5) the distribution of the parts of the body among the planets and signs with an accompanying chart of eighty-four squares arranged in seven columns and twelve rows; (6) how to arrive at a judgment in any particular case by finding the ruling planet;[1609] (7) “of the place of the liver and its significator and the virtues of the same”; (8) of the color and substance of the urine; (9) of the outcome of the sickness and its end. William mentions in closing a case where he correctly predicted that the patient would die in exactly two months and eight days.
[Sidenote: Other works by William of England or by other Williams.]
We have already alluded elsewhere[1610] to “the very great secret of Catenus, king of the Persians, concerning the virtue of the eagle” which William of England is credited with having translated from the Arabic. And we have suggested that a William of Aragon who commented upon the Centiloquium ascribed to Ptolemy and wrote a treatise on the interpretation of dreams might possibly have been the same man.[1611] We also hear of a “William, master of medicine, of Provençal nationality,” who translated from Greek into Latin the life of the philosopher Secundus, which work he brought with him from Constantinople. Afterwards, we are told, this William became a monk of St. Denis and finally the abbot of that monastery. Secundus is described as a philosopher who observed the rule of silence and led the life of a Pythagorean, and who was associated with the emperor Hadrian.[1612] He appears to have broken his silence enough to give forth Sententiae which were treasured up by that emperor.[1613]
FOOTNOTES:
[1567] HL, XXI, 541.
[1568] On the life of Gilbert, besides the articles in DNB and HL 21 (1847), 393-403, see J. F. Payne, British Medical Journal (Nov. 12, 1904), 1282, and H. E. Handerson, Gilbertus Anglicus, 1918 (published posthumously for private distribution by the Cleveland Medical Library Association, Cleveland, Ohio), 18-24.
[1569] Haeser, Lehrbuch d. Gesch. d. Medicin, I, 711.
[1570] DNB, article on Gilbert.
[1571] BN 7056, fols. 93r-95r, “Experimenta magistri Gilberti Cancellarii Montepessulani”; many of them open, “Gilbert said”; they have been published with a discussion of their authorship by P. Pansier, in Janus, (1903).
[1572] Escorial P-II-5. 14th century, fols. 69v-74, Incipiunt experimenta Cancellarii et Cardinalis.
[1573] Trinity 1120 III, 15th century, fols. 19-21.
[1574] Gonville and Caius 388, 14-15th century, fol. 103, “Gilbertus Anglicus super oraculum Cyrilli Carmelitae. Frater Gilbertus anglicus, magnus ille theologus....”
[1575] Gonville and Caius 379, 13th century, fols. 134-41r, headed in an old hand, “Inc. Antitodus Gileberti ... / ... Expl. Antidotarium Guilberti.”
[1576] Many copies of it are listed in the 15th century catalogue of MSS of St. Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury. An extant 13th century MS at Cambridge is St. John’s 99, fols. 11-22v, “Versus Egidi de urinis cum commento gilberti.”
[1577] The following citations will be to the edition of Lyons, 1510.
[1578] Handerson (1918), pp. 22-24.
[1579] For a treatment of him in English see H. P. Cholmeley, John of Gaddesden and the Rosa Medicinae, Oxford, 1912. The Rosa was printed at Pavia, 1492 (the John Crerar Library, Chicago, has a copy of this edition), and again in 1516 and 1595. Gordon’s Lilium was printed at Venice in 1496 (also in the John Crerar Library); it had previously been translated into French and Spanish. See HL. 25, 329ff. for Gordon’s life and other writings.
[1580] “Gordon’s work does not contain a single chapter on surgery proper,” Handerson (1918), 77.
[1581] Handerson (1918), p. 75.
[1582] Ibid., 76.
[1583] Compendium medicinae, fols. 119v. and 357r.
[1584] Possibly there is some connection between the 15 steps of this ladder of Hermes and the 15 fixed stars of first magnitude and the treatise ascribed to Enoch or Hermes on 15 stars, 15 herbs, and 15 stones.
[1585] fol. 287r.
[1586] Or Midsummer eve.
[1587] fol. 307r. “Lotio manuum alicuius interfectoris detur.”
[1588] fol. 327r. “Quamvis ego declino ad has res parum, tamen est bonum scribere in libro nostro ut non remaneat tractatus sine eis qui (?) dixerunt antiqui.”
[1589] fol. 260v.
[1590] Handerson (1918), 52.
[1591] fol. 348. “Vetule provinciales dant purpuram combustam in potu, habet enim occultam naturam curandi variolas. Similiter pannus tinctus de grano.”
[1592] fol. IIIv.
[1593] fol. 349r.
[1594] fol. 348v.
[1595] fol. 120v.
[1596] fol. 134.
[1597] fol. 136r.
[1598] fol. 284v.
[1599] fol. 305v.
[1600] fol. 350v.
[1601] fol. 304r.
[1602] Regule Generales Curationis Morborum, Doctrina IV. “Item ille Gilbertus anglicus in prima parte sui libri in cura ethice.” That is, in that portion of the first book of the Compendium devoted to the fever called “ethica.” This passage in Gilbert is also referred to by Handerson (1918), 29.
[1603] fol. 243r.
[1604] fol. 244r.
[1605] From Handerson (1918), 34-36 where further illustrations are given.
[1606] Vienna 5207, 1342 A. D., fols. 208-10, “Incipit liber magistri G(ilberti) Anglici in quo docet cognoscere disposicionem urine non vise et multa alia secundum astrologiam.”
[1607] Some MSS are: Cotton Appendix VI, fols. 2-5; Sloane 3281, 13th-14th century, fols. 76v-79; Harleian 2269, a paper folio, fol. 88; Ashmole, 345, 14th century, fols. 70-74; Ashmole 393, 15th century (?), fols. 56-57v, “Explicit liber Anglici nationis quondam civis Marsiliensis de urina non visa editus 1219”; Canon. Misc. 46, 15th century, fols. 61-67; CU Trinity 1406, 15th century, fols. 173-6; BN 7298, 14th century #17; BN 7328, 7413, 7416, 7440; CLM 267, 14th century, fols. 46-8; CLM 588, 14th century, fols. 93-6; Berlin 963, 14-15th century, fols. 74-6; Vienna 5311, 14-15th century, fols. 42-52; Amplon. Folio 37, fols. 49-51, de urina non visa, followed at fol. 52 by “de pactis secundum astrologiam,” which would seem to be another treatise; Amplon. Quarto 196, 361, and 391; Amplon. Quarto 345, 14th century, fols. 53-4 astrologia de iudiciis medicine, is probably the De urina non visa; but Amplon. Quarto 357, 13-14th century, fols. 1-21, astrologia, seems rather long for it.
I have read the treatise in Cotton Appendix VI, Canon. Misc. 46, and Ashmole 345. It opens, “Ne ignorancie vel pocius invidie redarguar, mi Germane, qui quandoque apud Masciliam aliquando mecum studuisti ...” but the wording of this opening sentence varies a little in different MSS.
Duhem, III (1915), 287-91, suggests that “mi Germane” may refer to Gilbert of England who would thus be William’s brother or cousin.
[1608] They will be found listed with references to MSS and such portions as have been printed in Duhem, III (1915), pp. 287-91.
[1609] “de inventione iudicis cui nomen almutaz.”
[1610] See above, p. 93.
[1611] See above, p. 301. I realize that William would have to be indeed a cosmopolitan to come from both England and Aragon as well as being a citizen of Marseilles; but copyists may have confused Aragon and Anglicus, although it does not seem very likely.
[1612] CUL 186, 13-14th century, fols. 66-67, “Incipit vita Secundi philosophi de Greco in Latinum translata a Magistro Willelmo medico natione Provinciali. Hanc secum de Constantinopoli detulit; post factus monachus in cenobio Sancti Dionisii; ac postremo perficitur Abbas eiusdem loci.” Opens, “(S)ecundus fuit philosophus: hic philosophatus est omni tempore silentium conservans, et Pitagoricam ducens vitam.” Ends, “precepit eius libro sacre bibliothece inseri et intitulari.”
CUL 1391, 14th century, fol. 214v, “De Secundo philosofo,” has the same Incipit.
