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

by Lynn Thorndike

CHAPTER LIX

ALBERTUS MAGNUS

Bibliography

His own writings—His life—His relations to natural science.

I. Life

Albert the leading figure in thirteenth century learning—Albert and Aquinas—Dates of birth and death—Early life—Probable early date of some of his works—Events of his life after 1250—At Cologne—Contemporary estimates of Albert.

II. As a Scientist

The scope of his scientific treatises—Can a gradual intellectual development be traced in his works?—His best works are those on natural science—His fame in the early nineteenth century—A survival of medieval attitude—Recent historians of science and Albert—His scientific spirit—Philosophical generalization and scientific detail—Medieval interest in nature—Albert’s own attitude—Albert and modern experimentation—Personal observation and experience of plants—Experience a criterion in zoology—Observations of Albert and his associates—Experiments with animals—Past authors questioned—Instances of credulity—Incredible “experiences”—Minerals and experience—Minerals and credulity—Tale of a toad and an emerald—Experience versus Aristotle.

III. His Allusions to Magic

Peter of Prussia on Albert’s occult science—Trithemius on Albert’s study of magic—Magnus in magia—Albert’s varying treatment of magic—Reality of magic—Magic due to demons—Magic and miracle—Good magic of the Magi—Natural magic—Attitude in his scientific treatises—Use of animals and herbs in magic—Magic stones—Magic images engraved on gems—Magic and alchemy; finding hidden metals—Fascination and magic—Interpretation of dreams and magic—Magic and divination—Summary of Albert’s accounts of magic.

IV. Marvelous Virtues in Nature

Properties of the lion—Nasty recipes: illusory lights—Dragons—The basilisk—Remedies for falcons and mad dogs—Habits and remedies of animals—The virtues of herbs—Their medicinal use—Occult virtue of herbs due to the stars—Occult virtue of stones—Occult virtue of stones due to the stars—Pseudo-Albert De lapidibus—Alchemy—Works of alchemy ascribed to Albert—A more detailed description of one of them: preface—Experimental method and equipment—Differences between transmuted and natural metals—Substances and processes of alchemy—Ligatures and suspensions—Incantations—Fascination—Physiognomy—Aristotle on divination from dreams—Albert on divination from dreams—Augury.

V. Attitude Toward Astrology

Emphasis on the influence of the stars—Problem of the authorship of the Speculum astronomiae—Mandonnet fails to prove Albert hostile to astrology—Nature of the heavens and the stars—The First Cause and the spheres—Things on earth ruled by the stars—Conjunctions—Comets—Man and the stars—Free will—Ptolemy on free will—Nativities—Galen on the stars and human generation—Plato on boys and the stars—The doctrine of elections—Influence of the stars on works of art—Astrological images—Discussion of fate in the Summa theologiae—Attempt to reconcile the Fathers with the astronomers—Glossing over Augustine—Christ and the stars—Patristic arguments against astrology upheld, but perhaps not by Albert.

Bibliography Concerning Albertus Magnus

In the following bibliography I include some works that I have not been able to examine and cannot vouch for, and omit others which I have seen but which seemed of doubtful value or treated sides of Albert’s personality and writings which have little connection with our investigation, such as accounts of Albert as a saint, or theologian, or metaphysician, or psychologist. Of recent years a bewildering underbrush of German monographs has sprung up concerning Albert as one of the few prominent persons that Germany could claim as its own among the many scholars of the medieval period.

A number of works that do not deal primarily with Albert will be cited in the course of the chapter rather than here, and mention of his individual works and of manuscripts of them will also be found in connection with the following text.

I. His Own Writings

M. Weiss. Primordia novae bibliographiae B. Alberti Magni, Paris, 1898.

B. Alberti Magni Opera omnia, ed. Augustus Borgnet, Paris, 1890-1899, in 38 vols. My references are regularly to this edition. Its text, however, has been a good deal criticized.

Of more recent and critical editions of single works by Albert, that of the Historia animalium by H. Stadler from the Cologne autograph MS in Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Philos, d. Mittelalters, vols. 15-16, is the only one of a work with which we are concerned. Stadler attempts to distinguish Albert’s additions from Aristotle’s text and to trace their sources. German criticism of the genuineness of large portions of the text of Aristotle’s Historia animalium has in my opinion been carried altogether too far and based upon the gratuitous assumption that Aristotle would not have said anything superstitious. For recent editions of other single works by Albert see v. Hertling (1914) 23.

Separate bibliographies of printed texts and MSS of certain works of doubtful or spurious authorship ascribed to Albert will be given later in separate chapters dealing with these.

