A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 1 (of 2) / During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era

by Lynn Thorndike

BOOK III. THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Chapter 24.	The Story of Nectanebus.
Chapter 25.	Post-Classical Medicine.
Chapter 26.	Pseudo-Literature in Natural Science of the Early Middle Ages.
Chapter 27.	Other Early Medieval Learning.
Chapter 28.	Arabic Occult Science of the Ninth Century.
Chapter 29.	Latin Astrology and Divination, Especially in the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Centuries.
Chapter 30.	Gerbert and the Introduction of Arabic Astrology.
Chapter 31.	Anglo-Saxon, Salernitan, and other Latin Medicine in Manuscripts from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century.
Chapter 32.	Constantinus Africanus.
Chapter 33.	Treatises on the Arts before the Introduction of Arabic Alchemy.
Chapter 34.	Marbod.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE STORY OF NECTANEBUS
OR
THE ALEXANDER LEGEND IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES[2293]

The Pseudo-Callisthenes—Its unhistoric character—Julius Valerius—Oriental versions—Medieval epitomes of Julius Valerius—Letters of Alexander—Leo’s Historia de praeliis—Medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition—Survival of magical and scientific features—Who was Nectanebus?—A scientific key-note—Magic of Nectanebus—Nectanebus as an astrologer—A magic dream—Lucian on Olympias and the serpent—More dream-sending; magic transformation—An omen interpreted—The birth of Alexander—The death of Nectanebus—The Amazons and Gymnosophists—The Letter to Aristotle.

The Pseudo-Callisthenes.

The oldest version of the legend or romance of Alexander is naturally believed to have been written in the Greek language but is thought to have been produced in Egypt at Alexandria. But the Greek manuscripts of the story are all of the medieval or Renaissance period; indeed, none of them antedates the eleventh or twelfth century. Furthermore, they differ very considerably in content and arrangement, so that the problem of distinguishing or recovering the original text of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, as the work is commonly called, and of dating it, is one with which various scholars have grappled. It has been held that the original Greek text which lies back of the later versions was written not later than 200 A. D. But Basil, writing in Greek in the fourth century and well-versed in Greek culture, is apparently unfamiliar with the story of Nectanebus, since he says, “Without doubt there has never been a king who has taken measures to have his son born under the star of royalty.”[2294] Fortunately we are less interested in the original version than in the medieval development of the tradition. It should, however, perhaps be premised that certain features of the Alexander legend may be detected in embryo in Plutarch’s Life of him.

The true Callisthenes was a historian who accompanied Alexander upon his Asiatic campaigns but then offended the conqueror by opposing his adoption of oriental dress, absolutism, and deification, and was therefore cast into prison on a charge of treason, and there died in 328 B. C. either from ill treatment or disease.[2295] Since Callisthenes was also a relative and pupil of Aristotle, his name was an excellent one upon which to father the romance. However, the oldest Latin version of it professes to employ a Greek text by one Aesopus, possibly because Aesop’s fables accompany the story of Alexander in some of the manuscripts. Yet other versions cite an Onesicritus,[2296] and the Pseudo-Callisthenes has also been attributed to Antisthenes, Aristotle, and Arrian.

Its unhistoric character.

Perhaps no better single illustration of the totally unhistorical and romantic character of the Pseudo-Callisthenes can be given than the perversion of Alexander’s line of march in most of the Greek and all of the Latin versions. He is represented as first proceeding to Italy and receiving royal honors at Rome; then he goes to Carthage and reaches the shrine of Ammon by traversing Libya; next he passes through Egypt into Syria and destroys Tyre, after which he crosses Arabia and has his first battle with Darius. Presently he is found back in Greece sacking Thebes and dealing with Corinth, Athens, and Sparta. Then his Asiatic conquests are resumed.

Julius Valerius.

The oldest Latin version of the Alexander romance is the Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis of Julius Valerius. Who he was and when he lived are matters still veiled in obscurity; but it is customary to place him in the early fourth century on the basis of Zacher’s contention that the Res gestae is copied in certain portions of the Itinerarium Alexandri, which was written during the years 340-345 A. D. This dating would also serve to explain why Basil, writing in Greek before 379, had never heard of a king who had taken steps to have his son born under the star of royalty, while Augustine, writing in Latin between 413 and 426, mentions the story of a sage who selected a certain hour for intercourse with his wife in order that he might beget a marvelous son. This would also suggest that the Latin version was older than the Greek, as in fact the extant manuscripts of it are. The oldest manuscript of Valerius, however, is a badly damaged palimpsest of the seventh century at Turin. Other manuscripts are one at Milan of the tenth century and another at Paris dating about 1200.[2297] The text of Valerius differs considerably from the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes and was to undergo further alteration in later medieval Latin versions.

Oriental versions.

Before speaking of these we may mention other oriental versions of the story. An Armenian text dates from the fifth century. A Syriac version, which dates from the seventh or eighth century and was “much read by the Nestorians,” was itself derived from an earlier Persian rendering. It seems to make use of both the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes and Julius Valerius since it includes incidents from either which are not found in the other. And it omits a considerable section of the Greek version besides adding episodes which are not found in it, although contained in Julius Valerius. We hear further of Arabic and Hebrew versions of the romance, while manuscripts of recent date supply an Ethiopic version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes of unknown authorship and date, together with other Ethiopic histories and romances of Alexander. These are based partly upon Arabic and Jewish works but take great liberties with their sources in making alterations to suit a Christian audience, omitting for example, as Budge points out, Alexander’s victory in the chariot race, and transforming Philip and Alexander into Christian martyrs, or the Greek gods into patriarchs and prophets like Enoch and Elijah. Even the Greek version did not remain unaltered in the Byzantine period when two recensions in prose and two more in verse are distinguished. Indeed, none of the Greek manuscripts of the work antedates the eleventh or twelfth century, they differ greatly, and some of them ascribe the romance to Alexander himself.

Medieval epitomes of Julius Valerius.

Such variations in the eastern versions of the story of Alexander illustrate how the middle ages made the classical heritage their own and prepare us for similar alterations in the Latin account current in western Europe. The work of Julius Valerius, though written in the rhetorical style characteristic of the declining Roman Empire and composed almost on the verge of the middle ages, was to undergo further alterations to adapt it more closely to medieval taste and use. By the ninth century, if not earlier, two epitomes of it had been made, and, beginning with that century, manuscripts of the shorter of these epitomes become far more numerous than those of the original Valerius.[2298]

Letters of Alexander.

Two sections of the Alexander legend were omitted in the Epitome, not because medieval men had lost interest in them but because they had become so fond of them as to enlarge upon them and issue them as distinct works. They often, however, accompany the Epitome in the manuscripts. One of these was the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle on the Marvels of India.[2299] It is longer than the corresponding chapter of Valerius[2300] where a letter of Alexander to Aristotle is quoted and also differs from any known Greek text. The fact that reference is made to it in the longer Epitome leads to the conclusion that the Letter is older. This would also seem to be the case with the other work, a short series of letters interchanged between Alexander and Dindimus, the king of the Brahmans, since the Epitome omits the two chapters of Valerius which tell of Alexander’s interview with the Brahmans. It is believed that Alcuin, who died in 804, in one of his letters to Charlemagne speaks of sending these epistles exchanged between Alexander and Dindimus along with the equally apocryphal correspondence of the apostle Paul and the philosopher Seneca. No such letters are found in the Pseudo-Callisthenes, for the ten chapters on the Brahmans found in one Greek codex are interpolated from the treatise of Palladius, likewise in the form of a correspondence.[2301] Julius Valerius does not even mention Dindimus, but a third epistolary discussion of the Brahmans exists in Latin, De moribus Brachmannorum, ascribed to St. Ambrose.[2302]

Leo’s Historia de praeliis.

Leo, an archpriest of Naples, who went to Constantinople about 941-944 on an embassy for two dukes of Campania, John and Marinus, brought back with him a History containing the conflicts and victories of Alexander the Great, King of Macedon. Later Duke John, who was fond of science, had Leo translate this work from Greek into Latin, in which tongue it is entitled Historia de praeliis. We learn these facts from its prologue which is found only in the oldest extant manuscript, a Bamberg codex of the eleventh century,[2303] and in a manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth century at Munich. The location of these two manuscripts suggests that the work was early carried from Italy to Germany, lands then connected in the Holy Roman Empire. Of the De praeliis apart from the prologue there came to be many copies, but most of them date from the later middle ages, and the importance of the work as a source for the vernacular romances of Alexander has been somewhat overestimated, since Meyer has shown that no manuscript of it is found in France until the thirteenth century and since the manuscripts of the Epitome are far more numerous.[2304]

Medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition.

In the foregoing observations we may seem to have digressed too far from our main theme of science and magic into the domain of literary history. But the development of the Alexander legend, which happens to have been traced more thoroughly than perhaps any other one thread in the medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition, throws light at least by analogy upon many matters in which we are interested: the state of medieval manuscript material, the continuity and yet the alteration of ancient culture during the early middle ages, the process of translation from the Greek which went on even then, and the varying rapidity or slowness with which books circulated and ideas permeated.

Survival of magical and scientific features.

Moreover, the story of Alexander, especially as adapted by the middle ages, contained a large amount of magic and science, more especially the former. The Epitome might omit a great deal else, but it kept intact the opening portion of the Pseudo-Callisthenes and of Julius Valerius concerning the adventures of Nectanebus, the sage and magician from Egypt, the astrologer and the natural father of Alexander. Indeed, the titles in some manuscripts suggest that Nectanebus came to rival Alexander for medieval readers as the hero of the story. Thus we find a History of Alexander, King of Macedon, and of Nectanebo, King of Egypt,[2305] or an account Of the Life and Deeds of Neptanabus, astronomer of Egypt,[2306] or a Latin metrical version by “Uilikinus” or Aretinus Quilichinus of Spoleto in 1236 entitled, The History of the Science of the Egyptians and of Neptanabus their king who afterwards was the true father of Alexander.[2307]

Who was Nectanebus?

Pliny in the Natural History describes the obelisk of Necthebis, king of Egypt, whom he places five centuries before Alexander the Great.[2308] Plutarch, however, in his life of Agesilaus and Nepos in his life of Chabrias mention a Nectanebus II who struggled against Persia for the throne of Egypt about 361 B. C. and later was forced to flee to Ethiopia. In the Alexander romance, however, it is to Macedon that Nectanebus retreats. A Nectabis is listed as a magician along with Ostanes, Typhon, Dardanus, Damigeron, and Berenice, by Tertullian, writing about 200 A. D.[2309] As a matter of fact, in the Thirtieth Dynasty were two kings named respectively Nektanebes or Nekht-Har-ehbēt, who ruled 378 to 361 B. C., and Nektanebos or Nekhte-nebof, who ruled 358 to 341 B. C. Both have left considerable buildings.[2310] It is the latter who was forced by the Persians to flee to Ethiopia nine years before Alexander conquered Egypt and who is the hero of our story. The stele of Metternich is covered with magical formulae ascribed to Nectanebo.[2311]

A scientific key-note.

A note suggestive of both natural science and occult science is struck by the opening passage of the Latin epitomes and of the oldest Greek manuscript; the first page of Julius Valerius is missing and has to be supplied from the epitomes. The first words are “The Egyptian sages,” and the first sentence describes their scientific ability in measuring the earth and in tracing the revolutions of the heavens and numbering the stars. “And of them all Nectanabus is recognized to have been the most prudent ... for the elements of the universe obeyed him.” In the opening sentences of the oldest Greek version and of the Ethiopic version even more emphasis is laid than in the Epitomes upon the learning of the Egyptians in general and of Nectanebus in particular, and of the close connection of that learning with astrology and magic.[2312] We read, “Now there lived in the land of Egypt a king who was called Bektanis, and he was a famous magician and a sage, and he was deeply learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians. And he had more knowledge than all the wise men who knew what was in the depths of the Nile and in the abysses, and who were skilled in the knowledge of the stars and of their seasons and in the knowledge of the astrolabe and in the casting of nativities.... And by his learning and by his observations of the stars Nectanebus was able to predict what would befall anyone who was about to be born.”[2313] In one Latin manuscript of the fifteenth century the History of Alexander the Great begins with the

5 sentence, “Books tell us how powerful the race of the Egyptians were in mathematics and the magic art.”[2314]

Magic of Nectanebus.

Next we are told, and the account is practically the same in all the versions of the story, how by means of his basin filled with water, his wax images of ships and men, his rod or wand of ebony, and the incantations with which he addressed the gods above and below, Nectanebus had been hitherto able to destroy all the armies and to sink all the fleets that had come against him. But when one day he found his magic unavailing to save him, he shaved his head and beard and fled to Macedon, where in linen garb he plied the trade of an astrologer.

Nectanebus as an astrologer.

In this he soon became so celebrated that the fame of his predictions reached the ears of the queen Olympias, who consulted him during an absence of Philip. When she asked Nectanebus by means of what art he divined the future so truthfully, he answered that there were many varieties of divination. Julius Valerius and the Latin epitomes mention specifically only interpreters of dreams and astrologers, but the Greek, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions give more elaborate lists of various kinds of diviners.[2315] Nectanebus next produced an astrological tablet adorned with gold and ivory and with each planet and the horoscope represented by a different stone or metal. With the aid of this he read the queen’s horoscope and told her that she would have a son by the God Ammon and would be forewarned soon to that effect in a dream. Olympias replied that if such a dream came to her, she would no longer employ Nectanebus as a magus but honor him as a god.

A magic dream.

Nectanebus thereupon sought for herbs useful to command dreams, plucked them, and pressed a syrup out of them. He placed a wax image of the queen inscribed with her name upon a little couch, lighted lamps, and poured his syrup over the wax figure, muttering a secret and efficacious incantation the while. By this means he brought it about that the queen would dream or think she dreamed whatever he said to the wax image of her. Later Nectanebus himself played the part of the god Ammon, announcing his coming beforehand to Olympias by making by his “science” a dragon which glided into her presence.

Lucian on Olympias and the serpent.

Lucian of Samosata in the second century tells us that it was a common story in his time that Olympias had lain with a serpent before giving birth to Alexander. He suggests as the explanation of how this tale originated the fact that at Pella in Macedonia there is a breed of large serpents, “so tame and gentle that women make pets of them, children take them to bed, they will let you tread on them, have no objection to being squeezed, and will draw milk from the breasts like infants.... It was doubtless one of these that was her bedfellow.”[2316] As is apt to be the case in ancient efforts to give a natural explanation of what purports to be miraculous or supernatural, Lucian’s biology is only slightly less incredible than Nectanebus’s magic transformations.

More dream-sending: magic transformation.

As the queen became pregnant, “Nectanebus consecrated a hawk and told it to go to Philip,” who was still absent, “to stand by him through the night and to instruct him in a dream as it was ordered.”[2317] The vision in question was explained by an interpreter of dreams to Philip as signifying that his wife would have a son by the god Ammon. Nevertheless Philip was somewhat suspicious and hastened to bring his wars to a close and hurry home. Nectanebus, however, rendering himself invisible by means of the magic art, continued to deceive both king and queen. Once he terrified the court by appearing again in the form of a huge hissing serpent, but put his head in Olympias’s lap and then kissed her. Thereupon he turned from a serpent into an eagle and flew away. Philip was then really convinced that his wife’s lover was the god Ammon.

An omen interpreted.

Before the birth of Alexander the following omen befell Philip. As he sat absorbed in thought in a place where there were many birds flying about, one of them laid an egg in his lap. It rolled to the ground, the shell broke, and a snake issued forth. It circled about the egg-shell but when it tried to re-enter the shell was prevented by death. When Antiphon, the interpreter of omens, was consulted concerning this portent, he said that it signified that a son should be born who would conquer the world but die before he could regain his native land.

The birth of Alexander.

The day of Olympias’s delivery now approached and Nectanebus, in his office of astrologer, stood by her side to tell her when the favorable moment had arrived for the birth of her child. Once he urged her to wait, since a child born at that moment would be a slave and a captive. Again he bade her restrain herself, for at that moment an effeminate would be born. At last the favorable instant came for the birth of a world conqueror, and Alexander was born amid an earthquake, thunder, and lightning. In this case, therefore, the moment of birth is regarded as controlling the destiny. Many astrologers, however, considered the moment of conception as of greater importance; we have already heard Augustine tell of the sage who chose a certain hour for intercourse with his wife in order to beget a marvelous son; and in the thirteenth century Albertus Magnus, in his treatise on animals, informs us that “Nectanebus, the natural father of Alexander, in having intercourse with his mother Olympias, observed the time when the sun was entering Leo and Saturn was in Taurus, since he wished his son to receive the form and power of those planets.”[2318]

The death of Nectanebus.

The death of Nectanebus was as closely in accord with the stars as was the birth of Alexander. At the age of twelve Alexander found Nectanebus in consultation with Olympias and, attracted by his astrological tablet, made him promise to show him the stars at night. Then as Nectanebus walked along star-gazing, Alexander pushed him into a steep pit which they chanced to pass, and Nectanebus lay there with a broken neck. When he asked Alexander the reason for his act, the boy replied that it was in order to convince him of the futility of his art, since he gazed at the stars unmindful of what threatened him from the ground. But Nectanebus rebuts this revised version of the maid servant’s taunt to Thales by telling Alexander that he had been forewarned by the stars that he should be killed by his own son, and by revealing to Alexander the secret of his birth.[2319]

In concluding the story of Nectanebus it is perhaps worth while to emphasize the fact that the epitomes and Julius Valerius often use the word magus of Nectanebus as an astrologer and that in general magic, astrology, and divination are indissolubly connected.

The Amazons and Gymnosophists.

Some account is given both in Julius Valerius and the longer epitome of Alexander’s exchange of letters with the Amazons and of questions which he put to the Gymnosophists of India (i. e. the Brahmans) and their replies. Neither of these promising themes, however, results in the introduction of any magic or occult science. We also find in the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria[2320] a list of ten questions which Alexander propounded to ten of the Gymnosophists of India and their ingenious answers given under pain of death if their responses proved unsatisfactory.

The letter to Aristotle.

Nor does Alexander’s letter to Aristotle on the marvels of India reveal many specific instances of superstition that are at all interesting. For the most part it recounts his marches, the sufferings of his army from thirst, combats with wild beasts, serpents, and hippopotamuses, and the treasures which he captured. Alexander states that “in former letters I informed you about the eclipse of the sun and moon and the constancy of the stars and the signs of the air.”[2321] He tells now, however, of a place where there are two trees of the sun and moon, speaking Indian and Greek, one masculine and the other feminine, from which one may learn what the future has in store for good or evil. As to this Alexander was inclined to be incredulous, but the natives swore that it was true, and his companions urged him “not to be defrauded of the experience of so great a thing.” Accordingly he made his way to the spot despite the innumerable beasts and snakes which beset his path. Chastity was essential in order to approach the trees, and he also had to lay aside his rings, royal robes, and shoes. The sun tree then told him at dawn that he would never see home or his mother and sisters again. At eventide the moon tree added that he would die at Babylon.[2322] The third and final response, vouchsafed by the sun tree, was that his death would be from poison, but the name of the poisoner the oracular tree refused to divulge lest Alexander try to kill him first and thus cheat the three Fates. Alexander has consequently had to content himself, as he informs Aristotle in the closing sentence of his letter, with building a monument to perpetuate his name among all mortals.[2323]

Of other spurious treatises ascribed to Alexander in the middle ages, works of alchemy and works of astrology, we shall treat in a later chapter on the Pseudo-Aristotle.

CHAPTER XXV
POST-CLASSICAL MEDICINE

Three representatives of post-classical medicine—Bibliographical note—Medical compendiums: Oribasius and Paul of Aegina—Aëtius of Amida—How superstitious are Aëtius and Alexander of Tralles?—Compound medicines—Aëtius merely reproduces the superstition of Galen—Occult science mixed with some scepticism—Alexander of Tralles—Originality of his work—His medieval influence—His personal experience—Extent of his superstition—Physica—Occult virtue of substances applied externally—Other things used as ligatures and amulets—Astrology and sculpture of rings—Incantations—Conjuration of an herb—Medieval version seems less superstitious than the original text—Marcellus: date and identity—“Marcellus Empiricus”—Superstitious character of his medicine—Preparation of goat’s blood—A rabbit’s foot—Magic transfer of disease—Pliny and Marcellus compared on green lizards as eye-cures—More lizardry—Use of stones and an herb—Right and left: number—Incantations and characters—The art of medicine survives the barbarian invasions.

Three representatives of post-classical medicine.

In this chapter as representatives of post-classical medicine and its influence upon medieval Latin medicine we shall consider three writers whose works date from the close of the fourth to the middle of the sixth century, Marcellus of Bordeaux or Marcellus Empiricus, Aëtius of Amida in Mesopotamia, and Alexander of Tralles in Asia Minor.[2324] They have just been mentioned in their chronological order, but although Marcellus antedates the other two by a full century, we shall consider him last, since he wrote in Latin while they wrote in Greek, and since he includes Celtic words and probably Celtic folk-lore, and since he seems to have been a native of Gaul, if not of Bordeaux,[2325] and thus is geographically closer to the scene of medieval Latin learning. Aëtius and Alexander have the closer connection not only with the eastern and Greek world but also with the past classical medicine of Galen and so will provide a better point of departure. Presumably from the places and periods in which they lived, all three of our authors were Christians, but it must be said that the chief evidence of Christianity in their works is the use of Christian or Hebrew proper names in incantations, and there are some analogous relics of pagan superstition.

Medical compendiums: Oribasius and Paul of Aegina.

As Tribonian and Justinian boiled down the voluminous legal literature of Rome into one Digest, so there was a similar tendency to reduce the past medical writings of the Greeks into one compendious work. Paul of Aegina, writing in the seventh century, observes in his preface[2326] that it is not right, when lawyers who usually have plenty of time to reflect over their cases have handy summaries of their subject to which they can refer, that physicians whose cases often require immediate action should not also have some convenient handbook, and the more so since many of them are called upon to exercise their profession not in large cities with easy access to libraries, but in the country, in desert places, or on shipboard. Oribasius, friend and physician of the emperor Julian, 361-363 A. D., had made such a compendium by that emperor’s order. In this he embodied so much of Galen’s teachings that he became known as “the ape of Galen,”[2327] although he also used more recent writers. But Paul of Aegina regarded this work of Oribasius as too bulky, since it originally comprised seventy-two books although only twenty-five are now extant, and so essayed a briefer compilation of his own. Two centuries ago, however, Friend and Milward protested against regarding Paul, Aëtius, and Alexander as mere compilers and maintained that they “were really men of great learning and experience”[2328] who “have described distempers which were omitted before; taught a new method of treating old ones; given an account of new medicines, both simple and compound; and made large additions to the practice of surgery.”[2329] Puschmann more recently states that Paul’s compendium was “composed with great originality and independence” and is of great value “particularly in its surgical sections.”[2330] After Paul, however, the Byzantine medical writers, such as Palladius, Theophilus, Stephen of Alexandria, Nonus, and Psellus, were of an inferior caliber.[2331] With Paul’s work, however, we are not now further concerned, nor with that of Oribasius, but with the somewhat similar compendiums of Aëtius and Alexander which lie chronologically between these other two. It is Aëtius and Alexander whom Payne accuses of “introducing into classical medicine the magical elements derived from the East”[2332] and whom we might therefore expect to possess an especial interest for our investigation.

Aëtius of Amida.

Of the life and personality of Aëtius we know very little, but inasmuch as he mentions St. Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, and Peter the Archiater, a physician of Theodoric, while he himself is cited by Alexander of Tralles, he seems to have lived at the end of the fifth and beginning of the sixth century.[2333] And since Alexander cites him only in his book on fevers which seems to have been composed after the rest of his work, it seems probable that Aëtius was almost contemporary with him and wrote in the sixth rather than the fifth century. His Tetrabiblos—each of the four books subdivides into four sections and often these are spoken of as sixteen books—occupies a middle position not only in time but in length between the works of Oribasius and Paul, and resembles the latter in making a great deal of use of the former. Aëtius’ extracts from the older writers are shorter than those of Oribasius, however, and he also differs from him in combining several authorities in a single chapter, the method usually adopted by the medieval Latin encyclopedists. It has been noted that the wording of the original authorities was often preserved in the oldest medieval manuscripts of Aëtius, until the copyists of the time of the Italian Renaissance began to touch up the style in accordance with their erroneous notions of what constituted classical Greek.[2334] It may also be said that these systematically arranged handbooks of Oribasius, Aëtius, and the rest, where one could find what one was looking after, were far superior in systematic and orderly presentation to the discursive works of Galen which, like many other classical writings, often seem rambling and without any particular plan.[2335] This more logical, if somewhat cut-and-dried method, was also to be a virtue of medieval Latin learning. Whether Aëtius directly influenced the Latin middle ages is doubtful, since no early Latin translation of him seems to be known.[2336] The work of Oribasius, however, exists in Latin translation in manuscripts of the seventh century as well as in others of the ninth and twelfth.[2337]

How superstitious are Aëtius and Alexander?

The works of Aëtius and Alexander of Tralles do not impress me as containing an unusually large amount of superstitious medicine. Much less am I inclined to agree with Payne that they are responsible for the introduction into classical medicine of magical elements derived from the east. These elements, whether derived from the orient any more than any other feature of classical civilization or not, at any rate had been a prominent feature of classical medicine long before the days of Aëtius and Alexander, as Pliny’s review of medicine before his time abundantly proved and as is also shown by the extraordinary virtues which Pliny himself, his contemporary Dioscorides, and even the great Galen attributed to medicinal simples.

Compound medicines.

It is true that Aëtius and Alexander abound in recipes for elaborate medical compounds composed of numerous ingredients. Of such concoctions one example must suffice, a plaster which Aëtius recommends for tumors, hard lumps, and gout. “Of the terebinth-tree, of the stone of Asia, of bitumen three hundred and sixty drams each; of washing-soda (spumae nitri), calf-fat, wax, laurel berries, ammonia, and thyme three hundred and forty drams each; of the stone pyrites and quick-lime one hundred and twenty drams each; of the ashes of asps which have been burned alive one hundred and forty drams; of old oil two pounds. First liquefy the oil and wax, then the bitumen, which should have first been pulverized. Add to these the fat, and presently the ammonia and terebinth; and when these are taken off the fire mix in the lime and stone of Asia, then the laurel berries and washing-soda, and finally after the medicament has cooled sprinkle the ashes of asps upon it.”[2338] Such concoctions are to a large extent borrowed by Aëtius, Alexander, and Marcellus from earlier writers. Moreover, while Pliny had excluded such compounds from the pages of his Natural History, he had also made it abundantly evident that they were already in general use by his time, and they are to be found in great numbers in the works of Galen who cites many from preceding writers.

Aëtius merely reproduces the superstition of Galen.

Indeed, it was from Galen himself and not from the east that Aëtius at least derived his most strikingly superstitious passages. This was accidentally and convincingly proven by my own experience. It so happened that I wrote an account of the passages in the Tetrabiblos of Aëtius before I had read extensively in Galen’s works. When I came to do so, I found that almost every passage that I had selected to illustrate the superstitious side of Aëtius was contained in Galen: for example, the use as an amulet of a green jasper suspended from the neck by a thread so as to touch the abdomen;[2339] the story of the reapers who found the dead viper in their wine and cured instead of killing the sufferer from elephantiasis to whom they gave the wine to drink;[2340] the tale of his preceptor who roasted river crabs to an ash in a red copper dish in August during dog-days on the eighteenth day of the moon, and administered the powder daily for forty days to persons bitten by mad dogs.[2341] Such passages are usually repeated by Aëtius in such a way as to lead the reader to think them his own experiences, a fact which warns us not to accept the assertions of ancient and medieval authors that they have experienced this or that at their face value, and which makes us wonder if Friend and Milward were not too generous in regarding Aëtius at least as more than a compiler. He also repeats some of Galen’s general observations anent experience as that the virtues of simples are best discovered thus, and that he will not discuss all plants but only those “of which we have information by experience.”[2342] He further reproduces Galen’s attitude of mingled credulity and scepticism concerning the basilisk, combining the two passages into one;[2343] also Galen’s questioning the efficacy of incantations and telling of having seen a scorpion killed by the mere spittle of a fasting man without any incantation.[2344] Like Galen again, he omits all injurious medicaments and expresses the opinion that men who spread the knowledge of such drugs do more harm than actual poisoners who perhaps cause but a single death.[2345] Like Galen he announces his intention to omit all “abominable and detestable recipes and those which are prohibited by law,” mentioning as instances the eating of human flesh and drinking urine or menses muliebres.[2346] But also like Galen, he devotes several chapters to the virtues of human and animal excrement, especially recommending that of dogs after they have been fed on bones for two days.[2347] Somewhat similar to Galen’s recommendation to fill cavities in the teeth with roasted earthworms is the recipe of Aëtius for painless extraction of teeth “without iron.” The tooth must first be thoroughly scraped or the gum cut loose about it, and then sprinkled with the ashes of earthworms. “Therefore use this remedy with confidence, for it has already often been celebrated as a mystery.”[2348] Such use of earthworms continued a feature of medieval dentistry.

Occult science mixed with some scepticism.

Of my original selections from Aëtius very few are now left, and it is not unlikely that they too might be found somewhere in Galen’s works if one looked long enough. Aëtius asserts that drinking bitumen or asphalt in water will prevent hydrophobia from developing,[2349] and recommends for wounds inflicted by sea serpents an application of lead with a slice of the serpent itself.[2350] He takes the following prescription from Oribasius. To cure impotency anoint the big toe of the right foot with oil in which the pulverized ashes of a lizard have been mixed. To check the operation of this powerful stimulant one has merely to wash off the ointment from the toe.[2351] On the other hand, an instance of a sceptical tendency is the citation of the view of Posidonius that the so-called incubus is not a demon but a disease akin to epilepsy and insanity and marked by suffocation, loss of voice, heaviness, and immobility.[2352] It may also be noted that in discussing the medicinal virtues of the beaver’s testicles Aëtius does not include the story of its biting them off in order to escape its hunters.[2353] He does, however, cite several authorities, Piso, Menelbus, Simonides, Aristodemus, and Pherecydes for instances of the remarkable powers of certain animals in discovering the presence of poisons and preserving themselves and their owners from this danger: a partridge who made a great noise and fuss whenever any medicament or poison was being prepared in the house; a pet eagle who would attack anyone in the house who even plotted such a thing; a peacock who would go to the place where the dose had been prepared and raise a clamor, or upset the receptacle containing the potion, or dig up a charm, if it had been buried underground; and a pet ichneumon and parrot who were endowed with very similar gifts.[2354] Aëtius shows a slight tendency in the direction of astrological medicine, giving a list of “times ordained by God” for the risings and settings of various stars, since these affect the air and winds, and since “the bodies of persons in good health, and much more so those of the sick, are altered according to the state of the air.”[2355] But on the whole, of our three authors, Aëtius seems to contain the smallest proportional amount of superstitious medicine and occult science.

Alexander of Tralles.

Alexander of Tralles was the son of a physician and, according to the Byzantine historian, Agathias,[2356] the youngest of a group of five distinguished brothers, including Anthemius of Tralles, architect of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and Metrodorus the grammarian, whom Justinian summoned also to his court. Alexander had visited Italy, Gaul, and Spain as well as all parts of Greece[2357] before settling down in old age, when he could no longer engage in active medical practice,[2358] to the composition of his magnum opus in twelve books beginning with the head, eyes, and ears, and ending with gout and fever. Aside from his citation of Aëtius in the book on fevers, the latest writer named by Alexander is Jacobus Psychrestus, physician to Leo the Great about 474.[2359] It seems rather strange that Alexander says nothing of the pestilence of 542.[2360]

Originality of his work.

Alexander embodied the results of his own practice to a much greater extent than Oribasius and Aëtius. His book is more a record of his own medical observations and experiences than a compilation from past writings, a fact recognized in the first edition which entitled it Practica, and “though he pays a due deference to the ancients, yet he is so far from putting an implicit faith in what they have advanced that he very often dissents from their doctrines.”[2361] Puschmann regarded him as the first doctor for a long time who had done any original thinking,[2362] and esteemed his pathology as highly as his therapeutics had been esteemed by his sixteenth century translator, Guinther of Andernach.[2363] Friend wrote of him in the early eighteenth century, “His method is extremely rational and just and after all our discoveries and improvements in physick scarce anything can be added to it.”[2364] Alexander seems to have been a practitioner of much resource and ingenuity, stopping hemorrhage of the nose by blowing down or fuzz up the nostrils through a hollow reed, and directing patients, a thousand years before the discovery of the Eustachian tube, to sneeze with mouth and nose stopped up in order to dislodge a foreign object from the ear.[2365] According to Milward, Alexander was the first Greek medical writer to mention rhubarb and tape-worms, and the first practitioner to open the jugular veins.[2366] Indeed, Alexander advises blood-letting a great deal, but Milward, whose age still approved of that practice, notes that he was “no ways addicted to those superstitious rules of opening this or that vein in particular cases which several of the ancients and some even among the moderns have been so very fond of.”[2367] Finally, Alexander’s concise and orderly method of presentation compares favorably with that of the classical medical writers.

His medieval influence.

Alexander’s book traveled west, as its author had done, and was current in a free and abbreviated Latin translation from an early date.[2368] In fact, it was from the Latin version that the work was translated into Hebrew and Syriac.[2369] Not only are Latin manuscripts of Alexander’s work as a whole or of extracts from it[2370] found from the ninth century on, while printed editions in Latin were numerous through the sixteenth century, but it was much used and cited by medieval writers such as Constantinus Africanus, Gariopontus,[2371] and Gilbert of England.[2372] It is not, however, always safe to assume that citations of Alexander medicus, encountered in thirteenth century writers on the nature of things like Thomas of Cantimpré and Bartholomew of England, have reference to Alexander of Tralles, since a treatise on fevers is also ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias,[2373] while a work on the pulse and urine in fevers is thought to be by some medieval Alexander.[2374] And medical treatises are sometimes ascribed even to Alexander the Great of Macedon in the medieval manuscripts.[2375]

His personal experience.

We have already said that Alexander is no mere compiler but embodies the results of his own observation and experience during a long period of travel and medical practice. He frequently asserts that he has tested this or that for himself, or that the prescription in question has been “approved by long use and experience,”[2376] so that it is not surprising that we find the name Alexander still associated with medical “experiments” in manuscripts dating from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.[2377] One of his cures for epilepsy he learned “from a rustic in Tuscany” (Thuscia?) but afterwards often employed with success himself.[2378] “It is a marvelous and exceptional medicine which you will communicate to no one,” concludes Alexander, a rather surprising prohibition in view of the fact that it was a popular remedy to begin with. Folk-lore, however, is often supposed to be kept secret. Another general rule which holds true in Alexander’s case is that these empirical remedies are apt to be the most superstitious, and conversely that marvels are apt to be supported by solemn assurance of their experimental testing.

Extent of his superstition.

Two centuries ago Milward wrote of Alexander of Tralles, “But there is another objection to our author’s character which I cannot pretend to say much in defence of, and that is, his being addicted to charms and amulets. It is very surprising that one who discovers so much judgment in other matters should show so much weakness in this.”[2379] Alexander certainly devotes more space to superstition relatively to the length of his book than Aëtius does and also is hospitable to a wider range of more or less magical notions and practices. One notices, however, in his book that the treatment of certain diseases, such as epilepsy, colic, gout, and quartan fever, is more likely to involve magical and astrological procedure than that of other ailments such as earache and disorder of the spleen. This is also apt to be the case with other ancient and medieval medical works. But it is doubtful if the distinction can be sharply drawn that magic was resorted to more in those diseases which seemed most mysterious and incurable.

Physica.

The chief circumstance which renders some parts of Alexander’s work more superstitious than others is that he sometimes, after concluding the usual medical description of the disease and prescriptions for it, adds a list of what he calls physical or natural medicines (φυσικά), which are for the most part ligatures and suspensions but involve also the employment of incantations and engraved images or characters. Apparently he calls these remedies physica, because they supposedly act by some peculiar property or occult virtue of the substance which is bound on or suspended and constitute a sort of natural magic. Alexander explains that “since some cannot observe a diet nor endure medicine, they compel us in the case of gout to employ physical remedies and ligatures; and in order that the well-trained physician may be instructed in every side of his art and able to help all sick persons in every way, I come to this subject.”[2380] This rather apologetic tone and the fact that he separates the physica from his other remedies show that he regards them as not quite on the same level with normal medical procedure. He goes on to say, however, that although there are many of these “physical” remedies which are efficacious, he will write down only those proved true by long use. In discussing fevers he again justifies the inclusion of physica in much the same way and says that those now mentioned were learned by him during a long-extended practice and experience.[2381] It is to be noted that some of these chapters on physical ligatures do not appear in the Latin version in three books, at least as it was printed in 1504.

Occult virtue of substances applied externally.

One ligature which is “quite celebrated and approved by many” and which instantly lessens the pain of ulcers in the feet, makes use of muscles from a wild ass, a wild boar, and a stork, binding the right muscles about the patient’s right foot and the left muscles about the left foot. Some persons, however, do not intertwine the muscles of the stork with the others but put them separately into the skin of a sea-calf. Also they take care to bind the other muscles about the patient’s feet when the moon is in the west or in a sterile sign and approaching Saturn. Others bind on the tendons and claws of a vulture, or the feet of a hare who should remain alive.[2382] Alexander seems to regard the carcass of the ass as especially remedial in the case of epilepsy. In Spain he learned to use the skull of an ass reduced to ashes and he recommends employing the forehead and brain of an ass as amulets.[2383] A suspension for quartan fever consists of a live beetle firmly fastened on the outside of a red linen cloth and hung about the neck. “This is true and often tested by experience,” Alexander assures us. Also excellent for this purpose are hairs from a goat’s cheek or a green lizard combined with clippings of the patient’s finger nails and toe nails. It is confirmed by the testimony of all “natural” physicians that the blood qui primus a virgine fuerit excretus is naturally hostile to quartan fever. Even if the girl is not chaste, the blood will be efficacious, if applied to the patient’s right hand or arm.[2384] Alexander knew a man who treated quartan fever by giving an undergarment of the patient to a woman in childbirth to wear, after which the patient wore it again and was cured “miraculously by some antipathy and occult influence.”[2385]

Other things used as ligatures and in amulets.