Other MSS are CLM 9528, 13th century, fol. 33-, “Erat quidam philosophus Secundus dictus”; and CLM 18757, 15th century, fol. 22-25.
There are doubtless many more MSS. Manitius (1911), p. 285, states that “Der lateinische Secundus findet sich übrigens in alten Katalogen von s. XIII an nicht selten, ... nämlich in Canterbury (Christ-Church und St. Augustin), Dover, Peterborough, Prüfening, Durham, bei Benedikt XIII, Amplonius von Ratinck, Borso d’Este und in Leicester.”
[1613] The Dicta or Sententiae of Secundus were printed with the Altercatio Hadriani Aug. et Epicteti philosophi, in 1628; see Manitius (1911), pp. 268 and 284.
LVIII. PETRUS HISPANUS
Nationality: at Paris--Medical works and later life--Death and character--The Thesaurus pauperum--Is it interpolated?--Its essential character is fairly represented even by the printed version--Devout tone of its preface--Arrangement of the text--Emphasis on occult virtue--Authority and experiment--Some of Peter’s authorities--Parts of animals; suspensions--Remedies for toothache--Prescriptions for epilepsy--Against sorcerers and demons--De morbis oculorum--Summa de conservanda sanitate--A marvelous treatise on waters--Other works ascribed to him--Commentaries on Isaac’s Diets; their scholastic method--Their questions concerning nature--Absence of astrology and occult virtue--Incorrect ideas about nature--Reason and experience--Via experimenti--Question of Peter’s relation to Roger Bacon and Galen--John of St. Amand on medical experimentation--Natural and occult science in John of St. Amand--Appendix I. Some Manuscripts of the Thesaurus pauperum.
[Sidenote: Nationality: at Paris.]
Petrus Hispanus, or Peter of Spain, who finally became Pope John XXI, is said by Ptolemy of Lucca, who died fifty years after him in 1327, to have been of Portuguese nationality.[1614] His birth is placed at Lisbon between 1210 and 1220, and he is said to have been the son of a physician named Julian.[1615] However, in the preface to his De conservanda sanitate, as preserved in a fifteenth century manuscript, Peter speaks of himself as from Compostella and as familiar with all Italy, Burgundy, Gascony, and parts of Spain.[1616] In other manuscripts he calls himself Petrus Hispanus. He came to the University of Paris at an early age, as he himself testified when pope in a letter to the bishop of Paris.[1617] In the same epistle he refers to the many years he spent at Paris occupied with varied studies. His text-book in logic was universally adopted and often commented upon, and has now been shown to be, not, as Prantl held in his History of Logic,[1618] a copy of the work of Psellus, but an independent product of the Parisian school. It was printed from forty to fifty times between 1477 and 1519.[1619]
[Sidenote: Medical works and later life.]
From 1246 to 1250 Peter was at Siena in the faculty of arts. Perhaps he then wrote the letter to the emperor, Frederick II, On the Rule of Health, if it be a genuine work, which precedes his Thesaurus pauperum in at least one manuscript.[1620] Ptolemy of Lucca calls Peter “an all-round scholar and specialist in medicine,”[1621] and mentions particularly among his medical works the famous Thesaurus pauperum, which we shall presently consider as a very influential and representative handbook of medieval medicine. In all seventeen medical works are attributed to Peter, of which only three have been printed.[1622] At the beginning of his treatise on eye diseases Peter speaks of himself as a professor of the art of medicine and an investigator of the truth.[1623] In the Thesaurus pauperum he cites Albertus Magnus as well as Gilbertus Anglicus, but he probably did not write it very late in life. Pope Gregory X made Peter a cardinal in 1273,[1624] he was also an archbishop, and in 1276 the career of the celebrated scholar culminated in his election to the papal see following Gregory’s death.
[Sidenote: Death and character.]
The next year Peter met an untimely death from the fall of a ceiling, a catastrophe which according to the gossip of Ptolemy of Lucca occurred while he was engaged in a fit of complacent and self-admiring laughter and shortly after he had issued some fulminations against the monks, for whom he had little love. Ptolemy criticizes the pope as not dignified enough in speech and manner for his office, but concedes that he was easily approached and very kindly to all scholars and men of letters. Millot-Carpentier regarded him as “assuredly one of the most illustrious personages of the thirteenth century both as a philosopher and as a dialectician,” and as “a true scholar and worthy representative of the University of Paris, ... having all the faults of his time but endowed with a liberal spirit.”[1625] Millot-Carpentier also gives a list of ecclesiastical offices, honors, and dignities held by other physicians of the period in addition to the supreme honor of a papal election which Peter attained.
[Sidenote: The Thesaurus pauperum.]
Peter’s book, the Thesaurus pauperum, became perhaps the leading brief medical manual during the remainder of the middle ages, as the numerous extant manuscripts and many printed editions bear witness.[1626] It was translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and English. The work was intended to be a condensed compilation and its title, “The Treasure of the Poor,” indicates that it was written especially for the benefit of poor students and medical practitioners, who could not afford many books. It thus continues the type of book represented by Galen’s Euporista and by the compendiums of post-classical medicine, and is to be regarded, like Bartholomew of England’s “On the Properties of Things,” as an example of a medieval text-book and not as a specialized work.
[Sidenote: Is it interpolated?]
Stapper states in his Life of Pope John XXI[1627] that the text of the Thesaurus pauperum has suffered greatly from later interpolations, that every successive transcriber of the manuscript felt at liberty to add any further recipes of past authors that hit his fancy, and that thereby a great deal of superstitious nonsense for which the pope should not be held accountable was added to the original work. But on what authority or from what personal inspection of manuscripts Stapper makes this assertion is not clear. He lists, it is true, a number of manuscripts in continental libraries and a few at Oxford, but his citations of the Thesaurus pauperum are all from the Lyons edition of 1525. It is also true that he affirms that he has searched the manuscripts in vain for the sentence in the preface of the printed text in which it is stated that ligatures are not superstitious. But I have found the passage without much search in three manuscripts of one library.[1628] Possibly one reason why Stapper failed to find it is that the opening word of the sentence is not Litteras, which he gives presumably from the 1525 edition, and which would mean “characters” if it could mean anything in the context in question, but Ligaturas, as the 1497 edition correctly has it.[1629]
[Sidenote: Essential character of the work fairly represented even by the printed version.]
My own feeling is rather that the book, even in the printed editions of 1497 and 1578 which I had access to, is not more superstitious than one would expect a compilation of ancient, Arabic, and medieval medicine to be. The 1497 edition, it is true, confesses to a number of additions from a Peter of Tuscany (? de tusciano) and from Bernard Gordon; but it gives these additions separately at the close of various chapters. I have also inspected a number of manuscripts of the work at the British Museum, none of which Stapper mentions in his list, and which date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is not easy to compare these different copies or versions, since they vary greatly in headings and arrangement, so that the same statement may be found in different places in them. But there seem to be passages in the 1497 edition which are not in the manuscripts, and these in turn, as is usually the case, are not all alike in contents.[1630] But while there may be considerable interpolation, it does not seem to have essentially altered the original character of the book. The superstitious nonsense may have increased in amount but scarcely in degree. Much the same sort of remedies may be found in the earliest manuscript and latest printed text. To be on the safe side, however, in the ensuing account of the Thesaurus pauperum I shall follow the manuscripts rather than the printed text. I shall then add some account of other treatises which I have found ascribed to Peter in the manuscripts and of his printed Commentaries on Isaac’s Diets.
[Sidenote: Devout tone of its preface.]
The brief preface, which appears in most of the manuscripts that I have seen as well as in the printed editions, gives a good idea of the nature of the work. Its opening sentence reflects the religious spirit of the age and status of the author. “In the name of the holy and indissoluble Trinity, who created all things which are not God and who endowed individual objects with their particular virtues, from whom all wisdom is given to the wise and science to scientists, I approach a task beyond my powers trusting in the aid of the same, who works through us as instruments all good works.” In a second sentence, given differently in the manuscripts and printed texts, the author states the title of his work, Thesaurus pauperum. Later he adds that the attentive reader will find here easy and efficacious medicines for almost all infirmities, provided he has Him as helper who created medicine from earth. He also warns the physician, lest by his science he impugn God the giver of science, to take the utmost care not to reveal to anyone any medicines by which pregnancy may be prevented or abortions provoked. In most manuscripts that I have examined the preface presently concludes with the sentence, “Therefore in the name of Jesus Christ, the supreme physician, who heals at His will all our infirmities, since He is the head of the faithful, let us begin with diseases of the head and descend to the feet.”