II. His Life

Articles in the Histoire Littéraire de la France, XIX, 362-81, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, and by Mandonnet in Vacant and Mangenot’s Dictionnaire de théologie catholique.

Petrus de Prussia, Vita B. Alberti Magni, 1621; von Hertling mentions an earlier edition of Cologne, 1496, which I have not seen.

Joachim Sighart, Albertus Magnus: sein Leben und seine Wissenschaft, Ratisbon, 1857. (French translation, Paris, 1862). (English translation by Dixon, London, 1876, is incomplete and garbled.)

N. Thoemes, Albertus Magnus in Geschichte und Sage, Cologne, 1880.

G. von Hertling, Albertus Magnus: Beiträge zu seiner Würdigung, 2nd edition, revised with the help of Baeumker and Endres, Münster, 1914, in Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Philos, etc., vol. XIV.

Paul von Loë, De vita et scriptis B. Alberti Magni, in Annal. Boland., XIX (1900) 257-84, XX (1901) 273-316, XXI (1902) 361-71.

Kritische Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete der Albertus Magnus Forschung, in Annalen d. hist. Vereins f. d. Niederrhein, Cologne, vol. 72 (1902) 115-26.

E. Michael, Albert der Grosse, in Zeitsch, f. kath. Theol., Innsbruck, XXV (1901) 37-; Wann ist Albert der Grosse geboren? Ibid. XXXV (1911) 561-.

P. P. Albert, Zur Lebensgeschichte Alberts des Grossen, in Freiburg. Dioces. Archiv, 1902.

J. A. Endres, Das Geburtsjahr und die Chronologie in der ersten Lebenshälfte Alberts des Grossen, in Historisches Jahrbuch, XXXI (1910) 293-.

Eine beabsichtigte zweite Berufung Alberts des Grossen an die Universität Paris um Jahr 1268, in Hist.-polit. Blätter, vol. 152 (1913) 749-.

Chronolog. Untersuchungen z. d. philos Kommentaren Alberts des Grossen, in Festgabe 70 Geburtstag von G. Freiherr von Hertling, Freiburg, 1913, p. 96-.

A. Pangerl, Studien über Albert den Grossen, in Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, XXXVI (1912) 304-31, 332-46, 512-49, 784-800.

P. Pelster, S. J., Kritische Studien zum Leben und zu den Schriften Alberts des Grossen, Freiburg, 1920: I have not been able to procure in time to utilize, but it seems in large measure a re-examination of ground already covered.

III. His Relations to Natural Science

E. H. F. Meyer, Albertus Magnus, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Botanik im XIII Jahrhundert, in Linnaea, 1836-1837.

F. A. Pouchet, Histoire des sciences naturelles au moyen âge, ou Albert le Grand et son époque considéré comme point de départ de l’école expérimentale, Paris, 1853; pp. 203-320 deal particularly with Albert.

L. Choulant, Albertus Magnus in seiner Bedeutung für die Naturwissenschaften, historisch und bibliograpisch dargestellt, in Janus, I (1846) 152-.

E. v. Martens, Ueber die von Albertus Magnus erwähnten Landsäugethiere, in Archiv f. Naturgesch. XXIV (1858) 123-44.

C. Jessen, Alberti magni historia animalium, in Archiv f. Naturgesch. XXXIII (1867) 95-105.

R. de Liechty, Albert le Grand et saint Thomas d’Aquin, ou la science au moyen âge, Paris, 1880.

A. Fellner, Albertus Magnus als Botaniker, Vienna, 1881.

H. Stadler, Albertus Magnus als selbständiger Forscher, in dem Vordergrund des Interesses gestellt; in Forschungen z. Gesch. Bayerns, XIV (1906) 95-.

J. Wimmer, Deutsches Pflanzenleben nach Albertus Magnus, etc. Halle, 1908.

S. Killermann, Die Vogelkunde bei Albertus Magnus, Regensburg, 1910.

I. Life

The leading figure in thirteenth century learning.

At last we come to the consideration of the dominant figure in Latin learning and natural science of the thirteenth century, with whose course his lifetime was nearly coincident, the most prolific of its writers, the most influential of its teachers, the dean of its scholars, the one learned man of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to be called “the Great,”—Albertus Magnus. The length of his life and presumably also of his period of literary productivity makes it difficult to place him at any particular point in the century, and from the fact that Vincent of Beauvais and Peter of Spain cite him we might well have placed our account of his works before theirs. He appears, however, to have outlived them both. But it is mainly in order to bring our account of Albert into juxtaposition with our treatment of the other two great names of Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon, to determine whether the Speculum astronomiae should be ascribed to Roger rather than Albert, and to treat of books of experiments and magic, that have been ascribed to Albert but are perhaps of somewhat later date, in connection with other similar experimental and occult literature, that we have postponed our consideration of Albertus Magnus until this point.