The materials employed in Alexander’s therapeutics are sometimes those which we associate especially with magic arts, such as the hair and nail-parings already mentioned. Against epilepsy he employs nails from a cross or wrecked ship, or the blood-stained shirt of a gladiator or criminal who has been slain. The nails are bound to the patient’s arm; the shirt is burned and the patient given the ashes in wine seven times. The use of a nail from a cross is a method ascribed to Asclepiades. Other materials recommended by Alexander against gout and epilepsy include the herb night-shade, the stones magnet and aetites, blood of a swallow and urine of a boy, chameleons in varied forms, and the stones found in dissected swallows of which we have heard before and shall hear yet again. For Alexander these stones are black and white, but he states that they are not found in all young swallows but are said to appear only in the first-born, so that one often has to dissect a great many birds before one finds any. In these passages on Physica Alexander cites such authors of magical reputation as Ostanes and Democritus, and tells how the latter suffered in youth from epilepsy until an oracle from Delphi instructed him to make use of the worms in goats’ brains. When a goat sneezes violently, some of these worms are expelled into his nostrils, whence they should be carefully extracted in a cloth without allowing them to touch the ground. Either one or three of them should then be worn about the epileptic’s neck wrapped in the thin skin of a black sheep.[2386]

Astrology and sculpture of rings.

One passage has already been cited where astrological conditions were observed. Alexander sometimes prescribes the day of the month upon which things shall be done; an oil, for instance, is to be prepared on the fifth of March.[2387] In one place Alexander advises engraving upon a copper die a lion, a half-moon, a star, and the name of the beast. This is to be worn enclosed in a gold ring upon the fourth finger.[2388] That the lion may not stand for a sign of the zodiac is suggested by another instruction concerning an engraved stone to be set in a gold ring, and which is to be carved with a figure of Hercules suffocating a lion.[2389] For gout, however, one writes a verse of Homer on a copper plate when the moon is in Libra or Leo.[2390] For colic one inscribes upon an iron ring with an octangular circumference a charm beginning, “Flee, flee, colic.”[2391]

Incantations.

The employment of such incantations is expressly justified by Alexander, who maintains that even “the most divine” Galen, who once thought that incantations were of no avail, came after a long time and much experience to be convinced that they were of great efficacy. Alexander then quotes from a treatise which is not extant but which he asserts is a work by Galen entitled, On medical treatment in Homer.[2392] “So some think that incantations are like old-wives’ tales and so I thought for a long while, but in process of time from perfectly plain instances I have become persuaded that there is force in them, for I have experienced their aid in the case of persons stung by scorpions. And no less in the case of bones stuck in the throat, which were straightway expelled by an incantation.” Alexander himself thereupon continues, “If such is the testimony of divinest Galen and many other ancients, what prevents us too from communicating to you those which we have learned from experience and which we have received from trustworthy friends?”

Conjuration of an herb.

Both incantations and observance of astrological conditions play an important part in the instructions given by Alexander for digging and plucking with imprecations an herb to be used in the treatment of fluxions of hands or feet. “When the moon is in Aquarius under Pisces, dig before sunset, not touching the root. After digging with two fingers of the left hand, namely, the thumb and middle finger, say, ‘I address you, I address you, sacred herb. I summon you to-morrow to the house of Philia to stay the fluxion of feet and hands of this man or this woman. But I adjure you by the great name, Iaoth, Sabaoth, God who established the earth and fixed the sea abounding in fluid floods, who desiccated Lot’s wife and made her a statue of salt, receive the spirit of thy mother earth and its powers, and dry up this fluxion of feet or of hands of this man or woman.’ On the morrow ere sunrise, taking the bone of some dead animal, dig up the root, and holding it say, ‘I adjure you by the sacred names, Iaoth, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi,’ and sprinkle a pinch of salt on that root, saying, ‘As this salt is not increased, so be not the ailment of this man or of this woman.’ Then bind one end of the root to the patient, taking care that it is not moist, and suspend the rest of it over the fire for 360 days.”[2393] The mention of mother earth in this charm perhaps indicates an ultimate pagan origin, but the allusions to one God, and to incidents in the Old Testament, and the use of names of spirits show Jewish or Christian influence, while the number 360 perhaps points to the Gnostics.

Medieval version seems less superstitious than the original text.

While in conformity with the character of our investigation we have emphasized those passages in Alexander which are suggestive of magic and its methods, it should be said that many of the passages which we have cited are apparently[2394] not found in the medieval Latin versions which seem to omit many, although not all, of the chapters devoted to physical ligatures. Here then apparently is a case where the early medieval translator and adapter, instead of retaining and emphasizing the superstition of the past, has largely purged his text of it. But we have next to consider a Latin work, written apparently about the year 400 A. D. and known to us through two manuscripts of the ninth century, in which magic is far more rampant than in any version of Alexander of Tralles. Judging, however, from the small number of extant manuscripts, it was less influential through the medieval period than was Alexander’s book.

Marcellus: date and identity.

The De medicamentis opens in one of the two extant manuscripts with a dedicatory letter from “Marcellus, an illustrious man of the main office of Theodosius the Elder (?)” to his sons.[2395] This ascription is generally accepted as genuine, and Grimm believed this to be the same Marcellus as the physician who is gratefully mentioned, together with his sons, then mere infants, in the letters of Libanius, whose severe headaches Marcellus had alleviated, and as the Marcellus magister officiorum who is mentioned twice in the Theodosian Code under the year 395. The date of the De medicamentis may be further fixed from its including “a singular remedy for spleen which the patriarch Gamaliel recently revealed from proved experiments.” This Gamaliel was Jewish patriarch at Constantinople from some time before 395 on to 415 or later. The question, however, of Marcellus’ authorship is complicated by the fact that he is twice cited in the work itself. One of these passages concerns an “oxyporium which Nero used for the digestion, which Marcellus the eminent physician revealed, which we too have tested in practice.”[2396] This sounds as if some later person had had a hand in the work as it has reached us, since Marcellus himself would scarcely have cited another person of the same name without some distinguishing epithet. Furthermore Aëtius cites a Marcellus for a passage which does not appear in the De medicamentis concerning wolfish or canine insanity, in which men imagine themselves to be wolves or dogs and act like them during the night in the month of February. But the De medicamentis as a whole is of the character promised by Marcellus in the introductory letter to his sons and so may be taken as his work.

“Marcellus Empiricus.”

The empiricism which we have already noted in Alexander of Tralles becomes most pronounced and most extreme in Marcellus, who indeed is often called Marcellus Empiricus on this account, and many of whose chapter and other headings[2397] terminate with these words descriptive of their contents, “various rational and natural remedies learned by experience” (remedia rationabilia et physica diversa de experimentis). In his preface, too, he speaks of his book not as De medicamentis but as De empiricis. He has, it is true, utilized “the old authorities of the medical art set down in the Latin language,” and likewise more recent writers and “the works of studious men” who were not especially trained in medicine; but he also includes what he has learned from hearsay or from personal experience, and “even remedies chanced upon by rustics and the populace and simples which they have tested by experience.” One prescription, which he characterizes as efficacious beyond human hope and incapable of being satisfactorily lauded, he purchased from an old-wife of Africa who cured many at Rome by it, while the author himself has employed it in the cure of “several persons neither of humble rank nor unknown, whose names it is superfluous to mention.” This remedy is a concoction of such things as ashes of deer-horn, nine grains of white pepper, a little myrrh, and an African snail pounded shell and all while still alive in a mortar and then mixed with Falernian wine. Very detailed and explicit directions are given as to its preparation and administration, including an instruction to drink the dose facing towards the east.[2398] In another passage Marcellus says of certain compounds, “If there is any faith, both I myself have always found them by experience to be useful remedies and I can state that others are of the same mind; and I will add this, that other medicines can not compare to this liniment, which in similar cases several of my friends, whom I trust as I do myself, have affirmed on oath they have found by experience a remarkable cure.”[2399] Of an eye-remedy he remarks, “And that we may believe the author of this remedy from experience, he states that after he had been blind for twelve years it restored his sight within twenty days.”[2400] Marcellus also frequently couples marvelousness with experimentation, saying, “You will experience a wonderful remedy.” In one passage he uses the word “experiment” as a verb rather than as a noun, coining a new expression, experimentatum remedium,[2401] but his commonest expressions are de experimento or de experimentis, expertum, and experieris or experietur.[2402] Some of his “experiences” really are purposive experiments, as where one discovers whether a tumor is scrofulous by applying an earthworm to it. Then put the worm on a leaf and if the tumor was scrofulous, the worm will turn into earth.[2403] The following experiment indicates that sufferers from spleen should drink in vinegar the root or dried leaves of the tamarisk. Give tamarisk to a pig to eat for nine days, then kill the animal and you will find it without a spleen.[2404]

Superstitious character of his medicine.

As Marcellus appeals the most to experience, so he is by far the most given to superstition and folk-lore of our three authors. Practically his entire work is of the character of the passages devoted to Physica by Alexander of Tralles. He indulges in no medical theory, he does not diagnose diseases, nor prescribe a regimen of health in the form of bathing, diet, and exercise. His work is wholly composed of medicaments and for the most part empirical ones. Besides the elaborate compounds which were so frequent in Aëtius and Alexander, he is extremely addicted to absurd rigmarole and all sorts of superstitious practices in the application or administration of medicinal simples. His pharmacy includes not only herbs and gems, to which he attributes occult virtue and which he sometimes directs to have engraven with characters and figures, such as SSS or a dragon surrounded with seven rays[2405]—the emblem of the Agathodaemon, but also all kinds of animals, reptiles, and parts of the same, after the fashion of Pliny’s medicine. He is constantly calling into requisition such things as the ashes of a mole, the blood of a bat, the brains of a mouse, the gall of a hyena, the hoofs of a live ass, the liver of a wolf, woman’s milk, sea-hares, a white spider with very long legs, and centipedes or multipedes, especially the variety that rolls up into a ball when touched. But it is scarcely feasible to separate Marcellus’ materials from his procedure, so we will begin to consider them together in some prescriptions where animals play the leading part.

Preparation of goat’s blood.

For those suffering from stone is recommended a remedy prepared in the following fashion. In August shut up in a dry place for three days a goat, preferably a wild one who is one year old, and feed him on nothing but laurel and give him no water to drink; finally on the third day, which should fall on a Thursday or Sunday, kill him. Both the person who kills the goat and the patient should be chaste and pure. Cut the goat’s throat and collect his blood—it is best if the blood is collected by naked boys—and burn it to an ash in an earthen pot. After combining it with various herbs and drugs, there are further directions to follow as to how it may best be administered to the patient. Marcellus, by the way, affirms that adamant can be broken only by goat’s blood.[2406]

A rabbit’s foot.

The following prescription involves the familiar superstition that a rabbit’s foot is lucky: “Cut off the foot of a live rabbit and take hairs from under its belly and let it go. Of those hairs or wool make a strong thread and with it bind the rabbit’s foot to the body of the patient and you will find a marvelous remedy. But the remedy will be even more efficacious, so that it is hardly credible, if by chance you find that bone, namely, the rabbit’s ankle-bone, in the dung of a wolf, which you should guard so that it neither touches the earth nor is touched by woman. Nor should any woman touch that thread made of the rabbit’s wool.” Marcellus further recommends that in releasing the rabbit after taking its wool you should say, “Flee, flee, little rabbit, and take the pain away with you.”[2407]

Magic transfer of disease.

Of such magical transfer of disease to other animals or objects there are a number of examples. Toothache may be stopped by standing on the ground under the open sky and spitting in a frog’s mouth and asking it to take the toothache away with it and then releasing it.[2408] Even consumptives who seem certain to die and who labor continually with an unbearable cough, may be cured by giving them to drink for three days the saliva or foam of a horse. “You will indeed cure the patient without delay, but the horse will die suddenly.”[2409] Splenetic persons are benefited by imposing any one of three kinds of fish upon the spleen and then replacing the fish alive in the sea.[2410] Warts may be got rid of by rubbing them with something the moment you see a star falling in the sky; but if you rub them with your bare hand, you will simply transfer them to it.[2411] Another superstition connected with falling stars which Marcellus records is that one will be free from sore eyes for as many years as he can count numbers while a star is falling.[2412] The first time you hear or see a swallow, hasten silently to a spring or well and anoint your eyes with the water and pray God that you may not have sore eyes that year, and the swallows will bear away all pain from your eyes.[2413] With slight variations the same procedure may be employed to prevent toothache. In this case you fill your mouth with water, rub your teeth with the middle fingers of both hands, and say, “Swallow, I say to you, as this will not again be in my beak, so may my teeth not ache all year long.”[2414] Marcellus advises anyone whose nose is stuffed up to blow it on a piece of parchment, and, folding this up like a letter, cast it into the public way,[2415]—which would very likely spread the germs, if not take away the cold.

Pliny and Marcellus compared on green lizards as eye cures.

In his preface Marcellus refers to Pliny as one of his authorities and many of his quaint animal remedies will be found substantially duplicated in the Natural History. Both, for example, state that one can stop one’s nose from running by kissing a mule.[2416] Marcellus, however, adds much from other sources or of his own. This may be illustrated by comparing their accounts of the use of lizards to cure eye diseases.[2417] Marcellus omits the following portion of Pliny’s account: “Some shut up a green lizard in a new earthen pot, and they mark the little stones called cinaedia, which are bound on for tumors of the groin, with nine signs and take out one daily. On the ninth day they let the lizard go, and keep the pebbles for pains of the eyes.” Pliny next proceeds: “Others put earth under a green lizard that has been blinded and shut it up in a glass vase with rings of solid iron or gold. When through the glass the lizard is seen to have recovered its sight, it is released and the rings are used for sore eyes.” This recipe is in Marcellus who, however, words it differently and adds that the lizard must be blinded with a copper needle, that the rings may be of silver, electrum, or copper, that the vase must be carefully sealed and opened on the fifth or seventh day following, and that one should not only wear the rings afterwards on one’s fingers but also frequently apply them to one’s eyes and strengthen the sight by looking through them. He further cautions to leave the vase in a clean grassy spot, to collect the rings only after the lizard has departed, to catch the lizard in the first place on a Thursday in September between the nineteenth and twenty-fifth day of the moon, and to have the operation performed by a very pure and chaste man. Marcellus also states that an amulet made either of the eyes of the said lizard enclosed in a lead bull or gold coin, or of its blood caught on clean wool and wrapped in purple cloth will effectually prevent eye diseases. Meanwhile Pliny for his part has gone on to tell how efficacious the ashes of green lizards are.

More lizardry.

Marcellus employs green lizards in other connections which are not paralleled in Pliny. To stay colic one binds about the patient three times with an incantation a string with which a copper needle has been threaded and drawn through a lizard’s eyes, after which the reptile is released at the same point where it was captured.[2418] In another passage Marcellus recommends the drawing by a silver needle of threads of nine different colors other than black or white through the eyes of a new-born puppy before they open and ita ut per anum eius exeant, after which the puppy is to be thrown into the river.[2419] But to return to our lizards. For those suffering from liver complaint the liver of a lizard is to be extracted with the point of a reed and bound in purple or black cloth to the patient’s right side or suspended from his arm, while the lizard is to be dismissed alive with these words, “Lo, I send you away alive; see to it that no one whom I touch henceforth has liver complaint.”[2420] To insure a wife’s fidelity one touches her with the tip of a lizard’s tail which has been cut off by the left hand.[2421] Here again the lizard is released but apparently is not expected to survive for long, since one is instructed to “hold the tail shut in the palm of the same hand until it dies.” In a fourth example the lizard is neither mutilated nor released but hung in the doorway of a splenetic’s bedroom where it will touch his head and left hand as he comes and goes.[2422]

Use of stones and an herb.

One or two other prescriptions may be added where the procedure is connected with herbs or stones rather than with animals. On entering a city one is advised to pick up some of the pebbles lying in the road before the city gate, stating that they are being collected for headache. Then bind one of them on the head and throw the others behind your back without looking around.[2423] A certain herb must be gathered on Thursday in a waning moon. When it is administered in drink, the recipient must take it standing and facing the east. He receives the cup from the right hand and then, in order not to look back, returns it to the left to him who gave it. Only these two persons should touch the drink.[2424]

Right and left number.

Right and left, as just illustrated, are much observed in Marcellus’ medicine. When a tooth aches on the left side of the mouth, a hot cooked dried bean is applied to the right elbow for three days, a process which is reversed if the tooth is on the right side.[2425] The following exercise recommended for a stiff neck would seem to stand more chance of success than most of Marcellus’ prescriptions. While fasting the patient should spit on his right hand and rub his right thigh, and then do the same with his left hand and thigh. Thrice repeated this is warranted to work an immediate cure.[2426] A ring worn on the middle finger of the left hand is said to stop hiccough.[2427] The power of the planets or of mere number is indicated in the advice, given several times, to make seven knots in a string.[2428] Once instructions are given to make as many knots as there are letters in the patient’s name.[2429]

Incantations and characters.

Incantations and characters, as has already been incidentally illustrated, abound in Marcellus’ pages. Some are in Greek, some in Latin, some perhaps in Celtic; many, as we have seen, are coherent statements, commands, or requests; many others are to all appearance a jargon of meaningless words, like the jingle, Argidam, margidam, sturgidam,[2430] which is to be repeated seven times on Tuesday and Thursday in a waning moon to cure toothache. Marcellus well calls one of these carmen idioticum.[2431] For stomach and intestinal troubles he recommends pressing the abdomen with the left thumb and saying, “Adam, bedam, alam, betur, alem, botum.” This is to be repeated nine times, then one touches the earth with the same thumb and spits, then says the charm nine more times, and again for a third series of nine, touching the ground and spitting nine times also. Alabanda, alabandi, alambo is another incantation, variously repeated thrice with hands clasped above and below the abdomen. Yet another consists in rubbing the abdomen with the left thumb and two little fingers and saying, “A tree stood in the middle of the sea and there hung an urn full of human intestines; three virgins went around it, two make it fast, one revolves it.” As you repeat this thrice, you touch the ground thrice and spit, but if the charm is for veterinary purposes, for the words “human intestines” should be substituted “the intestines of mules” or horses or asses as the case may be.[2432] The following is a specimen of the characters prescribed by Marcellus:[2433]

ΛΨΜΘΚΙΑ
ΛΨΜΘΚΙΑ
ΛΨΜΘΚΙΑ

The art of medicine survives the barbarian invasions.

It is perhaps worth while to point out in concluding this chapter that apparently at no time during the period of barbarian invasions and early medieval centuries did medical practice or literature cease entirely in the west. We have seen that there is reason to suspect that portions of the work ascribed to Marcellus may be contributions of the centuries following him, and that there were early medieval Latin translations of the works of Oribasius and Alexander of Tralles. Furthermore, the laws of the German kingdoms, the allusions of contemporary chroniclers and men of letters, the advice of Gregory the Great to a sick archbishop to seek medical assistance, and many other bits of evidence[2434] show that physicians were fairly numerous and in good repute, and that medieval Christians at no time depended entirely upon the healing virtues of relics of the saints or other miraculous powers credited to the church or divine answer to prayer.

CHAPTER XXVI
PSEUDO-LITERATURE IN NATURAL SCIENCE OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

General character—Medicine of Pliny—Herbarium of Apuleius—Specimens of its occult science—A “Precantation of all herbs”—Other treatises accompanying the Herbarium—Cosmography of Aethicus—Its medieval influence—Character of the work—Its attitude to marvels—The Geoponica—Magic and astrology therein—Dioscorides—Textual history of the De materia medica—Alterations made in the Greek text—Dioscorides little known to Latins before the middle ages—Partial versions in Latin—De herbis femininis—The fuller Latin versions—Peter of Abano’s account of the medieval versions—Pseudo-Dioscorides on stones—Conclusions from the textual history of Dioscorides—Macer on herbs; its great currency—Problem of date and author—Virtues ascribed to herbs—Experiments of Macer.

General character.

A class of writings which seems to have been very characteristic of the waning culture of the declining Roman Empire and the scanty erudition of the early medieval period were the brief epitomes of, or disorderly collections of fragments from, the writers of the classical period. Such works often passed under the name of some famous author of the previous period and sometimes are more or less based upon his writings. Most of the works in the field of natural science are of such derivative or pseudo-authorship: the Medicine of the Pseudo-Pliny, the Herbarium of the Pseudo-Apuleius, the geographical work ascribed to Aethicus, the Geoponica, the treatises on herbs attributed to Macer and Dioscorides. Indeed, the whole textual history of the latter’s De materia medica is so full of vicissitudes and uncertainties that I have postponed its treatment until this chapter. The names of the actual compilers or abbreviators of these works are usually unknown and it is also usually impossible to date them with any approach to accuracy. Roughly speaking of them as a whole, they may be said to have gradually taken on their present form at almost any time between the third and tenth centuries. In the case of these works of natural science at least, it is not quite fair to class them all as brief epitomes or disorderly collections. In some we see an obvious attempt to rearrange the old materials in a form more convenient for present use. In others to the stage of abbreviation from ancient authors has succeeded another stage of later additions from other sources.

Medicine of Pliny.

The Medicina, or Art of Medicine, of the Pseudo-Pliny[2435] consists of three books in which medical passages, drawn from Pliny’s Natural History, are rearranged according to diseases instead of, as in the genuine Pliny, by simples. The first two books deal with diseases of the human body in descending order from top to toe and from headache to gout, a favorite arrangement throughout the course of medieval medicine. The last book then considers afflictions which are not necessarily connected with any particular part of the body, such as wounds and fevers. Thus this compilation attests Pliny’s medieval influence and the practical use made of his work, while it of course continues much of his medical magic and superstition. The compiler’s rearrangement is an essential one, if the medical recommendations of the Natural History were to be made available for ready reference. In this case, therefore, the epitomizer has rather improved upon than disordered the arrangement of the original. This compilation is believed to have been used by Marcellus Empiricus, and a Letter of Plinius Secundus to his friends about medicine, which Marcellus gives along with other medical epistles, is thought to be the preface of the abbreviator, who in that case depicts himself as composing his volume so that his friends and himself when traveling may avoid the payment of exorbitant fees asked by strange physicians. If we can regard everything in the work of Marcellus as we have it as having been written by 400, the Medicine of Pliny must have been written during the declining Roman Empire. The manuscripts used by Rose in his edition were of the tenth and twelfth centuries. There is also a later version of the Medicine of Pliny in five books,[2436] of which the two last are entirely new additions, the fifth being an extract from the old Latin translation of Alexander of Tralles. And in the first three books the earlier Pseudo-Pliny has been worked over with additions. The Pseudo-Pliny is also embodied with alterations and accompanied by some prayers and incantations in a tenth century manuscript at St. Gall.[2437]

The Herbarium of Apuleius.

Several works besides the six commonly regarded as genuine[2438] were attributed to Apuleius in the middle ages, grammatical[2439] and rhetorical[2440] treatises, the Hermetic Asclepius,[2441] a treatise on physiognomy,[2442] and the very widespread Sphere of Life and Death, of which we shall treat in another chapter.[2443] We shall now consider the Herbarium of Apuleius,[2444] the one of his spurious works, which has most to do with the world of nature, and, with the exception of the brief Sphere, the one which occurs most often in the manuscripts. The Herbarium was first printed about 1480 by the physician of Pope Sixtus IV from a manuscript at Monte Cassino, and then, after various other editions, was included in 1547 in the collection of ancient Latin medical writers issued by the Aldine Press. We are told, however, that with the close of the fifteenth century the Apuleius began to be superseded by German herbals. The medieval manuscripts of the Herbarium are often noteworthy for their illuminations of the herbs in vivid colors. Those of the mandragora root are especially interesting, showing it as a man standing on the back of a dog or a human form with leaves growing on the head and led by a dog chained to his waist.[2445] The oldest manuscripts are of the sixth century, and there are some in Anglo-Saxon, but as one would expect, the work underwent many additions and alterations, and different manuscripts of it vary considerably. The author is usually spoken of as Apuleius the Platonist and is sometimes said to have received his work from the centaur Chiron, the master of Achilles, and from Esculapius.[2446]

Specimens of its occult science.

In the Herbarium the plants are listed and described and their virtues, especially medicinal, stated. Usually the names for each herb in several languages or regions are given—Latin, Greek, Punic, Biblical (by the Prophets), Egyptian, Syrian, Gallic, Dacian, Spanish, Phrygian, Tuscan. By no means all of these are listed in every case, however. The virtues of the herbs often operate in an occult manner, or procedure suggestive of magic is involved in collecting or applying them. Often diseases are cured merely by holding an herb in the hand, wearing it with a string about the neck, or placing it behind one ear, or wearing it in a ring. Lunatics, for example, are treated by binding an herb about the neck with red cloth when the moon is waxing in the sign of the bull or the first part of the scorpion. Not only does observance of astrology assist the medicinal application of herbs; plants are in turn of assistance in the pursuit of astrology. To learn under the rule of what star you are, be in a state of purity, pluck the herb Montaster, keep it in a bit of clean linen until you find a whole grain of wheat in a loaf of bread, then place this with the herb under your pillow and pray to the seven planets to reveal your guardian star to you in your sleep. Indeed prayers and incantations are frequently employed and in one case must be repeated nine times. Sometimes the herb itself is addressed, as in the conjuration, “Herb Erystion, I implore you to aid me and cheerfully afford me all your virtues and cure and make whole all those ills which Aesculapius and Chiron the centaur, masters of medicine, healed by means of you.” Sometimes the earth is conjured as in the prayer beginning, “Holy goddess Earth.” Such prayers are scarcely consonant with Christianity and in some manuscripts have been omitted and replaced by the Lord’s Prayer or other Christian forms, or left in with their wording slightly altered to avoid paganism.[2447] Personal purity and clean clothing are often enjoined upon those gathering the herbs and such instructions are added as to mark the circle about the plant with gold, silver, ivory, the tooth of a wild boar, and the horn of a bull, or to fill the hole with honeyed fruits. Some herbs protect their bearers from all serpents or even from all evils. Others, like asparagus if you use a dry root of it to sprinkle the patient with spring water, break the spell of witchcraft. Asparagus is also beneficial for toothache and wonderfully relieves a tumor or bladder trouble, if it is boiled in water and drunk by the patient fasting for seven days and also used in bathing for a number of days. But one must be careful not to go out in the cold during this time nor to take cold drinks.[2448]

A “Precantation of All Herbs.”

In some manuscripts a “Precantation of all herbs” is placed at the beginning of the treatise.[2449] It prescribes such procedure as holding a mirror over the herb before plucking it before sunrise under a waning moon. The person plucking the herb and uttering the incantation must be barefoot, ungirded, chaste, and wear no ring. The plant is adjured not only “by the living God” and “the holy name of God, Sabaoth,” but also by Seia, the Roman goddess of sowing, and by “GS,” which presumably stands for Gaia Seia, an expression which is once written out in full. Some meaningless words are also repeated.

Other treatises accompanying the Herbarium.

The Herbarium is often accompanied in the manuscripts by other treatises on herbs ascribed to Dioscorides and Macer, of which we shall speak presently; by a work on the medicinal properties of animals, or more particularly of quadrupeds, by Sextus Papirius Placidus[2450] Actor[2451]—an otherwise quite unknown personage;[2452] by a “letter concerning a little beast” from the king of Egypt or Aesculapius to the emperor Octavian Augustus;[2453] and by introductory letters, such as we find prefaced to the De medicamentis of Marcellus Empiricus, of “Hippocrates to his Moecenas”[2454] and “Antonius Musus to Moecenas Agrippa.” The epistle of the Egyptian king or Aesculapius to Augustus, however, really forms the introduction or opening chapter to the treatise of Sextus Papirius Placidus on the medicinal properties of animals, and after the little beast or quadruped called mela or taxo[2455] follow fast the stag, serpent, fox, hare, scorpion, and so forth. As for the taxo, Augustus is told that by means of it he can protect himself from sorcerers, avoid defections in his army, and preserve his troops from the pestilence which the barbarians bring, and the city of Rome from both pestilences and fires. To this end a lustration should be performed with its flesh, and it should then be buried at the city gates. One way to appropriate its virtue is to extract its large teeth, repeating a jargon of strange words the while.

Cosmography of Aethicus.

Another characteristic product of declining antique learning and of early medieval effort is found in the field of geography in the Cosmography of Aethicus Istricus, translated into Latin by the priest Jerome (Hieronymus Presbyter). The oldest manuscript is one of the eighth century in the British Museum,[2456] where it is also found in several other fairly early manuscripts[2457] in the respectable company of Vitruvius, Vegetius, Sallust, and Suetonius,[2458] as well as with the more congenial work of Solinus. This Cosmographia was not printed until 1852, when it was edited at Paris by M. d’Avezac and again in 1854 at Leipzig by M. H. Wuttke. It is an entirely different work from what had hitherto been repeatedly printed as the Cosmography of Aethicus but is really to be identified with fragments of Julian Honorius and Orosius. The Latin translator of our treatise had been identified in the middle ages with St. Jerome, the church father, and Wuttke still ascribed it to him, but Bunbury protested against this,[2459] and Mommsen placed our treatise not earlier than the seventh century.[2460]

Its medieval influence

Bunbury added, however, that the Cosmography “appears to have been much read in the middle ages, and is therefore not without literary interest.” The apparent greatness of the names on the title page seems to have given the middle ages an exaggerated notion of the work’s importance. Aethicus himself is spoken of as from Istria and according to the Explicit of at least one manuscript[2461] was a Scythian, but this does not mean that his attitude towards learning was that of a Hun, for the same Explicit goes on to inform us that he was of noble lineage and, if I correctly interpret the faulty syntax of its Latin, that from him the ethical philosophy of other sages drew its origins. Somewhat later Roger Bacon said in discussing faults in the study of theology in his day, “From the authorities of the philosophers whom the saints cite I shall abstain, except that I will strengthen the utterances of Ethicus the astronomer and Alchimus the philosopher by the authority of the blessed Jerome, since no one could credit that they had said so many marvelous things about Christ and the angels and demons and men who are to be glorified or damned unless Jerome or some other saint proved that they had said so.”[2462]

Character of the work.

As Bacon’s words indicate, Christian influence is manifest in the Cosmography, although, as they also indicate, the original Aethicus is not supposed to have been a Christian, but, as one manuscript informs us, an Academic philosopher.[2463] Oriental influence, too, is perhaps shown in flights of poetical language and unrestrained imagination, in a number of allusions to Alexander the Great, and in an extraordinary ignorance of early Roman history which leads the author to tell how Romulus invaded Pannonia and fought against the Lacedaemonians. “How great carnage,” he exclaims, “in Lacedaemonia, Noricum and Pannonia, Istria and Albania, northern regions near my home, first at the hands of the Romans and the tyrant Numitor, then under the brothers Romulus and Remus, and later under the first Tarquin, the Proud.” The author eulogizes Athens as well as Alexander, and mentions a people called Turchi, but whether or not he has Turks in mind would be hard to say.

Its attitude to marvels.

As we have it, the Cosmography cites both the Ethicus and the Alchimus to whom Roger Bacon referred. Indeed, our treatise does not pretend to be the original work of Aethicus, which it repeatedly cites, but is apparently the work of some epitomizer or abbreviator who intersperses remarks and comments of his own, and, according to one manuscript, makes the statements of Aethicus conform to Christian Scripture. From the volumes of the original work he makes only a few excerpts, professing to omit what is unheard of or unknown or seems too formidable, and including only with hesitancy a few bits concerning unknown races on the testimony of hearsay. The enigmas of Aethicus and other philosophers often give our abbreviator pause, and he regards as incredible the story of Aethicus that the Amazons nurse young minotaurs and centaurs who fight for them in return. Aethicus also tells of the wonderful armor of the Amazons which they treat with bitumen and the blood of their own offspring. In Crete Aethicus found herbs unknown in other lands which ward off famine. Very beautiful gems are mentioned, including those extracted from the brains of immense dragons and basilisks, but little is said of their virtues, occult or otherwise. Indeed, the amount either of specific information or specific misinformation in the book is very scanty. It deals largely in uncouth rhetoric, glittering generalities, and obscure allusion anent the wanderings of Aethicus over the face of the earth and the strange marvels which he encountered in distant lands. He is described as well versed in astrology and as reproving the astrologers of Scythia(?) and Mantua(?), and one passage vaguely speaks of the stars as signs of the present and future; but otherwise the abbreviator gives little evidence of knowledge of the subject, although Roger Bacon[2464] cited Ethicus Astronomicus in Cosmographia as one of his authorities when discussing the question of Jesus Christ’s nativity and its relation to the stars, and although Pico della Mirandola ranked the Cosmography as one of the most absurd of astrological works.[2465] As for magic, in one passage malefici and magi are censured along with idolaters, and the author presently speaks of vain characters and superstitious doctrines. But elsewhere a magician (Pirronius magus) is named as the inventor of ships and discoverer of purple. On the whole, in its loose and hazy way the Cosmography not only is romantic and religious enough to appeal to medieval readers, it also is of a character to offer encouragement, if not data, to a later and more detailed interest in alchemy, occult virtues, astrology, and magic.

The Geoponica.

Upon the subject of agriculture in the early middle ages we have the collection known as the Geoponica. It properly belongs to Byzantine literature and perhaps had little direct influence upon western Europe. Nevertheless at least a portion of it upon vineyards was translated into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa in the twelfth century.[2466] In any case as the “only formal treatise on Greek agriculture” extant it is a rather important historical source; it also is a good specimen of early medieval compilations from classical works; and in its inclusion of superstitious and magical details it is probably roughly representative of the period, whether in east or west. In the form which we now possess it was published about 950 A. D. and dedicated to the Byzantine emperor, Constantine VII or Porphyrygennetos. But this issue was perhaps little more than an abbreviated revision of the work of Cassianus Bassus of the sixth century, whose introductory words to his son are still given at the beginning of the seventh book. Cassianus is believed in his turn to have been especially indebted to two fourth century writers, Vindanius Anatolius of Beirut, whose agricultural teaching was of a sober and rational sort, and Didymus of Alexandria, who was more given to superstition and magic.[2467]

Magic and astrology therein.

Nevertheless, magic and astrology find no place in the index to the most recent edition of the work.[2468] A survey, however, of the text itself reveals some indications of the presence of both. The very first of its twenty books deals with astrological prediction of the weather and cites some spurious work or works by Zoroaster a great deal. In later books, too, Zoroaster is sometimes cited for semi-astrological advice, such as guarding wine jars against sun or moon-beams when opening them, or testing seed by exposing it to the rays of the dog-star.[2469] Zoroaster is also used as an authority on the sympathy and antipathy existing between natural objects.[2470] Damigeron and Democritus are other names cited which are suggestive of the occult and magical.[2471] There are not, however, many cases of extreme superstition in the Geoponica. Something is said of the marvelous properties of gems, of the effect of a hyena’s shadow falling upon a dog by moonlight, and how dogs will not attack a person who holds a hyena’s tongue in his hand.[2472] Incantations of a sort are occasionally recommended.[2473] To keep wine from turning sour one is directed to write the divine words, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” upon the wine-jar.[2474] Another passage advises a person who finds himself in a place full of fleas to cry, “Ouch! Ouch!” and then they will not bite him.[2475]

Dioscorides.

Perhaps the chief ancient work on pharmacology was the De materia medica or Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς of Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarba. Galen, as we have seen, found things to criticize in it but nevertheless made great use of it in his own work on medicinal simples. Dioscorides of course had his previous sources but seems to have surpassed them in fulness and orderliness of arrangement. Of the man himself his preface tells us all that we know, and his dedication shows that he probably wrote during the reign of Nero. He was born in Cilicia near Tarsus, he had traveled in many lands as a soldier, and his work was based partly upon personal observation and experience as well as previous books.

Textual history of the De materia medica.

Dioscorides’ influence continued and even increased as time went on; but if future centuries were deeply influenced by his book, it was also seriously affected by them, for it seems to have been subjected to a long series of repeated abbreviations and omissions, additions and interpolations, changes in form and in order. Thus all sorts of versions of what was called Dioscorides came into being, but which in some cases can hardly be regarded as more than compilations from all the favorite pharmacies of the time, in which the genuine Dioscorides constituted but a remnant or a core. Thus most early printed editions of what purports to be the De materia medica must be handled with great caution, and it may perhaps be doubted if even the latest effort of Max Wellmann to recover the original Greek text has been entirely successful.[2476] Of the five books regarded as genuine and original the first dealt with spices, salves, and oils; the second, with parts of animals and animal products like milk and honey, with grains, vegetables, and pot-herbs. Other plants and roots were considered in the third and fourth books, while the last dealt with wines and minerals.[2477]

Alterations made in the Greek text.

Whether we now possess Dioscorides’ original text or not, at any rate the oldest Greek manuscripts do not contain it, but only that portion dealing with herbs. Moreover, this has been rearranged in alphabetical order and has been adapted to fit a set of pictures of plants which were perhaps taken over from the work of Crateuas, one of Dioscorides’ chief sources. Such is the famous early sixth century illuminated manuscript made for Juliana Anicia, daughter of the emperor Olybrius (472 A. D.) and wife of the consul Areobindus (about 512 A. D.).[2478] The alphabetical rearrangement of the Greek text of Dioscorides was made at some time between Galen and Oribasius, who cites from it in the fourth century. Not only were the five books of the genuine De materia medica interpolated, but additional spurious books were added “On Harmful Drugs” and “On Poisons.”[2479] The work on medicinal simples attributed to Dioscorides is extant in no manuscript earlier than the fourteenth century and some versions of it are much more interpolated than others. As Galen does not cite it while Oribasius and Aëtius do use it, it is assumed that it was composed in the third or early fourth century with a forged dedication to a contemporary of Dioscorides, but that it made considerable use of the genuine Dioscorides, to which it bore much the same relation as the Medicina Plinii did to the Historia Naturalis. Later, however, some Byzantine compiler of the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth century introduced a great deal of new material from Galen’s genuine and spurious works in that field and from John of Damascus.[2480]

Dioscorides little known to Latins before the middle ages.