[Sidenote: Arrangement of the text.]
This top to toe order, taking up one ailment after another and listing remedies in connection with each, was already common[1631] and is generally followed with some variations in the manuscripts. The 1497 preface also states that the work is divided into four books, but this division is neither promised nor performed in most of the manuscripts. Two seem to go no farther than where the third book ends in the 1497 edition, and two others give the first few chapters of its fourth book as a separate treatise on fevers.[1632] Indeed the colophon to the 1497 edition states that Peter’s treatise on fevers has been added to the Thesaurus pauperum. In the 1578 edition instead of four books we find simply eighty-five headings representing as many diseases. Some manuscripts also have tables of contents. Royal 12 B III gives but fifty-two headings, ending with quartan fever, while Additional MS. 32,622 and Harleian MS. 5218 sometimes have more and sometimes fewer headings than the 1497 text, which has 21, 18, 19, and 20 chapters respectively in its four books. The other manuscripts which I have seen have to a considerable extent the same headings, and still more so the same matter, but the order varies somewhat.
[Sidenote: Emphasis on occult virtue.]
Returning to the preface, we may note that the author counsels the reader not to despise what he reads because it is unfamiliar to him, and also not to apply the remedies before carefully considering the nature of the disease and the condition of the patient. “And let him study diligently to learn the natures and constitutions and substances of things, and as far as he can the occult virtue of particular things.”[1633] Otherwise it will be a case of blind leading blind. We have already seen that in addition to this profession of belief in occult virtue of particular objects some manuscripts, though hardly the oldest or most reliable ones, assert further that ligatures are not superstitious but act directly, especially if a right foot is bound on the right foot, or a male animal on a man.
[Sidenote: Authority and experiment.]
The preface also informs us of the sources whence the work has been compiled. These are “the books of the ancient philosophers and masters and of modern experimenters.” The author has tried either to present their views in their own words, or to express their precise meaning in other words of easier comprehension, so that if you had their books at hand you would find nothing other than what he sets down here, and so that in perusing his book you may seem to read the originals. The mention of “modern experimenters” is a foretaste of the “experimental” character of the Thesaurus pauperum. In some manuscripts it is called a Book of Experiments or a Summa of medicinal experiments, and it is sometimes included in collections of expressly experimental works. One reason for this is the common medieval use of the word “experimentum” for almost any medicinal recipe or remedy, but another reason is that Peter’s remedies are rather empirical in character. And as early as Galen’s time the Empirics relied partly for their experiences upon the statements of past authors. Moreover, we meet throughout the Thesaurus pauperum with assurances that this or that has been experienced, or that experts or “Experimenter” have said so, or even that “I have experienced this.”[1634] These uses of the first person are often probably copied from Peter’s authorities, but they later came to be regarded as his own experiences, since the 1578 edition describes the Thesaurus pauperum in the full title as “an empirical work from all sorts of authors and his own experience.”
[Sidenote: Some of his authorities.]
Among his authorities Peter makes much use of recent works and writers, such as Constantinus Africanus and Platearius and the Antidotarium of Nicholaus, Walter and Richard and Roger, Experimentator and Lapidarius and Liber de natura rerum, Gilbert of England and Albertus Magnus. He of course utilizes such Hebrew and Arabic medical writers as Isaac, Rasis, Haly, and Avicenna. It is worth noting as a hint of the superstitious character of parts of his work that he cites the Kiranides a good deal. Galen and “Dyascorides”--often pseudo, Pliny and Esculapius, are of course not forgotten.
[Sidenote: Parts of animals: suspensions.]
Much use is made of parts of animals, and perhaps especially of those least to be mentioned. Less nauseating examples are, among many similar parts of animals prescribed for epileptics, the liver of a vulture drunk with its blood for nine days, or the gall still warm from a dog who should have been killed the moment the epileptic fell in the fit. This last is borrowed from Gilbert. Portions of the human body, too, are employed; for instance, burnt human bones or the tooth of a dead man. Suspensions from the neck of such objects as the hairs of a dog or a cabbage root are also in favor.[1635]
[Sidenote: Remedies for toothache.]
Selection of a few details from two or three specimen chapters will further illustrate the nature of the contents. For toothache is recommended touching the ailing tooth with one from a corpse, holding in the mouth violets cooked in wine, holding a grain of opium between the teeth. Other remedies are vinegar in which a root of jusquiam has been boiled, deer horn burnt until it whitens and dries, and a powder made from dogs’ teeth. Cavities may be filled with the brain of a partridge or crow’s dung. The latter “breaks the tooth and removes pain.” A tooth may be easily extracted by touching it with dog’s milk or applying a hot root of jusquiam to its roots. But in the latter case beware not to touch the other teeth or they will fall out too.[1636] These remedies are, however, mild indeed compared to the treatment for toothache prescribed by Pliny in two chapters of his Natural History.[1637] Nor do I find in those chapters a passage ascribed to Pliny in the Thesaurus pauperum, in which one is directed to dig a root without use of iron, touch the ailing tooth with it for three days, and then replace it where one has dug it, after which “that tooth will never ache again.”
[Sidenote: Prescriptions for epilepsy.]
For epilepsy besides parts of animals and suspensions already mentioned, “Experimenter says and I have heard from experts that eating a wolf’s heart cures.”[1638] Or one may try the following experiment: Take a frog and split him down the back with a knife, and extract his liver and wrap it up in a cabbage leaf, and reduce it to a powder in a sealed pot, and give it to the epileptic to drink with the best wine. “And if one frog does not cure him, give him another, and so on until he is cured; and don’t doubt concerning the cure, for he will be cured beyond a doubt.”[1639] From Constantinus and Walter[1640] is repeated the cure of an epileptic child by bringing him to church on certain days and having him hear mass and having the priest read over him the Scripture about this sort of demon not being cast out except by fasting and prayer. Most of the manuscripts also state that one who carries with him the names of the three kings who adored Christ will be free from epilepsy, and some give their names, Jasper, Baltaser, Melchior.[1641]
[Sidenote: Against sorcerers and demons.]
Under the caption of remedies for witchcraft and possession by demons are found such procedures as smearing the walls of the house with the blood of a black dog or burying a reed filled with quicksilver under the threshold. A recipe to rescue a patient from infatuation in love produced by sorcery is hardly translateable, but affords too good an example of sympathetic magic or of human psychology to be omitted entirely. “Si quis ad aliquam vel aliquem nimis amandum maleficiatus fuerit, tum stercus recens illius quem vel quam diligit ponatur in ocrea vel in calceo dextro amantis, et calciet se et quamprimum foetorem sentiat, maleficium solvetur.” It is also stated that wearing the heart of a vulture makes one popular with all men and very wealthy, and that by vivisecting the bird hoopoe and eating its still palpitating heart one may learn the future and all secrets concealed in men’s minds.[1642]
[Sidenote: De morbis oculorum.]
Very similar to the remedies of the Thesaurus pauperum are those in Peter’s treatise on diseases of the eyes.[1643] The works are further alike in being compilations and yet experimental or empirical. Peter states that he has collected his material on eye diseases from many books at the urging of a disciple,[1644] and that it is based upon reason and experience. Of one recipe for removing ingrowing eyebrows he says, “I have tested this with my own hands”; and he cites as an experiment of Rasis the trite prescription of using the blood of a bat to prevent eyebrows or lashes which have been plucked out from growing again.[1645] Millot-Carpentier[1646] has already given a number of these eye-cures, bringing out chiefly the great use of parts of animals, which we have already remarked in the case of Gilbert of England. We may further note a bit of astrology. Peter first makes the general assertion that the human body is subject to the planets and signs,[1647] and later in describing the eye notes that it has seven tunics or humors covering it like the seven planets. There is also, as in the Thesaurus pauperum, some use of Christian incantations. To remove a fistula from the eye, besides using the blood from a cock’s crest and pulverized snakeskin one should bind the leaf of an herb about the patient’s foot and say, “As Christ descended from heaven into the Virgin’s womb, so may the fistula descend from the eye to the foot.”[1648] This is of course also an example of the magic transfer of disease.
[Sidenote: Summa de conservanda sanitate.]
A third treatise exists under Peter’s name in a British Museum manuscript and is called a “Summa concerning the preservation of health and those things which assist and harm it.”[1649] This work opens in a more self-confident and flamboyant style than the other treatises where Peter spoke of himself in a self-depreciatory manner. Now after a few lines of pious introduction we read, “Let the Jews blush, the Saracens be put to confusion, roving practitioners desist, old enchantresses be dumb, and empirics and methodics keep silence. Let rational physicians rejoice and those descendants of the medical art who employ both reason and experience. I, master Petrus Hispanus, a native of Compostella, have pursued my education (expertus ... alumpniam) in all Italy, Burgundy, Vienne, Provence, Gascony, and certain parts of Spain. Certain useful natural phenomena which are not found in the bosom of the art of medicine I have discovered by labor, vision, chance, experience, and genius to be both useful against diseases and the causes of diseases; and I have demonstrated certain instructive experiments for conserving the safety of the human mechanism, and I have experienced that all things from the eighth sphere to the earth’s center are governed by the law of reason (veridica ratione habentur).” At first, however, the treatise consists of general rules and precepts for guarding one’s health rather than experiments or recipes. Astrology comes in again in the statement that the motion of the superior bodies is one of the causes of the shortening of human life. Presently the author considers different parts of the body in turn, as the brain, eyes, ears, teeth, lungs, heart, stomach, liver, spleen, and feet, and lists things which are good and bad for each. Things which harm the brain,[1650] for example, are quicksilver, the cerebellum of all animals except the dog and the fox, fetid odors, gluttony and drunkenness, sleeping immediately after eating--if the brain is weak, bathing after eating, turbid air, worry over temporal affairs, eating with bent head, and eating a great deal of fish or milk, cheese, unripe fruit, and nuts. Among things beneficial for the eyes frequent washing of the feet is suggested.
[Sidenote: A Marvelous Treatise on Waters.]
A Marvelous Treatise on Waters which master Petrus Hispanus composed with natural industry guided by the intellect is found in a number of manuscripts. Sometimes it appears to be the closing part of his treatise on diseases of the eyes,[1651] and its first item is “a marvelous water to preserve and clarify the sight.” But it also is found as a separate treatise, in which directions are given for distilling various liquids, which in at least one manuscript are accompanied by two figures of chemical apparatus.[1652] In another manuscript the word philosophus is substituted for master Petrus Hispanus in the title given at the beginning of this paragraph, but the treatise is presumably the same.[1653] In this case, at least, it seems to include exactly twelve waters[1654] and so to conform to other medieval books Of twelve waters, of which we treat further in another chapter.[1655] Also its last two “waters” are an elixir of life and alcohol.[1656] If Peter of Spain came from Compostella, he may have had something to do with a Book of Compostella, which treats of many waters and of many oils and of many salts of great virtue. However, Brother Bonaventura, a Franciscan, is said to have composed the book in the convent of the Brothers of St. Mary in Venice.[1657]
[Sidenote: Other works ascribed to him.]
A Rule of Health[1658] and a Rule of Safety through all the months,[1659] which are ascribed to Peter in still other manuscripts, very likely have some connection with the above-mentioned Summa de conservanda sanitate or with the Letter to Frederick on the Rule of Health which has also been mentioned earlier in this chapter. A treatise on anatomy is attributed to Peter in an Italian manuscript,[1660] and a Book of Life and Death and of the Causes of Longevity and Brevity of Life is listed as his in an Oxford manuscript.[1661] Perhaps the shortest work ascribed to him is one of seven verses on rain.[1662] Commentaries by him on one or more of the following works are contained in a manuscript at Paris:[1663] the Introduction of Johannitius (Honein or Hunain ibn Ishak) to the Ars parva of Galen, the Prognostics of Hippocrates, Philaretus concerning the pulse, Theophilus on urines, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, the Microtegni itself. A Liber naturalis de rebus principalibus naturarum is ascribed to Peter in a Vienna manuscript.[1664]
[Sidenote: Commentaries on Isaac’s Diets: their scholastic method.]
We come finally to Peter’s Commentaries upon the works of Isaac on Universal Diets and Particular Diets.[1665] They are as full as the Thesaurus pauperum was abbreviated and as scholastic and dialectical in form as it was empirical. Where Isaac’s text is clear Peter leaves its meaning to the reader’s industry,[1666] but it suggests to him over a thousand further questions which he takes up one after the other, listing authorities pro and con in each case and rebutting or reconciling them. Here we see the handiwork of the author of the favorite manual of logic of the later middle ages. The systematic, but abstract, sophistical, and jejune character of this method may be sufficiently illustrated by quotation of the closing passage of the “First Lecture” (Lectio prima).[1667]
“Next we proceed to the fourth point and inquire whether any food can be found of like nature to our bodies. And it would seem so, since when foods are called temperate and equal, they are not called equal except with respect to the body. But certain foods, such as chicken meat and the like, are called temperate and equal; therefore it is possible to find food of like nature to our bodies.”
“Against this three arguments are advanced. The first is that it is impossible to associate or join two different individuals; therefore a plant which grows in the earth and an animal cannot be joined and made one. The second argument is that nothing which is at first contrary and at last similar is of like nature to our bodies; but such is food, according to Aristotle, therefore no food is at all like. The third argument is that nothing far removed from human nature in constitution and composition and species is in any way like human nature. But all food is of this sort; therefore no food at all resembles the nature of our bodies, which we concede.”
“But it should be said anent these opposing arguments that ‘like’ may be understood in two senses. Either it means alike in all respects, and so no food is like. In the second sense, it means that it makes no manifest impression on the body, and in this sense some foods are called of like nature, such as chicken.”
“Next it is asked whether human flesh is nourishing, since nutriment goes by likeness. And it would seem so, for Isaac says that man is not nourished by the elements, since he is too far removed from them. Therefore that flesh which approaches closest to human nature should be the most nutritious. But this is human flesh; hence human flesh should be very nutritious. Here is another argument. Nutriment is from likeness, and from equal nutriment comes a well-balanced state of health; now the human constitution is especially temperate and well-balanced; therefore it requires temperate and equal food, and such, some agree, is human flesh. We, however, call it the worst sort of nutriment for two reasons: one, its corrruptibility; the other, its excessive unctuosity. For as the flesh of the body endures by virtue of the presence of the soul, so after the spirit’s departure the flesh becomes moist, vile, and fetid; and herein lies the solution of the difficulty, since if it is temperate, it has this property from the soul while it exists in the body.”
As to what the effect would be of eating men alive, Peter does not state. His argument may have possessed an additional interest for his own time from the possibility of applying it in theological as well as medical matters,--for example, the sacrament of the Eucharist.
[Sidenote: Their questions concerning nature.]
Many of the questions raised by Peter are concrete enough, however, and supply, not only some definite information on the history of domestic science and of the medieval table, but also interesting illustration of the scope of that medieval curiosity concerning nature to which we have more than once adverted. Such questions continue the type of natural science of which the Problems of Aristotle and the Natural Questions of Adelard of Bath are earlier instances. Those of Peter are the more impressive in that some of them are far removed from the subject of diet at all strictly interpreted. The following is a list of such representative questions picked out here and there throughout the commentaries on both the works of Isaac on diet.
Can natural death be retarded?
Is a well-balanced constitution the best preserved, or is it easily overcome by the causes of disease?
Is bad food more injurious than bad air?
Why do we employ foods hot in the fourth degree and not those cold in the same degree?
What should be the diet of those taking mental exercise, like students?
Why is man less hairy and of weaker constitution than the brutes?
Why does nature sustain a multitude of medicines, but not of foods?
Are medicines always contraries?
How can animals who eat poisons be food for men?
Why in some foods is the liquid substance of the same nature as the solid, and in others not?