What more especially concern us are the medieval Latin versions of Dioscorides. As a matter of fact, although the De materia medica was from the start highly regarded and widely used by Greek physicians, it seems to have been little known to Latin writers until the verge of the medieval period. Gargilius Martialis, a Roman writer on agriculture in the third century of our era, was the only old Latin author to cite Dioscorides, which he did, however, no less than eighteen times in his Medicinae ex oleribus et pomis. This has led to the suggestion that he was perhaps responsible for the first Latin translation or version of Dioscorides; but it seems unlikely that the work had been put into Latin as early as his time, since it is not cited again by a Latin writer until the sixth century and is not used by such medical authors as Serenus Sammonicus, Cassius Felix, Theodorus Priscianus, and Marcellus Empiricus.

Partial versions in Latin.

But at least a portion of Dioscorides seems to have been translated into Latin by the time of Cassiodorus, who, writing in the first half of the sixth century, states that those who cannot read Greek may consult the Herbarium Dioscoridis.[2481] This naturally suggests a version limited to medicinal plants like the early Greek text in the manuscript of Juliana Anicia. This impression is confirmed by the preface to some early Latin version of Dioscorides, which Rose discovered in one of the manuscripts of the Herbarium of Apuleius in the British Museum.[2482] This preface implies that the translation which it introduced was limited to the botanical books of Dioscorides and states that it was accompanied by illustrations of herbs.

De herbis femininis.

Based upon this partial translation rather than identical with it is believed to have been the De herbis femininis,[2483] which was ascribed to Dioscorides in the middle ages and which often accompanies the Herbarium of the Pseudo-Apuleius in the manuscripts. In this case the herbs of the Pseudo-Apuleius are sometimes called masculine, but as a matter of fact only a minority of those in the Pseudo-Dioscorides seem to be distinctly feminine. Of seventy-one plants Kaestner classed fifteen or sixteen as feminine, while in only thirty cases are they prescribed for female complaints. Rose dated this work before Isidore of Seville by whom he believed it was used.[2484] It seems to combine a free Latin translation of excerpts from the genuine Dioscorides with numerous additions from other sources.

The fuller Latin versions.

Besides such abbreviated and interpolated Latin versions or perversions of Dioscorides, there was also in existence in the early middle ages a literal translation of all five books of the De materia medica. It is full of Latinisms and barbarisms but otherwise reproduces the complete and genuine Dioscorides, or is supposed to do so. Rose and Wellmann[2485] say that it was current from the sixth century on, and the few extant manuscripts of it date from the early medieval period.[2486] One reason for this seems to be that this literal translation was replaced by another Latin version which in a Bamberg manuscript[2487] is ascribed to Constantinus Africanus, the medical translator and writer of the eleventh century. In this version the items are arranged alphabetically, and additions are embodied from other sources. This version apparently became much better known than the earlier literal translation and has been called “the most widely disseminated handbook of pharmacy of the whole later middle ages.”[2488] It is stated by Rose to be identical with the “Dyascorides,” upon which Peter of Abano lectured and commented about 1300 and which was printed at Colle in 1478 and again at Lyons in 1512.[2489]

Peter of Abano’s account of the medieval versions.

Peter of Abano tells us in his preface[2490] that in his time there were current two different versions, although both had the same preface. One of these was in five books with a great many short chapters, so short in fact that often the treatment of a single thing was scattered over several chapters. This version was rare in Latin. The other version contained fewer but longer chapters with material added from Galen, Pliny, and other writers. This version was arranged alphabetically. It was this version which Aggregator[2491] had followed and imitated, but sometimes there were chapters in either “Dyascorides” which were missing in Aggregator. Peter had also seen an alphabetical version of Dioscorides in Greek.

Pseudo-Dioscorides on stones.

There seems also to have been current, at least in the later middle ages, a Pseudo-Dioscorides on stones, drawn in part, like the Feminine Herbs, from the genuine De materia medica, whose discussion of the virtues of stones is incredible enough.[2492] This Dioscorides on Stones is cited by Arnold of Saxony and Bartholomew of England in the thirteenth century, and portions at least of the work are extant in manuscripts at Erfurt and Montpellier.[2493] A work on physical ligatures is ascribed to Dioscorides in a late manuscript,[2494] but is really a collection of items from various authors since Dioscorides on the marvelous virtues of animals, herbs, and stones, especially when bound on the body, held in the hand, or worn around the neck.

Conclusions from the textual history of Dioscorides.

The history of the medieval versions of Dioscorides, even in the brief and incomplete outline given here, is instructive, showing us in general the vicissitudes to which the transmission of the text of any ancient author may have been subjected, but more especially proving that the middle ages, whether Latin or Byzantine, were ready to take great liberties with ancient authorities and to adapt them to their own taste and requirements. And indeed, why should they not rearrange and make additions to their Dioscorides? After all it was a compilation to begin with. But the case of Dioscorides has also taught us that we do not have to wait until the medieval period for the appearance of new versions of an ancient author.

Macer on herbs; its great currency.

With the possible exception of the Herbarium of the Pseudo-Apuleius, probably the best known single and distinct treatment of the virtues of herbs produced during the middle ages was the poem De viribus herbarum which circulated under the name of Macer Floridus.[2495] It was often cited by the medieval encyclopedists and other writers on nature and medicine in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[2496] It is found in an Anglo-Saxon version[2497] and was even translated into Danish in the early thirteenth century.[2498] Manuscripts of it are very numerous[2499] and there are many early printed editions.[2500] Even as recently as the first half of the nineteenth century a historian of medicine and natural science, in the preface of his edition of Macer, stated as one argument for the modern study of medieval medicine that much might be learned from writings of that period concerning the virtues of herbs.[2501]

Problem of date and author

The poem was certainly not written by the classical poet, Aemilius Macer, who was a friend of Vergil and Ovid, and whose descriptions of plants, birds, and reptiles are cited by Pliny in his Natural History and also preserved in some extracts by the grammarians. Proof of this is that our poem cites Pliny; in fact, it cites him more frequently than any other author. It also cites Galen six times, Dioscorides four, and as late an author as Oribasius twice.[2502] But Oribasius is not the latest author cited since Walafrid Strabo is also used.[2503] Strabo was born about 806, became abbot of Reichenau in 842, and died in 849. In his Hortulus, a poem dedicated to Grimoald, the abbot of St. Gall, he described twenty-three herbs in 444 hexameters.[2504] Indeed Stadler holds that the Pseudo-Macer uses the De gradibus of Constantinus Africanus who did not die until 1087.[2505] The true author of our poem ascribed to Macer is said on the authority of certain manuscripts to have been an Odo of Meung on the Loire, apparently the same town as the birthplace of Jean Clopinel or de Meun, the learned author of the latter portion of The Romance of the Rose. Choulant, however, did not regard this as sufficiently proved, and Stadler has recently noted that some manuscripts ascribe the poem to a physician, Odo of Verona; and others to the Cistercian, Odo of Morimont, who died in 1161.[2506] In any case, unless the mentions of Strabo are later interpolations, the author must be regarded as post-Carolingian, while he cannot be later than the eleventh century in view of a remark of Sigebertus Gemblacensis in 1112,[2507] the Anglo-Saxon version, the many twelfth century manuscripts, and the frequent use of his poem in the Regimen Salernitanum.[2508] Although Macer seems a pseudonym to begin with, the original poem, consisting of 2269 lines in which 77 herbs are discussed, is sometimes accompanied by additional lines regarded as spurious.[2509]

Virtues ascribed to herbs.

Our poet does not appear to have much of his own to offer on the subject of the virtues of herbs. When he does not cite his authority by name, he usually qualifies the statement made by a vaguer “they say” or “it is said.” He does not connect certain herbs with certain stars or otherwise introduce anything that can be called astrological. He repeats Pliny’s statement of the powers ascribed to vervain by the magi, such as to gain one’s desires, win the friendship of the powerful, and dispel disease and fever. Pliny had spoken of the magi as “raving about this herb”; our poet says:

“Although potent Nature can grant such virtues,

Yet they really seem to us idle old-wives’ tales.”[2510]

Nevertheless he himself about fifteen lines before had said of the vervain:

“If, holding this herb in the hand, you ask the patient,

‘Say, brother, how are you?’ and the patient answers, ‘Well,’

He will live; but if he says ‘Ill,’ there is no hope of safety.”[2511]

Our poet not only thus associates with herbs the virtue of divination, but is guilty of sympathetic magic when he believes that the ancients learned by experience that Dragontea or snake-weed dispels poisons, wards off snakes, and is good for snake-bite from observing the similarity between the spotted rind of the herb and the skin of a snake.[2512] Odo or Macer repeats Galen’s story of curing an epileptic boy by suspending a root of peony about his neck,[2513] and later asserts the same virtue for the herb pyrethrum.[2514] Even more magical is the ceremony for curing toothache which he takes from Pliny and which consists in digging up the herb Senecion without use of iron, touching the aching tooth with it three times, and then replacing the plant in the place where it came from so that it will grow again.[2515] Pliny is also cited concerning the swallow’s restoring the sight of its young by swallow-wort.[2516] Our poet also repeats such beliefs as that the herb Buglossa preserves the memory,[2517] or that the smoke of Aristochia dispels demons and exhilarates infants.[2518] If the hives are anointed with the juice of the herb Barrocus, the bees will not desert them; while carrying that plant with one is a protection against the stings of bees, wasps, and spiders.[2519] Among the virtues most frequently attributed to herbs are expelling or killing worms, curing pestiferous bites or poisons, and provoking urine or vomiting. On the whole, “Macer” contains only a moderate amount of superstition, although rather more proportionally than Walafrid Strabo.

Experiments of Macer.

Although Odo or Macer seems to make no original contribution to botany, cites authorities frequently, and speaks often of the ancients or men of old, he also at least once cites “experts”[2520] and we have also seen his belief that the ancients had tested the virtues of plants by experience. This rather slight experimental character of the work is further emphasized in some manuscripts of it, where the title is “Experiments of Macer” and the matter seems to have been rearranged under diseases instead of by herbs.[2521]

CHAPTER XXVII
OTHER EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING: BOETHIUS, ISIDORE, BEDE, GREGORY THE GREAT

Aridity of early medieval learning—Historic importance of The Consolation of Philosophy—Medieval reading—Influence of the works of Boethius—His relation to antiquity and middle ages—Attitude to the stars—Fate and free will—Music of the stars and universe—Isidore of Seville—Method of the Etymologies—Its sources—Natural marvels—Isidore is rather less hospitable to superstition than Pliny—Portent—Words and numbers—History of magic—Definition of magic—Future influence of Isidore’s account of magic—Attitude to astrology—In the De natura rerum—Bede’s scanty science—Bede’s De natura rerum—Divination by thunder—Riddles of Aldhelm—Gregory’s Dialogues—Signs and wonders wrought by saints—More monkish miracles—A monastic snake-charmer—Basilius the magician—A demon salad—Incantations in Old Irish—The Fili.

Aridity of early medieval learning.

The erudite fortitude of students of the Merovingian period commands our admiration, but sometimes inclines us to wonder whether anyone without a somewhat dry-as-dust constitution could penetrate far or tarry long in the desert of early medieval Latin learning without perishing of intellectual thirst. As a rule the writings of the time show no originality whatever, and least of all any scientific investigation; they are of value merely as an indication of what past books men still read and what parts of past science they still possessed some interest in. Under the same category of condemnation may be placed most of the Carolingian period so far as our investigation is concerned. We shall therefore traverse rapidly this period of sparse scientific productivity and shall be doing it ample justice, if from its meager list of writers we select for consideration Boethius of Italy at the opening of the sixth century and Gregory the Great at its close, Isidore of Spain at the opening of the seventh century, and Bede in England at the beginning of the eighth century, with some brief allusion to the riddles of Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, and to Old Irish literature. We should gain little or nothing by adding to the list Alcuin at the close of the eighth century and Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century, although it may be noted now that later medieval writers cite Rabanus for statements which I have failed to find in his printed works. In general it may be said that the writers whom we shall consider are those during the period who are most cited by the later medieval authors.

Historic importance of The Consolation of Philosophy.

Of the distinguished family and political career of Boethius who lived from about 480 to 524 A. D., and his final exile, imprisonment, and execution by Theodoric the East Goth, we need scarcely speak here. Our concern is with his little book, The Consolation of Philosophy, one of those memorable writings which, like The City of God of Augustine, stand out as historical landmarks and seem to have been written on the right subject by the right man at the most dramatic moment. The timely appearance of such works, produced in both these cases not under the stimulus of triumphant victory but the sting of bitter defeat, is nevertheless perhaps less surprising than is their subsequent preservation and enormous influence. We often are alternately amused and amazed by the mistakes concerning historical and chronological detail found in medieval writers. Yet medieval readers showed considerable appreciation of the course of history, of its fundamental tendencies, and of its crucial moments by the works which they included in their meager libraries.

Medieval reading.

But were medieval libraries as meager as we are wont to assume? Bede and Alcuin both tell of the existence of sizeable libraries in England,[2522] and Cassiodorus urged those monks whose duty it was to tend the sick to read a number of standard medical works.[2523] I sometimes wonder if too much attention has not been given to medieval writing and too little to medieval reading, of which so much medieval writing, in Latin at least, is little more than a reflection. We get their image, faint perhaps and partial; but they had the real object. It has been assumed by some modern scholars that medieval writers had usually not read the works, especially of classical antiquity, which they profess to cite and quote, but relied largely upon anthologies and florilegia. In the case of various later medieval authors we shall have occasion to discuss this question further. For the present I may say that in going through the catalogues of collections of medieval manuscripts I have noticed few florilegia or anthologies from the classics in medieval Latin manuscripts,—perhaps Byzantine ones from Greek literature are more common—and few indeed compared to the number of manuscripts of the old Latin writers themselves. We owe the very preservation of the Latin classics to medieval scribes who copied them in the ninth and tenth centuries; why deny that they read them? Latin florilegia of any sort do not exist in impressive numbers, but other kinds are as often met with as are those from classic poets or prose writers, for instance, selections from the church fathers themselves. On the whole, the impression I have received is that those authors included in florilegia, commonplace books, and other manuscripts made up of miscellaneous extracts, were likewise the authors most read in toto. I am therefore inclined to regard the florilegia as a proof that the authors included were read rather than that they were not. But from extant Latin manuscripts one gets the impression that the whole matter of florilegia is of very slight importance, and that the theory hitherto based upon them is a survival of the prejudice of the classical renaissance against “the dark ages.”

Influence of the works of Boethius.

At any rate, however scanty medieval libraries may have been, they were apt to include a copy of The Consolation of Philosophy, and however little read some of their volumes may have been, its pages were certainly well thumbed. Lists of its commentators, translators, and imitators, and other indications of its vast medieval influence may be found in Peiper’s edition.[2524] Other writings of Boethius were also well known in the middle ages and increased his reputation then. His translations and commentaries upon the Aristotelian logical treatises[2525] are of course of great importance in the history of medieval scholasticism. His translations and adaptations of Greek treatises in arithmetic, geometry, and music occupy a similar place in the history of medieval mathematical studies.[2526] Indeed, his treatise on music is said to have “continued to be the staple requisite for the musical degree at Oxford until far into the eighteenth century.”[2527] The work on the Trinity and some other theological tracts, attributed to Boethius by Cassiodorus and through the middle ages, are now again accepted as genuine by modern scholars and place Boethius’ Christianity beyond question.[2528]

His relation to antiquity and middle ages.

Boethius has often been regarded as a last representative of Roman statesmanship and of classical civilization. His defense of Roman provincials against the greed of the Goths, his stand even unto death against Theodoric on behalf of the rights of the Roman senate and people, his preservation through translation of the learned treatises of expiring antiquity, and the almost classical Latin style and numerous allusions to pagan mythology of The Consolation of Philosophy:—all these combine to support this view. But the middle ages also made Boethius their own, and several points may be noted in which The Consolation of Philosophy in particular foreshadowed their attitude and profoundly influenced them. Both a Christian and a classicist, both a theologian and a philosopher, Boethius set a standard which subsequent thought was to follow for a long time. The very form of his work, a dialogue part in prose and part in verse, remained a medieval favorite. And the fact that this sixth century author of a work on the Trinity consoled his last hours with a work in which Christ and the Trinity are not mentioned, but where Phoebus is often named and where Philosophy is the author’s sole interlocutor:—this fact, combined with Boethius’ great medieval popularity, gave perpetual license to those medieval writers who chose to discuss philosophy and theology as separate subjects and from distinct points of view. The great medieval influence of Aristotle and Plato, and in particular of the latter’s Timaeus, also is already manifest in The Consolation of Philosophy. Aristotle, it is true, appears to be incorrectly credited by Boethius with the assertion that the eye of the lynx can see through solid objects,[2529] but this ascription of spurious statements to the Stagirite also corresponds to the attribution of entire spurious treatises to him later in the middle ages.

Attitude to the stars.

Of the ways in which The Consolation of Philosophy influenced medieval thought that which is most germane to our investigation is its attitude toward the stars and the problem of fate and free will. The heavenly bodies are apparently ever present in Boethius’ thought in this work, and especially in the poetical interludes he keeps mentioning Phoebus, the moon, the universe, the sky, and the starry constellations. Per ardua ad astra was a true saying for those last days in which he solaced his disgrace and pain with philosophy. It is by contemplation of the heavens that he raises his thought to lofty philosophic reflection; his mind may don swift wings and fly far above earthly things

“Until it reaches starry mansions

And joins paths with Phoebus.”[2530]

He loves to think of God as ruling the universe by perpetual reason and certain order, as sowing stars in the sky, as binding the elements by number, as Himself immovable, yet revolving the spheres and decreeing natural events in a fixed series.[2531] The attitude is like that of the Timaeus and Aristotle’s Metaphysics, closely associating astronomy and theology, favorable to belief in astrology, in support of which later scholastic writers cite Boethius.

Fate and free will.

We may further note the main points in Boethius’ argument concerning fate and free will, providence and predestination,[2532] which was often cited by later writers. He declares that all generation and change and movement proceed from the divine mind or Providence,[2533] while fate is the regular arrangement inherent in movable objects by which divine providence is realized.[2534] Fate may be exercised through spirits, angelic or daemonic, through the soul or through the aid of all nature or “by the celestial motion of the stars.”[2535] It is with the last that Boethius seems most inclined to identify fati series mobilis. “That series moves sky and stars, harmonizes the elements one with another, and transforms them from one to another.” More than that, “It constrains human fortunes in an indissoluble chain of causes, which, since it starts from the decree of immovable Providence, must needs itself also be immutable.”[2536] Boethius, however, does not believe in a complete fatalism, astrological or otherwise. He holds that nothing escapes divine providence, to which there is no distinction between past, present, and future.[2537] As the human reason can conceive universals, although sense and imagination are able to deal only with particulars, so the divine mind can foresee the future as well as the present. But there are some things which are under divine providence but which are not subject to fate.[2538] Divine providence imposes no fatal necessity upon the human will, which is free to choose its course.[2539] The world of nature, however, existing without will or reason of its own, conforms absolutely to the fatal series provided for it. As for chance, Boethius agrees with Aristotle’s Physics that there is really no such thing, but that what is commonly ascribed to chance really results from an unexpected coincidence of causes, as when a man plowing a field finds a treasure which another has buried there.[2540] Thus Boethius maintains the co-existence of the fatal series expressed in the stars, divine providence, and human free will, a thesis likely to reassure Christians inclined to astrology who had been somewhat disturbed by the fulminations of the fathers against the genethliaci, just as his constant rhapsodizing over the stars and heavens would lead them to regard the science of the stars as second only to divine worship. Indeed, his position was the usual one in the subsequent middle ages.

Music of the stars and universe.

The stars also come into Boethius’ treatise on music, where one of the three varieties of music is described as mundane, where the music of the spheres is declared to exist although inaudible to us, and where each planet is connected with a musical chord. Plato is quoted as having said, not in vain, that the world soul is compounded of musical harmony, and it is affirmed that the four different and contrary elements could never be united in one system unless some harmony joined them.[2541]

Isidore of Seville.

Isidore was born about 560 or 570, became bishop of Seville in 599 or 600, and died in the year 636. Although mention should perhaps be made of his briefer De natura rerum,[2542] a treatise dedicated to King Sisebut who reigned from 612 to 620, Isidore’s chief work from our standpoint is the Etymologiae.[2543] His friend, bishop Braulio, writing after Isidore’s death, says that he had left unfinished the copy of this work which he made at his request, but this was apparently a second edition, since in a letter written to Isidore probably in 630, Braulio speaks of copies as already in circulation, although he describes their text as corrupt and abbreviated. But apparently the work had been composed seven years before this.[2544] The Etymologies was undoubtedly a work of great importance and influence in the middle ages, but one should not be led, as some writers have been, into exaggerated praise of Isidore’s erudition on this account.[2545] For the work’s importance consists chiefly in showing how scanty was the knowledge of the early middle ages. Its influence also would seem not to have been entirely beneficial, since writers continued to cite it as an authority as late as the thirteenth century, when it might have been expected to have outlived its usefulness. We suspect that it proved too handy and convenient and tended to encourage intellectual laziness and stagnation more than any anthology of literary quotations did. Arevalus listed ten printed editions of it before 1527, showing that it was as popular in the time of the Renaissance as in the middle ages.

Method of the Etymologies.

The Etymologies is little more than a dictionary, in which words are not listed alphabetically but under subjects with an average of from one to a half dozen lines of derivation and definition for each term. The method is, as Brehaut well says, “to treat each subject by ... defining the terms belonging to it.”[2546] Pursuing this method, Isidore treats of various arts and sciences, human interests and natural phenomena: the seven liberal arts, medicine, and law; chronology and bibliography; the church, religion, and theology; the state and family, physiology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geography, and astronomy; architecture and agriculture; war and sport; arms and armor; ships and costume and various utensils of domestic life. Such is the classification which later medieval writers were to adopt or adapt rather than the arrangement followed in Pliny’s Natural History. Isidore’s association of words and definitions under topics makes an approach, at least, to the articles of encyclopedias: sometimes there is a brief discussion of the general topic before the particular terms and names are considered; sometimes there are chronological tables, family trees, or lists of signs and abbreviations. In short, Isidore forms a connecting link between Pliny and the encyclopedists of the thirteenth century.

Its sources.

In a prefatory word to Braulio Isidore describes the Etymologies as a collection made from his recollection and notes of old authors,[2547] of whom he cites a large number in the course of the work. It has been suspected that some of these writers were known to Isidore only at second or third hand; at any rate he has not made a very discriminating selection from their works and he has been accused more than once of not clearly understanding what he tried to abridge. On the other hand, Isidore seems to me to display a notable power of brief generalization, of terse expression and telling use of words. We should not have to go back to the middle ages for textbook writers who have written more and said less. This power of condensed expression probably accounts for Isidore’s being so much cited. Many of the derivations proposed for words are so patently absurd that we would fain ascribe them to Isidore’s own perverse ingenuity, but it is doubtful if he possessed even that much originality, and they are probably all taken from classical grammarians such as Varro.[2548] Isidore, however, still displays a considerable knowledge of the Greek language. And again it may be said in excuse of Isidore and his sources that the absurd etymologies are usually proposed in the case of words whose derivation is still problematic.

In the passages dealing with natural phenomena and science Isidore borrows chiefly from Pliny and Solinus, sometimes from Dioscorides, giving us a faint adumbration of their much fuller confusion of science and superstition. Occasionally bits of information or misinformation are borrowed through the medium of the church fathers. A work of Galen, for instance, is cited[2549] through the letter of Jerome to Furia against widows remarrying. Galen, indeed, is seldom mentioned by Isidore who draws his unusually brief fourth book on medicine chiefly from Caelius Aurelianus.[2550]

Natural marvels.

In his treatment of things in nature Isidore seldom gives their medicinal properties as Pliny does, and this reduces correspondingly the amount of space devoted to marvelous virtues. Indeed, of the twenty books of the Etymologies but one is devoted to animals other than man, one to vegetation which is combined in the same book with agriculture, and one to metals and minerals. The book on animals is the longest and is subdivided under the topics of domestic animals, wild beasts, minute animals, serpents, worms, fish, birds, and minute flying creatures. Isidore also tends to ascribe more marvelous virtues to animals than to plants or stones. From Pliny and Solinus are repeated the tales of the basilisk, echeneis, and the like,[2551] while Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms is cited for the story of the asp resisting the incantations of its charmers by laying one ear to the ground and stopping up the other ear with the end of its tail.[2552] On the other hand, Isidore omits Pliny’s superstitious assertions concerning the river tortoise and gives only his criticism that the statement that ships move more slowly if they have the foot of a tortoise aboard is incredible.[2553] Even in the books on minerals and vegetation we still hear of animal marvels:[2554] how the coloring matter, cinnabar, is composed of the blood shed by the dragon in its death struggle with the elephant, how the fiercest bulls grow tame under the Egyptian fig-tree, how swallows restore the sight of their young with the swallow-wort, or of the use of fennel and rue by the snake and weasel respectively, the former tasting fennel to enable him to shed his old skin, and the latter eating rue to make him immune from venom in fighting the snake. All these items, too, are from Pliny.

Isidore is rather less hospitable to superstition than Pliny.

But on the whole I should estimate that Isidore contains less superstitious matter even proportionally to his meager content than Pliny does in connection with the virtues of animals, plants, and stones. In discussing plants he says nothing of ceremonial plucking of them and he contains practically no traces of agricultural magic. He describes as a superstition of the Gentiles the notion that the herb scylla, suspended whole at the threshold, drives away all evils.[2555] He mentions the use of mandragora as an anaesthetic in surgical operations, and remarks that its root is of human form, but says nothing of its applications in magic.[2556] In his discussion of stones he repeats after Pliny and Solinus the marvelous virtues ascribed to a number of them, but follows Pliny’s method of making the magicians responsible for these assertions or of inserting a word of caution such as “if this is to be believed” with each statement. Finally he introduces together a number of cases of marvelous powers ascribed to stones with the introduction, “There are certain gems employed by the Gentiles in their superstitions.”[2557]

Portents.

Isidore lists a number of mythical monsters as well as cases of portentous births in the third chapter, De portentis, of his eleventh book. He there affirms that God sometimes wishes to signify future events by means of monstrous births as well as by dreams and oracles, and declares that this “has been proved by numerous experiences.”[2558]

Words and numbers.

Brehaut is impressed by Isidore’s “confidence in words,” which he thinks “really amounted to a belief, strong though perhaps somewhat inarticulate, that words were transcendental entities.”[2559] Isidore’s faith in the power of words does not seem, however, to have led him to recommend the use of any incantations; he was content with etymologies and allegorical interpretation. He was also a great believer in the mystic significance of numbers and wrote a separate treatise upon those numbers which occur in the sacred Scriptures. In the Etymologies, too, he more than once dwells upon the perfection of certain numbers. We have already heard how perfect most of the numbers up to twelve are, but this is our first opportunity to hear the Pythagorean method applied to the number twenty-two. However, Isidore is not the first to do this; he is, indeed, simply quoting one of the fathers, Epiphanius.[2560] “The modius is so-called because it is of perfect mode. For this measure contains forty-four pounds, that is, twenty-two sextarii. And the reason for this number is that in the beginning God performed twenty-two works. For on the first day He made seven works, namely, unformed matter, angels, light, the upper heavens, earth, water, and air. On the second day only one work, the firmament. On the third day four things: the seas, seeds, grass, and trees. On the fourth day three things: sun and moon and stars. On the fifth day three: fish and aquatic reptiles and flying creatures. On the sixth day four: beasts, domestic animals, land reptiles, and man. And all twenty-two kinds were made in six days.[2561] And there are twenty-two generations from Adam to Jacob.... And twenty-two books of the Old Testament.... And there are twenty-two letters from which the doctrine of the divine law is composed. Therefore in accordance with these examples the modius of twenty-two sextarii was established by Moses following the measure of sacred law. And although various peoples have added something to or ignorantly subtracted something from its weight, it is divinely preserved among the Hebrews for such reasons.” With such mental magic and pious “arithmetic,” as Isidore’s friend Braulio called it, might the Christian attempt to sate the inherited thirst within him for the operative magic and pagan divination in which his conscience and church no longer allowed him to indulge.

History of magic.

Isidore’s chapter on the Magi or magicians, which occurs in his eighth book on the church and divers sects, is a notable one, of whose great future influence we shall presently speak. His own borrowing here is only in small part from Pliny’s famous passage on the same theme. On such a subject Isidore naturally has recourse mainly to Christian writers: Augustine, Jerome, Lactantius, Tertullian. From the occasional similarity of his wording to these authors it seems fairly certain that his account is a patchwork from their works, and the context is too Christian to have been drawn in toto from some Roman encyclopedist now lost to us. Perhaps the most noteworthy point about Isidore’s chapter is that he has made magic and magicians the general and inclusive head under which he presently lists various other minor occult arts and their practitioners for separate definition. But first we have a longer discussion, though long only by comparison, of magic in general. Its history is sketched; Zoroaster and Democritus, as in Pliny, are mentioned as its founders, but it is not forgotten that the bad angels were really responsible for its dissemination. From the first Isidore identifies magic and divination; after stating that the magic arts abounded among the Assyrians, he quotes a passage from Lucan which speaks of the prevalence of liver divination, augury, divination from thunder, and astrology in Assyria. Also the magic arts are said to have prevailed over the whole world for many centuries through their prediction of the future and invocation of the dead. Brief allusion is further made to Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians, to the invocation of Samuel by the witch of Endor, to Circe and the comrades of Ulysses, and to several other passages in classical literature anent magic.

Definition of magic.

Next comes a formal definition of the Magi. They are “those who are popularly called malefici or sorcerers on account of the magnitude (a characteristic bit of derivation) of their crimes. They agitate the elements, disturb men’s minds, and slay merely by force of incantation without any poisoned draught. Hence Lucan writes, ‘The mind, though polluted by no venom of poisoned draught, perishes by enchantment.’[2562] For, summoning demons, they dare to work their magic so that anyone may kill his enemies by evil arts. They also use blood and victims and sometimes corpses.“ After this very unfavorable, although sufficiently credulous, definition of magic, which is represented as seeking the worst ends by the worst means, Isidore goes on to list and briefly define a number of subordinate or kindred occult arts. First come necromancers; then hydromancy, geomancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy; next diviners, those employing incantations, arioli, aruspices, augurs, auspices, pythones, astrologers and their cognates, the genethliaci and mathematici, who as Isidore notes are spoken of in the Gospel as Magi, and horoscopi. ”Sortilegi are those who profess the science of divination under the pretended guise of religion through certain devices called sortes sanctorum and predict by inspection of certain scriptures.” Salisatores are those who predict from the jerks of their limbs. To this list of magic arts Isidore adds in the words of Augustine all ligatures and suspensions, incantations and characters, which the art of medicine condemns and which are simply the work of the devil. With mention of the origin of augury among the Phrygians, the discovery of praestigium which deceives the eye by Mercury, and the revelation of aruspicina by Tagus to the Etruscans, Isidore closes the chapter. Some of its items will be found again in his De differentiis verborum,[2563] listed under the appropriate letters of the alphabet. It may also be noted that he briefly treats of transformations worked by magic in the fourth chapter of the eleventh book of the Etymologies.

Future influence of Isidore’s account of magic.

We turn to the future influence of this account of magic which seems to have been first patched together by Isidore. Juiceless as it is, it seems to have become a sort of stock or stereotyped treatment of the subject with succeeding Christian writers down into the twelfth century. Somewhat altered by omission of poetical quotations or the insertion of transitional sentences, it was otherwise copied almost word for word by Rabanus Maurus (about 784 to 856), in his De consanguineorum nuptiis et de magorum praestigiis falsisque divinationibus tractatus, and by Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres (died 1115) in their respective collections of Decreta, while Hincmar of Rheims in his De divortio Lotharii et Tetbergae copied it with more omissions.[2564] It was also in substance retained in the Decretum of Gratian in the twelfth century, when, too, Hugh of St. Victor probably made use of it and John of Salisbury made it the basis of his fuller discussion of the subject. Isidore’s account of magic, like his discussion of many other topics, sounds as if he had ceased thinking on the subject, and it must have meant still less to those who copied it. John of Salisbury is the first of them to put any life into the subject and give us any assurance that such arts were still practiced in his day. We have, however, other evidence that magic continued to be practiced in the interval. And such practices as the sortes sanctorum, though included in Isidore’s stock definition of magic, were probably not generally regarded as reprehensible.[2565]

Attitude to astrology.

Isidore’s repetition of the views of the fathers concerning demons is so brief and trite[2566] that we need not further notice it, but turn to his attitude toward astrology. We have just heard him associate astrologers with practitioners of the magic arts, but in his third book in discussing the quadrivium he states that astrology is only partly superstitious and partly a natural science. The superstitious variety is that pursued by the mathematici who augur the future from the stars, assign the parts of the soul and body to the signs of the zodiac, and try to predict the nativities and characters of men from the course of the stars. Such superstitions “are without doubt contrary to our faith; Christians should so ignore them that they shall not even appear to have been written.” Mathesis, or the attempt to predict future events from the stars, is denounced, according to Isidore, “not only by doctors of the Christian religion but also of the Gentiles,—Plato, Aristotle, and others.” Isidore also states that there is a distinction between astronomy and astrology, but what it is, especially between astronomy and natural astrology, he fails to elucidate.[2567]

In the De natura rerum.

In the preface to his De natura rerum, which deals chiefly with astronomical and meteorological phenomena, Isidore asserts that “it is not superstitious science to know the nature of these things, if only they are considered from the standpoint of sane and sober doctrine.” He also states that his treatise is a brief sketch of what has been written by the men of old and especially in the works of Catholics. In it some of the stock questions which gave difficulty to Christian scientists are briefly discussed, for instance, “Concerning the waters which are above the heavens,” and “Whether the stars have souls?”[2568] Isidore rejects as “absurd fictions” imagined by the stupidity of the Gentiles their naming the days of the week from the planets, “because by the same they thought that some effect was produced in themselves, saying that from the sun they received the spirit, from the moon the body, from Mercury speech and wisdom, from Venus pleasure, from Mars ardor, from Jupiter temperance, from Saturn slowness.”[2569] Yet later in the same treatise we find him saying that everything in nature grows and increases according to the waxing and waning of the moon.[2570] Moreover, he calls Saturn a cold star and explains that the planets are called errantia, not because they wander themselves but because they cause men to err.[2571] He also describes man as a microcosm.[2572] Like most ecclesiastical writers, no matter how hostile they may be to astrologers, he is ready to assert that comets signify political revolutions, wars, and pestilences.[2573] In the Etymologies he not only attributes racial and temperamental differences among the peoples of different regions to “force of the star”[2574] and “diversity of the sky,”[2575] phrases which seem to imply astrological influence rather than the mere influence of climate in our sense. He also encourages astrological medicine when he says that the doctor should know astronomy, since human bodies change with the qualities of the stars and the change of times.[2576] Isidore might as well have taken the planets as signs in the astrological sense as have ascribed to them the absurd allegorical significance in passages of Scripture that he did. He states that the moon is sometimes to be taken as a symbol of this world, sometimes as the church, which is illuminated by Christ as the moon receives its light from the sun, and which has seven meritorious graces corresponding to the seven forms of the moon.[2577]

Bede’s scanty science.

The scientific acquisitions of Bede have too often been referred to in exaggerated terms. Sharon Turner said of him, “He collected and taught more natural truths with fewer errors than any Roman book on the same subjects had accomplished. Thus his work displays an advance, not a retrogradation of human knowledge; and from its judicious selection and concentration of the best natural philosophy of the Roman Empire it does high credit to the Anglo-Saxon good sense.”[2578] Dr. R. L. Poole more moderately says of Bede, “He shows an extent of knowledge in classical literature and natural science entirely unrivalled in his own day and probably not surpassed for many generations to come.”[2579] Bede perhaps knew more natural science than anyone else of his time, but if so, the others must have known practically nothing; his knowledge can in no sense be called extensive. As a matter of fact, we have evidence that his extremely brief and elementary treatises in this field were not full enough to satisfy even his contemporaries. In the preface to his De temporum ratione[2580] he says that previously he had composed two treatises, De natura rerum and De ratione temporum, in brief style as he thought fitting for pupils, but that when he began to teach them to some of the brethren, they objected that they were reduced to a much briefer form than they wished, especially the De temporibus, which Bede now proceeds to revise and amplify. It is noteworthy that in order to fulfill the monks’ desire for a fuller treatment of the subject he found it necessary to do some further reading in the fathers. In addition to Bede’s own statement of his aim, the frequency with which we find manuscripts of early date[2581] of the De natura rerum and De temporibus suggests that they were employed as text-books in the monastic schools of the early middle ages. As the Carolingian poet expressed it,

Beda dei famulus nostri didasculus evi

Falce pia sophie veterum sata lata peragrans.

Bede’s De natura rerum.

Of Bede’s Hexaemeron we spoke in an earlier chapter. His chief extant genuine scientific treatise is the aforesaid De natura rerum,[2582] a very curtailed discussion of astronomy and meteorology. It is very similar to Isidore’s treatise of the same title, but is even briefer, omitting for the most part the mention of authorities and the Biblical quotations and allegorical applications which make up a considerable portion of Isidore’s brief work. One of the few authorities whom Bede does cite is Pliny in a discussion of the circles of the planets.[2583] Like Isidore he accepts comets as signs of war and political change, of tempests and pestilence.[2584] He also states that the air is inhabited by evil spirits who there await the worse torments of the day of judgment.[2585] In his Biblical commentaries Bede briefly echoes some of the views of the fathers concerning magic and demons, for instance, in his treatment of the witch of Endor.[2586]

Divination by thunder.

Bede also translated into Latin a treatise on divination from thunder, perhaps from the works of the sixth century Greek writer, John Lydus. In the preface to Herefridus, at whose request he had undertaken the translation, he speaks of it as a laborious and dangerous task, sure to expose him to the attacks of the invidious and detractors who will perhaps insinuate that he is possessed of an evil spirit or is a practitioner of magic. The three chapters of the treatise give the significance of thunder for the four points of the compass, the twelve months of the year, and the seven days of the week. For instance, if thunder arises in the east, according to the traditions of subtle philosophers there will be in the course of that year copious effusion of human blood. Each signification is introduced with some bombastic phraseology concerning the agile genius or sagacious investigation of the philosophers who discovered it.[2587] Other tracts on divination which were attributed to Bede are probably spurious and will for the most part be considered later in connection with other treatises of the same sort.[2588]

Riddles of Aldhelm.

Some interest in and knowledge of natural science is displayed in the metrical riddles[2589] of St. Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, “the first Englishman who cultivated classical learning with any success and the first of whom any literary remains are preserved.” Most of them are concerned with animals, such as silkworms, peacock, salamander, bee, swan, lion, ostrich, dove, fish, basilisk, camel, eagle, taxo, beaver, weasel, swallow, cat, crow, unicorn, minotaur, Scylla, and elephant; or with herbs and trees, such as heliotrope, pepper, nettles, hellebore, and palm; or with minerals, such as salt, adamant, and magnet; or with terrestrial and celestial phenomena, such as earth, wind, cloud, rainbow, moon, Pleiades, Arcturus, Lucifer, and night. There is a close resemblance between some of these riddles and a score of citations from an Adhelmus made in the thirteenth century by Thomas of Cantimpré in his De natura rerum.[2590] Pitra,[2591] however, suggested that the Adhelmus cited by Thomas of Cantimpré was a brother of John the Scot of the ninth century.

Gregory’s Dialogues.

The total lack of originality and the extremely abbreviated character of the infrequent scientific writing in the west is not, however, a fair example of the total thought and writing of early medieval Latin Christendom. When we turn to the lives of the saints, to the miracles recorded of contemporary monks and missionaries, we find that in the field of its own supreme interests the pious imagination of the time could display considerable inventiveness and was by no means satisfied with brief compendiums from the Bible and earlier Fathers. Here too the superstition and credulity, which had been held back by fear of paganism in the case of natural and occult science, ran luxuriant riot. Such literature lies rather outside the strict field of this investigation, but it is so characteristic of the Christian thought of the period that we may consider one prominent specimen, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great,[2592] pope from 590 to 604. We shall sufficiently illustrate the nature of this farrago of pious folk-lore by a résumé of the contents of the opening pages of the first of its four books. We need not dwell upon the importance of Gregory in the history of the papacy, of monasticism, and of patristic literature, further than to emphasize the point that so distinguished, influential, and for his times great, a man should have been capable of writing such a book. Similar citations which might be multiplied from other authors of the period could not add much force to this one impressive instance of the naïve pious credulity and superstition of the best Christian minds of that age. Not only were the Dialogues well known throughout the medieval period in the Latin reading world, but they were translated into Greek at an early date and in 779 from that language into Arabic, while King Alfred made an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Latin in the closing ninth century.

Signs and wonders wrought by saints.

In the Dialogues Gregory narrates to Peter the Deacon some of the virtues, signs, and marvelous works of saintly men in Italy which he has learned either by personal experience or indirectly from the statements of good and trustworthy witnesses. The first story is of Honoratus, the son of a colonus on a villa in Samnium. When the lad evinced his piety by abstaining from meat at a banquet given by his parents, they ridiculed him, declaring that he would find no fish to eat in those mountains. But when the servant presently went out to draw some water, he poured a fish out of the pitcher upon his return which provided the boy with enough food for the entire day. Subsequently the lad was given his freedom and founded a monastery on the spot. Still later he saved this monastery from an impending avalanche by frequent calling upon the name of Christ and use of the sign of the cross. By these means he stopped the landslide in mid-course and the rocks may still be seen looking as if they were sure to fall.

More monkish miracles.

A tale follows of Goths who stole a monk’s horse, but found themselves unable to force their own horses to cross the next river to which they came until they had restored his horse to the monk. In another case where Franks came to plunder this same monk, he remained invisible to them. This same monk was a disciple of the afore-mentioned Honoratus and once raised a woman’s child from the dead by placing upon its breast an old shoe of his master which he cherished as a souvenir. Thus he contrived to satisfy the mother’s pleading and at the same time preserve his own modesty and humility. Gregory does not doubt that the woman’s faith also contributed to the miracle. Gregory adds, however, that he thinks the virtue of patience greater than signs and miracles and tells another story of the same monk to illustrate that virtue.

A monastic snake-charmer.

We may pass on, however, to the third chapter which contains a story of the gardener of a monastery who set a snake to catch a thief who had made depredations upon the garden, adjuring the snake as follows: “In the name of Jesus I command you to guard this approach and not permit the thief to enter here.” The serpent obediently stretched its length across the path, and when the gardener returned later, he found the thief hanging head first from the hedge, in which his foot had caught as he was climbing over it and had been surprised by the sight of the serpent. The monk of course then freely gave the thief what he had come to steal, but also of course gave him a brief moral lecture which was perhaps less welcome.

Basilius the magician.

After a brief account of a miraculous release from sexual passion Gregory comes to a tale of Basilius the magician. This is the same man concerning whose arrest and trial on the charge of practicing magic and sinister arts we find directions given in two of the letters of Cassiodorus.[2593] According to Gregory he took refuge with the aid of a bishop in a monastery, although the abbot saw something diabolical about him from the very start. Soon a virgin who was under the charge of the monastery became so infatuated with Basilius as to call publicly for him, declaring that she should die unless he came to her aid. The abbot then expelled him from the monastery, on which occasion Basilius confessed that he had often by his magic arts suspended the monastery in mid-air but that he had never been able to injure anyone who was in it. This is more detailed information concerning the nature of Basilius’ magic than Cassiodorus gives us. Gregory further adds that not long after Basilius was burned to death at Rome by the zeal of the Christian people.

A demon salad.

A female servant of this same monastery once ate a lettuce in the garden without making the sign of the cross first, and became possessed of a demon straightway. When the abbot was summoned, the demon attempted to excuse himself, exclaiming, “What have I done? what have I done? I was just sitting on a lettuce when she came along and ate me.” The abbot nevertheless indignantly proceeded to drive the evil spirit out of his serf.

Such are a few specimens of the monkish magic that was considered perfectly legitimate and rapturously admired at the same time that men like Basilius were burned at the stake on charges of magic by the zealous Christian populace.

Incantations in Old Irish.

We may add a word at this point concerning Old Irish literature[2594] which, as it has reached us, is almost entirely religious in character,[2595] produced and preserved by the Christian clergy. Yet we find a number of traces of magic in these remains of Celtic learning and literature during the dark ages. Indeed, the sole document in the Irish language which is ascribed to St. Patrick is a Hymn or incantation in which he invokes the Trinity and the powers of nature to aid him against the enchantments of women, smiths, and wizards. By repeating this rhythmical formula Patrick and his companions are said to have become invisible to King Loigaire and his Druids. The spell is perhaps as old as Patrick’s time. Three other incantations for urinary disease, sore eyes, and to extract a thorn are contained in the Stowe Missal. An Irish manuscript of the eighth or ninth century in the monastery of St. Gall has four spells for similar purposes and another is found in a ninth century codex preserved in Carinthia.

The Fili.

The Irish had their Fili corresponding somewhat to the Druids of Gaul or Britain. They were perhaps less closely connected with heathen rites, since the church seems to have been less opposed to them than to the Druids. They were poets and learned men, and a large part of their learning, at least originally, seems to have consisted of magic and divination. There are many instances in Irish literature of their disfiguring the faces of their enemies by raising blotches upon them by the power of words which they uttered. St. Patrick forbade two of their three methods of divination.

CHAPTER XXVIII
ARABIC OCCULT SCIENCE OF THE NINTH CENTURY

Plan of the chapter—Works of Alkindi—On Stellar Rays, or The Theory of the Magic Art—Radiation of occult force from the stars—Magic power of words—Problem of prayer—Figures, characters, and sacrifice—Experiment and magic—Alkindi’s medieval influence—Divination by visions and dreams—Weather prediction—Alkindi as an astrologer—Alkindi on conjunctions—Alkindi and alchemy—Astrological works of Albumasar—The Experiments of Albumasar—Albumasar in Sadan—Book of Rains—Costa ben Luca’s translation of Hero’s Mechanica—Latin versions of his Epistle concerning Incantation—Form of the epistle—Incantations directly affect the mind alone—Men imagine themselves bewitched—How are amulets effective?—Citations from the lapidary of the Pseudo-Aristotle—From Galen and Dioscorides—Occult virtue—On the Difference between Soul and Spirit—The nature of spiritus—Thought explained physiologically—Views of other medieval writers—Thebit ben Corat—The Sabians—Thebit’s Relations to Sabianism—Thebit as encyclopedist, philosopher, astronomer—His occult science—Astrological and magic images—Life of Rasis—His 232 works—Charlatans discussed—His interest in natural science—Rasis and alchemy—Titles suggestive of astrology and magic—Conclusion.

Plan of the chapter.

In this chapter we shall consider a number of learned men who wrote in Arabic or other oriental languages in the ninth and early tenth century: Alkindi, Albumasar, Costa ben Luca, Thebit ben Corat, and Rasis—to mention for the present only the brief and convenient form of their names by which they were commonly designated in medieval Latin learning. Not all of these men were Mohammedans; not one was an Arab, strictly speaking; but they lived under Mohammedan rule and wrote in Arabic. We shall note especially those of their works which deal with occult science and which were plainly influential upon the later medieval Latin learning. Indeed, most of the works of which we shall treat seem to be extant only in Latin translation. This chapter aims at no exhaustive treatment of Arabic science and magic in the ninth century, but merely, by presenting a few prominent examples, to give some idea of it and of its influence upon the middle ages. In subsequent chapters we shall have occasion to mention many other such medieval translations from Arabic and other oriental languages.

Works of Alkindi.

One of the great names in the history of Arabic learning is that of Alkindi (Ya‘kûb ibn Ishâk ibn Sabbâh al-Kindî), who died about 850 or 873 A. D.[2596] Comparatively few of his writings have come to us, however, although some two hundred titles prove that he covered the whole field of knowledge in his own day. He translated the works of Aristotle and other Greeks into Arabic, and wrote upon philosophy, politics, mathematics, medicine, music, astronomy, and astrology, discriminating little between science and superstition in his enthusiasm for extensive knowledge. The first treatise of his to appear in print was an astrological one on weather prediction in Latin translation.[2597] In 1875 Loth printed an Arabic text of his treatise on the theory of conjunctions. More recently Nagy has edited Latin versions of some of his philosophical opuscula, and Björnbo has published an optical treatise by him entitled De spectaculis.

On Stellar Rays, or The Theory of the Magic Art.

In a manuscript of the closing fourteenth century are contained several sets of errors of Aristotle and various Arabs, also others condemned at Paris in 1348 and 1363, at Oxford in 1376, and so on. Among these are listed the Errors of Alkindi in the Magic Art.[2598] The allusion is to a treatise by Alkindi, variously styled The Theory of the Magic Art or On Stellar Rays, which is found in Latin version in a number of medieval manuscripts,[2599] but which has never been published or described at all fully.

Radiation of occult force from the stars.

Alkindi begins the treatise by asserting the astrological doctrine of radiation of occult influence from the stars. The diversity of objects in nature depends upon two things, the diversity of matter and the varying influence exerted by the rays from the stars. Each star has its own peculiar force and certain objects are especially under its influence, while the movement of the stars to new positions and “the collision of their rays” produce such an infinite variety of combinations that no two things in this world are ever found alike in all respects. The stars, however, are no the only objects which emit rays; everything in the world of the elements radiates force, too. Fire, color, and sound are examples of this. The science of physics considers the action of objects upon one another by contact, but the sages know of a more occult interaction of remote objects suggested by the power of the magnet and the reflection of an image in a mirror. All such emanations, however, are in the last analysis caused by the celestial harmony, which governs by necessity all the changes in this world. Thus the men of old, by experiments and by close scrutiny of the secrets of both superior and inferior nature and of the disposition of the sky, came to comprehend many hidden things in the world of nature and were able to discover the names of those who had committed theft and adultery.

The border-line between science and magic.

Alkindi has thus prepared the reader’s mind for the consideration of phenomena beyond the realm of ordinary physical action. At the same time he has approached the occult by arguing on the analogy of natural phenomena and he has laid down as a fundamental scientific premise what we now regard as a superstition of astrologers. In other words, he is not unaware of a difference in method and character between physics and astrology, between science and superstition, yet he tries to formulate a scientific basis for what is really a belief in magic.

Magic power of words.

Although Alkindi does not, as I recall, use the word magic, he next argues in favor of what is commonly called the magic power of words. He affirms that the human imagination can form concepts and then emit rays which will affect exterior objects just as would the thing itself whose image the mind has conceived. Muscular movement and speech are the two channels by which the mind’s conceptions can be transformed into action. Frequent experiments have proven clearly the potency of words when uttered in exact accordance with imagination and intention, and when accompanied by due solemnity, firm faith, and strong desire. The effect produced by words and voices is heightened if they are uttered under favorable astrological conditions. Some go best with Saturn, others with the planet Jupiter, some with one sign of the zodiac and others with another. The four elements are variously affected by different voices; some voices, for instance, affect fire most powerfully. Some especially stir trees or some one kind of tree. Thus by words motion is started, accelerated, or impeded; animal life is generated or destroyed; images are made to appear in mirrors; flames and lightnings are produced; and other feats and illusions are performed which seem marvelous to the mob.

Problem of prayer.

Alkindi even ventures to touch upon the subject of prayer. He states that the rays emitted by the human mind and voice become the more efficacious in moving matter, if the speaker has fixed his mind upon and names God or some powerful angel. Human ignorance of the harmony of nature also often necessitates appeal to a higher power in order to attain good and to avoid evil. Faith, and observance of the proper time and place and attendant circumstances have their bearing, however, upon the success or failure of prayer as well as of other utterances. And there are some authorities who would exclude spiritual influence entirely in such matters and who believe that words and images and prayers as well as herbs and gems are completely under the universal control exercised by the stars.

Figures, characters, and sacrifice.

The treatise concludes by discussing the virtues of figures, characters, images, and sacrifices in much the same way as it has treated of the power of words. We are assured that “The sages have proved by frequent experiments that figures and characters inscribed by the hand of man on various materials with intention and due solemnity of place and time and other circumstances have the effect of motion upon external objects.” Every such figure emits rays having the peculiar virtue which has been impressed upon it by the stars and signs. There are characters which can be employed to cure disease or to induce it in men or animals. Images constructed in conformity with the constellations emit rays having something of the virtue of the celestial harmony. Alkindi also defends the practice of animal sacrifice. Whether God or spirits are placated thereby or not, none the less the sacrifice is efficacious, if made with human intent and due solemnity and in accordance with the celestial harmony. The star and sign which are dominant when any voluntary act of this sort is begun, rule that work to its finish. The material and forms employed should be appropriate to the constellation, or the effect produced will be discordant and perverted.

Experiment and magic.

It will have been noted that Alkindi more than once asserts that his conclusions have been demonstrated experimentally. Thus we have one more example of the connection, supposititious or real, between magic and experimental method.

Alkindi’s medieval influence.

The doctrine here set forth by Alkindi of the radiation of force and his explanation of magic by astrology were both to be very influential conceptions in Latin medieval learning. We shall find Roger Bacon, for example, repeating the same views in almost the same language concerning stellar rays and the power of words, and it is appropriate that in two manuscripts his utterances are placed together with those of Alkindi.[2600]

Divination by visions and dreams.

Alkindi’s treatise De somno et visione, as we have it in the Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona,[2601] accepts clairvoyance and divination by dreams as true and asks why we see some things before they happen, why we see other things which require interpretation before they reveal the future, and why at other times we foresee the contrary of what is to be.[2602] His answer is that the mind or soul has innate natural knowledge of these things, and that “it is itself the seat of all species sensible and rational.” Vision is when the soul dismisses the senses and employs thought, and the formative or imaginative virtue of the mind is more active in sleep, the sensitive faculties when one is awake.

Weather prediction.

While by some persons, at least, opinions of Alkindi in his Theory of the Magic Art were regarded as erroneous, Albertus Magnus in his Speculum astronomiae listed among works on judicial astrology with which he thought that the church could find no fault “a book of Alchindi” which opened with the words Rogatus fui.[2603] This is a work on weather prediction which still exists in a number of manuscripts[2604] and was printed in 1507 at Venice, and in 1540 at Paris, together with a treatise on the same theme by Albumasar, of whom we shall say more presently.[2605]

Alkindi as an astrologer.

A majority, indeed, of the works by Alkindi extant in Latin translation are astrological.[2606] Several were translated by Gerard of Cremona, and one or two by John of Spain and Robert of Chester.[2607] Geomancies are attributed to Alkindi in manuscripts at Munich.[2608] Loth notes concerning Alkindi’s astrology what we have already found to be the case in his theories of radiation and magic art and of divination by dreams; namely, that while he believes in astrology unconditionally, he tries to pursue it as a science in a scientific way, observing mathematical method and physical laws—as they seemed to him—while he attacked the vulgar superstitions which were popularly regarded as astrology.

Alkindi on conjunctions.

The astrological treatise by Alkindi, of which Loth edited the Arabic text, is a letter on the duration of the empire of the Arabs. This bit of political prediction was, as far as Loth knew, the first instance of the theory of conjunctions in Arabian astrology. The theory was that lesser conjunctions of the planets, which occur every twenty years, middling conjunctions which come every two hundred and forty years, and great conjunctions which occur only every nine hundred and sixty years, exert a great influence not only upon the world of nature but upon political and religious events, and, especially the great conjunctions, open new periods in history. Thus, as Loth says, the conjunction is for the macrocosmos what the horoscope is for man the microcosmos; the one forecasts the fate of the individual; the other, that of society. Loth knew of no Latin translation of Alkindi’s letter, and medieval writers in Latin cite Albumasar usually as their authority on the subject of conjunctions. But Loth held that Albumasar, who was a pupil of Alkindi, merely developed and popularized the astrological theories of his master, and Loth showed that Albumasar embodied our letter on the duration of the Arabian empire in large part in his work On Great Conjunctions without mentioning Alkindi as his authority.

Alkindi and alchemy.

Although a believer in astrology to the point of magic, and not unacquainted with metals as his work On the Properties of Swords shows, Alkindi regarded the art of alchemy as a deception and the pretended transmutation of other metals into gold as false.[2609] He affirmed this especially in his treatise entitled, The Deceits of the Alchemists, but also in his other writings.[2610]

Astrological works of Albumasar.

Something further should be said concerning the astrological treatises of Albumasar (Abu Maؗ’shar Ja’far ben Muhammad al-Balkhî) whence also his briefer appellations, Japhar and Dja’far. He died in 886 and has been called the most celebrated of all the ninth century Bagdad astrologers, although he has also been accused of plagiarism, as we have seen. In 1489 at Augsburg Erhard Ratdolt published three of his works, the Greater Introduction to Astronomy in eight books, the Flowers—which Roger Bacon cites as severely condemning physicians who do not study astrology[2611]—and the eight books concerning great conjunctions and revolutions of the years. Of these the Introduction was translated both by John of Spain and Hermann of Dalmatia, but the former translation, although found in many manuscripts, remains unprinted. The Flores is found in numerous manuscripts and was reprinted in 1495. The work on conjunctions and revolutions was printed again in 1515 and also exists in many manuscripts.[2612] A French translation which Hagins the Jew, working for Henri Bate of Malines, made in 1273 of “Le livre des revolutions de siècle,” of whose six chapters he translated only four,[2613] probably applied to a part of this work.

The Experiments of Albumasar.

Albertus Magnus in the Speculum astronomiae, in listing irreproachable works of astronomy and astrology, mentions a “Book of Experiments” by Albumasar instead of the Conjunctions and Revolutions along with his Flowers and Introduction.[2614] This book of experiments by Albumasar is often met with in the manuscripts. It is a different and shorter work than that in eight parts on Conjunctions, but itself deals with the subject of revolutions. It is not, however, to be confused with still another work by Albumasar on revolutions as connected with nativities.[2615]

Albumasar in Sadan.

Another work on astrology with which the name of Albumasar is connected is cited by medieval writers, notably Peter of Abano,[2616] as Albumasar in Sadan (or Sadam), and is also found in Latin manuscripts where it is also called “Excerpts from the Secrets of Albumasar.”[2617] Steinschneider regarded the Latin translation as a shortened or incomplete version of an Arabic original entitled al-Mudsakaret, or Memorabilia by Abu Sa’id Schâdsân, who wrote down the answers of his teacher to his questions.[2618] There is also a Greek text, entitled Mysteries, which differs considerably from the Latin and of which Sadan perhaps made use.[2619] The Latin version might be described as a miscellaneous collection of astrological teachings, anecdotes, and actual cases of Albumasar gathered up by his disciples and somewhat resembling Luther’s Table-Talk in form.

Book of rains.

We have already alluded to the treatise on weather prediction by Albumasar which was printed with a similar work by Alkindi in 1507 and 1540, and also often accompanies it in the manuscripts. In this “book of rains according to the Indians”[2620] Albumasar is variously disguised under the names of Gaphar, Jafar, and Iafar and is called an Indian, Egyptian, or Babylonian.[2621] In his Latin translation of it Hugo Sanctellensis tells his patron, the “antistes Michael” that the treatise was written by Gaphar, an ancient astrologer of India, and has since been abbreviated by a Tillemus or Cilenius or Cylenius Mercurius.[2622] To Japhar is also attributed a Minor Isagoga to astronomy in seven lectures or sermones, which Adelard of Bath is said to have translated from the Arabic.[2623]

Costa ben Luca’s translation of Hero’s Mechanica.

We turn next to Costa ben Luca, or Qustá ibn Lūqá, of Baalbek, and especially to his treatise On Physical Ligatures, or more fully, The Epistle concerning Incantations, Adjurations, and Suspensions from the Neck. The scientific importance of Costa ben Luca may be seen from the circumstance that the Mechanica of Hero of Alexandria, of which the Greek text is for the most part lost, has been preserved in the Arabic translation which Costa prepared in 862-866 for the caliph al-Musta. Several manuscripts of this Arabic text are still extant at Cairo, Constantinople, Leyden, and London, and it has been twice printed.[2624]

Latin versions of his Epistle concerning Incantation, etc.

The work in which we are more especially interested has also been printed in editions of the works of Galen, of Constantinus Africanus, of Arnald of Villanova, and of Henry Cornelius Agrippa.[2625] The treatise is also attributed to Rasis in the library at Montpellier.[2626] Its inclusion among Galen’s works is a manifest error; in the edition of Agrippa it is appended as The Letter of an Unknown Author (Epistola incerti authoris); while Arnald is represented as translating the work from Greek—a language of which he was ignorant—into Latin. He could read Arabic, however, and perhaps rendered the treatise from that language.[2627] But it had certainly been translated before his time, the end of the thirteenth century, and presumably by Constantinus Africanus, c1015-1087, since it not merely appears in his printed works but is found together with an imperfect copy of his Pantegni in a manuscript of the twelfth century.[2628] In a fifteenth century manuscript Unayn or Honein ben Ishak is named as the author of our treatise, but this seems to be a mistake.[2629] Albertus Magnus in the middle of the thirteenth century cites our treatise both in his Vegetables and Plants,[2630] where he alludes to “the books of incantations of Hermes the philosopher and of Costa ben Luca the philosopher, and the books of physical ligatures,” and in his Minerals,[2631] where the Liber de ligaturis physicis, as he calls it, is the source whence he has borrowed statements concerning gems ascribed to Aristotle and Dioscorides.

Form of the epistle.

Our treatise is in the form of a reply by Costa ben Luca to someone whom he addresses as “dearest son” and who has asked him what validity there is in incantations, adjurations, and suspensions from one’s neck, and what the books of the Greeks and Indians have to say upon these matters. The wording of Costa’s epistle varies considerably in the printed editions owing probably to careless interpretation of the manuscripts or careless copying by the earlier scribes, but its general tenor is the same.

Incantations directly affect the mind alone.

Costa first affirms that all the ancients have agreed that the virtue of the mind affects the state of the body. Galen in particular is cited as to the effect of passions upon health and the advisability of the physician’s cheering the minds of gloomy patients even by resort to deception to a limited extent, if it seems necessary. A perfect mind generally goes with a perfect body and an imperfect mind with an imperfect body, as is seen in the case of children, old men, and women, or in the inhabitants of the intemperate zones, either torrid Ethiopia or the frozen north. Here one text specifies Scotland (Scotie); another, Schytie, which is perhaps intended for Scythia. Costa therefore argues that if anyone believes that an incantation will help him, he will at least be benefited by his own confidence. And if a person is constantly afraid that incantations may be directed against him, he may easily fret himself into a fever. This, Costa thinks, was what Socrates had in mind when he described incantations as “words deceiving rational souls by their interpretation or by the fear they produce or by despair.” According to Albertus Magnus, who embodies a good deal of Costa’s Epistle in his Minerals, Socrates said more fully that incantations, or perhaps better, enchantments, were made in four ways, namely, by suspending or binding on objects, by imprecations or adjurations, by characters, and by images; and that they dement rational souls so that they fall into fear and despair or rise to joy and confidence; and that through these accidents of the mind bodies are altered either in the direction of health or of chronic infirmity.[2632] Costa states that the medical men of India believe that incantations and adjurations are beneficial. But he says nothing to indicate that they, much less the Greeks or himself, have faith in the efficacy of incantations or words to work changes in matter per se or directly, nor does he say anything to indicate that demons may be summoned and given orders by this method. Perhaps his discussion of incantations is a trifle constrained and not sufficiently outspoken, but it is moderate and scientific and shows a fair degree of scepticism for that period, especially when we compare it with Alkindi’s attitude towards the power of words.

Men imagine themselves bewitched.

Costa ben Luca’s attitude towards sorcery seems the same as towards incantations. He concludes his discussion of this point by a story of “a certain great noble of our country” who had convinced himself that he had been bewitched and consequently became impotent. After vainly endeavoring to convince him that this was simply due to his imagination, Costa decided that there was nothing to do but humor him in his delusion. He therefore showed him a passage in The Book of Cleopatra which prescribed as an aphrodisiac the anointing of the entire body with the gall of a crow mixed with sesame.[2633] The noble followed the prescription and had so much faith in it that his imaginary complaint disappeared.

How are amulets effective?

Finally Costa considers the question of the validity of amulets, or ligatures and suspensions, which we have heard Socrates class with incantations, adjurations, characters, and images. Costa says that he has read in many works by the ancients that objects suspended from the neck are potent not through their natural, but their occult properties. He will not deny that this may be so, but is inclined as before to attribute the result rather to the comforting effect which such things have upon one’s mind. He proceeds, however, to list a number of suspensions recommended by ancient writers.

Citations from the lapidary of the Pseudo-Aristotle.

First he cites from “Aristotle in the Book of Stones,” a spurious treatise of which we shall have more to say in the chapter on Aristotle in the middle ages, a number of examples of the marvelous powers of gems worn suspended from the neck or set in a ring upon the finger. One augments the flow of saliva, another checks the flow of blood. The stone hyacinth enables its bearer to pass safely through a pestilent region, and makes him honored in men’s thoughts and procures the granting of his petitions by rulers. The emerald wards off epilepsy, “wherefore we often prescribe to nobles that their children should wear this stone hung about the neck lest they incur this infirmity.”

From Galen and Dioscorides.

Costa also cites some recommendations of ligatures and suspensions from Galen, such as curing stomach-ache by suspending coral about the neck or abdomen, or the dung of wolves who have eaten bones, which should preferably be bound on with a thread made from the wool of a sheep eaten by that wolf. To Dioscorides are attributed such amulets as the teeth of a mad dog who has bit a man, which will safeguard their wearer from ever being so bitten—and it would be somewhat of a coincidence, if he were—and the seed of wild saffron which, held in the hand or worn about the neck, is good for the stings of scorpions. The Indians are cited for what is a recipe rather than an amulet: stercum elephantinum cum melle mixtum et in vulva mulieris positum numquam permittit concipere. And some say that a woman who spits thrice in a frog’s mouth will not conceive for a year. A number of other examples are given without mention of any particular authority. Some of them, indeed, are very familiar and could be found in many authors, and we shall meet them in other contexts.

Occult virtue.

Costa concludes by saying that he himself has not tested these statements extracted from the works of the ancients, but that neither will he deny them, since there exist in nature many strange phenomena and inexplicable forces. We would not believe that the magnet attracts iron, if we had not seen it. Similarly lead breaks adamant which iron cannot break. There is a stone which no furnace can consume and a fish which paralyzes the hand of the person catching it. These strange properties act in some subtle and mighty fashion which is not perceptible to our senses and which we cannot account for by reasoning.[2634] But it is noteworthy that as in discussing incantations Costa said nothing of demons, so he fails to ascribe occult virtue to the influence of the stars.

On the Difference between Soul and Spirit.

Another treatise by Costa ben Luca, On the Difference between Soul and Spirit,[2635] has little to do with occult science, but gives too good a glimpse of medieval notions in the field of physiological psychology to pass it by. It was translated into Latin by John of Spain for Archbishop Raymond of Toledo in the twelfth century,[2636] and is found in many manuscripts, often together with the works of Aristotle.[2637] Probably by a confusion of the names Costa ben Luca and Constantinus[2638] it was printed among the latter’s works,[2639] and indeed we find very similar views in his Pantegni[2640] and in his treatise On Melancholy. The work has also been ascribed to Augustine,[2641] Isaac,[2642] Avicenna,[2643] Alexander Neckam, Thomas of Cantimpré, and Albertus Magnus.[2644] A different work with a similar title and somewhat similar contents is the De spiritu et anima, which is printed with the works of Augustine[2645] but which cites such later authors as Boethius, Isidore, Bede, Alcuin, St. Bernard, and Hugh of St. Victor, to whom also it has been attributed.[2646] Thomas Aquinas called it the work of an anonymous Cistercian.[2647] But to return to our treatise.

The nature of spiritus.

Costa ben Luca has, as we have hinted, some diverting passages in the fields of physiological psychology. He believes in the existence of spiritus, which is not spirit in one of our senses of that word, but “a subtle body,” unlike the soul which is incorporeal. This subtle spiritus perishes when separated from the body and it operates most of the vital processes of the body such as breathing and the pulse, sensation and movement. The two former processes are operated by spiritus “arising from the heart and borne in the pulsating veins to vivify the body.” The two latter processes are caused by spiritus which arises from the brain and operates through the nerves. Thus spiritus is the cause of life in the body and it leaves this mortal frame with our dying gasp. The clearer and more subtle this spiritus is, the more readily it lends itself to mental processes, while the more perfect the human body, the more perfect the spiritus and the human mind. Hence the intellectual powers of children and women are inferior, and the same is true of races subjected to excessive heat or cold like the Ethiopians or Slavs. Here we have the same views repeated as in the Epistle concerning Incantation. Some physicians and philosophers think that there are two vessels in the heart and that there is more spiritus than blood in the left hand vessel and more blood than spiritus in the right hand vessel. The spiritus in the brain becomes more subtle and apt to receive the virtues of the soul by its passage from one cavity of the brain to another. The less subtle spiritus the brain uses for the five senses; Costa speaks of “hollow nerves” from the brain to the eye through which the spiritus passes for the purpose of vision. The most subtle spiritus is employed in the higher mental processes such as imagination, memory, and reason.

Thought explained physiologically.

Costa ben Luca gives an amusing explanation of how these processes take place in the brain. The opening between the anterior and posterior ventricles of the brain is closed by a sort of valve which he describes as “a particle of the body of the brain similar to a worm.” When a man is in the act of recalling something to memory, this valve opens and the spiritus passes from the anterior to the posterior cavity. Moreover, the speed with which this valve works or responds differs in different brains, and this fact explains why some men are of slow memory and why others answer a question so much sooner. The habit of inclining the head when deep in cogitation is also to be explained as tending to open this valve. However, the relative subtlety of the spiritus is another important factor in intellectual ability.

Views of other medieval writers.

Other medieval writers differed somewhat from these views of Costa ben Luca as to the nature of spiritus and the cavities of the brain. For instance, Constantinus Africanus in his treatise On Melancholy states that the spiritus of the brain is called the rational soul, which is inconsistent with the distinction drawn between soul and spirit in the other treatise. In the eleventh century both Constantinus in his Pantegni and Anatomy or De humana natura,[2648] and Petrocellus the Salernitan in his Practica;[2649] in the twelfth century both Hildegard of Bingen[2650] and the Pseudo-Augustinian Liber de spiritu et anima;[2651] in the thirteenth century both Bartholomew of England, who seems to cite Johannitius (Hunain ibn Ishak) on this point,[2652] and Vincent of Beauvais agree that the brain has three main cavities. The first is phantastic, from which the senses are controlled, where the sensations are registered, and where the process of imagination goes on. The middle cell is logical or rational, and there the forms received from the senses and imagination are examined and judged. The third cell retains such forms as pass this examination and so is the seat of memory.[2653] The Pseudo-Augustine, however, represents it further as the source of motor activity. Constantinus and Vincent of Beauvais, who quotes him in the thirteenth century, further distinguish the phantastic cavity as hot and dry, the logical cell as cold and moist, and the seat of memory as cold and dry. Moreover, the phantastic cell which multiplies forms contains a great deal of spiritus and very little medulla, while the cell of memory which retains the smaller number of forms selected by reason contains much medulla and little spiritus. Thus the general point of view of these other authors resembles that of Costa ben Luca despite the divergence from him in details. They perhaps also owe something to Augustine, who in his genuine works speaks of the three cells of the brain but makes the hind-brain the center of motor activity, and the mid-brain the seat of memory.[2654]

Thebit ben Corat.

Thabit ibn Kurrah ibn Marwan ibn Karaya ibn Ibrahim ibn Marinos ibn Salamanos (Abu Al Hasan) Al Harrani or Thabit ben Corrah ben Zahrun el Harrani, or Tabit ibn Qorra ibn Merwan, Abu’l-Hasan, el-Harrani, or Thabit ben Qorrah or Thabit ibn Qurra, or Tabit ibn Korrah, or Thabit ben Korra, as he is variously designated by modern scholars;[2655] or Thebit ben Corat, or Thebith ben Corath, or Thebit filius Core, or Thebites filius Chori, also Tabith, Tebith, Thabit, Thebeth, Thebyth, and Benchorac, ben corach, etc., as we find it in the medieval Latin versions—Thebit ben Corat seems the prevalent medieval spelling and so will be adopted here—was born at Harran in Mesopotamia about 836, spent much of his life at Bagdad, and lived until about 901.[2656] He wrote in Arabic as well as Syriac, but was not a Mohammedan, and Roger Bacon alludes to him as “the supreme philosopher among all Christians, who has added in many respects, speculative as well as practical, to the work of Ptolemy.”[2657] As a matter of fact, he was a heathen or pagan, a member of the sect of Sabians, whose chief seat was at his birthplace, Harran.

The Sabians.

The Sabians appear to have continued the paganism and astrology of Babylonia, but also to have accepted the Agathodaemon and Hermes of Egypt,[2658] and to have had relations with Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. They seem to have laid especial stress upon the spirits of the planets,[2659] to whom they made prayers, sacrifices, and suffumigations,[2660] while days on which the planets reached their culminating-points were celebrated as festivals.[2661] They observed the houses and stations of the planets, their risings and settings, conjunctions and oppositions, and rule over certain hours of the day and night.[2662] Some planets were masculine, others feminine; some lucky, others unlucky;[2663] they were related to different metals;[2664] the different members of the human body were placed under different signs of the zodiac;[2665] and in general each planet had its own appropriate figures and forms, and ruled over certain climates, regions, and things[2666] in nature. Most of this, however, is astrological commonplace whether of pagans, Mohammedans, or Christians. Nor were the Sabians peculiar in associating intellectual substances or spirits with the planets.[2667] It was only in worshiping these and denying the existence of one God and in their practice of sacrificial divination that they could be distinguished as heathen or pagan. However, they seem to have devoted a rather unusual amount of attention to astrology and other forms of magic such as oracular heads,[2668] magic knots and figures,[2669] and seal-rings carved with peculiar animal figures. These last they often buried with the dead for a time in order to increase their virtue.[2670]

Thebit’s relations to Sabianism.

Thebit, at any rate, seems to have prided himself upon being a descendant of pagan antiquity. In a passage praising his native town he said, “We are the heirs and posterity of heathenism,”[2671] and he described with veneration a ruined Greek temple at Antioch.[2672] He had, however, some religious disagreement with the Sabians of Harran and was finally forced to leave.[2673] He met a philosopher who took him to Bagdad where he became one of the Caliph’s astronomers[2674] and founded there a Sabian community to his own taste. His numerous religious writings show the value which he attached to various Sabian usages and rites: ceremonials at burials, hours of prayer, rules of purity and impurity and concerning the animals to be sacrificed, readings in honor of the different planets.[2675]

Thebit as encyclopedist, philosopher, astronomer.

Thebit was a writer of encyclopedic range and translated from the Greek[2676] into Arabic or Syriac such authors as Apollonius, Archimedes, Aristotle, Euclid, Hippocrates, and Galen. He “was famed above all as a philosopher,”[2677] but most of his philosophical works are lost, but some geometrical treatises by him are extant, and a work on weights appears in Latin translation.[2678] A group of four astronomical treatises by him also occurs with fair frequency in medieval manuscripts.[2679] On the basis of these specimens of his astronomy Delambre was not moved to assign him any great place in the history of the science;[2680] Chwolson objects that they are too brief to do him justice,[2681] but they are probably the cream of his own contributions to the subject or the middle ages would not have translated and preserved them so sedulously.

His occult science.

Whatever Thebit’s contributions to positive knowledge may or may not have been, there is no dispute as to the fact that he was given to occult science and even superstition. His attitude towards alchemy, indeed, is doubtful, as a work of alchemy is ascribed to him in one manuscript of the fourteenth century and some notes against the art in another[2682]. But of his adhesion to astrology there is no doubt[2683], and Chwolson notes his interest in the mystic power of letters and magic combinations of them[2684]. But the one outstanding example of his occult science is his treatise on images, which seems to have been a favorite with the Latin middle ages, since it appears to have been translated into Latin twice, by Adelard of Bath[2685] and by John of Seville[2686], since the manuscripts of it are numerous,[2687] and it also was printed,[2688] and since Thebit is cited as an authority on the subject of images by such medieval writers as Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus,[2689] the author of Picatrix,[2690] Peter of Abano,[2691] and Cecco d’Ascoli.[2692]

Astrological and magic images.