If the spleen causes laughter by purifying the blood, why isn’t love caused by the gall-bladder?
Why are the droppings of birds of prey white, of others not?
Does the blood alone nourish us?
How do sweet things sour on the stomach?
Should wine be drunk before or after eating, and immediately following or long afterwards?
Is water of more aid than wine in the process of assimilating food?
Which satiety is sooner removed, that from fats or from sweets?
How do salts possess the virtue of laxatives?
Why are fish not given in acute fevers?
Why are compound foods more often injurious than compound medicines?
Why are some plants cold and wet when young, hot and sharp when old?
Is humidity the formal principle of tastes?
Is fruit wholesome?
Why do some plants bear fruit twice a year?
Why does a branch cut from a plant and placed in earth live, while the severed limb of an animal will not live?
Why are animals soft in infancy, and fruits hard?
What part of water is more truly water: top, bottom, or middle?
Is cow meat better eating than ox meat?
Is the flesh of female animals moister?
Why in hot regions are the brutes large but the men small, and in cold countries the contrary?
Is pork better in summer?
Is meat cooked in a pie good?[1668]
Why are the ears of all animals save men and apes in continual motion?
Why do sparrows cure epilepsy when they are subject to the disease themselves?
Why are pigs’ intestines the best of animals that walk and geese’s intestines of those that fly?
Why a small hen lays more eggs than a large one?
Are eggs or meat better for convalescents?
Why is white of egg used for wounds?
Is goats’ milk the best?
Is human milk subtler than asses’ milk?
Why do these things go together:--having large flanks and belly, ruminating, lack of teeth in the upper jaw, coagulation of the milk, having horns?
Is butter of a hotter nature than oil?
Why salt water fish do not have salt flesh?
Why the dolphin and whale have true blood, albeit they are fish?
Why there are larger fish in salt water than fresh?
Are fish fried in meal better than those not?
Should paralytics eat fried fish?
Why should one not eat eggs raw like milk?
Why the flame of fire takes the figure of a pyramid?
Why are springs hot in winter and cold in summer?
Should an interval elapse between the courses of a meal?
Should drink be taken along with one’s food?
Should the heartier meal be at mid-day or in the evening?
Why are other animals than man content with one form of food?
Why does human urine enrich vines?
Should fruit be plucked ripe or green?
Are apples good in fevers?
Why is wine (cider) made from apples?
Why does melancholy especially excite the appetite?
Why do the boxwood, white-fir, and laurel trees retain their foliage a longer time than others?
Why in the boxwood, laurel, and olive are the leaves pointed, in the poplar and other trees wide?
Is it beneficial to strew myrtle leaves in the sick-room?
Why is oil best at the top, honey at the bottom, wine in the middle of the cask?
Are fungi plants or something between earth and plants?
Why the weasel seeks rue and rubs itself with it when it intends to fight a snake?
Why pepper is good for dimmed eyes?
Why the water in the sea does not grow less?
Why the horse, mule, and ass neither nourish man nor harm him, if he eats them?[1669]
Why castration improves the conduct of beasts, makes men worse?[1670]
Is raw cheese better than cooked, and solid cheese or cheese with holes in it?
Why are fools so fond of cheese?
Why have birds but two feet and no teeth?
Which is more nourishing, the white or the yolk of an egg?
Why travelers should eschew fish?
Whether the water that we drink is the element?[1671]
Which is better, standing or running water?
Why wine affects the tongue more than the other members?
[Sidenote: Absence of astrology and occult virtue.]
Some of the questions which Peter raises one might expect him to solve by an appeal to occult virtue, sympathy and antipathy existing between things in nature, or the superior influence of the stars. This, however, he almost never does; his reasoning is based rather on the prevalence of the four qualities, hot and cold, dry and moist, in natural objects. Thus the property of dove’s blood of removing spots from the eye is attributed to its heat and humidity, not to any occult power.[1672] And sparrows, although epileptics themselves, are said to cure epilepsy because they are very hot and dry and consume the humors or vapors which cause epilepsy, not by antipathy or because like cures like.[1673] Even less does one note any instances of ligatures and suspensions, characters and incantations. One or two passages show, however, that Peter believes in occult virtue and the rule of the stars. He states that in addition to the four simple elements “there is another simplicity ... namely, from qualities, and it is not in the elements but in the celestial bodies.”[1674] And in his prologue to the Particular Diets he affirms that celestials are the cause of inferiors and quotes the words addressed by God to the stars in Plato’s Timaeus, “O gods of gods, whose father and creator I am, by your nature you are dissoluble but by my will indissoluble,” to prove how much more corruptible inferior bodies are.[1675]
[Sidenote: Incorrect ideas about Nature.]
Despite the almost complete absence of superstitious practices and of astrological and magical doctrine from the Commentaries on Isaac it is of course true that Peter harbors many incorrect notions such as that fish lack bones and that hot water freezes harder and quicker than cold.[1676] This last, however, he supports by the authority and arguments of Aristotle and Avicenna. Peter also throughout the work displays faith in the validity of compound medicines, although he raises the suggestive question, why compound foods are more often injurious than compound medicines. He also accepts various stories of animal remedies and sagacity for which he finds support in Aristotle’s History of Animals, such as that the serpent eats fennel to restore or sharpen its sight,[1677] and that the bone in the heart of the stag is especially beneficial for heart disease because “the stag is very ingenious and astute and so eats potent herbs which especially affect the heart like parsley and origanum,” and from these the bone forms.[1678] In explaining why deer shed their horns and hide them, Peter incorrectly makes Aristotle say that they secrete the right horn with more care, whereas the History of Animals states, “It is said that no one has ever seen the left horn, for he conceals it as if it had some medicinal (or, magic) power.”[1679]
[Sidenote: Reason and experience.]
Finally, despite the scholastic form of Peter’s Commentary, it contains a long passage on the importance of experimental method or “the way of experience” (via experimenti),[1680] f which it couples with “the path of reason” (via rationis) as the two methods by which dietary science may be investigated. First Peter distinguishes between the two, then shows the necessity of the way of experience, and third that it can and should be confirmed by reason. Galen says that experience is weak without reason, and so is reason when not joined to experience. Some say that reason should precede experience, that first we should seek rationally, then test by experience. In any case the way of experience proceeds through effects, the way of reason through causes. The one method is inductive; the other, syllogistic; the one based on immediate effects, the other on mediate effects. “Experimental method pays no attention to causes; rational method considers causes and principles; experience makes use of the senses; reason, of the intellect” and arguments.
[Sidenote: Via experimenti.]
After listing various arguments pro and con as to whether the via experiment “is of art and in art, or precedes art,” Peter gives his solution to the effect that experimentum is threefold. As a method of attaining knowledge it antecedes all arts and sciences. As a method of making known the objects of scientific inquiry, it is a part of science. As an application of scientific doctrine to practical life and industry, it follows science. Furthermore, experience “may proceed regularly through science and doctrine and in this way it can be rational.” Or it may be irregular and not syllogistic in method. The experimental discoveries of brutes, as when the serpent restores its sight with fennel, come to them from nature, but ours are acquired by art and confirmed by reason, although man too possesses the experimental instinct. Peter further distinguishes the experiences of rustics, which are unregulated by reason, from the experiments of skilled men which are regulated by reason. Moreover, “experiences are not without their reasons, and idle is the experiment which does not rest on reason.” Finally, Peter gives six conditions requisite in medical experimentation which are somewhat similar to the seven conditions stated by his contemporary, John of St. Amand. First, the medicine administered should be free from all foreign substance.[1681] Second, the patient taking it should have the disease for which it is especially intended. Third, it should be given alone without admixture of other medicine. Fourth, it should be of the opposite degree to the disease. Fifth, “we should test it not once only but many times.” Sixth, “the experiments should be with the proper body, as on the body of a man and not of an ass.”
[Sidenote: Question of Peter’s relation to Roger Bacon and Galen.]
Peter’s discussion of the via experimenti is in several respects similar to Roger Bacon’s discussion of experimental science, but is probably quite independent of it. Peter died before Roger in 1277, and his Commentary on Isaac was probably composed before the works which Bacon addressed to the pope in and around the year 1267. The influence of Galen, who had discussed the part played by reason and experience in his own work on food values, upon Peter is fairly evident.