The work begins by emphasizing the need of a knowledge of astronomy in order to perform feats of magic (praestigia). The images described are astronomical or astrological and must be constructed under prescribed constellations in order to fulfill the end sought. Often, however, they are human forms rather than astronomical figures. It is not necessary to engrave them upon gems; Thebit expressly states that the material of which they are made or upon which they are engraved is unimportant, and that lead or tin or bronze or gold or silver or wax or mud or anything you please will do. The essential thing and “the perfection of mastery” is careful conformity to astrological conditions. This science of images is indeed, as Aristotle and Ptolemy have testified, the acme of astrology. Nevertheless, after the image has been properly constructed, there is usually some non-astrological ceremony to be executed in connection with it which savors of magic. Often the image is to be buried, not however in a grave as in the case of the ancient curses upon lead tablets, but in the house of someone concerned. Once two images are to be placed facing each other and wrapped in a clean cloth before burying them. Instructions are also given as to the direction in which the person burying the image should face. Also forms of words are prescribed which are to be repeated as the image is buried. Once the name of the person whom it is desired to injure is to be written with “names of hate on the back of the image.” Among the objects supposed to be achieved by such images are driving off scorpions, destroying a given region, causing misfortunes to happen to others, recovery of stolen objects, success in business or politics, protection from possible injury at the hands of the king, or the causing of an enemy’s death by bringing him into disfavor with the monarch. The treatise closes, at least in the printed text, with an admission of its essentially magic character by saying, “And this is what God the highest wished to reveal to his servants concerning magic, that His name may be honored and praised and ever exalted through the ages.” But no mention is made of demons, unless an instruction to name one image “by a famous name” alludes to some spirit.

We shall now conclude the present survey with some account of Rasis and his writings, with the exception of a number of books of experiments ascribed to him, but which it is impossible to separate from those ascribed to Galen and other authors, and of which we shall treat later under the head of such experimental literature.

Life of Rasis.

The full name of Rasis or Rhazes was Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi,[2693] the last word indicating his birthplace in Persia. The date of his birth is uncertain, perhaps about 850. He died in 923 or 924.[2694] For the facts of his life we are dependent upon two Arabic writers of the thirteenth century[2695] who do little except tell one “good” story after another about him, or quote his famous sayings, most of which sound as if culled from the works of Galen. When about thirty years of age Rasis came to Bagdad and is said to have been attracted to the study of medicine by hearing how an inflamed and swollen forearm which gave great pain was marvelously cured by the application of an herb, which came to be called “the vivifier of the world.” In the early years of the tenth century Rasis served as physician in the hospital at Bagdad. According to Withington he has been called “the first and most original of the great Moslem physicians.” He also was interested in philosophy and alchemy, as his writings will show.

His 232 works.

There has come down to us a list of some 232 works ascribed to Rasis.[2696] Some of them are probably merely different wordings of the same title, others are very likely chapters repeated from his longer works, but at any rate they serve to give us some idea of his interests and the ground he covered, although of course some may be incorrectly attributed to him. Editions of the Latin translations of some of his chief medical works were printed before the end of the fifteenth century at Milan in 1481 and Bergamo in 1497.[2697] These contain the famous Liber Almansoris or Liber El-Mansuri dictus with its ten subordinate treatises: (1) introduction to medicine and discussion of human anatomy, (2) the doctrine of temperaments and humors and a discussion of the art of physiognomy,[2698] with a chapter on how to select slaves, (3) diet and drugs, (4) hygiene, (5) cosmetics, (6) rules of health and medicines for travelers, (7) surgery or “the art of binding up broken bones and concerning wounds and ulcers,” (8) poisons, (9) treatment of diseases from head to foot, (10) fevers. Following this in both editions come his works on Divisions, on diseases of the joints, on the diseases of children, and his Aphorisms or six books of medicinal secrets. Other writings by Rasis found in one or both of the printed editions are a brief treatise on Surgery, Cautery, and Leeches,[2699] the book of Synonyms, the table of antidotes, and some others which we shall have occasion to mention later. His treatise on the pestilence or on smallpox and measles was printed many times from the fifteenth to sixteenth century.

Charlatans discussed.

In the list of 232 titles are three works which all seem to bear on the same point and are perhaps different descriptions of one treatise, or else show that this was a favorite theme with Rasis. The idea in all three seems to be that no physician is perfect or can cure all diseases of all patients, that this is why many persons go to charlatans, and why sometimes quacks, old-wives, and popular practice succeed in certain cases where the most learned doctors have failed.[2700]

His interest in natural science.

Other titles show that Rasis was interested in natural science and not merely in the practice of medicine. Besides what would appear to have been a general treatise entitled, Opinions concerning Natural Things, he wrote on optics, holding that vision was not by rays sent forth from the eye, and discussing some of the figures in the work on optics ascribed to Euclid. In a letter he inquired into the reason for the creation of wild beasts and venomous reptiles; and in a third treatise wrote of the magnet’s attraction for iron and of vacuums.[2701] His interest in natural philosophy of a rather theoretical sort is indicated by an Explanation of the book of Plutarch or commentary on the book of Timaeus.[2702] Other titles attest his experimental tendency.[2703]

Rasis and alchemy.

Eight titles deal with alchemy[2704] and show that Rasis regarded transmutation as possible. One is a reply to Alkindi who held the opposite opinion.[2705] None of these writings seem to be extant in Arabic, however, and the Latin works of alchemy ascribed to Rasis are generally regarded as spurious. The thirteenth century encyclopedist, Vincent of Beauvais, made a number of citations from the treatise De salibus et aluminibus attributed to Rasis, but Berthelot[2706] regarded this work as later than Rasis and it is not found among our eight titles. The Lumen luminis, which is ascribed to Rasis[2707] and seems to have been translated by Michael Scot[2708] in the early thirteenth century, is also mainly devoted to these two substances, salts and alums. A Book of Seventy is ascribed to Rasis as well as to Geber. Berthelot was inclined to think that a Book of Secrets perhaps went back to Rasis. At least some good stories are told by Arabic chroniclers of Rasis’ connection with alchemy. One is to the effect that he abandoned the art as a result of a sound beating to which the caliph subjected him when he failed to transmute metals at order. Another states that in preparing the elixir he injured his eyes with its vapors and was cured by a physician who charged him a fee of five hundred dinars. Rasis paid the doctor’s bill, but, remarking that at last he had discovered the true alchemy and the best art of making gold, devoted the remainder of his life to the study and practice of medicine.[2709]

Titles suggestive of astrology and magic.

Rasis also wrote treatises on mathematics and the stars but it is not always easy to infer their contents from the titles which have alone reached us or to tell when mathematica means astrology. In one work he seems to have shown the excellence and utility of mathematica, but to have confuted those who extolled it beyond measure.[2710] In a letter he denied that the rising and setting of the sun and other planets was because of the earth’s motion and held that it was due to the movement of the celestial orb.[2711] In another letter he discussed the opinion of natural philosophers concerning the sciences of the stars and whether or not the stars were living beings.[2712] Rasis also discussed the difference between dreams from which the future can be forecast and other dreams.[2713] The title, Of exorcisms, fascinations, and incantations, under which, according to Negri’s Latin translation Rasis discussed the causes and cures of diseases by these methods and magic arts, should, in Ranking’s opinion, be more accurately translated as The Book of Divisions and Branches.[2714] A work On the Necessity of Prayer is also included in the list of 232 works ascribed to Rasis,[2715] while a Lapidary produced for Wenzel II of Bohemia (1278-1305) cites Rasis On the virtues of words and characters.[2716]

Conclusion.

Herewith we conclude our present survey of Arabian occult science especially in the ninth century, although in the following chapters we shall frequently encounter its influence. We have found the occult science closely associated with natural science and difficult to sever from it. In the authors and works reviewed we have found both scepticism and superstition, both rationalism and empiricism. But perhaps the most impressive point is that even superstition pretends to be or attempts to be scientific.

CHAPTER XXIX
LATIN ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION: ESPECIALLY IN THE NINTH, TENTH, AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES

Astrology in Gaul before the twelfth century—Figures of astrological medicine—The divine quaternities of Raoul Glaber—Celestial portents and other marvels—An eleventh century calendar—Astrology and divination in ecclesiastical compoti—Notker on the mystic date of Easter—Prediction from the Kalends of January—Other divination by the day of the week—Divination by the day of the moon—Authorship of moon-books—Spheres of life and death: in Greek—Medieval Latin versions—Survival of such methods in medical practice of about 1400—Egyptian days—Their history—Medieval attempts to explain them—Other perilous days—Firmicus read by an archbishop of York—Relation of Latin astrology to Arabic—Appendix I. Some manuscripts of the Sphere of Pythagoras or Apuleius—Appendix II. Egyptian days in early medieval manuscripts.

Astrology in Gaul before the twelfth century.

Astrology had continued to flourish in Gaul in the last declining days of the Roman Empire, despite the strictures of Christian writers and clergy,[2717] and it was one of the first subjects to revive after the darkness of the Merovingian period. Two centuries ago Goujet in a treatise on the state of the sciences in France from the death of Charlemagne to that of King Robert noted that from the reign of Charlemagne astronomy continued to be increasingly studied. “The councils in their decrees, the bishops in their statutes, the kings in their capitularies, expressly recommended the study of it to the clergy.”[2718] With the study of astronomy naturally developed a belief in astrology. According to the Histoire Littéraire de la France it became quite the fashion during the reign of Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s successor, when we are told that there was no great lord but had his own astrologer. Adalmus, before he became abbot of Castres, wasted much time upon this pseudo-science, and Rabanus Maurus showed tendencies in that direction. In the tenth century such celestial phenomena as comets and eclipses were feared as sinister portents, and men resorted to enchantments, auguries, and other forms of divination.[2719] A brief treatise in a manuscript of the ninth century in the Vatican library also develops the thesis that comets signify disasters.[2720] In the eleventh century Engelbert, a monk of Liège, and Odo, teacher at Tournai, were devoted to the study of the stars; and Gilbert Maminot, bishop of Lisieux, and for a time chaplain and physician to William the Conqueror, would rather spend his nights in star-gazing than in sleep. “But what was the outcome of all this toil and study?” inquires the Histoire Littéraire and replies to its own question, “The making of some wretched astrologers and not a single true astronomer!”[2721]

Figures of astrological medicine.

These words were written nearly two hundred years ago, but such a recent investigation of manuscripts in French libraries as that of Wickersheimer on figures illustrative of astrological medicine from the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries has on the whole confirmed the importance of astrology in the meager learning of that time.[2722] The manuscripts in English libraries, I have found, tell a similar story. Of the human figures marked with the twelve signs of the zodiac, which become so common in the manuscripts by the fourteenth century, and in which the head rests upon the Ram, the feet on Pisces, while the intervening members of the body are marked by their respective signs,—of these Wickersheimer found none before the twelfth century. But in a medical manuscript of the eleventh century the twelve signs with their names and the names of the parts of the human body to which they apply are grouped about a half figure of Christ, who has His right hand raised to bless, while about His head is a halo or sun-disk with twelve rays.[2723] Less favorable to astrology is the accompanying legend, “According to the ravings of the philosophers the twelve signs are thus denoted.” On the page following the text describes the twelve signs “according to the Gentiles.” Schemes in which the world, the year, and man were associated, and where are shown the four elements, four seasons, four humors, four temperaments, four ages, four cardinal points, and four winds, are frequently found in extant manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.[2724]

The divine quaternities of Raoul Glaber.

Such association reminds one of the opening of the chronicle of Raoul Glaber, written in the eleventh century, “Since we are to treat of events in the four quarters of the earth, it will be well to touch first upon the power of divine and abstract quaternity.” There are four elements, he gives us to understand, four virtues and four senses. There are four Gospels and they have their relation to the four elements. Matthew, dealing with Christ’s incarnation, corresponds to earth; Mark to water, since it emphasizes baptism; Luke to air, because it is the longest Gospel; and John to fire or ether as the most spiritual. In like manner can be associated with the four cardinal virtues those four famous rivers which had their sources in Paradise: Phison and prudence, Geon and temperance, the Tigris and fortitude, the Euphrates and justice. Finally the ages of the world are found to be four by Raoul, instead of the six eras corresponding to the days of creation which we find in Isidore, Bede, and other medieval historians; and these four ages also relate to the four virtues. The days of Abel, Enoch, and Noah were days of prudence; but on leaving Noah we have temperance marking the age of Abraham and the patriarchs; fortitude is the feature of the time of Moses and the prophets; while justice characterizes the period since the incarnation of the Word.

Celestial portents and other marvels.

The faith of Raoul and his contemporaries in the mystic significance of numbers, if not also in astrology, and the fact that they were constantly on the lookout for portents and prodigies, are further attested by the stress laid in his chronicle upon the thousandth anniversaries of Christ’s birth and of His passion. Says Raoul, “After the multiplicity of prodigies which, although some came a little before and some a trifle afterwards, happened in the world around the thousandth year of Christ the Lord, there were many industrious men of sagacious mind who prophesied that there would be others not inferior to these in the thousandth year of our Lord’s passion.” That they were not mistaken in this premonition he shows later by several chapters, including an account of the eclipse of the sun in that year. Like many another medieval historian, Raoul is careful to note the appearance of comets—in the Bayeux tapestry of the same century one marks the death of Edward the Confessor; Raoul also believes that if a living person is visited by spirits, either good or evil, it is a sign of his approaching death; he holds the usual view that demons may sometimes work marvels by divine permission, and tells of a magician-impostor whom he saw work miracles upon pseudo-relics. But from the superstition of medieval chroniclers we must turn back to astrological manuscripts proper.

An eleventh century calendar.

An eleventh century calendar at Amiens[2725] reveals both a simple form of astrological medicine and a belief in some peculiar significance of the number seven, whether as a sacred or an astrological number. At the head of each month are brief instructions as to what herbs to use during that month, as to bleeding and bathing, and what disease may most easily be cured then.[2726] In the same manuscript one miniature shows someone striking seven bells with a hammer, perhaps as notes in a scale, and another miniature represents a seven-branched candlestick, of which the branches are respectively labeled, “Spirit of piety, Spirit of fortitude, Spirit of intellect, Spirit of wisdom, Spirit of prudence, Spirit of science, Spirit of the fear of God.”[2727]

Astrology and divination in ecclesiastical Compoti.

Indeed works of astrology and divination are especially likely to be found in the same manuscripts with ecclesiastical calendars and computi. Computus or compotus, as one manuscript states, was “the science considering times.”[2728] For example, in a brief compotus of the ninth century[2729] a divining sphere of Pythagoras occurs twice, and we have also a moon book, an account of the Egyptian days, and a method of divination from winds. In a twelfth century manuscript,[2730] sandwiched in between calendars and reckonings of Easter and eclipses and Bede’s work On the Natures of Things, are a sphere of divination, an account of Egyptian days, a method of divination from thunder, and a portion of a work on judicial astrology beginning with the eleventh chapter which tells how to determine whether anyone will be poor or rich by inspection of the planet in his nativity.[2731]

Notker on the mystic date of Easter.

The very dating of Easter itself might be the occasion for indulging in mystic speculation of a semi-astrological nature. Thus Notker Labeo, c 950-1022, the well-known monk of St. Gall,[2732] in a treatise to his disciple Erkenhard on four questions of compotus,[2733] states that the principal problem, with which all others are connected, is that of the date of Easter. He gives the time as in the first full moon after the vernal equinox, but adds that this is because of a certain mystery. For if there were no mystery connected with the date of Easter, and it merely celebrated like other festivals the memory of an event which once happened, there is no doubt but that it would occur every year without variation upon the twenty-seventh of March, which was the day of the Lord’s resurrection. But as after the vernal equinox the days grow longer than the nights, and as at the full of the moon its splendor is revolved on high, so we should overcome the darkness of sin by the light of piety and faith and turn our minds from earthly to celestial things, if we wish to celebrate Easter worthily.

Prediction from the Kalends of January.

But let us consider in more detail the methods of divination found in such manuscripts. Simplest of all perhaps are predictions as to the character of the ensuing year according to the day of the week upon which the first of January falls. For example, “If the kalends of January shall be on the Lord’s day, the winter will be good and mild and warm, the spring windy, and the summer dry. Good vintage, increasing flocks; honey will be abundant; the old men will die; and peace will be made.”[2734] In some manuscripts these predictions concerning the weather, crops, wars, and king for the ensuing year are called Supputatio Esdrae or signs which God revealed to the prophet Esdras.[2735] In another manuscript[2736] the weather for winter and summer is predicted according to the day of the week upon which Christmas falls and Lent begins. Christmas of course was sometimes regarded as the first day of the new year and in any case it falls on the same day of the week as the following first of January. In a ninth century manuscript[2737] predictions for the ensuing year are made according as there is wind in the night on Christmas eve and the eleven nights following. For instance, “If there is wind in the night on the night of the natal day of our Lord Jesus Christ, in that year kings and pontiffs will perish,” and “If on twelfth night there shall be wind, kings will perish in war.”

Other divination by the day of the week

Divination from thunder is another form of judicial astrology, if it may so be called, found in these early manuscripts. Perhaps the simplest variety of it is according to the day of the week on which thunder is heard.[2738] Predictions were also made according to the month in which thunder was heard,[2739] or the direction from which it was heard.[2740] It may be recalled that the three chapters of Bede’s translation of some work on divination from thunder had been respectively devoted to these three methods by the direction from which the thunder is heard, the month, and the day of the week. Nativities of infants are also given according to the day of the week on which they are born, and further taking into account whether the hour of birth is diurnal or nocturnal.[2741] It is also regarded as important to note upon which day of the week the new moon occurs,[2742] and we are further informed of the various hours of the days of the week when it is advisable to perform blood-letting.[2743] In a method of divination according to the day of the week and the letters in the boy’s or girl’s name the Lord’s day is assigned the number thirteen, the day “of the moon” eighteen, and that “of Mars” fifteen.[2744] Since the days of the week bore the names of the planets, it was not strange that they should have been credited with something of the virtues of the stars.

Divination by the day of the moon.

A commoner method of divination and one more nearly approaching approved astrological doctrine was that by the day of the month or moon. Briefest of such moon-books is that which merely designates each of the thirty days as favorable or unfavorable.[2745] We also find a Lunarium for the sick, stating the patient’s prospects from the day of the moon on which he contracted his illness;[2746] a work ascribed to “Saint Daniel” on nativities by the day of the moon;[2747] and an equally brief interpretation of dreams upon the same basis.[2748] Or all these matters may be considered in the same treatise and each of them somewhat more fully, and we may be told whether the day is a good one on which to buy and sell, to board a ship, to enter a city, to operate upon a patient, to send children off to school, to breed animals, to build an aqueduct or mill, or whether it is best to abstain on it from most business. Also such predictions as that the boy born on that day will be illustrious, astute, wise, and lettered; that he will encounter danger on the water, but will live to old age if he escapes; while the girl born on the same day will be “chaste, benign, good-looking, and pleasing to men.” That anyone who takes to his bed on that day will suffer a long sickness, but that it is a favorable day for blood-letting, and that one should not worry about dreams he has then, since they possess no significance either for good or evil. Also what chance there is of recovering articles stolen on that day.[2749] In later manuscripts at least it is further stated that certain Biblical characters were born on this day or that day of the moon: Adam on the first, Eve on the second, Cain on the third, Abel on the fourth, and so on.[2750]

Authorship of moon-books.

In the early manuscripts moon-books are anonymous or ascribed to Daniel, but in later medieval manuscripts other authors are named. The name of Adam is coupled with that of Daniel in both of two rather elaborate moon-books in a fourteenth century manuscript,[2751] where Adam is said to have worked out these “lunations” “by true experience.” A fifteenth century one is attributed to a philosopher, astrologer, and physician named Edris,[2752] perhaps the Esdras of the method of divination by the kalends of January rather than the Arab Edrisi. It briefly predicts from the relation of the moon to the twelve signs whether patients will recover and captives escape. In a sixteenth century manuscript at Paris are “Significations of the days of the moon which the most excellent astronomer Bezogar revealed to his disciples and transmitted to them as a very great secret and most precious gift.”[2753] But such an ascription is rather obviously a late fiction.

Spheres of life and death: in Greek.

Determining the fate of the patient from the day of the moon upon which his illness was incurred enters also into certain spheres of life and death which were much employed in the early middle ages. But in these the number of the day of the moon is combined with a second number obtained by a numerical evaluation of the letters forming the patient’s name. This method came down from the ancient Greek-speaking world, as in a “Sphere of Democritus, prognostic of life and death” found in a Leyden papyrus,[2754] while the very similar Sphere of Petosiris, the mythical Egyptian astrologer, is variously dated by W. Kroll from the second century before Christ, by E. Riess from the first century before Christ, and by F. Boll in the first century of our era.[2755] The so-called “Sphere” is really only a wheel of fortune, circle, or other plane figure divided into compartments where different numbers are grouped under such headings as “Life” and “Death.” Having calculated the value of a person’s name by adding together the Greek numerals represented by its component letters, and having further added in the day of the moon, one divides the sum by some given divisor and looks for the quotient in the compartments. This method of divination was also employed in regard to fugitive slaves and the outcome of gladiatorial combats.[2756]

Medieval Latin versions.

In the medieval Latin versions of these Spheres of life and death the numerical value of the Greek letters was naturally usually lost and arbitrary numerical equivalents were assigned to the Roman letters or some other method of calculation was substituted. The Sphere of Petosiris was perpetuated in the form of a letter by him to Nechepso, king of Egypt.[2757] But more common than this in manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries was the Sphere of life and death of Apuleius or Pythagoras or both[2758] which replaced that of Democritus. Like it, it consisted of the numbers from one to thirty arranged in six compartments, three above a line each containing six numbers, and three below the line having four each. John of Salisbury, in the twelfth century, presumably refers to it when he speaks of divination or lot-casting “by inspection of the so-called Pythagorean table”;[2759] and it continues to be found with great frequency in the manuscripts of subsequent centuries.[2760] It is not to be confused, however, with the Prenostica Pitagorice, a more elaborate, although somewhat similar, method of divination by means of geomantic tables, of which we shall treat later in the chapter on Bernard Silvester. A Sphere ascribed to St. Donatus in a twelfth century manuscript includes instructions how to determine the sign of the zodiac under which a person was born by computing the difference between his name and his mother’s name. If this amounts to four letters, he was born under the fourth sign, and so on.[2761]

Survival of such methods in medical practice of about 1400.

The survival of such superstitious methods of divination into the later middle ages is attested not only by the frequent recurrence of the Sphere of Apuleius and the divinations from the kalends of January in manuscripts of the later centuries, but by the medical notebook, written in middle English, of John Crophill, who practiced medicine in Suffolk under Henry IV.[2762] Besides a record of his patients and the sums of money due from them, rules of dieting and blood-letting for the twelve months of the year, and his “more regular and masterly observations upon Urin,” his notes include a treatise on astrological medicine which, in the sarcastic language of the old catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, concludes “with a masterpiece of art, namely, a tretys or chapter of ‘Calculation to know what thou wilt,’ and this by observation of persons’ names.” The notebook also contains “Oracular Answers prepared beforehand by this great Doctor for those of both Sexes who shall come to consult him in the momentous affair of Matrimony; according to the several Months of the year wherein they should apply themselves.” Further contents are an incantation in Latin for women in child-birth, and “The names of the 12 signs with such marks as shew that this John Crophill was a dabbler in Geomancy.”

Egyptian days.

Brief lists of “Egyptian Days” are of rather common occurrence in both Latin and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, and succeeding centuries.[2763] Often it is merely stated what days of the year they are; sometimes it is simply added that the doctor should not bleed the patient upon them. As early as a ninth century manuscript,[2764] however, we are further warned not to take a walk or plant or carry on a lawsuit or do any work upon these days. And under no circumstances, no matter what the seeming necessity, is it permitted to bleed man or beast on these days. Two Egyptian days are then listed for each month, one reckoned as so many days from the beginning and the other as so many days before the close of the month. Eleven days is the farthest removed that any Egyptian day is from the first of the month and twelve the most from the close, so that they never fall in the middle of a month nor on the very first or last day. Our ninth century manuscript then mentions three of these days in April, August, and December as especially dangerous. Whoever falls ill or receives a potion on them is sure to die soon. Whoever, male or female, is born on one of them will die an evil and painful death. “And if one drinks water on those three days, he will die within forty days.” The account then closes with the statement that on the Egyptian days the people of Egypt were cursed with Pharaoh. In another ninth century manuscript a bare list of the Egyptian days is followed by a somewhat similar account of the three which must be observed with especial care.[2765] In a calendar of saints’ days in this same manuscript only the third of March and the third of July are marked dies egiptiagus.[2766] Egyptian days are also marked in the calendar of Marianus Scotus, the well-known chronicler and chronologist.[2767] A somewhat different account in a twelfth century manuscript states that “these are the days which God sent without mercy.” It also, however, lists two of them for each month and distinguishes the three in April, August, and December as especially dangerous.[2768]

Their history.

There seems to be no doubt that these Egyptian days were a relic of the unlucky days in the ancient Egyptian calendar,[2769] of which we learn from several papyri, although of course the ancient Egyptians were also accustomed to distinguish further the three divisions of each day as lucky or unlucky. The Egyptian days are noted in official calendars of the Roman Empire about 354 A. D., and in the Fasti Philocaliani there are twenty-five in all, of which three fall in January. In the middle ages, as has already been illustrated, there were usually but twenty-four, two to each month.[2770] They were mentioned in the Life of Proclus by Marinus, and both Ambrose and Augustine testified that many Christians still had faith in them.[2771] Indeed, they passed into the ecclesiastical calendar, as the Franciscan, Bartholomew of England, states in the thirteenth century.[2772]

Medieval attempts to explain them.

By that time the notion had become prevalent that they were anniversaries of the days upon which God afflicted Egypt with plagues, as our citations from the manuscripts have shown. Bartholomew, indeed, is at pains to explain that the days are placed in the church calendar, “not because one should omit anything upon them more than upon other days, but in order that God’s miracles may be recalled to memory.” The circumstance that there are twenty-four days does not embarrass him; he simply explains that this proves that God sent more plagues upon Egypt than the ten which are especially famed. Our citations from earlier manuscripts have shown that most people would not agree with Bartholomew that nothing should be omitted on these days. Moreover, other explanations of their origin had been already given in the middle ages than that from the plagues of Egypt. Honorius of Autun stated in the twelfth century that they were called Egyptian days because they had been discovered by the Egyptians, and since Egypt means dark,[2773] they are called tenebrosi, because they are declared to bring the incautious to the shadows of death.[2774] The Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais,[2775] who probably wrote his encyclopedia soon after that of Bartholomew, did not find the discrepancy between ten plagues and twenty-four days so easy to explain away. He states that of the two Egyptian days in each month one comes near the beginning and the other near the close, as we have already learned. He adds that some call them lucky days, while others say that the astrologers of Egypt discovered that they were unlucky. Yet another explanation of their origin is that on these days the Egyptians were accustomed to sacrifice to demons with their own blood, a circumstance which would not seem to recommend them for inclusion in the ecclesiastical calendar. Bernard Gordon, a medical writer at the end of the thirteenth century, reverts to the position that the Egyptian days were in memory of the plagues in Egypt. He declares that there is no sense in the prohibition of blood-letting upon these days, since they have no astrological significance, but are the anniversaries of miracles worked by special providence.[2776] Gilbert of England, earlier in the thirteenth century, had advised against bleeding on Egyptian days, if the moon was then influenced by any evil planet.[2777]

Other perilous days.

On the other hand, not only did the twenty-four Egyptian days and the three in April, August, and December which were considered especially dangerous, continue to be listed in the fourteenth and fifteenth century manuscripts, but imitations of them appeared. Thus in a fourteenth century manuscript we read of forty perilous days which should be observed with the utmost care and which Greek masters have tested by experience;[2778] while in a second manuscript of the closing medieval period appear fifty-eight dangerous days “according to the Arabs.”[2779] Of the Greek days only twenty-nine are actually listed, seven in January, three in February, and so on, omitting the months of July and August entirely, which perhaps should contain the missing eleven days.[2780] The Arabic days vary in number per month from seven in March, which is the first month listed, to three in February. “And there are four other days and nights according to Bede on which no one is ever born or conceived, and if by chance a male is conceived or born, its body will never be freed from putridity.”[2781]

Firmicus read by an archbishop of York.

That astrological knowledge in England, at least soon after the Norman conquest, was not limited to such meager and simple treatises as the moon-books described above from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, is seen from the closing incident in the career of Gerard, a learned and eloquent man, bishop of Hereford under William Rufus and archbishop of York under Henry I, whom he supported in the investiture struggle with Anselm and the pope. The story goes that Gerard, who had been feeling slightly indisposed, lay down to rest and enjoy the fresh air and fragrance of the flowers in a garden near his palace, asking his chaplains to leave him for a while. On their return after dinner they found him dead, and beneath the cushion upon which his head rested was a copy of the astrological work of Julius Firmicus Maternus. Gerard had not been popular with the inhabitants of York, and when his corpse was brought back to town, boys stoned the bier and the canons refused it burial within the cathedral, which, however, his successor granted. “His enemies,” we are told, “interpreted his death, without the rites of the church, as a divine judgment for his addiction to magical and forbidden arts.” At any rate the story shows that the work of Firmicus was well known by this time; it is from the eleventh century that the oldest manuscripts of it date; and we suspect that some of his enemies were rather hypocritical in the horror which they expressed at a bishop’s reading such a book. “Too independent a thinker for his contemporaries,” writes Miss Bateson, “his opponents held up their hands in horror that an astrological work by Julius Firmicus Maternus should be found under his pillow when he died.”[2782] The style of Firmicus is much imitated by the anonymous author of The Laws of Henry I and another legal work entitled Quadripartitus written in 1114. F. Liebermann states that the author was in the service of archbishop Gerard aforesaid.[2783]

Relation of Latin astrology to Arabic.

Charles Jourdain once made the generalization that before the translation of the Quadripartite of Ptolemy and the works of the Arabian astrologers into Latin in the twelfth century, astrology had little hold among men of learning in western Europe.[2784] An even more erroneous assertion was that in Burckhardt’s Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien that “at the beginning of the thirteenth century” the superstition of astrology “suddenly appeared in the foreground of Italian life.”[2785] Even Jourdain’s assertion the entire present chapter tends to disprove, but since it has been quoted with approval by a subsequent writer on the thirteenth century,[2786] we may deal with it a little farther. The reason which Jourdain added in support of his generalization was that before the translations from the Arabic “those who cultivated astrology had no other guides than Censorinus, Manilius, and Julius Firmicus, who might indeed seduce a few isolated dreamers but did not have enough weight to convince philosophers. Ptolemy and the Arabs, on the contrary, appeared as masters of a regular science having its own principles and method.” This sounds as if Jourdain had not read Firmicus who gives a more elaborate presentation of the art of astrology than the elementary Quadripartite of Ptolemy. It is true that Ptolemy had a great scientific reputation from his other writings, but Manilius is a poet of no small merit, and there would be no reason why an age which accepted Ovid and Vergil as authorities concerning nature and regarded such works as De vetula and the Secret of Secrets as genuine works of Ovid and Aristotle, should draw delicate distinctions between Firmicus and Albumasar or Manilius and Alkindi. It was because reading Firmicus and even practicing the cruder modes of divination which we have described had already aroused an interest in astrology that other works in the field were sought out and translated. Moreover, there is an even more cogent objection to Jourdain’s generalization which will be developed in the following chapter, and it is that the taking over of Arabic astrology had already begun long before the twelfth century. We have, indeed, in the present chapter told only half the story of astrology in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and must now turn back to Gerbert and the introduction of Arabic astrology.

APPENDIX I
SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SPHERE OF PYTHAGORAS OR APULEIUS

Besides the copies noted by Wickersheimer (1913) in French manuscripts from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, such as Laon 407, Orléans 276, and BN nouv. acq. 1616, where in fact it occurs twice: at fol. 7v, “Ratio spere phytagor philosophi quem epulegus descripsit,” and at fol. 14r, “Ratio pitagere de infirmis,”—the following may be listed.

BN 5239, 10th century, # 12.

Harleian 3017, 10th century, fol. 58r, “Ratio spherae Pythagorae philosophi quam Apuleius descripsit.”

Cotton Tiberius C, VI, 11th century, fol. 6v, Imagines vitae et mortis quarum utraque rotulum tenet longum literis et numeris quae ad sphaeram Apuleii ad latera adscriptis, cum versibus pagina circumscriptis. The figures are of Vita with halo, robes, and angelic face, and of Mors, who wears only a pair of drawers, whose ribs show through his flesh, and who has wings like a demon. One has to turn the page upside down in order to read some of it.

CU Trinity 1369, 11th century, fol. 1r, just before the Calendar of Marianus Scotus, “Racio spere pytagorice quam apuleius descripsit.”

Chartres 113, 9th century, fol. 99, following works by Alcuin, “Spera Apuleii Platonis.”

Ivrea 19, 10th century, # 5, De spera Putagorae.

CLM 22307, 10-11th century, fol. 194, Ratio sphaerae Phitagoreae philosophi quam Apulegius descripsit, “Petosiris philosophus Micipso regi salutem ...”, where it would seem to be confused with the letter of Petosiris to Nechepso.

Vatican Palat. Lat. 176, 10th century, fol. 162v, “Eulogii ratio sperae Pitagorae philosophi,” in a MS containing works of Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose.

Vatican Urb. Lat. 290, 11-13th century, fol. 2v, Ratio spere Pitagoras quam Apuleius descripsit; fol. 3, Petosiris Micipso regi salutem.

I suspect that the following would also prove upon examination to be one of these Spheres of life and death.

CLM 18629, 10th century, fol. 95, Characteres literarum secretarum, item incantationes. Alphabetum Graecorum et numeri per tabulam dispositi; fol. 106, Tractatus de literis alphabeti (mysticus).

Vatican Palat. Lat. 485, 9th century, fol. 14, Litterae graecae cum interpretatione alphabetica et numerica.

Vatican 644, 10-11th century, fol. 16v.

Of the numerous occurrences of the Sphere of Pythagoras or of Apuleius in MSS later than the eleventh century I have noted only a few examples.

Vienna 2532, 12th century, fols. 1-2, Tractatus astrologicus de divinando exitu morborum e positionibus lune et de sphere Pythagore.

Vatican 642, 12th century, fol. 82, a somewhat different mode of divination, by which one tells what another is thinking or is holding in his hand, is attributed to Bede.

Madrid 10016, early 13th century, fol. 3, “spera de morte vel vita”; fol. 85v, the letter of Petosiris to Nechepso. It is interesting to note that this MS originally belonged to an English Cluniac monastery: Haskins, EHR (1915), p. 65.

BN 7486, 14th century, fol. 66v, “Canon supra rotam Pictagore,” opens, “Pictagoras is said to have written thus to Nasurius, king of the Chaldees;” then at fol. 67r comes “The Sphere of Pictagoras the philosopher which Epuleus Platonicus briefly described;” which is followed at fol. 68r by a long treatise ascribed to Ptolemy, Exortatio ad artem prescientie ptholomei regis egypti, in which various questions are answered by numerical and alphabetical calculations and one is also by the same method referred to nativities arranged under the 28 mansions of the moon.

CU Trinity 1109, 14th century, fol. 15, Spera apulei et platonici; fol. 20, “Ratio spere pictagis philosophe quod apollonius scripsit;” fol. 392, S(p)era Fortune.

Digby, 58, 14th century, fol. 1v, “Spera philosophorum.”

Bodleian 26 (Bernard 1871), 13-14th century, fols. 207 and 216v.

Bodleian 177 (Bernard 2072), late 14th century, # 1, Pythagorae sphaera quam Apuleius exaravit ut scias an aeger convalescat; # 14, fol. 22r, Apuleii Platonici Sphaera de vita et morte et de omnibus negotiis quae inquirere volueris.

Amplon. Quarto 380, 14th century, at the close of a Geomancy by Abdallah, “Spera Apuley de vita et morte vel de omnibus negociis de quibus scire volueris; sic facias....”

Additional 15236, 13-14th century, fol. 108, “Spera (Pictagore) de vita et morte sive de re alia quacunque secundum Apuleium.”

Harleian 5311, 15th century, folder i, “Spera Apullei.”

S. Marco XI, 111, 16th century, ascribes a wheel of life and death to “Bede the presbyter,” and another to Apollonius and Pythagoras.

APPENDIX II
EGYPTIAN DAYS IN EARLY MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS

The following citations could probably be greatly multiplied.

BN nouv. acq. 1616, 9th century, fol. 12r.

Digby 63, end of 9th century, Anglo-Saxon minuscule, fol. 36, “Dies Egiptiachi.”

Berlin 131 (Phillips 1869, Trier), 9th century, fol. 12r.

Lucca 236, about 900 A. D., on its last 3 leaves are Egyptian days and a dream-book; described by Giacosa (1901), p. 349.

Harleian 3017, 10th century, fol. 59r, De diebus Egiptiacis qui mali sunt in anno circulo. The catalogue dates this MS as 920 A. D. but at fol. 66r the date is given as DCCClxii or DCCCClxii (962 A. D.)—a letter seems to have been erased which probably was the fourth C.

Harleian 3271, 10th century (?), fol. 121, Versus ad dies Egyptiacas inveniendas. See also Baehrens, Poet. lat. min. V, 354-6; Mommsen CIL I, 411.

Sloane 475, this portion of the MS 10-11th century, fol. 216v, Versus de significatione dierum mensis, opening, “Tenebrae Aegyptus Grecos sermone vocantur....”

Additional 22398, 10th century, fol. 104.

Cotton Caligula A, XV, written mostly in Gaul before 1000 A. D., fol. 126, a list of lucky and unlucky days for medical purposes, in Anglo-Saxon.

Cotton Titus D, XXVI, 10th century, fol. 3v.

Cotton Vitellius A, XII, fol. 39v.

Cotton Vitellius C, VIII, in Anglo-Saxon, fol. 23, de tribus anni diebus Aegyptiacis.

CU Trinity 945, early 11th century, fol. 37.

CU Trinity 1369, 11th century (perhaps 1086 A. D.), fol. 1v.

Vatican 644, 10-11th century, fol. 77r, versus duodecim de diebus aegyptiis, and a fragment “de tribus diebus aegyptiis.”

Dijon 448, 10-12th century, fol. 88, Calendrier, avec jours égyptiaques ajoutés; fol. 191, “De Egyptiacis diebus.” Bede’s De temporibus and De natura rerum occur twice in this MS and at fol. 181 is an incantation for use in fevers.

Harleian 1585 and Sloane 1975, where the Egyptian days are found with the Herbarium of Apuleius, are both 12th century but probably copied from earlier MSS.

So in Chalons-sur-Marne 7, 13th century, fol. 41, verses on the Egyptian days occur with the Ars calculatoria of Helpericus of Auxerre who wrote in the ninth century.

I have usually not noted the occurrence of the Egyptian days in later manuscripts. A few exceptions are:

BN 7299A, 12th century, fol. 37r.

CLM 23390, 12-13th century, the last item is, “Verses concerning the twelve signs and the Egyptian days.” The previous contents were mainly religious.

Cambrai 195, fol. 208; 229, fol. 56; 829, fol. 54; all three MSS of the 12th century.

Cambrai 861, early 13th century, fol. 56.

Sloane 2461, end of 13th century, fols. 62r-64v.

The verses concerning the ten plagues of Egypt contained in CLM 18629, 10th century, fol. 93, and ascribed by the catalogue to Eugenius Toletanus have, I presume, no connection with the Egyptian days. Such proved to be the case with BN 16216, 13th century, fol. 251v, de decem plagis Egyptiorum et de vii diebus, although from the fact that it follows “Precepta Pithagore” I suspected before examining it that it might have something to do with divination. But not even the Pythagorean precepts have in this case.

CHAPTER XXX
GERBERT AND THE INTRODUCTION OF ARABIC ASTROLOGY

Arabic influence in early manuscripts—A preface and twenty-one chapters on the astrolabe—Are they parts of one work?—Their relation to Gerbert and the Arabic—Hermann’s De mensura astrolabii—Attitude towards astrology in the preface—Question of Gerbert’s attitude towards astrology—His posthumous reputation as a magician—An anonymous astronomical treatise; its possible relation to Gerbert—Contents of its first two books—Attitude towards astrology—The fourth book—Citations: Arabic names—Mathematica of Alchandrus or Alhandreus—An account of its contents—Astrological doctrine—Nativities and name-calculations—Interrogations and more name-calculations—Alchandrus or Alhandreus not the same as Alexander—Alkandrinus or Alchandrinus on nativities according to the mansions of the moon—Albandinus—Geomancy of Alkardianus or Alchandianus—An anonymous treatise or fragment of the tenth century.

Arabic influence in early manuscripts.

The usual view has been that western Latin learning was not affected by Arabic science until the twelfth or even the thirteenth century. We shall see in other chapters that the translations of the Aristotelian books of natural philosophy were current rather earlier than has been recognized, that in medicine a period of Neo-Latin Salernitan tradition can scarcely be distinguished from one of Arabic influence, and that in chemistry owing to the misinterpretation of the date of Robert of Chester’s translation of the book of Morienus Romanus—in which Robert says that the Latin world does not yet know what alchemy is—Berthelot in his history of medieval alchemy placed the introduction of Arabic influence half a century too late. In the present chapter we shall see that the voluminous work of translation of Arabic astrologers which went on in the twelfth century—and to which another chapter will later be devoted—was preceded in the eleventh and even tenth centuries by numerous signs of Arabic influence in works of astronomy and astrology and also by translations of Arabic authors. I was somewhat startled when I first found works by Arabic authors and use of astronomical terminology drawn from the Arabic in a manuscript of the eleventh century in the British Museum[2787] and Wickersheimer was similarly surprised at the traces of Arabic influence in a similar but still earlier manuscript of the tenth century at Paris.[2788] Bubnov, however, had already noted this Paris manuscript as a proof that Arabic books were being translated into Latin in Gerbert’s time,[2789] and one of Gerbert’s letters, written in 984 to a Lupitus of Barcelona (Lupito Barchinonensi), asking him to send Gerbert a book on “astrology” which he had translated, points in the same direction. In the present chapter we shall discuss the contents of the early manuscripts just mentioned and of some others which seem to have some connection either with Gerbert or the introduction of Arabic astrology into Latin learning.

A preface and twenty-one chapters on the astrolabe.

In an eleventh century manuscript at Munich[2790] the astrological work of Firmicus is preceded by writings in a different hand upon the astrolabe. One of these, in its present state an anonymous fragment, is a stilted and florid introduction to a translation from the Arabic of a work on the astrolabe.[2791] Another is a treatise on the astrolabe in twenty-one chapters and containing many Arabic names.[2792] Bubnov lists three other copies of the introductory fragment, and they are all in manuscripts where the second treatise is also included;[2793] it, however, is often found in other manuscripts where the anonymous fragment does not appear, and it must be admitted that its omission is no great loss.

Are they parts of one work?

Although the fragment precedes the other treatise in only one manuscript mentioned by Bubnov, there is reason to think that they belong together, since both are concerned with the Wazzalcora or planisphere or astrolapsus of Ptolemy, and since the plan outlined by the writer of the introduction is followed in the treatise of twenty-one chapters except that it ends incompletely. Bubnov recognized this, yet did not unite them as a single work.[2794] In 984 Gerbert wrote to a Lupito Barchinonensi asking Lupitus to send him a work on “astrology” which Lupitus had translated.[2795] If Lupitus was of Barcelona, his translation was probably from the Arabic, and as such translations were presumably not common in the tenth century, it is natural to wonder if he may not be the above-mentioned anonymous translator. This Bubnov suggested in the case of the introductory fragment,[2796] but the treatise in twenty-one chapters he placed among the doubtful works of Gerbert,[2797] because a monastic catalogue composed before 1084 speaks of a work of Gerbert on the astrolabe, while six manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, although none earlier to his knowledge, ascribe this very treatise of twenty-one chapters to Gerbert. Bubnov believed that whoever the author of the treatise in twenty-one chapters was, he had utilized the full work of the anonymous translator. But this seems a rather unnecessary refinement. For what has become of that translation? Why is only its wordy and rhetorical preface extant? If the writer of the twenty-one chapters destroyed its text after plagiarizing it, why did he not also make away with the preface? It seems more plausible that the twenty-one chapters are the original translation from the Arabic, and that many makers of manuscripts have copied it alone and omitted the wordy and rather worthless preface of the translator. If, as Bubnov suggested, the treatise in twenty-one chapters is Gerbert’s revision and polishing up of Lupitus’ translation,[2798] why did he not prefix a new introduction of his own? And why should anyone try to polish up the style of so rhetorical a writer as he who penned the extant anonymous introduction?

Their relation to Gerbert and the Arabic.

If we accept this anonymous introduction as the preface to the twenty-one chapters, Gerbert would be the most likely person to ascribe both to, unless we argue that he could not make a translation from the Arabic and that his letter asking to see a translation from the Arabic by Lupitus is a proof of this. If Gerbert is not the author, Lupitus would perhaps be the next most likely person, but the hint contained in Gerbert’s letter is all that points to Lupitus, and indeed the only mention that we have of him. If the translator is some third unknown person, at least he is not later than the eleventh century. If, on the other hand, we regard the introduction of the translator and the twenty-one chapters as by different persons, who perhaps had no connection with each other, and Gerbert’s letter of 984 as having nothing to do with either, we have the more evidence of an early and widespread interest in astronomy and knowledge of Arabic in the western Latin learned world.

Hermann’s De mensura astrolabii.

One reason why the treatise on the astrolabe in twenty-one chapters is so seldom found in the manuscripts preceded by the introduction of the translator may be that it is more often found with and preceded by another treatise on the astrolabe, sometimes entitled De mensura astrolabii, and attributed to a Hermann who modestly calls himself “the offscouring of Christ’s poor and the butt of mere tyros in philosophy.”[2799] This treatise tells how to construct an astrolabe, thus filling in the deficiency left by the incomplete ending of the treatise in twenty-one chapters, which fails to carry out fully this last item in the plan of the introductory fragment. A note in one manuscript, reproduced in part by Macray in his catalogue of the Digby Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, states that the treatise in twenty-one chapters is by Gerbert and that when a certain Berengarius read it, he found it told how to exercise the art but not to make the instrument and asked Hermann to tell him how to make one. Hermann therefore composed the work in question, dedicated it to Berengarius, and prefixed it to Gerbert’s treatise.[2800] Of late there has been a tendency to identify this Hermann with Hermann of Dalmatia, the twelfth century translator from the Arabic,[2801] rather than with Hermann the Lame, the chronicler, who died in 1054, but if Bubnov is correct in dating two manuscripts[2802] containing Hermann’s treatise on the astrolabe in the eleventh century, they could not be the work of Hermann the translator of the next century.[2803] Moreover, in the thirteenth century the treatise seems to have been regarded as the work of Hermann the Lame.[2804] The author’s self-depreciatory description of himself is also a mark of Hermann the Lame, who in another treatise addressed to his friend Herrandus and discussing the length of a moon calls himself “of Christ’s poor a vile abortion.”[2805]

Attitude towards astrology in the preface.

In the treatise of twenty-one chapters, which simply tells how to use the astrolabe, there is naturally no reference to judicial astrology. But in the introduction of the anonymous writer to his translation from the Arabic of a work on the astrolabe there is mention of the influence of the stars. Their “concord with all mundane creatures in all things” is regarded as established by “secret institution of divinity and by natural law” and testified to by scientists.[2806] Not only is the effect of the moon on tides adduced as usual as an example, but God is believed to have set the seal of His approval upon “this discipline,” when He made miraculous use of the stars and heavens to mark the birth and passion of His Son. The writer, however, stigmatizes as a “frivolous superstition” the doctrine of the Chaldean genethlialogi, “who account for the entire life of man by astrological reasons” and “try to explain conceptions and nativities, character, prosperity and adversity from the courses of the stars.” Something nevertheless is to be conceded to them, provided all things are recognized as under divine disposition. But their doctrine is an egg which is not to be sucked unless rid of the bad odors of error.[2807] The translator urges the importance of a knowledge of astronomy in determining the date of church festivals and canonical hours. He cites Josephus concerning Abraham’s instruction of the Egyptians in arithmetic and astronomy, but regards Ptolemy as the most illustrious of all astronomers and the astrolabe as the invention of his “divine mind.” The translator wishes his readers to understand that he is offering them nothing new but only reviving the discoveries of the past, and that he is simply presenting what he finds in the Arabic.

Question of Gerbert’s attitude toward astrology.

If Gerbert could be shown to be the translator who wrote this introduction, it would be a more valuable bit of evidence as to his attitude toward astrology than anything that we have at present. His surely genuine mathematical works, as edited by Bubnov, consist solely of a short geometry and a few of his letters in which mathematical topics, mainly the abacus, are touched upon. His contemporary and disciple, the historian Richer, tells in the well-known passage[2808] how Borellus, “the duke of Hither Spain,” took Gerbert as a youth from the monastery at Aurillac in Auvergne back with him across the Pyrenees and entrusted his education to Hatto, bishop of Vich, in the north-eastern part of the peninsula. Whether Gerbert studied Arabic or not Richer does not state. Since he is still described as adolescens when the duke and bishop take him with them to Italy and leave him there with the pope, one would infer that he probably had not engaged in the work of translation from the Arabic. Another almost contemporary writer, alluding very briefly to Gerbert, makes him visit Cordova, but is perhaps mistaken.[2809] Richer does, however, state that Berbert especially studied mathesis, a word which, as various medieval writers inform us, may mean either mathematics or divination. Apparently Richer uses it in the former sense, for later he mentions only Gerbert’s achievements in arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.[2810] But Robert, king of France, 987-1031, whose teacher Gerbert had been, seems to refer to him as “that master Neptanebus” in some verses,[2811] a name which certainly suggests an astrologer, as well as an instructor of royalty, if not also a magician.

His posthumous reputation as a magician.

But Gerbert’s reputation for magic seems to start with William of Malmesbury in the first half of the twelfth century, who makes him flee by night from his monastery to Spain to study “astrology” and other arts with the Saracens, until he came to surpass Julius Firmicus in his knowledge of fate. There too, according to William of Malmesbury, “he learned what the song and flight of birds portend, to summon ghostly figures from the lower world, and whatever human curiosity has encompassed whether harmful or salutary.” William then adds some more sober facts concerning Gerbert’s mathematical achievements and associates.[2812] Michael Scot in his Introduction to Astrology in the early thirteenth century speaks of a master Gilbertus who was the best nigromancer in France and whom the demons obeyed in all that he required of them day and night because of the great sacrifices which he offered and his prayers and fastings and magic books and great diversity of rings and candles. Having succeeded in borrowing an astrolabe for a short time he made the demons explain its purpose, how to operate it, and how to make another one. Later he reformed and became bishop of Ravenna and pope.[2813] In a manuscript early in the thirteenth century is a statement that Gerbert became archbishop and pope by demon aid and had a spirit enclosed in a golden head whom he consulted as to knotty problems in composing his commentary on arithmetic. When the demon expounded a certain very difficult place badly, Gerbert skipped it, and hence that unexplained passage is called the Saltus Gilberti.[2814]

An anonymous astronomical treatise; its possible relation to Gerbert.

In a manuscript in the Bodleian library which seems to have been written early in the twelfth century[2815] is an astronomical treatise in four books which Macray suggested might be the Liber de planetis et mundi climatibus which Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester from 963 to 984, is said to have composed.[2816] The present treatise indeed embodies a Letter of Ethelwold to Pope Gerbert on squaring the circle.[2817] It seems, however, that this letter on squaring the circle was really written by Adelbold, bishop of Utrecht from 1010 to 1027.[2818] Adelbold speaks of himself in the letter as a young man[2819] and of course wrote it before Gerbert’s death in 1003, and very probably before Gerbert became Pope Silvester II in 999. But he could scarcely have written the letter early enough to have it included in a work written by Ethelwold who died in 984. Our astronomical treatise in four books is therefore not by Ethelwold, unless the letter be a later interpolation, but it is possibly by Adelbold or by Gerbert.[2820] Its opening words, “Quicumque mundane spere rationem et astrorum legem ...,” are similar to those of the treatise on the uses of the astrolabe which has often been ascribed to Gerbert, “Quicumque astronomice peritiam discipline....”[2821]

Contents of its first two books.

Our treatise then may be by Gerbert or it may be a specimen of the astronomy of the eleventh or early twelfth century. As it appears to be little known and never to have been published, it may be well to give a brief summary of its contents. An introductory paragraph outlines some of the chief points with which the treatise will be concerned, such as the twelve signs of the zodiac, their positions, “most varied qualities,” the reasons for their names, and the diverse opinions of gentile philosophers and Catholics as to their significations; the four elements; and the seven planets. In the text which follows, these topics are considered in rather the reverse order to that in which they were named in the preface. After some discussion of “the founders of astronomy and the doctors of astrology,” the first book is occupied with a description of the sphere or heavens. The second book is largely geographical, beginning with the question of the size of the earth, the zones, the ocean, and how to draw a T map. This geographical digression the author justifies in the prologue to his third book by the statement that often the position of the stars can be determined from the location of countries, and that if the habitat of peoples is known one can more easily arrive at the effect of the stars.[2822]

Attitude towards astrology.

This suggests that the author believes in astrological influence, and in the two following books he states a number of astrological doctrines, not, however, as his own convictions but as the opinions of the genethliaci or astrologers, or “those who will have it that prosperity and adversity in human life are due to these stars.”[2823] On the other hand, he seldom subjects the astrologers to any adverse criticism. Indeed, early in the third book, he states that the belief of the genethliaci that human wealth and honors, poverty and obscurity, depend upon the stars, pertains to another subject than that which he is at present discussing; namely, prognostication, concerning which he will treat fully in later chapters. But I cannot see that he fulfills this promise in the present manuscript, which seems to end rather abruptly,[2824] so that possibly there is something missing. In the previous passage, however, he immediately proceeded to admit that the sun and moon greatly affect our life and to tell further how it is connected with the other five planets. In the star of Saturn the soul is said to busy itself especially with reasoning and intelligence, logic and theory. Jupiter is practical and represents the power of action. Mars signifies animosity; Venus, desire; Mercury, interpretation. Men have proved the moon’s moist influence by sleeping out-of-doors and finding that more humor collected in their heads when they slept in the moonlight than when they did not.[2825] After mentioning the twelve signs, “through which the aforesaid planets revolving exert varied influences, and even, according to the genethliaci, make a good man in some nativities and a bad man in others,”[2826] the author goes on to tell which signs are masculine and which are feminine, to relate them to the four cardinal points and to the four elements, to define the twenty-eight mansions and their distribution among the twelve signs and seven planets,[2827] and to tell how the planets differ in quality.[2828] All this is providing at least the basis for astrological prediction.

The fourth book.

The fourth book of the treatise is mainly taken up with descriptions and figures of the constellations, concerning which the author often repeats the fables of antiquity. After discussing the six ages of the world, the author intended to insert a figure on what is the next to last page of the present text to show “the harmony of the elements, climates of the sky, times of the year, and humors of the human body,” for, as he goes on to say, man is called a microcosm by the philosophers. This missing figure or figures would have been analogous to those which Wickersheimer investigated in the early medieval manuscripts in the libraries of France.

Citations: Arabic names.

Our author does not make many citations, but among them are Eratosthenes,[2829] Aratus, Ptolemy, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella. Some of these authors are perhaps known to him only indirectly, and he seems to make use of Isidore and Pliny without mentioning them. He shows, however, an acquaintance with foreign languages, listing the seven heavens as “oleth, lothen, ethat, edim, eliyd, hachim, atarpha,” and giving Greek, Hebrew, and “Saracen” names for the seven planets, as well as a “Similitudo,” or corresponding metal, and “Interpretatio,” or quality such as “Obscurus, Clarus, Igneus.”[2830] He also gives the Arabic names for the twenty-eight mansions into which the circle of the zodiac subdivides.[2831] We now turn to another treatise, found in tenth and eleventh century manuscripts, in which Arabian influence is apparent.

The Mathematica of Alchandrus or Alhandreus.

William of Malmesbury, writing in the first half of the twelfth century concerning Gerbert’s studies in Spain, says, probably with a great deal of exaggeration, that Gerbert surpassed Ptolemy in his knowledge of the astrolabe, Alandraeus in his knowledge of the distances between the stars, and Julius Firmicus in his knowledge of fate.[2832] It is rather remarkable that a work ascribed to Alhandreus or Alcandrus, “supreme astrologer,” should be found in two manuscripts of the eleventh century[2833] in both of which occurs also the work on the astrolabe which is perhaps by Gerbert, while in one is found also the Mathesis of Julius Firmicus Maternus. Alchadrinus or Archandrinus is cited in Michael Scot’s long Introduction to Astrology as the author of a “book of fortune making mention of the three facies of the signs and the planets ruling in them,” and Michael adds that a similar method of divination is employed in general among the Arabs and Indians as can be seen in the streets and alleys of Messina where “learned women” answer the questions of merchants.[2834] Peter of Abano in his Lucidator astronomiae,[2835] written in 1310, mentions Alchandrus as a successor of Hermes Trismegistus in the science of astronomy but as flourishing before the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Alchandrus was probably scarcely as ancient as that, but the treatise ascribed to him also exists in Latin in a manuscript of the tenth century,[2836] and seems to be a translation from the Arabic. In any case it is full of Arabic and Hebrew words, and professes to cite the opinions of Egyptians, Ishmaelites, and Chaldeans in general as well as those of Ascalu the Ishmaelite and Arfarfan or Argafalan or Argafalaus[2837] the Chaldean in particular. Since the name Alchandrus or Alhandreus is found so far as I know in no historian or bibliographer of Arabian literature or learning,[2838] we shall treat somewhat fully of the work and its author here.

An account of its contents.

The “Mathematic of Alhandreus, supreme astrologer,” as it is entitled in one manuscript, opens somewhat abruptly with a terse statement of the qualities of the planets. Two estimates of the number of years between creation and the birth of Christ are then given, one “according to the Hebrews,” the other “according to others.”[2839] There follow letters of the Greek alphabet with Roman numerals expressing their respective numerical values, perhaps for future reference in connection with some sphere of life or death. Next is considered the division of the zodiac into twelve signs for which Hebrew as well as Latin names are given. The movements of the planets through the signs are then discussed, and it is explained in the usual astrological style that Leo is the house of the sun, Cancer of the moon, while two signs are assigned to each of the other five planets. Every planet is erect in some one sign and falls in its opposite, and any planet is friendly to another in whose house it is erect and hostile to another in whose house it declines. Presently the author treats of “the order of the planets according to nature and their names according to the Hebrews,”[2840] and then of their sex and courses, which last leads to considerable digressions anent the solar and lunar calendars.[2841] Then the twelve signs are related to the four “climates” and elements.

Astrological doctrine.

All this implies a favorable attitude to astrology, and the author has already expressed his conviction more than once that human affairs are disposed by the seven planets according to the will of God.[2842] Since man like the world is composed of the four elements it is no false opinion which persuades us that under God’s government human affairs are principally regulated by the celestial bodies.[2843] To make this plainer the author proposes to insert an astrological figure “which Alexander of Macedon composed most diligently,” and which presumably would have been of the microcosmus or Melothesia type, but the space for it remains blank in the manuscript. Next comes a paragraph on the sex of the signs and their rising and setting, and then lists of the hours of the day and night governed by the signs and by each planet for all the days of the week.[2844]

Nativities and name-calculations.

Then we read, “These are the twenty-eight principal parts or stars (i.e. constellations) through which the fates of all are disposed and pronounced indubitably, future as well as present. Anyone may with diligence forecast goings and returnings, origins and endings, by the most agreeable aid of these horoscopes.”[2845] These twenty-eight parts are of course the sub-divisions of the zodiac into mansions of the sun or moon which we have already encountered, and Arabic names are given for them beginning with Alnait, the first part of the sign Aries. First, however, we are instructed how to determine under which one of them anyone was born by a numerical calculation of the value of his name and that of his natural mother similar to that of the spheres of life and death except that it is based upon Hebrew instead of Greek letters.[2846] Then follow statements of the sort of men who are born under each of the twenty-eight mansions, their physical, mental, and moral characteristics, and any especial marks upon the body,—either birth-marks or inflicted subsequently by such means as hot irons and dog-bite,—their health or sickness, term of life, and manner of death,—which in the case of Alnait, the first mansion, will be “by the machinations or imaginations of the magic arts.”[2847] Also the number of their children is roughly predicted.

Interrogations and more name-calculations.

Next is discussed the course of the planets through the signs, the houses of the planets, and their positions in the signs at creation.[2848] The author then turns to the influence of the planets upon men and gives another method of numerical calculation of a man’s name in order to determine which planet he is under.[2849] Under the heading “Excerpts from the books of Alexander, the astrologer king,”[2850] directions are given for the recovery of lost or stolen articles and descriptions of the thief are provided for the hour of each planet. The letter of Argafalaus to Alexander instructs how to read men’s secret thoughts as Plato the Philosopher used to do, and how to tell what is hidden in a person’s hand by means of the hours of the planets.[2851] After some further discussion of astrological interrogations the manuscript at the British Museum closes with the Breviary of Alhandreus, supreme astrologer[2852], for learning anything unknown by a method of computation from Hebrew and Arabic letters.

Alchandrus or Alhandreus not the same as Alexander.

Someone may wonder if the names Alhandreus and Alchandrus may not be mere corruptions of Alexander who is cited and quoted even more than has yet been indicated[2853], and if some careless head-line writer has not inserted the name Alchandri or Alhandrei instead of Alexandri in the Titulus. But this would leave the statements of William of Malmesbury and of Peter of Abano to be explained away. Or, if it is argued that the name of Alhandreus should be attached only to the Breviary, it must be remembered that in the earliest manuscript, which does not contain the Breviary, the treatise is none the less called the Book of Alchandreus. As a matter of fact there is found also in the manuscripts a “Mathematica Alexandri summi astrologi,”[2854] but while the title is the same, the contents are different from the “Mathematica Alhandrei summi astrologi.”

However, the treatise itself is found together with the Mathematica Alhandrei in a tenth century manuscript.[2855] But no author is mentioned, and instead of Mathematica the title reads “Incipiunt proportiones cppfcfntfs knkstrprx indxstrkb,” which may be deciphered as “Incipiunt proportiones competentes in astrorum industria.”[2856] Possibly therefore this treatise is a part of the work of Alchander, and the title Mathematica Alexandri is an error for Mathematica Alhandrei.

Alkandrinus or Alchandrinus on nativities according to the mansions of the moon.

Moreover, in later manuscripts we encounter authors with names very similar to Alchandrus and works by them of the same sort as that we have just considered. In a fifteenth century manuscript at Oxford we find ascribed to Alkandrinus an account of the types of men born in each of the twenty-eight mansions of the moon[2857] such as we have seen formed a part of the Mathematica Alhandrei. And in a fifteenth century manuscript at Paris occurs under the name of Alchandrinus what seems to be a Christian revision of that same part of the Mathematica Alhandrei.[2858] What appears to be another revision and working over of this same discussion of nativities according to the twenty-eight mansions of the moon[2859] appeared in print a number of times in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in French and English translations as well as Latin. The author’s name in these printed editions is usually given as Arcandam, but the English edition of 1626 adds “or Alchandrin.”[2860]

Albandinus.

Two other manuscripts at Paris[2861] contain under the name of Albandinus a “book of similitudes of the sons of Adam, fortunate and unfortunate, of life or death, according to nations, that is, their nativities according to the twelve signs.” The treatise opens with a method of calculating a person’s nativity from the letters in his own and his mother’s name similar to that which occurs in the course of the Mathematica Alhandrei, but then applies it directly to the twelve signs rather than to the twenty-eight mansions of the moon. It also does not bother with the Hebrew alphabet but gives numerical equivalents directly for the Latin letters. Some treatise by Albandinus on sickness and the signs in a manuscript at Munich[2862] is perhaps identical with the foregoing.

Geomancy of Alkardianus or Alchandiandus.

To an Alkardianus or Alchandiandus is ascribed a geomancy,[2863] and since it also is arranged according to the twenty-eight divisions of the zodiac with 28 judges and 28 chapters each consisting of 28 lines in answer to as many questions, it would seem almost certain that it is by the same author who treated of the influences of the 28 houses or facies of the twelve signs upon those born under them. Moreover, this Alkardianus or Alchandiandus states in his preface that he has composed certain books on the dispositions of the signs and the courses of the planets and on prediction of the future from them. “But since moderns always rejoice in brevity,” he has added this handy and rapid geomantic means of answering questions and ascertaining the decrees of the stars. The 28 tables of 28 lines each of this Alkardianus or Alchandiandus are identical with one of the two such sets[2864] commonly included in the Experimentarius[2865] of Bernard Silvester, a work of geomancy which he is said to have translated from the Arabic.[2866] He lived in the twelfth century and will be the subject of one of our later chapters.

An anonymous treatise or fragment of the tenth century.

It still remains to speak of a portion of our tenth century manuscript at Paris which begins, after the book of Alchandrus seems to have concluded, with the words, “Quicunque nosse desiderat legem astrorum....”[2867] This Incipit is so similar to that of the twenty-one chapters on the astrolabe, “Quicumque astronomiam peritiam disciplinae ...” and to that of the four books of astronomy, “Quicumque mundane spere rationem et astrorum,” that one is tempted to imply some relation between them, and, in view of the tenth century date of the one at present in question, to connect it like the others with the name of Gerbert. Our present treatise or fragment of a treatise is largely astrological in character, “following for the present the wisdom of the mathematici who think that mundane affairs are carried on under the rule of the constellations.” This refusal to accept personal responsibility for astrological doctrine is similar to the attitude of the author of the four books of astronomy, so that perhaps the present text is the missing fragment required to fulfil his promise to treat of the subject of prognostication in later chapters. If so it indulges in some repetition, as it goes into the relations existing between signs, planets, and elements, and gives the “Saracen” names[2868] for the twenty-eight mansions of the moon. It includes a way to detect theft for each planet and a method of determining if a patient will recover by computation of the numerical value of the letters in his name. These features are suggestive of the Mathematical of Alchandrus.

CHAPTER XXXI
ANGLO-SAXON, SALERNITAN, AND OTHER LATIN MEDICINE IN MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE NINTH TO THE TWELFTH CENTURY

Plan of this chapter—Instances of early medieval additions to ancient medicine—Leech-Book of Bald and Cild—Magical procedure and incantations—A superstitious compound—Summary—Cauterization—Treatment of demoniacs—Incantations and characters—In a twelfth century manuscript—Magic with a split hazel rod—More incantations and the virtues of a vulture—Lots of the saints—Superstitious veterinary and medical practice—Two Paris manuscripts—Blood-letting—Resemblances to Egerton 821—Virtues of blood—Pious incantations and magical procedure—More superstitious veterinary practice—The School of Salerno—Was Salernitan medicine free from superstition?—The Practica of Petrocellus—Its sources—Fourfold origin of medicine—Therapeutics of Petrocellus—The Regimen Salernitanum—Its superstition—The Practica of Archimatthaeus—A Salernitan treatise of about 1200—The wives of Salerno.

Plan of this chapter.

In this chapter our purpose is to treat of early medieval medicine as distinct on the one hand from post-classical medicine, to which we have already devoted a chapter, and on the other hand from later medieval medicine as affected by translations from the Arabic and other oriental influence. Perhaps one of the outcomes of our discussion will be to suggest that any such distinctions cannot be at all sharply or chronologically drawn. However, the writings which we shall discuss now are contained mainly in manuscripts dating from the ninth to the twelfth century, although some of them may have been first composed at an earlier date than that of the manuscript in which they chance to be preserved. Some are in Anglo-Saxon; more, in Latin. Some it has been customary to classify under the caption of Salernitan. We shall postpone until the next chapter our consideration of Constantinus Africanus, although the dates of his life fall within the eleventh century, because he already at that early date represents the introduction of Arabic medicine to the western world.

Instances of early medieval additions to ancient medicine.

A good instance of the working over by men of the early medieval period of the medical writings of the late Roman period is provided by a manuscript of the ninth or tenth century at Berlin.[2869] It now consists of a number of fragments whose original order can no longer be determined. These are made up of extracts from different sources or from other collections, but the collection also bears the mark of its last compiler who has introduced new remedies of his own and words derived from the vernacular of his day. Even extracts on fevers taken from the old Latin adaptation of Galen[2870] are added to by some Christian physician, who introduces among other things some incantations, such as, “I adjure you, spots, that you go away and recede from and be destroyed from the eye of the servant of God.”[2871] The manuscript also comprises more than one tract on how dreams or the fate of the patient or child born can be foretold from the day of the moon.[2872] Another tract[2873] tells how God made the first man out of eight parts, of which the first was the mud of the earth and the last the light of the world. This would seem to be rather a novel departure from the usual four element theory but perhaps involves ancient Gnostic error. The author further argues that individual divergences of character depend upon the preponderance of one or another of the eight constituents of the body.

Leech-Book of Bald and Cild.

The Anglo-Saxon Leech-Book of Bald and Cild[2874] has been called “the first medical treatise written in western Europe which can be said to belong to modern history.”[2875] It was produced in the tenth century. However, it extracts a good deal from late Greek medical writers, such as Paul of Aegina and Alexander of Tralles, and cites Pliny, “the mickle leech,” for the cure of baldness by application of dead bees burnt to ashes,[2876] a remedy also found in the Euporista ascribed to Galen. On the whole, however, it uses parts of animals somewhat less than Pliny, although sometimes a powdered earthworm is recommended, or a man stung by an adder is to drink holy water in which a black snail has been washed, or the bite of a viper is to be smeared with ear-wax while thrice repeating “the prayer of Saint John.”[2877] And a man about to engage in combat is advised to eat swallow nestlings boiled in wine.[2878] Herbs are as useful against a woman’s tongue as birds against a foeman’s steel, for we are told: “Against a woman’s chatter; taste at night fasting a root of radish; that day the chatter cannot harm thee.”[2879] There are directions for plucking herbs similar to those in Pliny,[2880] and the significance which he ascribed to cart ruts is paralleled by the injunction, after one has treated a venomous bite by striking five scarifications, one on the bite and four around it, to “throw the blood with a spoon silently over a wagon way.”[2881] Eight virtues of the stone agate are enumerated.[2882]

Magical procedure and incantations.

Not only such occult virtues of animals, vegetables, and minerals, but also magical procedure and incantations abound in the work. In a prescription “for flying venom and every venomous swelling” butter is to be churned on a Friday from the milk of a “neat or hind all of one color,” and a litany, paternoster, and incantation of strange words are to be repeated nine times each.[2883] A great deal of superstitious use is made of such Christian symbols, names, and forms of prayer as the sign of the cross, the names of the four evangelists, and masses, psalms, and exorcisms. Fear of witchcraft and enchantment is manifested, and the ills both of man and beast are frequently attributed to evil spirits. “A drink for a fiend-sick man” is on one occasion “to be drunk out of a church bell,” with the accompaniment of much additional ecclesiastical hocus-pocus.[2884] “If a horse is elf-shot, then take the knife of which the haft is horn of a fallow ox, and on which are three brass nails. Then write upon the horse’s forehead Christ’s mark, and on each of the limbs which thou may feel at. Then take the left ear; prick a hole in it in silence. This thou shalt do; then take a yerd, strike the horse on the back, then it will be whole. And write upon the horn of the knife these words, Benedicite omnia opera domini dominum. Be the elf what it may, this is mighty for him to amends.”[2885]

A superstitious compound.

Neither Bald and Cild nor their continuator shared Pliny’s prejudice against compound medicines. In the third book by the continuator is described “a salve against the elfin race and nocturnal visitors, and for women with whom the devil hath carnal commerce.” One takes the ewe hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, lupin, ashthroat, henbane, harewort, viper’s bugloss, heatherberry plants, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and fennel. These herbs are put in a vessel and placed beneath the altar where nine masses are sung over them. They are then boiled in butter and mutton fat; much holy salt is added; the salve is strained through a cloth; and what remains of the worts is thrown into running water. The patient’s forehead and eyes are to be smeared with this ointment and he is further to be censed with incense and signed often with the sign of the cross.[2886]

Summary.

The “modern” character of Bald’s and Cild’s book cannot be said to have produced any diminution of superstition as against the writings of antiquity. But we do find native herbs introduced, also popular medicine, and probably a considerable amount of Teutonic and perhaps also Celtic folk -lore, which, however, has been more or less Christianized. Indeed the connection between medicine and religion is remarkably close.

Cauterization.

The medicine of this period may be further illustrated by two Latin manuscripts of the eleventh century in the Sloane collection of the British Museum.[2887] One contains a brief treatise which illustrates the common tendency at that time to employ cauterization not only for surgical purposes in connection with wounds, but as a medical means of giving relief to internal diseases and trivial complaints with which cauterization could have no connection. That the practice was very largely a superstition is further evident from the fact that one part of the body often was cauterized for a complaint in another or opposite portion or member. In the present example, under the alluring names of Apollonius and Galen as professed authors,[2888] are presented a series of human figures showing where the cautery should be applied. These pictures of naked patients marked all over their anatomy with spots where the red-hot iron should be applied, or submitting with smiling or wry faces to its actual administration in the most tender places, are both amusing and, when we reflect that this useless pain was actually repeatedly inflicted through long centuries, pathetic.[2889]

Treatment of demoniacs.

In a general and much longer work on diseases and their remedies which follows in the same manuscript and which is professedly compiled from Hippocrates, Galen, and Apollonius, the treatment prescribed for demoniacs,[2890] who, it states, are in Greek called epilemptici (epileptics), includes among other things vaporization between the shoulder blades with various mixtures, scarification and bleeding, application of leeches to the “stomach where you ought not to operate with iron,”[2891] shaving and “imbrocating”[2892] the scalp, and anointing the hands and feet with oil. Both our manuscripts contain recipes for expelling or routing demons.[2893] For this purpose such substances are employed as the stone gagates and holy water, and elsewhere the usual confidence is reposed in the virtues of herbs and such parts of animals as the liver of a vulture.

Incantations and characters.

In one of the manuscripts is a treatise in which much use is made of incantations and characters. There are prayers to “Lord Jesus and Holy Mary” to heal the sick, while characters, sometimes engraved upon lead plates, are employed not only for medical purposes, but to prevent women from conceiving, to make fruit trees bear well, and against enemies.[2894] Later on in the manuscript instructions for plucking a medicinal herb include facing east and reciting a paternoster.[2895]

In a twelfth century manuscript.

The twelfth century portion of this same manuscript consists mainly of a long medical medley with no definitely marked beginning or ending but apparently originally in five books.[2896] Towards its close occur a number of incantations and characters quite in the style of Marcellus Empiricus.[2897] Indeed, “a marvelous charm” for toothache is an exact copy of his instructions to repeat seven times in a waning moon on Tuesday or Thursday an incantation beginning, “Aridam, margidam, sturgidam.”[2898] To make all his enemies fear him a man should gather the herb verbena on a Thursday, repeating seven times a formula in which the plant is personally addressed and the desire expressed to triumph over all foes as the verbena conquers winds and rains, hail and storms.[2899] If here the influence of pagan religion is still present, many of the incantations are in Christian form and expressed in the name of God or the Father. To find a thief characters are employed together with the incantation, “Abraham bound, Isaac held, Jacob brought back to the house.”[2900] A charm against fever opens, “Christ was born and suffered; Christ Jesus rose from the dead and ascended unto heaven; Christ will come at the day of judgment. Christ says, According to your faith it shall be done.” Then the sign of the cross is employed and “sacred words,” which seem, however, to include not only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but Maximianus, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantinus. As we have to do with a twelfth century manuscript the last two names might be presumed to have reference to the medical writers of the eleventh century, but another manuscript which contains a similar incantation states that they are the names of the seven sleepers.[2901] Our charm then continues “In the name of Christ” and with a prayer to God to free from sickness anyone who “bears this writing in Thy name.”[2902]

Magic with a split hazel rod.

In the same work occurs the earliest instance of which I am aware of the magical “experiment” with a split rod and an incantation, to which we shall hear William of Auvergne, Albertus Magnus, John of St. Amand, and Roger Bacon refer in the thirteenth century. A rod of four cubits length is to be cut with repetition of the Lord’s Prayer. It is to be split, and the two halves are to be held apart at the ends by two men. Then, making the sign of the cross, one should repeat the following incantation, “Ellum sat upon ella and held a green rod in his hand and said, Rod of green reunite again,”[2903] together with the Lord’s Prayer until the two split halves bend together in the middle. One then seizes them in one’s fist at the junction point, cuts off the rest of the rods, and makes magic use of the section remaining in one’s grasp.[2904]

More incantations and the virtues of a vulture.