[Sidenote: John of St. Amand on medical experimentation.]
John of St. Amand, to whose similar conditions for medical experimentation we just alluded, was a canon of Tournai who seems to have written a little later than Peter, since he describes the death from vomiting of a bishop of Tournai which took place in 1261.[1682] It is in his commentary on the Antidotarium of Nicolaus that John gives his seven conditions for medical experimentation. After having said that on account of the scarcity and incompleteness of experience, we should sometimes learn the virtues of simple medicines “through doctrine,” John for a page or two discusses other matters, but then reverts to the subject of experimentation. A medicinal simple, he says, may be known by two methods, “the way of experience and the way of reason.” “And because the principles of experience are better known to us than the principles of reason, let us first inquire concerning the knowledge of medicinal simples by the way of experience.” He goes on to say that experience is twofold as it is supported or not supported by reason. If unsupported by reason experience or experiment is timorous and fallacious. As for experience supported by reason, it should conform to these seven requirements.[1683] First, “the medicinal simple which is being tested should be pure and free from every extraneous quality, lest by such extraneous quality the proper operation of the medicine be impeded, and in consequence experimental knowledge.”[1684] Here the use of the adjective, “experimental” is interesting. Second, the experimentation should be with a simple and not a complicated disease.[1685] Third, the simple should be tested in two contrary types of disease, because sometimes a medicine cures one disease by its “complexion” or elemental properties and another by its occult virtue. Thus scammony cures both quotidian and tertian fever; the first because scammony is of a hot nature; but the second by its occult virtue and not because scammony is of a cold nature, for it is not.[1686] Fourth, the virtue of the medicine should correspond to the quality of the patient. Fifth, essence and accident should not be confused; water, for example, may be heated, but is not of a hot nature.[1687] Sixth, the experiment should be often repeated. For if a medicine is tested in the cases of five men and has a heating effect upon them all, still that is not adequate proof that it will always have a heating effect, for they may have all been of a cold or temperate constitution, whereas a man of hot nature would not be heated by the simple in question. Seventh, the test should be on the human body and in varying states of health. Trying the medicine upon a lion may not prove anything as to its effect upon a man.[1688] John seems to have taken his conditions directly from Galen rather than from Petrus Hispanus, since only three of them are identical with Peter’s, whereas all but one occur in his own Concordances from Galen’s works.[1689] John of St. Amand repeats the experiment with the hazel rod which we have already encountered in William of Auvergne. According to John the two split halves tend to reunite because it is natural for them to be together, but he adds that some old women make use of it with utterance of a useless incantation as a matrimonial charm, asserting that if the halves unite, the marriage will be a happy one.[1690]
[Sidenote: Natural and occult science in John of St. Amand.]
It was not my intention to speak of John of St. Amand further than to compare his remarks on experimental method with those of Petrus Hispanus, but the Histoire Littéraire has already presented some specimens of his views, which it will be worth repeating to show that his experimental tendency has the same accompaniment of mingled credulity and scepticism and of occult science and signs of magic as we have noted in other cases. Thus he rejects the story that the beaver castrates itself to escape the pursuit of hunters on the ground that the animal has not that much sense, but believes that beavers enslave one another. From the fact that herons are subject to diarrhoea he argues that men with long necks and legs should not resort to purgatives, and he states that pearls comfort the heart by similarity, since they are hard like the heart. He enters into long and obscure explanations how it is that application of the flesh of a snake extracts the venom from its bite, and “is not exempt from astrological ideas.”[1691] But the writings of John of St. Amand have carried us well along into the second half of the thirteenth century; in the next chapter we must turn back to a man whose literary activity began in the Erst half of that century, Albertus Magnus.
FOOTNOTES:
[1614] Ptolemaei Lucensis Historia Ecclesiastica. Liber XXIII, cap. xxi, in Muratori, XI, 1176. For the life of John XXI see also HL XIX (1838) 322-34; J. T. Koehler, Vollständige Nachricht von Pabst Johann XXI, Göttingen, 1760; L. Zdekauer, in Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria, VI (1898-1899); Richard Stapper, Papst Johannes XXI, Münster, 1898, in Kirchengesch. Studien herausg. v. Dr. Knöpfler, Band IV, Heft iv.
[1615] Millot-Carpentier (1901). G. Porro, in his catalogue of Trivulzian MSS at Milan, Turin, 1884, calls Peter “Petrus Julianus Ulissiponensis.”
[1616] Royal 13-A-VII, 15th century, fol. 149r.
[1617] Stapper (1898), p. 4, “In illis namque laribus ab annis teneris diutius observati variis scientiis inibi studiose vacavimus et per annos plurimos....”
[1618] See too, C. von Prantl, Michael Psellus und Petrus Hispanus, 1867.
[1619] HL XIX, 330.
[1620] Harleian 5218, fols. 1r-3r, Epistola Magistri Petri Hyspani missa ad Imperatorem Fridericum super regimen sanitatis. It seems strange, however, that Peter should call himself, as he does in this work, “senex artis medicinae professor,” before 1250, when he would have been rather less than forty years of age. Other MSS. are: CLM 615, 13-14th century, fols. 41-68; BN 7446, 15th century.
[1621] “Hic generalis clericus fuit et praecipue in medicinis.”
[1622] HL XIX, 327-8; namely, the Thesaurus pauperum, and the commentaries on Isaac on Diets and Urines.
[1623] Sloane 1214, 15th century, fols. 38r-46, De morbis oculorum. Other MSS of his work or works on eye diseases are: Sloane 2268, 14th century, fols. 52-59; CLM 161, 13th century, fols. 55v-57, de aegritudinibus oculorum; CLM 40, 14th century, fols. 112-15, Breviarium de aegritudinibus oculorum; CLM 381, 14th century, fol. 78-, Curae ... de passionibus oculorum, vel Secretum pro amico ad oculos; CLM 438, 14th century, fol. 108, de passionibus oculorum; Wolfenbüttel, 2794, 15th century, fols. 183-8, Petri Hispani liber oculorum, fol. 188v, Secretum magistri Petri Hispani; BN 6957, 15th century, #1, Secretum de oculis.
[1624] Cholmeley, John of Gaddesden, 1912, p. 183, says that Peter had been Gregory’s physician.
[1625] Millot-Carpentier (1900), p. 180.
[1626] Printed at Antwerp in 1476 and 1497, at Lyons in 1525, at Frankfurt perhaps in 1567, 1575, 1576, and certainly in 1578, at Paris in 1577. I have used the 1497 edition,--Summa Experimentorum sive thesaurus pauperum magistri Petri yspani, Antwerpiae, Theodoricus Martini, 1497 (die 22 Mai). A letter lying loose in the copy (numbered IB. 50018) which I read at the British Museum, stated that the copy at Liège is (was) the same. I also consulted the edition printed at Frankfurt in 1578 but it seemed faulty compared with the 1497 edition. For a list of MSS see Appendix I at the close of this chapter.
[1627] Stapper (1898), p. 23.
[1628] Sloane 284, Harleian 5218, Additional 25,000 contain the sentence; Sloane 521 and 2479, and Royal 12 B III do not have it. The entire preface is missing in Addit. 22,636 and in the early MS, Sloane 477, but it also has no Incipit and a first sheet may well be missing which contained the preface.
[1629] The sentence as Stapper gives it (p. 24), reads: “Litteras autem quas aliquando ponunt physici superstitiose positas nemo credat, sed quia immediatius operantur vel magis assidue, sicut dextrum dextro vel sinistrum sinistro membro et masculo apponitur.” In the 1497 edition and Sloane 284 the sentence reads more correctly: “Ligaturas autem quas aliquando posuerunt philosophi nemo credat superstitiose positas, sed immo quod (ideo quia) immediatius operantur vel magis assidue si (vel aliter) numquam deponuntur vel a simili sicut si ad (aliud) dextrum dextro membro vel sinistrum sinistro vel masculinum masculino apponatur.” In the 1578 edition the sentence has been completely changed and begins: “Characteres vero et de collo suspendenda quorum interdum a Philosophis sit mentio nemo arbitretur superstitiose tradita esse sed ideo quia immediate operantur vel magis per ἀντιπάθειαν...” etc.