Another manuscript of the twelfth century[2905] contains many similar charms, incantations, prayers, and characters for healing purposes. One formula employed is, “Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands.” In cases of miscarriage a drink of verbena is recommended and repetition of the following incantation with three Paternosters, “Saisa, laisa, relaisa, because so Saint Mary did when she bore the Son of God.” Presently a paragraph opens with the assertion that the human race does not know how great virtue the vulture[2906] possesses and how much it improves health. But certain ceremonial directions must be observed in making use of it. The bird should be killed in the very hour in which it is caught and with a sharp reed rather than a sword. Before beheading it, one should utter an incantation containing such names as Adonai and Abraam. Various healing virtues appertain to the different parts of its carcass, although here again there are instructions to be observed. The bones of its head should be bound in hyena skin; its eyes should be suspended from the neck in wolf’s skin. Binding its wings on the left foot of a woman struggling in child-birth produces a quick delivery. One who wears its tongue will receive the adoration of all his enemies; if one has its heart bound in the skin of a lion or wolf, all demons will avoid one and robbers will only worship one. Its gall taken in quite a mixture cures epileptics and lunatics; its lung in another compound cures fevers; and so on.

Lots of the saints.

There follow Sortes sanctorum, introduced by a page and a half of prayers of this tenor, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we ask Father and Son and Holy Ghost, Three and One; we ask Saint Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ; we ask the nine orders of angels; we ask the whole chorus of patriarchs; we ask the whole chorus of apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins, and the whole chorus of God’s faithful that they deign to reveal to us these lots which we seek, and that no seduction of the devil may deceive us.” The treatise closes, “These are the lots of the saints which never fail; so ask God and obtain what you desire.”

Superstitious veterinary and medical practice.

The next items in the manuscript are some cases of superstitious veterinary practice, with such pious incantations as “May God who saved the thief on the cross save this beast!”[2907] and with instructions concerning the religious invocations and written characters to be employed in blessing the food and salt to be given to domestic animals in order to keep them in good health. Characters are also mentioned which will prevent the blood of a pig from flowing when it is slaughtered, provided they are bound upon the breast or are written on the knife with which the pig is to be stuck.[2908] Holy water and bread that has been blessed are used for medical purposes and instructions are given on what days medicinal herbs should be gathered. The prayers employed are usually put in Christian form, but one for the cure of toothache has slipped by at least partially uncensored. It opens with the words “O lady Moon, free me....”[2909]

Two Paris manuscripts.

If we turn from medical manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the British Museum to those of the Bibliothèque Nationale, we find the same occurrence of superstitious passages. In an eleventh century codex which contains parts of the medical work of Celsus and the De dinamidis of Galen are also found prayers to God for the medicinal aid of the angel Raphael against the treacherous attacks of the demons, a work on the virtues of stones which has much to say of their marvelous properties, and figures and text concerning the twelve signs of the zodiac and twelve winds.[2910] Much more superstitious, however, is an anonymous treatise occupying the first ten leaves of a twelfth century manuscript[2911] which is apparently of German origin from the number of German words and phrases introduced near its close. This treatise is followed in the manuscript by the works of Notker, Hermann the Lame, and others on computus and the astrolabe.

Blood-letting.

After discussing the effect of food upon health, listing potions of herbs to be drunk in each month of the year,[2912] treating of the veins and of the four winds, four seasons, and four humors, and the relations existing between the two last-named, the author enumerates the many advantages of blood-letting in a long passage which is worth quoting in part. “It contains the beginning of health, it makes the mind sincere, it aids the memory, it purges the brain, it reforms the bladder, it warms the marrow, it opens the hearing, it checks tears, it removes nausea, it benefits the stomach, it invites digestion, it evokes the voice, it builds up the sense, it moves the bowels, it enriches sleep, it removes anxiety, it nourishes good health ...”: and so on. The operation of bleeding should not be performed on the tenth, fifteenth, twenty-fifth, or thirtieth day of the moon, nor should a potion be taken then. The Egyptian days and dog-days are to be similarly observed. The hours of the day when each humor predominates are then given.

Resemblances to Egerton 821.

There then is introduced rather abruptly an account of the medicinal virtues of the vulture almost identical with that in the British Museum manuscript. Once again, too, herbs are to be plucked with repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.[2913] The use of characters to prevent a slaughtered pig from bleeding is introduced somewhat otherwise than in the other manuscript. Having first recommended as a cure for human sufferers from flux of blood the binding about the abdomen of a parchment inscribed with the characters in question, the author adds, “And if you don’t believe it, write them on a knife and kill a pig with it, and you will see no blood flow from the wound.”[2914]

Virtues of blood.

Considerable medicinal use is made of blood in this treatise. For cataract is recommended instilling in the eye the blood which flows from a certain worm (oudehsam?) when “you cut it in two near the tail.”[2915] To break the stone one employs goat’s blood caught in a glass vessel in a waning moon and dried eight days in the sun together with the pulverized skin of a rabbit caught in a waning moon and roasted over marble. These are to be mixed in wine and given in the name of the Lord to the patient to drink while he is in the bath.[2916] Another remedy consists of three drops of the milk of a woman nursing a male child given in a raw egg to the patient without his knowledge.[2917]

Pious incantations and magical procedure.

The work abounds in characters and in incantations which consist either of seemingly meaningless words or of Biblical phrases and allusions. These are very much like those in the manuscripts already considered and are often accompanied by elaborate procedure. For example, the prayer, “O Lord, spare your servant N., so that chastised with deserved stripes he may rest in your mercy,” is to be written on five holy wafers which are then to be placed on the five wounds of a figure of Christ on a crucifix. The patient is to approach barefoot, eat the wafers, and say: “Almighty God, who saved all the human race, save me and free me from these fevers and from all my languors. By God Christ was announced, and Christ was born, and Christ was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and Christ was placed in a manger, and Christ was circumcised, and Christ was adored by the Magi, and Christ was baptized, and Christ was tempted, and Christ was betrayed, and Christ was flogged, and Christ was spat upon, and Christ was given gall and vinegar to drink, and Christ was pierced with a lance, and Christ was crucified, and Christ died, and Christ was buried, and Christ rose again, and Christ ascended unto heaven. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Jesus, rising from the synagogue, entered the house of Simon. Moreover, Simon’s daughter was sick with a high fever. And they entreated Him on her behalf. And standing over her He commanded the fever and it departed.”[2918] To cure epilepsy an interesting combination of scriptural incantation and rather unusual magic procedure is recommended. Before the attack comes on, the words of the Gospel of Matthew, “Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert; and angels came and ministered unto Him,” are to be written on a wooden tablet with some black substance which will wash off readily. Then, when the fit comes on, this writing is to be washed off into a vessel with still water and given to the patient to drink in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “If you do this three times, God helping the patient will be cured.”[2919]

More superstitious veterinary practice.

Our manuscript further resembles Egerton 821 of the British Museum in containing remedies for beast as well as man. If a horse suffers from over-eating, one should learn his name and procure some hazel rods. Then one is to whisper in his right ear an incantation consisting of outlandish words accompanied by the Lord’s Prayer, and is to bind his thighs and feet with the rods. This ceremony, too, is to be repeated thrice.[2920]

The School of Salerno.

We now come to the consideration of treatises supposed to have been produced by the school of medicine at Salerno. But not only are the origins of the so-called School of Salerno “veiled in impenetrable obscurity,”[2921] much of its later history is scarcely less uncertain, and it is no easy matter to say what men and what writings may be properly called Salernitan, or when they lived or were composed. The manuscripts of Salernitan writings seem to have been found more frequently north of the Alps than in Italian libraries. It would perhaps be carrying scepticism too far to doubt if medicine developed much earlier or more rapidly at Salerno than elsewhere, since it seems certain that the town was famous for its physicians at an early date, and that we have medical writings of Salernitans produced in the early eleventh century. But one is inclined to view with some scepticism the assumption of historians of medicine[2922] that the word Salernitan represents a separate body of doctrine, or of method in practice, which may be sharply distinguished from Arabic medicine or from later medieval medicine as affected by Arabic influence. Rather the medical literature and practice of Salerno is an integral and scarcely distinguishable part of medieval medicine as a whole. Many Salernitan treatises themselves belong to the later medieval period, and very few of them can be shown to antedate Constantinus Africanus, whose translations seem to mark the beginning of Arabic influence. And on the other hand there are equally early medieval medical treatises, such as those we have hitherto been considering, which are not Salernitan and yet show no sign of Arabic influence. Thus the word Salernitan cannot accurately be identified with a first period of medieval Latin medicine based upon early or Neo-Latin translations of Greek medical authors and upon independent medical practice. Such activity was not confined to Salerno. But if we so employ the word Salernitan for a moment, there seems no reason for thinking that such a development would be very different from the Arabic and Byzantine continuations of Greek medicine. A place so open to Saracen and Byzantine influence as the coast of southern Italy is hardly the spot where we should look for a totally distinct medical development, and the influence of Celtic and Teutonic folk-lore upon medical practice would presumably be more felt north of the Alps. And it is to Salerno that Constantinus Africanus, the earliest known importer of Arabic medicine, comes.

Was Salernitan medicine free from superstition?

The notion, too, that the Salernitan or early medieval Latin medical practice was sound and straightforward and sensible and free from the superstition with which the holders of this opinion represent Arabic and later medieval medicine as overburdened, is also probably illusory. We have already seen evidence of rather extreme superstition in early medieval Latin medicine which shows no trace of Arabic influence, and the medical practitioners of Salerno are sometimes represented in the sources as empiricists or old-wives. The place was peculiarly noted for its female practitioners, of whom more anon; and one of the earliest mentions of a physician of Salerno is the account in Richer’s chronicle[2923] of the mutual poisoning of two rival physicians in 946 A. D. Here the Salernitan is described as lacking in Latin book-knowledge and skilful from natural talent and much experience. He was the queen’s favorite physician, but was worsted by another royal physician, Bishop Deroldus, in a debate which the king, Louis IV, instituted in order to find out “which of them knew more of the natures of things.” The defeated Salernitan then “prepared sorcery” and tried to poison the bishop, who cured himself with theriac and secretly poisoned his rival in turn. The Salernitan was then reduced to the humiliating position of being forced to beseech the prelate to cure him, but in his case the theriac only drove the poison into his foot, which had to be amputated by a surgeon. This tale, be it true or not, suggests that there were good Latin physicians and surgeons outside of Salerno at an early date as well as that Salernitan medicine was far from being free from magic and empiricism.

The Practica of Petrocellus.

It is fairer, however, to judge Salerno by its own best written productions rather than by the stories of perhaps jealous northerners, and we may note Payne’s comparison of the Practica of Petrocellus,[2924] written probably in the early eleventh century, with the earlier Leech-Book of Bald and Cild. Selected recipes, it may first be said, were translated from the Practica into Anglo-Saxon.[2925] Dr. Payne was impressed by “the complete freedom of the former from the magic and superstition which tainted the Anglo-Saxon and all other European medicine of the time.” Payne noted that the compounds of Petrocellus contained fewer ingredients, and regarded the Salernitan selection of drugs as “more intelligent.” The Salernitan formulae are “clear, simple, and written on a uniform system which implies traditional skill and culture.”[2926] “The pharmacy is generally very simple; and, as might be expected, there is an entire absence of charms and superstitious rites.”[2927] Such simplicity, however, is at best a negative sort of virtue; and we wonder if this early specimen of the School of Salerno is free from elaborate superstition for the very reason that the work is simple and elementary. The less medicine, the less superstition perhaps. Moreover, superstition is not quite absent, since Payne himself quotes the following recipe: “For those who cannot see from sunrise to sunset.... This is the leechcraft which thereto belongeth. Take a kneecap of a buck[2928] and roast it, and, when the roast sweats, then take the sweat and therewith smear the eyes, and after that let him eat the same roast; and then take fresh asses’ dung and squeeze it, and smear the eyes therewith, and it will soon be better with them.”[2929]

Its sources.

Petrocellus is thought to have used Greek writings directly without the intermediary of Arabic versions.[2930] He says in the introductory letter which opens the Practica that he reduces to brief form in the Latin language those “authors who have culled the dogmas of all cases from Greek places.”[2931] But these words might be taken to indicate that he has used Greek sources only indirectly, while the fact that the person to whom the work is addressed is called “dearest son” and “sweetest son” is rather in the style of Arabian and Hebrew medieval writers. He goes on to assure this person that everything in the work has been tested by experience and that nothing should be added to or subtracted from it.

Fourfold origin of medicine.

This introductory epistle also embodies an account of the origin of medicine which, while not exactly superstitious, is quite in the usual naïve and uncritical style so often employed by both ancient and medieval writers in treating of a distant past. Apollo and his son Esculapius, Asclepius and “Ypocras” are named as the four founders of the medical art. Apollo discovered methoyca, which presumably means methodism, but which Petrocellus proceeds to identify with surgery. Esculapius invented empirica, which is described as pharmacy rather than empiricism, although perhaps the distinction is slight. Asclepius founded loyca, which is probably meant for the dogmatic school. Hippocrates’ contribution was theoperica, which may mean therapeutics but is further described as the prognostication or “prevision of diseases.” It is in this same introductory epistle that Petrocellus makes the division of the brain into three cells of which we spoke in the chapter on Arabic occult science. Besides distinguishing the three cells as phantastic, logical, and mnemonic, he adds that good and evil are distinguished in the middle cell and that the soul is in the posterior one.

Therapeutics of Petrocellus.

In the Practica proper the method of Petrocellus is to take up one disease at a time, tell what the Greeks call it, and briefly describe it, sometimes listing its symptoms or causes, but devoting most of his space to such methods of curing it as diet and bleeding, simples and compounds. I saw no instance of astrological medicine nor of resort to amulets and incantations in the version published by Renzi from a twelfth century manuscript at Paris. But in a fragment of the work from a Milan manuscript where twenty-six lines are devoted to the treatment of epilepsy instead of but seven as in the other text,[2932] one is advised to use antimony in the holy water “which the Greeks bless on Epiphany” and to chant the Lord’s Prayer three times. If this passage be a later addition, it shows that Petrocellus was less inclined to superstitious methods than others and that his injunction that nothing should be subtracted from or added to his work was not well observed. But in any case it illustrates my previous point that the more medicine, the more superstition. In twenty-six lines on epilepsy one is much more likely to find something superstitious than in seven. Indeed, the treatment of epilepsy was so generally superstitious that my recollection is that any account of it of any considerable length which I have seen in medieval writings contained some superstition. In fact, even if Petrocellus wrote the longer passage, he could be praised for having resorted to charms and formulae only in the case of that mysterious disease.

The Regimen Salernitanum.

The work most generally known as a characteristic product of the School of Salerno is the Latin poem[2933] which opens with the line, “To the King of the English writes the whole School of Salerno.”[2934] This poem has been variously entitled Schola Salernitana, Regimen Salernitanum, and Flos medicinae. How much more influential and widespread it was than the Practica of Petrocellus may be seen from the fact that manuscripts of the text of the latter are rare, though the introductory letter is more common, and that it was first published by Renzi in the nineteenth century, whereas about one hundred manuscripts and two hundred and fifty printed editions of the poem have been found. It was known chiefly through the brief version of 362 verses, upon which Arnald of Villanova commented at the close of the thirteenth century, until as a result of the researches of Baudry de Balzac, Renzi, and Daremberg the number of lines was increased to 3526. This patchwork from many manuscripts can scarcely be regarded as the work of any one author, time, or even school, and it may be seriously questioned how many of the verses really emanated from Salerno. Certainly it is not free from Arabic influence, since it cites Alfraganus as well as Ptolemy.[2935] Pliny is used a great deal for the virtues of herbs. Much of it sounds like a late versification of commonplaces for mnemonic purposes. Sudhoff has recently pointed out that it was not generally known until the middle of the thirteenth century, before which time Frederick II, the cultured monarch, and Giles de Corbeil, the medical poet, appear unaware of its existence.[2936]

Its superstition.

The brief version of the poem commented upon by Arnald of Villanova naturally contains only one-tenth of the superstition found in the fuller text which is ten times longer. In some respects this brief version might pass as a restrained, though quaint, early set of directions how to preserve health, to which later writers have added superstitious recipes. But as a matter of fact it is too superstitious for even one as hospitable to theories of occult influence as Arnald, who rejects as false and worthless[2937] its assertion that the months of April, May, and September are lunar and that in them consequently fall the days upon which bleeding is prohibited. In the lines upon which Arnald comments marvelous properties are mentioned in the case of the plant rue, but the fuller text has many mentions of the occult virtues of herbs, stones, and animals. Almost at a glance we read that the urine of a dog or the blood of a mouse cures warts; that juice of betony should be gathered on the eve of St. John the Baptist, that rubbing the soles of the feet cures a stiff neck, and that pearls or the stone found in a crab’s head are of equal virtue for heart trouble.[2938] And not far away is a passage[2939] on the virtue of the Agnus Dei, made of balsam, pure wax, and the Chrism. It protects against lightning and the waves of the sea, aids women in child-birth, saves from sudden death, and in short from “every kind of evil.” Astrology is by no means omitted from the Regimen Salernitanum; in fact Balzac seems to have taken the fact that verses were astrological in character as a sign that they belonged in the Salernitan collection.

The Practica of Archimatthaeus.

A third work which may be considered as an example of the medicine of Salerno is the Practica of Archimatthaeus which Renzi placed in the twelfth century and conjectured to be the work of Matthaeus Platearius the Elder.[2940] One or two expressions, however, might be taken as indications that the writer is neither of early date nor himself a Salernitan. He speaks of curing pleurisy in a different way from the treatment recommended in the Practica’s and tells how the Salernitans try to prevent their hair from falling out by reason of their pores opening too wide when they frequent the bath.[2941] Renzi hailed this treatise with delight as “a true medical clinic,”[2942] since the author describes some twenty-two specific cases. He states at the beginning that he does not propose to write a systematic treatise or to deal with every variety of disease, but only with those in which he has learned new and better methods by experience, “and in which God has put the desired effect in my hand.”[2943] Through the work we encounter such phrases as expertum est, aliud probatissimum, “I tell you what I have proved,” “We have tested this by experience and rejoiced at the result.” These utterances seem really to refer to the writer’s own experience and not to be copied from previous authors. The following is an example of his cases. “A certain lady incurred paralysis of the face during sleep after the bath,” which he attributes to dissolution of humors which affected the muscles. First he bled the cephalic vein, hoping thereby to draw off somewhat the humors from the afflicted place. Then for three successive days he gave her “the potion of St. Paul with wine of a decoction of salvia and castoria which in part prevent dissolution, in part consume it.” He also had her hold that wine in her mouth for a long time before swallowing it. At length he gave her a purgative with pills of yerapiga (sacrum amarum), mixed with golden pills. “Afterwards we injected pills of diacastoria into her nostrils and placed her near the fire. Finally we gave opopira (bread free from furfure) with the aforesaid wine, and so she was cured, only a certain tumor remained in her face and made her eye water. We anointed her face with golden unguent and the potion of St. Paul mixed together and the tumor disappeared; for the tears we gave golden Alexandrina and they were checked; and thus it was that this year in your presence we cured a certain paralytic.”[2944] Like Galen’s accounts of his actual cases this makes us realize that all the gruesome mixtures of which we read in the books were actually forced upon patients, often several of them upon one poor sick person, and that medical practice was rather worse than medical theory. An interesting observation concerning the lot of the lower classes is let fall by our author when, in discussing involuntary emission of urine, he states that serfs and handmaids are especially subject to this ailment, since they go about ill-clad and with bare feet and become thoroughly chilled.[2945]

A Salernitan treatise of about 1200.

Giacosa classed one of the treatises which he published as Salernitan because it was written in a Lombard or Monte Cassino hand of about 1200.[2946] He described its contents as purely therapeutical and regarded its author as showing “a certain repugnance” to the popular remedies and superstitions recommended by other contemporary treatises. For this conclusion the chief evidence seems to be a passage where the author, after listing such means to prevent a woman from conceiving as binding her head with a red ribbon or holding the stone found in the head of an ass, says that he thinks that such remedies “operate more by faith than reason.”[2947] But he makes much use of parts of animals and of suffumigations, advising for example on the same page that after conception there should be fumigation with a root of mandragora or peony or the excrement of an ass mixed with flour, an operation which he characterizes as expertissimum. And on the preceding page, as Giacosa has noted, he recommends a procedure which is even more improbable than it is immoral, whereby patients who show themselves ungrateful to the physician after they have been cured may be made to suffer again.[2948]

The wives of Salerno.

We promised to say something of the female practitioners of Salerno. Trotula is no longer believed to be a woman and we have to judge the women of Salerno mainly by what others say of them. In a commentary of a Master Bernard of Provence, who I suspect may be Bernard Gordon, the medical writer at Montpellier of the closing thirteenth century, are a number of practices attributed to the women of Salerno which Renzi has already brought together.[2949] In these cases the practices are chiefly those employed by the women themselves in child-birth. We may note three from the list that savor strongly of magic. “The women of Salerno cook doves with the acorns which the doves eat; then they remove the acorns from the gizzard and eat them, whence the retentive virtue is much comforted.” “When the women of Salerno fear abortion, they carry with them the pregnant stone,” which our author explains is not the magnet. The other recipe had perhaps better remain untranslated: Stercus asini comedunt mulieres Salernitanae in crispellis et dant viris suis ut melius retineant sperma et sic concipiant. As we shall see in our chapter on Arnald of Villanova, another medical writer of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, he condemned the use of incantations in cases of child-birth by old-wives of Salerno but approved of a very similar procedure by which a priest had cured him of warts, and also mentioned favorably the cures wrought by female practitioners at Rome and Montpellier.

CHAPTER XXXII
CONSTANTINUS AFRICANUS: C. 1015-1087.

Reputation and influence—His studies in the Orient—His later life in Italy—His works were mainly translations—Pantegni—Viaticum—Other translations—The book of degrees—On melancholy—On disorders of the stomach—Medical works ascribed to Alfanus—Constantinus and experiment—“Experiments” involving incantations—Superstition comparatively rare in Constantinus—And of Greek rather than Arabic origin—Some signs of astrology and alchemy—Constantinus and the School of Salerno—Liber aureus and John Afflacius—Afflacius more superstitious than his master.

Reputation and influence.

Constantinus Africanus will be here considered at perhaps greater length than his connection with the history either of magic or experimental science requires, but which his general importance in the history of medicine and the lack of any good treatment of him in English may justify.[2950] Our discussion of him as an importer of Arabic medicine will also serve to support our attitude towards the School of Salerno. Daremberg wrote in 1853, “We owe a great debt of gratitude to Constantinus because he thus opened for Latin lands the treasures of the east and consequently those of Greece. He has received and he deserves from every point of view the title of restorer of medical literature in the west.”[2951] Daremberg proceeded to propose that a statue of Constantinus be erected in the center of the Gulf of Salerno or on the summit of Monte Cassino. Yet in 1870 he made the surprising assertion that “the voice of Constantinus towards the close of the eleventh century is an isolated voice and almost without an echo.”[2952] But as a matter of fact Constantinus was a much cited authority during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the works both of medicine and of natural science produced in Latin in western Europe, and his translations were cited under his own name rather than those of their original authors.[2953]

His studies in the Orient.

A brief sketch of Constantinus’ career and a list of his works[2954] is twice supplied us by Peter the Deacon, who wrote in the next century,[2955] and who treats of Constantinus both in the chronicle of Monte Cassino, which he continued to the year 1138,[2956] and in his work on the illustrious men of Monte Cassino.[2957] Peter tells that Constantinus was born at Carthage, by which he probably means Tunis, since Carthage was no longer in existence, but went to Babylon, by which Cairo is presumably designated, since Babylon had ages before been reduced to a dust heap,[2958] to improve his education. His birth must have been in about 1015. There he is said to have studied grammar, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, “mathematics,” astronomy, and physics or medicine (physica). To this curriculum in the Chronicle Peter adds in the Lives of Illustrious Men the subjects of music and necromancy. When so little was said of spirits in the occult science of the Arabic authors of the ninth century whom we considered in an earlier chapter, it is rather a surprise to hear that Constantinus studied necromancy, but that subject is listed along with mathematical and natural sciences by Al-Farabi in his De ortu scientiarum,[2959] and we shall find this classification reproduced by two western Christian scholars of the twelfth century.[2960] The mathematica and astronomy which Constantinus studied very likely also included considerable astrology and divination. At any rate we are told that he not only pursued his studies among “the Chaldeans, Arabs, Persians, and Saracens,” and was fully imbued with “all the arts of the Egyptians,” but even, like Apollonius of Tyana, visited India and Ethiopia in his quest for learning. It was only after a lapse of thirty-nine or forty years that he returned to North Africa. Most modern secondary accounts here state that Constantinus was soon forced to flee from North Africa because of the jealousy of other physicians who accused him of magic,[2961] or from fear that his fellow citizens would kill him as a wizard. In view of his study of necromancy, this may well have been the case. Peter the Deacon, however, simply states that when the Africans saw him so fully instructed in the studies of all nations, they plotted to kill him,[2962] and gives no further indication of their motives.

His later life in Italy.

Constantinus secretly boarded ship and made his escape to Salerno, where he lived for some time in poverty, until a brother of the caliph (regis Babiloniorum) who chanced to come there recognized him, after which he was held in great honor by Duke Robert Guiscard. The secondary accounts say that he became Robert’s confidential secretary and that he had previously occupied a similar position under the Byzantine emperor, Constantine Monomachos,[2963] but of these matters again Peter the Deacon is silent. When Constantinus left the Norman court, it was to become a monk at Monte Cassino, where he remained until his death in 1087. In a work addressed to the archbishop of Salerno he speaks of himself as Constantinus Africanus Cassinensis[2964] and Albertus Magnus cites him as Constantinus Cassianensis.[2965] What purports to be a picture of Constantinus is preserved in a manuscript of the fifteenth century at Oxford.[2966]

His works were mainly translations.

Peter the Deacon states both in the Chronicle and in the Illustrious Men that while at the monastery of Monte Cassino Constantinus Africanus “translated a great number of books from the languages of various peoples.” Peter then lists the chief of these. It is interesting to note, in view of the fact that Constantinus in prefaces and introductions appears to claim some of the works as his own, and that he was accused of fraud and plagiarism by medieval writers who followed him as well as by modern investigators, that Peter the Deacon speaks of all his writings as translations from other languages. Peter does not, however, give us much information as to who the Greek or Arabic authorities were whom Constantine translated. It may be added that if Constantinus claimed for himself the credit for Latin versions which were essentially translations, he was merely continuing a practice of which Arabic authors themselves had been repeatedly guilty. Indeed, we are told that they sometimes even destroyed earlier works which they had copied in order to receive sole credit for ideas which were not their own.[2967]

Pantegni.

The longest of Constantinus’ translations and the one most often cited in the middle ages was the Pantechni or Pantegni, comprising ten books of theory and ten of practice as printed in 1515 with the works of Isaac,[2968] although Peter the Deacon speaks of Constantinus’ dividing the Pantegni into twelve books and then of a Practica which also consisted of twelve books. What is the ninth book of the Practica in this printed version is listed as a separate book on surgery by Peter in his Illustrious Men, although omitted from his list in the Chronicle, and was so printed in the 1536 edition of the works of Constantinus.[2969] And the Antidotarium which Peter lists as a separate title is probably simply the tenth book of the Practica as printed with the works of Isaac.[2970] The Pantegni, however, is not a translation of any work by Isaac, but an adaptation of the Khitaab el Maleki, or Royal Art of Medicine, of Ali Ibn Abbas. The preface of Constantinus[2971] says nothing of Ali but tells the abbot Desiderius that, failing to find in the many works of the Latins or even in “our own writers, ancient and modern,” such as Hippocrates, Galen, Oribasius, Paulus, and Alexander, exactly the sort of treatise desired, he has composed “this little work of our own” (hoc nostrum opusculum). But Stephen of Pisa, who also translated Ali into Latin in 1127,[2972] accused Constantinus of having suppressed both the author’s name and title of the book and of having made many omissions and changes of order both in preface and text but without really adding any new contributions of his own.[2973] Stephen further justified his own translation by asserting that not only had the first part of The Royal Art of Medicine of Ali Ibn Abbas been “corrupted by the shrewd fraud of its translator,” but also that the last and greater portion was missing in the version by Constantinus.[2974] Also Ferrarius said in his gloss to the Universal Diets of Isaac that Constantinus had completed the translation of only three books of the Practica, losing the rest in a shipwreck.[2975] A third medieval writer, Giraldus Bituricensis, adds[2976] that Constantinus substituted in its place the Liber simplicis medicinae and Liber graduum, and that it was Stephen of Pisa who translated the remainder of the work of Ali ben Abbas which is called the Practica Pantegni et Stephanonis. Stephen’s translation is indeed different from the ten books of the Practica printed with the works of Isaac. From these facts and from an examination of the manuscripts of the Practica Rose concluded[2977] that Constantinus wrote only its first two books[2978] and the first part of the ninth, which is roughly the same as the Surgery published separately among Constantinus’ works. The rest of this ninth book was translated into Latin at the time of the expedition to besiege Majorca, that is, in 1114-1115, by a John[2979] who had recently been converted to Christianity[2980] and whom Rose was inclined to identify with John Afflacius, “a disciple of Constantinus,” of whom we shall have more to say presently. Rose further held that this John completed the Practica[2981] commonly ascribed to Constantinus with the exception of its tenth book which, as we have suggested, seems originally to have been a distinct Antidotarium. Different from the Pantegni is the Compendium megategni Galeni by Constantinus published with the works of Isaac, and the Librum Tegni, Megategni, Microtegni listed by Peter the Deacon.

Viaticum.

Perhaps the next best known and the most frequently printed[2982] of Constantinus’ translations or adaptations from the Arabic is his Viaticum which, as Peter the Deacon states, is divided into seven books. In the preface Constantinus states that the Pantegni was for more advanced students, this is a brief manual for others. He also adds that he appends his own name to it because there are persons who profit by the labors of others and, “when the work of someone else has come into their hands, furtively and like thieves inscribe their own names.” Daremberg designated Abu Jafar Ahmed Ibn-al-Jezzar as author of the Arabic original of the Viaticum. Moses Ibn Tibbon, who made a Hebrew translation in 1259, criticized the Latin version of Constantinus as often abbreviated, obscure, and seriously altered in arrangement.[2983] Constantinus seems to be alluded to in the Ephodia or Greek version of the same work.[2984]

Other translations.

If neither the original of the Pantegni nor of the Viaticum is to be assigned to Isaac, Constantinus nevertheless did translate some of his works, namely, those on diets, urines, and fevers.[2985] Moreover, Constantinus himself admits that these Latin works are translations, stating in the preface to the treatise on urines that, finding no satisfactory treatment of the subject in Latin, he turned to the Arabic language and translated the work which Isaac had compiled from the ancients. Constantinus also states that he translated the treatise on fevers from the Arabic. We have already seen that the alphabetical Latin version of Dioscorides which had most currency in the middle ages is ascribed in at least one manuscript to Constantinus. He also translated some treatises ascribed to Hippocrates and Galen, such as Galen’s commentary on the Aphorisms and Prognostics of Hippocrates[2986] and the Tegni of Galen. Constantinus has also been credited with translating works of Galen on the eyes, on diseases of women, and on human nature, but these are not genuine works of Galen.

The book of degrees.

In his list of the works which Constantinus translated from various languages.[2987] Peter the Deacon includes The book of degrees, but it has not yet been discovered from what earlier author, if any, it is copied or adapted. The work is a development of Galen’s doctrine that various medicinal simples are hot or cold, dry or moist, in varying degrees. Constantinus presupposes four gradations of this sort. Thus a food or medicine is hot in the first degree if its heating power is below that of the normal human body; if it is of the same temperature as the body, it ranks as of the second degree; if its heat is somewhat greater than that of the body, it is of the third degree; if its heat is extreme and unbearable, it is of the fourth degree. The rose is cold in the first degree, is dry towards the end of the second degree, while the violet is cold towards the end of the first degree and moist in the beginning of the second degree. Thus Constantinus distinguishes not only four degrees but a beginning, middle and end of each degree, and Peter the Deacon once gives the title of the work as The book of twelve degrees.[2988] This interesting though crude beginning in the direction of scientific thermometry and hydrometry unfortunately rested upon incorrect assumptions as to the nature and causation of heat and moisture, and so was perhaps destined to do more harm than good.

On melancholy.

A glossary of herbs and species and a work on the pulse, which Peter the Deacon includes in both his lists of Constantinus’ works or translations, do not seem to have been printed or identified as Constantinus’. On the other hand, the printed edition of the works of Constantinus includes treatises on melancholy and on the stomach[2989] which are not mentioned in Peter’s list. In a preface to the De melancholia which is not included in the printed edition[2990] Constantinus Africanus speaks of himself as a monk of Monte Cassino and states that, while he has often touched on the disease of melancholy in the many medical books which he has added to the Latin language, he has decided also to write a separate brochure on the subject because it is an important malady and because it is especially prevalent “in these regions.” “Therefore I have collected this booklet from many volumes of our adepts in this art.” Whether the word “our” here refers to Greek or Arabic writers would be hard to say. Constantinus states that melancholy is a disease to which those are especially liable who are always intent on study and books of philosophy, “because of their scientific investigations and tiring their memories and grieving over the failure of their minds.” This ailment also afflicts “those who lose their beloved possessions, such as their children and dearest friends or some precious thing which cannot be restored, as when scholars suddenly lose their books.” Constantinus also describes the melancholy of “many religious persons who live lives to be revered, but fall into this disease from their fear of God and contemplation of the last judgment and desire of seeing the summum bonum. Such persons think of nothing and seek for nothing save to love and fear God alone, and they incur this complaint and become drunk as it were with their excessive anxiety and vanity.”[2991] Such passages would seem to describe Constantinus’ own associates and environment, but they may possibly be a mere translation of some work of an earlier Christian Arab, such as Honein ben Ishak who translated or pretended to translate a number of works of Greek medicine into Arabic. In a later chapter[2992] we shall find that Honein perhaps had something to do with another work called The Secrets of Galen, in which remedies for religious ascetics who have ruined their health by their austerities form a rather prominent feature.

On disorders of the stomach.

That the treatise on disorders of the stomach is Constantinus’ own work is indicated by its preface, which is addressed to Alfanus, archbishop of Salerno from 1058 to 1087 and earlier a monk of Monte Cassino. Alfanus had himself translated Nemesius Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου[2993] and was the center of a group of learned writers: the dialectician, Alberic the Deacon, the historian, Amatus of Salerno, and the mathematician and astronomer, Pandulf of Capua.[2994] Constantinus states that he writes this treatise for Alfanus as a compensation for his recent failure to relieve a stomach-ache with which that prelate was afflicted. Such instances of self-confessed failure, be it noted in passing, are rare indeed in ancient and medieval medicine, and for this reason we are the more inclined to deal charitably with the charges of literary plagiarism which have been preferred against Constantinus. He goes on to say that he has sought with great care but in vain among ancient writings for any treatise devoted exclusively to the stomach, and has only succeeded in finding here and there scattered discussions which he now presumably combines in the present special treatise.

Medical works ascribed to Alfanus.

This archbishop Alfanus appears to have written on medicine himself, since A treatise of Alfanus of Salerno concerning certain medical questions was listed among the books at Christchurch, Canterbury about 1300.[2995] Also a collection of recipes entitled, Experiments of an archbishop of Salerno, in a manuscript of the early twelfth century are very likely by him.[2996] They follow a treatise on melancholy which does not, however, appear to be that of Constantinus Africanus.[2997]

Constantinus and experiment.

Peter the Deacon’s bibliography of the works of Constantinus includes a De experimentis which, if extant, has not been identified as Constantinus’. In such works of his as are available, however, we find a number of mentions of experience and its value. It is of course to be remembered that such expressions as “we state what we have tested and what our authorities have used,”[2998] and “we have had personal experience of the confection which we now mention,”[2999] may refer to the experience of the past authors whose works Constantinus is using or translating rather than to his own. In the Pantegni[3000] “ancient medical writers” are divided into experientes and rationabiles, and we are told that the empirics declare that compound medicines can be discovered only in dreams and by chance, while the rationalists hold that these can be deduced from a knowledge of the virtues and qualities and accidents of bodies and diseases. This much is of course simply Galen over again. Constantinus occasionally gives medical “experiments,” as in the case of “proved experiments to eject reptiles from the body,”[3001] or the placing of a live chicken on the place bitten by a mad dog. The chicken will then die while the man will be cured “beyond a doubt.”[3002] Such medical “experiments” by Constantinus were often cited by subsequent medieval writers.

“Experiments” involving incantations.

Incantations are involved in some of these “experiments.” One approved experiment, we are told, consists in whispering in the ear of the patient the words, Recede demon quia dee fanolcri precipiunt. The effect of this procedure is that when the epileptic rises, after remaining like one dead for an hour, he will answer any question that may be put to him. Another experiment to cure epilepsy is frequently cited by subsequent medieval medical writers from Constantinus, and, while it may not have originated with him, is apparently of Christian rather than Greek or Mohammedan origin. If the epileptic has parents living, they are to take him to church on the day of the four seasons and have him hear mass on the sixth day and also on Saturday. When he comes again on Sunday the priest is to write down the passage in the Gospel where it says, “This kind is not cast out save by fasting and prayer.” Presumably the epileptic is to wear this writing, in which case a sure cure is promised, “be he epileptic or lunatic or demoniac.” But it is added that the charm will not work in the case of persons born of incestuous marriages.[3003]

Superstition comparatively rare in Constantinus.