[1630] For instance, among remedies for sore throat an herb “divinely revealed to good bishop Boniface” and “a good prayer” were detailed in the 1497 edition, but I failed to find them in Sloane 477, Sloane 2479, Additional 32,622, or Royal 12-B-III. The next remedy after the good prayer was given in Sloane 477 only in the margin, but in Additional 32,622 appeared in the body of the text. In the chapter on toothache, too, a remedy written in the margin in a different ink from the text of Sloane 477 is embodied in the text of Sloane 521 and 2479 as well as in the 1497 edition.
[1631] Gilbert of England’s Compendium adopted essentially that order.
[1632] See also CLM 457, 15th century, fol. 112-, De febribus. Sunt aliqua capitula ex thesauro pauperum Hispani Petri.
[1633] Sloane 521 and Addit. 32,622 omit “occult.”
[1634] Even in an early MS like Sloane 477 we find the first person used a great deal and experience or “experiments” often mentioned.
[1635] Sloane 2479, fol. 37v, fol. 14r, fol. 13v; and in other MSS.
[1636] These remedies for toothache will all be found in Sloane 477 and 2479, Addit. 32,622, and Royal 12-B-III, as well as in the 1497 edition.
[1637] 28, 49 and 30, 8.
[1638] Sloane 477, fol. 9r.
[1639] Sloane 2479, fol. 14v; Addit. 25,000, fol. 79v; Addit. 32,622, under the heading “De spasmo.”
[1640] Sloane 477, fol. 10r does not cite Constantine and Walter, but other MSS do.
[1641] Sloane 2479, fol. 14v; Royal 12-B-III, fol. 19v; Addit. 25,000, fol. 79v; Harleian 5218.
[1642] All the items mentioned in this paragraph are found in the early MS Sloane 477 as well as in other MSS. In a fifteenth century MS at Florence (Ashburnham 143, fols. 113-14), this chapter appears separately as, “Capitulum pulcrum pro maleficiis malis” and under the further sub-titles, “De hiis qui maleficiis impediti cum uxoribus cohire non possunt. Pro maleficiis destruendis secundum magistrum Petrum Yspanum.”
[1643] For the De morbis oculorum I have used two MSS. in the British Museum; Sloane 1214, 15th century, fols. 38-46, and Sloane 2268, 14th century, fols. 52-59. I presume that Gonville and Caius 379, 13th century, fols. 142-49, “Secreta mag. Petri yspani ad oculos. In nomine summi opificii/acceptis de pectine matris,” is the same work.
[1644] Sloane 1214, fol. 38r; Sloane 2268, fol. 52.
[1645] Sloane 2268, fol. 54v.
[1646] Op. cit. (1901).
[1647] Sloane 1214, fol. 38r.
[1648] Sloane 2268, fol. 54v. Millot-Carpentier presumably has this passage in mind when he says, “Il connaissait la fistule lacrymale qu’il soignait ... par les exorcisms.”
[1649] Royal MS. 13-A-VII, 15th century, fols. 149r-153v. “Explicit summa magistri p. de conservanda sanitate et de his quae conferunt et nocent. Finito libro reddetur gratia Christo amen. Rogatis deum pro anima magistro qui hunc librum composuit. Explicit liber.” See also CLM 14574, 15th century, fol. 117. Magistri Petri liber de conservanda sanitate, “Erubescant Judei confundantur Sarraceni.”
[1650] Cap. 1, fols. 150r-v.
[1651] Sloane 2268, 14th century, fol. 52-, De morbis oculorum; fol. 56r, “Tractatus mirabilis aquarum quod composuit m. p. hyspanus cum naturali industria secundum intellectum”; fol. 59r, “Explicit secretum magistri P. hys. quod fecit pro amico suo ad oculos.”
BN 6957, 15th century, #2, Tractatus mirabilis aquarum quem composuit Petrus Hispanus cum naturali industria secundum intellectum. Explicit secretum magistri Petri Hispani de oculis, (as described by Renzi, V, 122).
BN 7349, 15th century, #2, is the same treatise.
[1652] Additional 32,622, early 14th century, fol. 95r, “Actus mirabilis aquarum quas composuit Petrus Hispanus cum naturali industria.”
Egerton 2852, 14th century, fols. 1-5, “de aquis,” is very similar in contents to Addit. 32622.
[1653] Digby 147, 14th century, fols. 104r-105v, “Tractatus mirabilis aquarum quem composuit philosophus naturali industria secundum intellectum.” It opens, “Aqua mirabilis valet ad visum conservandum.”
[1654] Namely: 1 aqua mirabilis ad visum conservandum et clarificandum, 2 aqua preciosa de radicibus, 3 aqua preciosa de seminibus, 4 aqua mirabilis per quam facit mistica sive mirabilia medicus, 5 aqua salicis, 6 aqua aromatica, 7 aqua qui dicitur lac virginis, 8 aqua tartari, 9 aqua de sale gemme, 10 aqua copose, 11 aqua vite, 12 aqua ardens.
[1655] See below, pp. 797-8.
[1656] I regret that I have not been able to examine and compare this and the other MSS of the treatise more closely in order to ascertain how far their texts are identical or vary. Some further MSS are:
CU Trinity 1411, early 16th century, fol. 131, Aqua mirabilis Petri Hispani.
Harleian 1887, 16th century (?), Petrus Hispanus, mirab. aquar.
[1657] Assisi 292, 15th century, 75 fols.
[1658] BN 7446, 15th century, Regimen sanitatis.
[1659] Harleian 2258, fols. 224v-225v, regimen salutis per omnes menses.
[1660] Bibl. Palat. Parma 1065, 15th century, fols. 147-53.
[1661] Corpus Christi 243, 1423 A. D., fols. 15v-28, “Sicut igitur in negotio nostro de anima ... / ... Explicit liber de morte et vita et de causis longitudinis ac brevitate vite magistri Petri Hispani.”
[1662] Sloane 568, late 14th century, fol. 15v.
[1663] BN 6956, 14th century.
[1664] Vienna 4751, 15th century, fols. 274-80, excerptus et in fine mutilus.
[1665] Printed in the Lyons, 1515 edition of Isaac’s works: fol. xir, Commentarium singulare doctissimi viri Petri hispani olim pontificis maximi Johannis vicesimiprimi super librum dietarum universalium Isaac Incipit; fol. ciii, Apollinee artis monarche Ysaac filii adoptivi Salomonis regis Arabum diete particulares cum uberrimis excellentissimi viri Petri hispani commentariis.
[1666] Ibid., fol. 12r.
[1667] Ibid., fol. 14v.
[1668] “An caro coda in pasta sit bona?” Peter thinks that it is pessima, because the pastry prevents the noxious fumes and humors of the meat from escaping, but he adds, “Contrarium facit vulgus.”
[1669] An interesting passage, which seems to indicate that despite frequent famines the medieval poor were seldom reduced to horse meat. Peter’s explanation is that these animals are not poisonous, but that nature designed them for man’s service, not his nutriment.
[1670] On this point Peter does not seem to be in agreement with some modern sociologists.
[1671] Peter of course answers in the negative.
[1672] fol. 145v.
[1673] fol. 78.
[1674] fol. 150v.
[1675] fol. 103r.
[1676] fol. 149r; fols. 150v-151r.
[1677] fol. 127r.
[1678] fol. 136r.
[1679] fol. 135v, and De animal. hist. ed. Dittmeyer (1907), p. 362, lines 29-30. λέγεταιδ’ ὡς ἀριστερὸν κέρας οὐδείς πω ἑώρακεν ἀποκρύπτειν γὰρ αὐτὸ ὡς ἔχον τινὰ φαρμακίαν. The last word, of course, suggests either a drug or poison, medicine or charm.
[1680] fols. 19v-20v; see also fol. 11v.
[1681] “... medicina sit tuta ab omni qualitate complexionali.”
[1682] On Jean de Saint-Amand see HL XXI, 254-66; J. L. Pagel, Die Concordanciae des Johannes de Sancto Amando, Berlin, 1894, and Nachträge zu den Concordanciae des Johannes de Sancto Amando, Berlin, 1896. For the Expositio in Antidotarium Nicolai, I have followed the text in Mesuae medici clarissimi opera, Venice, 1568; but there are earlier editions, such as Venice, 1497, and Lyons, 1533.
[1683] Expositio in Antidotarium Nicolai (1568), fol. 231, “Sed medicina simplex duplici via cognoscitur scilicet via experimenti et via rationis.... Et quia principia experimenti sunt nobis magis nota quam principia rationis, ideo prius inquiramus cognitionem simplicium medicinarum via experimenti ... duplex est experimentum ... vallatum et non vallatum ratione, tunc ipsum est timorosum et fallax si non sit vallatum ratione....”
[1684] Ibid., “Oportet ut medicina simplex quae experiatur sit pura et munda ab omni extranea qualitate, ne per illam extraneam qualitatem impediatur propria operatio medicinae, et per consequens cognitio experimentalis.” This is the same as Peter’s first condition. Also as the passage from Galen’s Medicinal Simples, II, 5, quoted in John’s Concordances, “Oportet quod res quae experitur sit pura et denudata ab omni qualitate accidentali....”
[1685] I do not note this condition among Peter’s nor in the Concordances.
[1686] “Oportet quod medicina simplex experiatur in duabus contrariis aegritudinibus diversis, sicut scamonea in quotidiana et tertiana, ipsa enim curat quotidianam ex sua complexione, tertianam ex proprietate sua, tamen non sequitur, scamonea curat tertianam, ergo est frigida; sed sequitur, ipsa ex sua complexione curat quotidianam, ergo est calida.”
The use of the word “proprietas” for occult virtue is found also in Arnald of Villanova and other medieval writers.
[1687] John’s third, fourth and fifth conditions do not exactly correspond to any of Peter’s, but are contained in the following quotation from Galen (simpl. med. I, 2) in the Concordances. “Ad hoc ut res recte experiatur, tria requiruntur: 1m est ut experiatur in re ad quam comparatur, ut helleborus in coturnice non in homine; 2m requiritur ut distinguamus inter opus quod facit res per se et quod facit per accidens; 3m oportet cavere ne complexio actualis obnubilet potentialem et de omnibus his exempla ponit.”
[1688] “experimentum in corpore humano et primo in temperato, postea in lapso, et postea in aegro.” These last two conditions correspond to Peter’s last two and are also duplicated in John’s Concordances from Galen: “Si videris 5 vel 6 homines qualibet medicina mobiles, experimento solo non potuisti certiorare ilia medicina omnes homines posse moveri.... Oportet cum res experitur ut primo experiatur in corpore temperato et postea in intemperate.”
[1689] See the foregoing footnotes and Pagel’s text (1894), pp. 102-4.
[1690] Expositio in Antidotarium Nicolai, fol. 268, “... et hoc patet per experimentum accipiatur virga coryli recens et scindatur per medium medullae et ponatur frustum unum in manu una et aliud in alia manu, adinvicem coniungentur et hoc est quia unam alteri natum est conjungi naturaliter quia ex eis fiebat naturaliter unum conjunctum, et ideo unum natum est alteri conjungi excitatum per virtutem alterius. Et per illud faciunt vetulae carmen suum in matrimonium: dicunt enim quod quando aliquis desponsat aliquam, quod illae virgae coryli si conjungantur matrimonium erit ad bonum, si non, non: sed dicunt carmen aliquid operari ad hoc quod nisi dicerent, conjungerentur tarnen sive ad bonum sive ad malum.”
[1691] HL XXI, 263-5.
APPENDIX I
SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF THE THESAURUS PAUPERUM
I have examined the following MSS of the work in the collections in the British Museum. As usual, the dating of the MSS is not my own, but either that given in the catalogues of the collections or in the MSS themselves.
Sloane 282, quarto, 15th century, fols. 87-105, Petri Hispani, postea Johannis Papae XXI, Thesaurus pauperum.
Sloane 284, 15th century, fols. 129-174. “Incipit liber qui thesaurus pauperum nominatur compositus a magistro P. Hispano Papa Johanne postmodum.”
Sloane 477, dated Sept. 30, 1309. Fol. 79r, “Explicit thesaurus pauperum ad honorem dei et hominum ipsius operis exigentium. Anno domine mill’o tricentessimo nono die tricessimo mense septembris hoc opus complevi scripsi presbitur N. De. Machia Anconitana hunc scripsit librum cui Christus filius dei et virginis matris marie det sibi gratiam consolationem anime et corpori. Amen.” Then in different ink is added, “Explicit thesaurus pauperum vel summa experimentorum medicinalium magistri petri Hispani.” This MS, which seems as early as any that I examined, is written on small pages in large print-like letters. The red ink of the text has faded and is accompanied by numerous notes in small black writing.
Sloane 521, 14th-15th century, fols. 46-74. “Explicit summa Petri Hispanensis experimentorum medicinalium, cujus libri posuit nomen thesaurus pauperum. Amen. Amen.”
Sloane 1754, 14th century, fols. 8-13. “Flos florum experimentorum thesauri pauperum a magistro Petro Yspano” etc. A collection of excerpts from the work; see also Sloane 357 and 405, both 15th century.
Sloane 2479, 14th century, fols. 10-41. At fol. 38v, “Explicit thesaurus pauperum”; at fol. 41v, “Expliciunt febres et thesaurus pauperum magni petri hispani quondam pape.”
Additional MS 22,636, fols. 23-35r (and not, as the catalogue and Scott’s Index say, to fol. 47, since a work on Phisionomia and some extracts from Thomas of Cantimpré on seals and gems intervene.) “Explicit liber qui dicitur tesaurus pauperum.”
Additional 25,000. This MS resembles Sloane 2479 closely in its arrangement: at fol. 94r, “Explicit liber pauperum”; at fol. 96v, another Explicit follows the discussion of fevers.
Addit. 32,622, early 14th century, fols. 116-177. “Summa experimentorum medicinalium Magistri Petri Ispaliensis, qui dicitur liber nomine thesaurus pauperum.”
Royal 12-B-III, 14th century, #2.
Harleian 5218. “Petri Hispani Thesaurus pauperum, Liber medicus cum complexionibus simplicium medicinarum, secundum Gallianum de Sancta Sophya Phisicum.”
I have not been able to consult the following MSS in the Amplonian collection at Erfurt, but mention them as of early date and not listed by Stapper.
Ampion. Octavo 62, early 14th century hand, fols. 124-165, Rubr. “Incipit thesaurus pauperum editus per Iohannem papam.”
Ampion. Quarto 193, end of 13th century to 1362-1364, fols. 2-49. “Incipit liber experimentorum, qui thesaurus pauperum nuncupatur.”
Ampion. Folio 271, 13th-14th century (Schum omits this in the index to his catalogue of the Amplonian collection).
Ampion. Folio 303, fols. 147-63.
Another early copy is contained in a miscellany compiled at Bologna in 1326: Wolfenbüttel 4504, fols. 106-31, Explicit summa medicinalis Magistri Petri Yspani, que dicitur thesaurus pauperum.
A few other MSS of the Thesaurus pauperum are:
Ste. Geneviève 2235, 14th century, “Incipit Summa experimentorum medicinalium magistri Petri Hispani, que dicitur thesaurus pauperum.”
Ste. Geneviève 2237, 18th century, fol. 57, “Incipit pauperum thesaurus summi medicorum monarchae D. Joannis XX (XXI) pontificis maximi cui Petro Hispano ante nomen erat in quo curandorum morborum et theoresim et praxim absolutissime comperies.”
BN 8654, 14th century, perhaps 1306 A. D.
Trivulz. 657, 14th century.
Turin F-V-25, 14th century, fols. 93-177.
Naples VIII-G-100.
Perugia 1227, 14th century, 50 fols., no author named.
Florence II-vi-62, 14th century, in Italian.
Wolfenbüttel 3050, 14th century, no author named.
CLM 438, 14th century, fols. 1-84; 321, 15th century, fol. 107-; 8742, 15th century, fols. 152-68.