But as a rule incantations and superstitious ceremony are comparatively rare in the works of Constantinus, which contain little to justify the charge of magic said to have been made against him in Africa or the charge of superstition made against the Arabic medicine which his writings so largely reflect. Also these superstitious passages seem limited to the treatment of certain ailments of a mysterious character like epilepsy and insanity, which, Constantinus says, the populace call divinatio and account for by possession by demons.[3004] It is against epilepsy and phantasy that it is recommended to give a child to swallow before it has been weaned the brains of a goat drawn through a golden ring. And it is for epilepsy that we find such suspensions as hairs from an entirely white dog or the small red stones in swallows’ gizzards, from which they must have been removed at midday. When Constantinus is treating of eye and ear troubles, or even of paralysis of the tongue and toothache, use of amulets is infrequent and there is only an occasional suggestion of marvelous virtue. Gout is treated with unguents and recipes but without the superstitious ligatures often found in medieval works of medicine.[3005] Parts of animals are employed a good deal: thus if you anoint the entire body with lion fat, you will have no fear of serpents, and binding on the head the fresh lung of an ox is good for frenzy.[3006] But Constantinus more often explains the action of things in nature from their four qualities of hot, cold, moist, and dry, than he does by assuming the existence of occult virtues.

And of Greek rather than Arabic origin.

It is also to be noted that those passages where Constantinus’ medicine borders most closely upon magic are apt to be borrowed from, or at least credited to, Galen and Dioscorides. Neither Constantinus nor his Arabic authorities introduced most of these superstitious elements into medicine. In his work on degrees Constantinus repeats Galen’s story of the boy who fell into an epileptic fit whenever the suspended peony was removed from his neck.[3007] In the Viaticum[3008] he ascribes the suspension of a white dog’s hairs and the use of various other parts of animals for epileptics to Dioscorides, but they do not seem to be found in that author’s extant works. Water in which blacksmiths have quenched their irons is another remedy prescribed for various disorders upon the authority of Dioscorides and Galen.[3009] Theriac and terra sigillata are of course not forgotten. That there is a magnetic mountain on the shore of the Indian Ocean which draws all the iron nails out of passing ships, and that the magnet extracts arrows from wounds is stated on the authority of the Lapidary of Aristotle, a spurious work. Constantinus adds that Rufus says that the magnet comforts those afflicted with melancholy and removes their fears and suspicions.[3010] However, it is without citation of other authors that Constantinus states that the plant agnus castus will mortify lust if it is merely suspended over the sleeper.[3011]

Some signs of astrology and alchemy.

There is not a great deal of astrological medicine in the works of Constantinus Africanus. There are some allusions to the moon and dog-days,[3012] Galen being twice cited to the effect that epilepsy in a waxing moon is a very moist disease, while in a waning moon it is very cold. In a chapter of the Pantegni[3013] the relation of critical days to the course of the moon and also to the nature of number is discussed. In another passage of the same work[3014] we read that if other remedies fail in the case of a patient who cannot hold his water while in bed, he should eat the bladder of a river fish for eight days while the moon is waxing and waning and he will be freed from the complaint. But Hippocrates testifies that in old men the ailment is incurable. But the principal astrological passage that I have found in the works of Constantinus is that in De humana natura[3015] where he traces the formation of the child in the womb and the influence of the planets upon the successive months of the process, and explains why children born in the seventh or ninth month live while those born in the eighth month die. This passage was cited by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum naturale.[3016] Belief in alchemy is suggested when Constantinus repeats the assertion of some book on stones that lead would be silver except for its smell, its softness, and its inability to endure fire.[3017]

Constantinus and the School of Salerno.

The relation of Constantinus Africanus to the School of Salerno has been the subject of much dispute and of divergent views. Some have held that Salerno’s medical importance practically began with him; others have tried to maintain for Salernitan medicine a Neo-Latin character quite distinct from Constantinus’ introduction of Arabic influence. From the fact that Constantinus passed from Salerno to Monte Cassino, where most, if not all, of his writing seems to have been done, it has been assumed that there was an intimate connection between the monks and the rise of a medical school at Salerno. On the other hand, Renzi and Rashdall have ridiculed the notion, declaring the distance and difficulty of communication between the two places to be an insurmountable difficulty. It must be remembered, however, that Constantinus himself both attended the archbishop of Salerno in a case of stomach trouble and sent a treatise on the subject to him afterwards. A strong personal influence by him upon the practice and still more upon the literature of Salernitan medicine is therefore not precluded, though his stay at Salerno may have been brief and his literary labor performed entirely at the monastery. In any case a Master John Afflacius, who is associated with other Salernitan writers in a compilation from their works, was a disciple of Constantinus and, as we are about to see, perhaps the author of some of the treatises which have been published under Constantinus’ name. It certainly would seem that Constantinus and his disciple have as good a right to be called Salernitan as most of the authors included in Renzi’s collection.

Liber aureus and John Afflacius.

In a medical manuscript which Henschel discovered at Breslau in 1837[3018] and which he regarded as a composition of the School of Salerno and dated in the twelfth century, he found in the case of two works compiled from various authors[3019] that the passages ascribed to a Master John Afflacius, who was described as “a disciple of Constantinus,”[3020] were identical with passages in the Liber aureus or De remediorum et aegritudinum cognitione published as a work of Constantinus in the Basel edition of 1536. He also identified a Liber urinarum attributed to the same John Afflacius, disciple of Constantinus, in the Breslau manuscript with the De urinis which follows the Liber aureus in the printed edition of Constantinus’ works. Thus either the pupil appropriated or completed and published the work of his master, or Constantinus had the same good fortune in having his own name attached to the compositions of his pupil[3021] as in the case of the writings of his Arabic predecessors.

Afflacius more superstitious than his master.

It may be further noted that the disciple seems to have been more superstitious than the master, for in one of the passages ascribed to Afflacius in the aforesaid compilation, after the correspondence with the Liber aureus has ceased, the text goes on to prescribe the suspension of goat’s horn over one’s head as a soporific and gives the following “prognostic of life or death.” Smear the forehead of the patient from ear to ear with musam eneam. “If he sleeps, he will live; but if not, he will die; and this has been tested in acute fevers.” Another method is to try if the patient’s urine will mix with the milk of a woman who is suckling a male child. If it will, he will live. Another procedure to induce sleep is then given, which consists in reading the first verse of the Gospel of John nine times over the patient’s head, placing beneath his head a missal or psalter and the names of the seven sleepers written on a scroll. This is not the first instance of such Christian magic that we have encountered in connection with the School of Salerno and we begin to suspect that it was rather characteristic. At any rate it was not uncommon in medieval medicine in general and was almost certainly introduced before Innocent III who in 1215 forbade ordeals and who frowned on other superstitious practices. Probably such Christian magic dates from a period before Arabic influence began to be felt. Thus again we have reason to doubt whether early medieval medicine or Salernitan medicine was less superstitious than Arabic medicine or than medieval medicine after the introduction of Arabic medicine. At least Constantinus Africanus who represents the introduction of translations from the Arabic is comparatively free from superstition.

CHAPTER XXXIII
TREATISES ON THE ARTS BEFORE THE INTRODUCTION OF ARABIC ALCHEMY

Latin treatises on the arts and colors—Progress of the arts even during the early middle ages—Scantiness of the sources—Character of Arabic alchemy—Different character of our Latin treatises—Compositiones ad tingenda—Mappe Clavicula—Some of its recipes—Question of symbolic nomenclature—Magical procedure with goats: in Mappe Clavicula—Similar passages in Heraclius—And Theophilus—A magic figure—Use of an incantation in tenth century alchemy—Experimental character of the work of Theophilus—How to make Spanish gold—The question of symbolic terminology again—Alchemy in the eleventh century—St. Dunstan and alchemy and magic—Introduction of Arabic alchemy in the twelfth century.

“ ... campum latissimum diversarum artium perscrutari....”

—Theophilus, Schedula, I, Praefatio.

Latin treatises on the arts and colors.

We come to the consideration of several treatises dealing with colors and the arts and dating from about the eighth to the twelfth centuries and probably in part of earlier origin. These are the Compositiones ad tingenda in a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, the Mappe clavicula found in part in a tenth century manuscript and more fully in one of the twelfth century, the poem of Heraclius on The colors and arts of the Romans, and the remarkable treatise of Theophilus On diverse arts in three books.[3022] The oldest known manuscripts of Theophilus are of the twelfth century and he has been dated at the beginning of that century or end of the eleventh, and Heraclius, from whom he takes a number of his chapters, still earlier. But it scarcely seems that some of Theophilus’ descriptions of ecclesiastical art would have been written before the twelfth century. Mrs. Merrifield regarded only the first two metrical books of The colors and arts of the Romans as the work of Heraclius, and the third book in prose as a later addition of the twelfth or thirteenth century and probably written by a Frenchman, whereas she believed that Heraclius wrote in southern Italy under Byzantine influence.[3023] His poem sounds to me like an attempt to imitate Lucretius, while one also is inclined to associate it with the perhaps nearly contemporary poems in which the so-called Macer and Marbod recounted in verse form some of the properties of herbs and stones which they had learned from ancient writers.

Progress of the arts even during the early middle ages.

Berthelot regarded these treatises on the arts as proof that the knowledge of industrial and alchemical processes continued unbroken even in western Europe from Egypt to the middle ages, although he held that the theories of transmutation and the like reached the west only in the twelfth century through the Arabs.[3024] Moreover, there is progress in the technical processes just as there was progress in Romanesque and Gothic art. New items and recipes appear in the lists. Even in the declining Roman Empire and earliest middle age we have evidence of new discoveries. The artificial fabrication of cinnabar becomes known at some time after Dioscorides and Pliny and before the eighth century.[3025] The hydrostatic balance is described not only in the Mappe clavicula but in the Carmen de ponderibus of Priscian or of Q. Remnius Fannius Palaemo of the fourth or fifth century A. D.[3026] Heraclius speaks more than once in his poem with admiration of the works of art of the Roman “kings” and people, and asks, “Who now is capable of investigating these arts, is able to reveal to us what those potent artificers of immense intellect discovered for themselves?”[3027] However, his aim is to resurrect these arts; he assures the reader that he writes nothing which he has not first proved himself;[3028] and he tells in particular how he discovered by close scrutiny of a piece of Roman glass that there was gold-leaf placed between two layers of glass, a work which he successfully imitated.[3029] On the other hand, lead glazing, according to Alexandre Brongniart, director of the Sèvres manufactory, is not found in European pottery before the twelfth century, when it was applied in Pesaro about 1100 and is found on pottery in a tomb at Jumièges of about 1120.[3030]

Scantiness of the sources.

During the early medieval centuries the Byzantine Empire, Syria and Egypt after they were conquered by the Arabs, the busy streets of Bagdad and Cordova, and Persia undoubtedly produced a far more flourishing activity in the fine arts and the industrial arts than was the case in backward western Christian Europe. Yet the surviving evidence for such activity is disappointing, and seems limited to some notices and allusions in Arabian and Jewish travelers and historians, and to the dust-heaps of ruined cities like Fostat, Rai, and Rakka. As the finest early specimens of Byzantine mosaics are preserved in Italy at Ravenna, so our Latin treatises concerning the arts are perhaps the best extant for the early medieval period up to the twelfth century.

Character of Arabic alchemy.

A number of treatises on alchemy in Arabic have reached us but they, like the Byzantine, chiefly continue the fantastic mysticism and obscurity, the astrology and magic, of the ancient Greek alchemists. Thus in the Book of Crates we have a virgin priestess of the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, and the snake Ouroburos, also a vision of the seven heavens of the planets. The Book of Alhabib invokes Hermes Trismegistus and says that the sages have not revealed the secret of transmutation for fear of the anger of the demons. The Book of Ostanes, in which Andalusia is mentioned, has eighty-four different names for the philosopher’s stone, and a fantastic dream concerning seven doors and three inscriptions in Egyptian, concerning the Persian Magi, and a citation from an Indian sage concerning the healing virtues of the urine of a white elephant. The Book of Like Weights of Geber states that the sage can discern the mixture of the four elements in animals, plants, and stones by astrology and many other signs involving varied superstition. His Book of Sympathy again emphasizes the seven planets as the key to alchemy and has much about the spirit in matter. His Book on Quicksilver, although it promises clarity, is the most mystic and incomprehensible of all. In it we read of raising the dead and of use of such liquids as “a divine water” and the milk of an uncorrupted virgin.[3031]

Different character of our Latin treatises.

Our Latin treatises are as free from mysticism and obscurity, from dreams and visions, as they are from theoretical discussion. They are collections of recipes and directions which are supposed at least to be practical and which are written in a simple and straightforward style. They are not, however, taken together, by any means entirely free from astrological directions or belief in occult virtue or yet other superstition, and they include recipes for making gold. Of this there is least in the first treatise we have to consider.

Compositiones ad tingenda.

The Compositiones ad tingenda,[3032] a treatise or collection of notes and recipes preserved in a manuscript dating from the time of Charlemagne, throws some light on the technical processes preserved in the Latin west in the early middle ages and on the amount of knowledge of natural phenomena preserved in connection with the arts,—applied science in other words. It tells how to color glass and make mosaics, and describes a glass furnace; how to dye skins and make parchment; how to make gold-leaf, gold-thread, silver-leaf and tin-leaf; how to give copper the color of gold; it gives various directions and preparations for painting and gilding; and a description of various minerals and herbs employed in the above processes. Much is repeated that is found already in Pliny and Dioscorides, or in Aristotle and the Greek alchemists. But several things are mentioned, at least so far as we know, for the first time, although Berthelot believed that the compiler of the Compositiones ad tingenda had copied them from earlier works, very probably Byzantine or late Roman, and not invented them himself. We find here the first mention of vitriol and of “bronze,”—a word apparently derived from Brundisium. Amor aquae is used for the first time for the scum formed on waters containing iron salts and other metals, and we also meet the first instance of the preparation of cinnabar by means of sulphur and mercury. The work contains very little superstition with the exception of one passage which Berthelot has already noted.[3033] Once a stone is spoken of as having solar virtue; lead is distinguished as masculine and feminine; the gall of a tortoise is used in a composition for writing golden letters, and pig’s blood is employed in another connection. But these are trifling signs of occult science.

Mappe Clavicula.

More alchemistic in character is the Mappe Clavicula,[3034] which, in its fuller twelfth century form, embodies the Compositiones ad tingenda in a different order,[3035] and adds about twice as many more recipes for making gold, making colors, writing with gold, glues and various other matters, including building directions. Berthelot regarded two items instructing how to make images of the gods as signs of an ancient pagan origin for the work.[3036] One of these items occurs in the twelfth century text, the other in the tenth century table of contents. On the other hand Berthelot believed that the twelfth century version contained the oldest directions for the distillation of alcohol.[3037] The Mappe Clavicula adds a good deal that is of a superstitious character to the Compositiones ad tingenda which it includes, and at the same time lays considerable stress upon experimental method.

Some of its recipes.

It opens with a recipe “for making the best gold,” the first of a long series. One of the ingredients in this case is “a bit of moon-earth, which the Greeks call Affroselinum.” The third recipe advises one to experiment at first with only a little of the compound in question, until one learns the process more thoroughly.[3038] The ingredients for gold-making in the sixth recipe include the gall of a goat and of a bull, and saffron from Lycia or Arabia, which is to be pounded in a Theban mortar in the sun in dog-days. At the close of the fourteenth recipe, into which the gall of a bull again enters we have one of the injunctions to secrecy so dear to the alchemist: “Hide the sacred secret which should be transmitted to no one, nor give to anyone the prophetic.”[3039] It is also implied that alchemy is a religious or divine art in the twentieth recipe where it is said that operators should concede all things to divine works. But such mystic allusions are infrequent as well as brief. In the same twentieth item gold is supposed to be made from a mixture of iron rust, magnet, foreign alum, myrrh, gold, and wine. It is also stated that those who will not credit the great utility that there is in humors are those who do not make demonstration for themselves, another instance of the experimental character of the work. The forty-first recipe states that gold may be dissolved in order to write with it by dipping it in the blood of an Indian dragon, placing it in a glass vessel, and surrounding it with coals. In the sixty-ninth item the blood of a dragon or of a cock is mixed with urine and the stone celidonius. The gall of a bull and the blood of a pig are used again in recipes sixty-eight and one hundred and twenty-eight.

Question of symbolic nomenclature.

It has sometimes been contended, chiefly by persons who did not realize how universal was the ascription of great virtue to the parts of animals in ancient and medieval science and their use as remedies in the medicine of the same periods, that they are not to be taken literally in alchemical recipes but are to be understood symbolically and are cryptic designations for common mineral substances. Thus Berthelot cites a passage from the Latin De anima, ascribed to Avicenna, which says, “I am going to tell you a secret: the eye of a man or bull or cow or deer signifies mercury,” and so on.[3040] But despite what Berthelot goes on to say about the “old prophetic nomenclature” of the Egyptians, I am inclined to think that such symbolism is mainly a refinement of later alchemists, and that originally most such expressions were intended literally. Certainly it would be impossible to explain all the medicinal use of parts of animals in Pliny’s Natural History as either symbolic or derived from the Egyptian priests. Like the suggestion that Roger Bacon wrote in cipher, the symbolic nomenclature theory is based on the assumption that the men of old concealed great secrets under an appearance of error. And where such cryptograms and symbols were employed, it was almost invariably done, we may be sure, with the object of impressing the reader with an exaggerated notion of the importance of what was written rather than because the writer really had any great discovery that he wished to conceal. That symbolic language was employed by alchemists, especially in the latest middle age and early modern centuries, is not to be questioned. The use of the names of the planets for the corresponding metals is a familiar example. But most such symbolic nomenclature is equally obvious, while there is no reason for not taking the use of parts of animals literally. Indeed, in many passages it must be so taken, as in a later item of the Mappe Clavicula[3041] which has no concern with alchemy and where in order to poison an arrow for use in battle, we are instructed to dip it in the sweat from the right side of a horse between the hip-bones. The following experiments with goats also illustrate the great value set upon animal fluids and substances.

Magical procedure with goats in the Mappe Clavicula.

We are reminded of the directions given by Marcellus Empiricus for the preparation of goat’s blood by a recipe for making figures of crystal which occurs near the close of the Mappe Clavicida.[3042] A he-goat which has never indulged in sexual intercourse is to be shut up in a cask for three days until he has completely digested everything that he had in his belly. He is then to be fed on ivy for four days, at the end of which time he is to be slain and his blood mixed with his urine which is now collected from the cask. By soaking the crystal overnight in this mixture it can be moulded or carved at will. This experiment is immediately preceded by a somewhat similar procedure for cutting glass with steel.[3043] The glass is to be softened and the steel is to be tempered by placing them either in the milk of a Saracen she-goat, who has been fed upon ivy and milked by scratching her udders with nettles, or in the lotion of a small girl of ruddy complexion, which must be taken before sunrise.

Similar passages in Heraclius.

Very similar passages are found in the works of Heraclius and Theophilus, the former of whom gives the following directions for glass engraving: “Oh! all you artists who wish to engrave glass correctly, now I will show you just as I myself have proven. I sought the fat worms which the plow turns up from the earth, and the useful art in such matters bade me at the same time seek vinegar and the hot blood of a huge he-goat, which I had taken pains to tie up under cover and to feed on strong ivy for a while. Next I mixed the worms and vinegar with the warm blood and anointed all the bright shining phial. This done, I tried to engrave the glass with the hard stone called pyrites.”[3044] In another passage Heraclius recommends the use of the urine and blood of a goat in engraving gems,[3045] and he also states that the blood of a goat makes crystal easier to carve.[3046]

And Theophilus.

Theophilus states that poets and artificers have greatly cherished the ivy, “because they recognized the occult powers which it contains within itself.”[3047] He also affirms that the blood of a goat makes crystal easier to carve, but he recommends the blood of a living goat two or three years old and repeated insertion of the crystal in an incision between the animal’s breast and abdomen.[3048] He also recommends a somewhat similar procedure to that of the Mappe Clavicula with a goat and a cask.[3049] In this case the goat should be three years old, and after being bound for three days without food should be fed for two days on nothing but fern. The following night he should be shut up in a cask with holes in the bottom through which his urine can be collected in another vessel for two or three nights, when the goat may be released and the urine employed to temper iron tools. Or the urine of a small red-headed boy may be employed, as it is better for tempering than plain water. Indeed, both Theophilus and Heraclius make much use of parts of animals in the arts: various animals’ teeth to shine and polish things with, horse dung mixed with clay, skins and bladders, saliva and ear-wax to polish niello, and so forth.

A magic figure.

Returning to the Mappe Clavicula we note the employment of a magic figure called arragab, which Berthelot thinks is a small lead image.[3050] By means of it the flow of a spring may be stopped; a cup may be made either to retain or to empty its contents; if the cows drink first from the trough, there will be enough water for both the cows and the horses, but if the horses drink first, there will not be enough for either. The same figure enables one to fill a pitcher from a cask without diminishing the amount of liquid in the cask, or to construct a lamp which will produce phantoms. It also makes soldiers leave their camp without their spears and yet return with them. After this flight into the realm of magic we come back to a more plausibly physical basis for marvels in a description of four revolving hoops or circles within which a vessel may be revolved in any direction without spilling its contents.[3051]

Use of an incantation in tenth century alchemy.

The passages which we have just noted in the Mappe Clavicula cannot be surely traced back earlier than the twelfth century version of it and do not appear in the table of contents which is preserved in the tenth century Schlestadt manuscript and which covers only a portion of the chapters of the twelfth century manuscript, but also some other chapters which are not extant. But that magic was not entirely absent from the earlier version to which this table of contents seems to apply is evidenced by the fact that one of the chapter headings dealing with the fabrication of gold mentions a prayer or incantation to be recited during the process.[3052]

Experimental character of the work of Theophilus.

The great importance of the work of Theophilus in the history of art is too generally recognized to need elaboration here. Our purpose is rather to point out that in it information of great value is found side by side with a considerable amount of misguided natural theory and magical ceremony. The stress laid by Theophilus upon personal observation, experience, and experimental method should not, however, pass unnoticed. He has scrutinized the works of art in the church of St. Sophia one by one “with diligent experience,” has tested everything by eye and hand, has as a “curious explorer” made all sorts of experiments, and appears to represent transparent stained glass as his own discovery or idea.[3053] Nor is he the only experimenter; he also speaks of “modern workmen” who deceive many incautious persons by their imitation of the appearance of most precious Arabian gold which “is frequently found employed in the most ancient vases.”[3054]

How to make Spanish gold.

Theophilus, however, believes that other metals can really be transmuted into gold, and we may repeat his amusing account of how Spanish gold “is made from red copper and powdered basilisk and human blood and vinegar.” “For the Gentiles, whose skill in this art is well known, create basilisks in this wise. They have an underground chamber completely walled in on all sides with stone, and with two windows so small as scarcely to admit any light. In this they put two cocks of twelve or fifteen years and give them plenty of food. These, when they have grown fat, from the heat of their fat have commerce together and lay eggs. As soon as the eggs are laid the cocks are ejected and toads are put in to sit on the eggs and are fed upon bread. When the eggs are hatched chicks come forth who look like young roosters, but after seven days they grow serpents’ tails and would straightway burrow into the ground, were the chamber not paved with stone. Guarding against this, their masters have round brazen vessels of great amplitude, perforated on all sides, with narrow mouths, in which they put the chicks and close the mouths with copper covers and bury them underground, and the chicks are nourished for six months by the subtle earth which enters through the perforations. After this they uncover them and apply a strong fire until the beasts within are totally consumed. When this is over and it has cooled off, they remove and carefully pulverize them, adding a third part of the blood of a ruddy man, which blood is dried and powdered. Having compounded these two they temper them with strong vinegar in a clean vessel; then they take very thin plates of the purest red copper and spread this mixture over them on both sides and place them in the fire. And when they grow white hot, they take them out and quench and wash them in the same mixture, and this process they repeat until the mixture has eaten through the copper, and so obtain the weight and color of gold. This gold is suited for all operations.”[3055]

The question of symbolic terminology again.

Mr. Hendrie held that Theophilus was here describing in symbolic language a process “for procuring pure gold by the means of the mineral acids;” and that “the toads of Theophilus which hatch the eggs are probably fragments of the mineral salt, nitrate of potash; ... the blood of a red man ... probably a nitrate of ammonia; fine earth, a muriate of soda (common salt); the cocks, the sulphates of copper and iron; the eggs, gold ore; the hatched chickens, which require a stone pavement, sulphuric acid produced by burning these in a stone vessel, collecting the fumes.... The elements of nitro-muriatic acid are all here, the solvent for gold.”[3056] Mr. Hendrie leaves, however, a number of details unexplained and he admits that “Unfortunately each chemist appears to have varied the symbols in use.” Certainly one would have to vary them in almost every case to make any sense out of such procedures as this of Theophilus. On the other hand, there is nothing very surprising in his procedure taken literally to one who is acquainted with the beliefs of ancient and medieval science and magic. And certainly Shakespeare’s line concerning the precious jewel in the toad’s head, which Hendrie quotes in this connection, is much more likely to be meant literally than to be the symbolic “jargon of the alchemist.” Later we shall hear again from Alexander Neckam, in a passage which has no connection with alchemy, of the basilisk hatched by a toad from an egg laid by a cock, and we shall hear from Albertus Magnus of an experiment in which a toad’s eye was proved superior in virtue to an emerald.

Alchemy in the eleventh century.

The treatises which we have been considering appear, at least for the most part, to antedate the Latin translations of works of alchemy from the Arabic, although it is possible that, just as the first translations of mathematical and astronomical works from the Arabic go back to the tenth century at least, so the reception of Arabic alchemy may have begun in a small way before the twelfth century. At any rate we find that in the eleventh century not only were Michael Psellus and other Byzantine scholars spreading the doctrines of alchemy,[3057] but a scholium to Adam of Bremen records the presence at the court of Bishop Adalbert of Bremen of an alchemist in the person of a baptized Jew.[3058]

St. Dunstan and alchemy and magic.

To St. Dunstan, the famous abbot of Glastonbury, archbishop of Canterbury, and statesman of the tenth century (924 or 925 to 988), is attributed a treatise on the philosopher’s stone contained in a Corpus Christi manuscript of the fifteenth century at Oxford and printed at Cassel in 1649. No genuine works by him seem to be extant, however, but it is interesting to note that along with his reputation for learning and mechanical skill went the association of his name with magic. In his studious youth he was accused of magic, driven from court, and thrown into a muddy pond. His contemporary biographer also narrates how the devil appeared to him in various animal and other terrifying forms. His favorite studies were mathematics and music, and he was said to own a magic harp which played while hanging by itself on the wall.[3059]

Introduction of Arabic alchemy in the twelfth century.

Berthelot has associated the introduction of Arabic alchemy into Christian western Europe with the Latin translation by Robert of Chester of The Book of Morienus, but incorrectly dated it in 1182 A. D.,[3060] whereas the mention of that date in the manuscripts has reference to the Spanish era and denotes the year 1144 A. D.[3061] The main reason for regarding Robert’s translation as one of the earliest is that he remarks in his preface, “What alchemy is and what is its composition, your Latin world does not yet know truly.” Of the work translated by Robert we shall treat more fully in a later chapter on Hermetic Books in the Middle Ages. Here we may further note the existence of a work of alchemy in another twelfth century manuscript.[3062] It is a brief work in four chapters and its superstitious character may be inferred from its opening instruction to “take four hundred hen’s eggs laid in the month of March,” and its citation of Artesius concerning divination by the reflection or refraction of the sun’s rays or moon-beams in liquids or a mirror. Since the treatise bears the title Alchamia, it is probably safe to assume that it represents Arabic influence.

CHAPTER XXXIV
MARBOD, BISHOP OF RENNES, 1035—1123

Career of Marbod—Relation of his Liber lapidum to the prose Evax—Problem of Marbod’s sources—Influence of the Liber lapidum—Occult virtue of gems—Liber lapidum meant seriously—De fato et genesi.

“Nec dubium cuiquam debet falsumque videri

Quin sua sit gemmis divinitus insita virtus;

Ingens est herbis virtus data, maxima gemmis.”

—Marbod, Liber lapidum.

Career of Marbod.

Of medieval Latin Lapidaries the earliest and what also seems to have been the classic on the subject of the marvelous properties of stones is the Liber lapidum seu de gemmis by Marbod, bishop of Rennes,[3063] who lived from 1035 to 1123 and so had very likely completed this work before the close of the eleventh century. Indeed one manuscript of it seems to date from that century[3064] and there are numerous twelfth century manuscripts. These early manuscripts bear his name and the style is the same as in his other writings. Born in the county of Anjou, Marbod attended the church school there, became the schoolmaster himself from 1067 to 1081, during which time he probably composed the Liber lapidum, then served as archdeacon under three successive bishops, and finally himself became a bishop in 1096. He attended church councils in 1103 and 1104 and died in September, 1123, in an Angevin monastery, whose monks issued a eulogistic encyclical letter on that occasion, while two archdeacons celebrated his integrity, learning, and eloquence in admiring verse. Marbod’s own productions are also in poetical form. It is interesting to note that despite his early date he was eulogized not as a lone man of letters in an uncultured age but as “the king of orators, although at that time all Gaul resounded with varied studies.”

Relation of the Liber lapidum to the prose Evax.

The Liber lapidum is a Latin poem of 734 hexameters describing sixty stones. In the opening lines Marbod writes:

“Evax, king of the Arabs, is said to have written to Nero,

Who after Augustus ruled next in the city.[3065]

How many the species of stones, what names, and what colors,

From what regions they came, and how great the power of each one.”

Making use of this worthy book, Marbod has decided to compose a briefer account for himself and a few friends only, believing that he who popularizes mysteries lessens their majesty. As a result of this opening line and the fact that in some manuscripts Marbod’s own name is not given, his poem is sometimes listed in the catalogues as the work of Evax.[3066] There is also, however, extant a work in Latin prose which opens, “Evax, king of Arabia, to the emperor Tiberius greeting.”[3067] But as this prose work is not much longer than Marbod’s poem, and seems to be known only from a single manuscript of the fourteenth century, it is doubtful if it is the work which he professed to abbreviate. This prose work is also ascribed to Amigeron or Damigeron,[3068] to whom we have already seen that the author of Lithica was supposed to be indebted and whose name was regarded as that of a famous magician. After alluding to the magnificent gifts which the emperor had sent to Evax by the centurion Lucinius Fronto and offering this book in return, the author of the prose version lists seven stones appropriate, not, strangely enough, to the seven planets, but to seven of the signs of the zodiac.[3069] Fifty chapters are then devoted to as many stones, beginning with Aetites, which is twenty-fifth in Marbod’s list, and ending with Sardo, while Sardius comes tenth in Marbod’s poem. Marbod’s own order, however, sometimes varies in the manuscripts.[3070]

Problem of Marbod’s sources.

King, and Rose after him, asserted[3071] that despite Marbod’s professed abridgement of a work which Evax was supposed to have presented to Tiberius, he drew largely from Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies. Rose thought that some of the descriptions of stones were from Solinus, the rest from Isidore, but that the account of their virtues was from Evax. King also noted occasional extracts from the Orphic work, Lithica, which is not surprising in view of the fact that both Evax and the Lithica seem based on Damigeron. This question of sources and ultimate origins is, however, as usual of relatively little moment to our investigation. My own impression would be that in antiquity and the middle age there exists a sort of common fund of information and stock of beliefs concerning gems which naturally is drawn upon and appears in every individual treatise upon them. But the number of gems discussed and the order in which they are considered or classified varies with each new author, and there is apt to be a similar variation in the number of statements made concerning any particular stone and the way in which these are arranged. In fine, all ancient and medieval accounts of the natures and virtues of stones bear a general resemblance to one another which is more impressive than is the similarity between any two given accounts, and testify to a consensus of opinion and to a common learned tradition concerning gems which is more significant than the possible borrowings of individual authors from one another.

Influence of the Liber lapidum.

However, there seems to be little doubt that the poem of Marbod is itself an outstanding work among medieval accounts of precious stones, first because of the early date of its authorship, and second because of its late persistence and popularity, which is indicated by the fourteen editions that appeared after the invention of printing.[3072] Its convenient form perhaps accounts to a considerable extent for its popularity. At any rate the manuscripts of it are numerous, and it was much used by subsequent writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, although citations of Lapidarius cannot always be assumed to refer to Marbod. But at least the notions concerning gems which we find in his poem are a fair sample of what we should find in any Latin treatment of the same subject for several centuries to come. It is found also in a medieval French version.

Occult virtue of gems.

It does not make much difference where we begin or what stones we select from Marbod’s list as examples, since the same sort of marvelous powers are ascribed to all of them. In his prologue Marbod describes the occult virtues of gems as those “whose hidden cause gives manifest effects.” No one should doubt them or think them false, “since the virtue in gems is divinely implanted. Enormous virtue is given to herbs, but the greatest to gems.”

Adamant, hard as it is, cracks when heated with goat’s blood. It counteracts the action of the magnet. It is used in the magic arts and makes its bearer indomitable. It drives off nocturnal specters and idle dreams. It routs black venom, heals quarrels and contentions, cures the insane, and repels fierce foes.

Allectory, found inside cocks, slakes thirst. Milo overcame other athletes, and kings have won battles by its aid. It restores promptly those who have been banished, enables orators to speak with a flow of language, makes one welcome on every occasion, and endears a wife to her husband. It is advised to carry it concealed in the mouth.

The sapphire nourishes the body and preserves the limbs whole. Its bearer, who should be most chaste, cannot be harmed by fraud or envy and is unmoved by any terror. It leads those in bonds from prison. It placates God and makes Him favorable to prayers. It is good for peace-making and reconciliation. It is preferred to other gems in hydromancy, since prophetic responses can be obtained by it. As for medicinal qualities, it cools internal heat, checks perspiration, powdered and applied with milk it heals ulcers, cleanses the eyes, stops headache, and cures diseases of the tongue.

Gagates, worn as an amulet, benefits dropsy; diluted with water, it prevents loose teeth from falling out; fumigation with it is good for epileptics and it is thought to be hostile to demons; it remedies indigestion and constipation and overcomes magical illusions (praestigia) and evil incantations. Also

Per suffumigium mulieri menstrua reddit

---

Et solet, ut perhibent, deprehendere virginitatem.

Praegnans potest aquam triduo qua mersus habetur

Quo vexabatur partum cito libera fundit.

Gagates burns when washed with water; is extinguished by anointing it with olive oil.

The magnet is especially used in the illusions of magic. The great Deendor is said to have first used it, realizing that there was no more potent force in magic, and after him the famous witch Circe employed it. Among the Medes experience revealed still further virtues of the stone. It is used to test a wife’s chastity while she is sleeping; if she is unchaste, she will fall out of bed when the gem is applied to her head. A burglar can commit theft unmolested by sprinkling it over hot coals and so driving away all the occupants of the house.

In the case of Chelonitis Marbod’s account is very similar to that in Pliny’s Natural History,[3073] citing the Magi for the power of divination it bestows when carried under the tongue at certain times of the moon, according to whose phases its power varies. Of the gems hitherto described only in the case of adamant and gagates was there any resemblance between Marbod and Pliny and there only partial.

Pliny also briefly states that the stone diadochos resembles beryl, but does not have Marbod’s statements that it is employed in water divination to show varied images of demons, “nor is there other stone stronger to evoke shades.” But if by chance it comes in contact with a corpse, it loses its wonted force, since the stone is sacred and abhors dead bodies.[3074]

Liber lapidum was meant to be taken seriously.

The vast powers, not only medicinal and physical, but of divination and magic, over the mind and affections, miraculous and supernatural, even over God, as in the statement that the sapphire can be employed to secure a more favorable answer to prayer, which Marbod assigns to gems without a sign of scruple or scepticism or disapproval on his part, have so shocked some moderns that suggestions have been made, in order to explain away the acceptance of talismanic powers of gems to such a degree by a Christian clergyman who became a bishop, that Marbod must have composed his poem when quite young and lived to repent it, or that he regarded it merely as a poetical flight and exercise, not as an exposition of scientific fact. But wherefore then was it not only widely read in the literary twelfth century but also widely cited as an authority in the scientific and equally Christian thirteenth century? No; everyone else took it precisely as Marbod meant it, as a serious statement of the marvelous powers which had been divinely implanted in gems. And why should not God be more easily reached through the instrumentality of gems, since He had endowed them with their marvelous virtues? Marbod affirms his own faith in the great virtues of gems not only at the beginning but the close of his poem, stating that while some have doubted the marvelous properties attributed to them, this has been due to the fact that so many imitation gems are made of glass, which deceive the unwary but of course lack the occult virtues of the genuine stones. If the stones are genuine and duly consecrated, the marvelous effects will without a doubt follow.

De fato et genesi.

Marbod’s belief in the almost boundless talismanic virtues of gems is thrown into the higher relief by the fact that in another of his poems he makes an attack upon genethlialogy or the prediction of the entire life of the individual from the constellations at his birth. In De fato et genesi he writes against “the common notion” (opinio vulgi) that all things are ruled by fate, that the hour of nativity controls man’s entire life, and the contention of the mathematici that the seven planets control not only the external forces with which man comes in contact but also human character. He objects to such a doctrine as that, when Venus and Mars appear in certain relations to the sun, the babe born under that constellation will be destined to commit incest and adultery in later life. He objects that such beliefs destroy all the foundations of morality, law, and future reward or punishment; contends that there are certain races which never commit adultery or crime, yet have the same seven planets; and argues that since Jews are all circumcised on the eighth day, they should all have the same horoscope. These are familiar contentions, at least as old as Bardesanes. Marbod declares further that the astrological writer, Firmicus, employs “infirm arguments,” and that his own horoscope, taken according to Firmicus’ methods and interpreted likewise, turned out to be false, “as I proved when once I dabbled in that art.” This is interesting as showing that Gerard of York[3075] was not the only bishop of the eleventh century who was acquainted with the work of Julius Firmicus Maternus, and that even opponents of astrology are apt to have once been dabblers in it. Marbod concludes his poem with this neat turn:

“I thought I ought to write these lines briefly against genethlialogy.

Nevertheless, that I may not seem to repel fate and horoscope utterly,

I assert that my fate is the Word of the supreme Father,

By Whom should all things be ruled and all men confess;

And I say that the computation of my constellation is innate in me

And the liberty by which I can tend whither I will.

Therefore, if my will shall be in conjunction with reason

In the sign of the Balances with Christ regarding me,

All things will turn out prosperously for me here and everywhere:—

This is the favorable horoscope of all Christ’s followers.”