Albert and Aquinas.

In 1253, the same year that Robert Grosseteste died, four years after William of Auvergne, opened the pontificate of Alexander IV, of which Ptolemy of Lucca wrote: “In his time flourished two great doctors in the Order of Preachers. Doubtless many others were famous during this same time both in life and doctrine. But these two transcended and deserve to be placed before all others.”[1692] The two Dominicans whom Ptolemy had in mind were, of course, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.[1693] It is customary and natural to couple their names. Besides being members of the same order, they were master and student; they were also the two scholars of their time who did most to adapt the natural philosophy of Aristotle to Christian use, a fact which in itself suggests their interest in natural science. It may seem strange to us today that two theologians, and even more so two members of an order vowed to asceticism, apostolic poverty, and the maintenance of strict orthodoxy against heresy, should play a leading part in interpreting the ideas of Greek and Arabic philosophers and should display such an interest in natural science. The fact, however, is indisputable. It is to the credit of the medieval church and its religious orders. But it is even more a tribute to the power that philosophy and natural science exercise upon every able mind that really studies them. As for the relations between Albert and Aquinas, it must be added that while the former outlived his pupil, he was born a full generation before him. It was thus Aquinas who profited by and built upon Albert’s work.

Dates of birth and death.

Ptolemy of Lucca states that Albertus Magnus was over eighty years old when he died in 1280, and that for about three years before his death he largely lost control of his intellectual faculties.[1694] That he outlived his pupil Aquinas by six years, and that his writings are cited by other contemporaries who died before he did—Vincent of Beauvais and Petrus Hispanus, are other indications of his longevity. There consequently seems little reason for questioning the traditional date of his birth, 1193, although Pouchet has suggested 1205[1695] and Father Mandonnet, more recently, 1206.[1696] The main argument for placing his birth about 1206 is that a fourteenth century chronicler[1697] states that he was only sixteen when he entered the Dominican Order, while in the fifteenth century Peter of Prussia asserts that Albert himself used to say that he had been in the Order “from his very boyhood.”[1698] His birthplace was at Lauingen in Swabia and he was the oldest son of the count of Bollstädt.

Early life.

Albert studied at Padua, where he tells us that in his youth he saw a well which exhaled a deadly vapor,[1699] while at Venice he beheld a royal figure painted by nature upon marble.[1700] He perhaps entered the Dominican Order in 1222 or 1223. According to Peter of Prussia,[1701] a few years later he was made reader or lecturer of the friars at Cologne and “twice gloriously lectured on the Sentences.” Then he was successively Lector at Hildesheim in 1233, at Freiburg, for two years in Ratisbon, and at Strasburg. Albert alludes in his works to a comet which he saw in Saxony in 1240.[1702]

Probable early date of some of his works.

Although Ptolemy of Lucca mentions Albert and Aquinas as flourishing during the pontificate of Alexander IV, 1253-1261, much of the former’s writing as well as teaching probably antedates this. Presumably he was already famous when young Aquinas came all the way from Italy to Cologne or Paris to study with him about 1244 or 1245. If the Speculum naturale of Vincent of Beauvais was written by 1250, many of Albert’s writings which it freely cites must have appeared before that date, for instance, the De anima (III, 41), De sensu et sensato (V. 108), De somno et vigilia (XXVI, 23), De animalibus (XVII, 71). The treatise on sleep and waking is found in a manuscript written in a French hand in 1258.[1703] Even in the treatise on minerals,[1704] which has been regarded as written after 1250 because Vincent of Beauvais does not cite it, and in which Albert speaks of having been in Paris as well as Cologne, he also speaks of one of his associates who saw in the possession of the emperor, Frederick II, 1212-1250, a magnet which instead of attracting iron was drawn to that metal.[1705] On the other hand, in his work on animals Albert cites the emperor Frederick’s book on falcons, so that Albert’s treatise on animals was probably not finished until at least the latter part of that monarch’s reign.[1706] But even Mandonnet who delays Albert’s birth to 1206 believes that his first writings date back to 1240 and that his great philosophical works began to appear about 1245. I should be inclined to push these dates back ten or twenty years. Albert was probably teaching at Paris from about 1245 to 1248, in which year he signed the condemnation of the Talmud in that city and then became regent of the new school at Cologne established by the Dominicans.[1707]

Events of his life after 1250.

The two chief ecclesiastical offices held by Albert were those of provincial of his order in Germany from 1254 to 1257, and of bishop of Ratisbon, 1260-1262. He resigned from both positions, apparently preferring the scholar’s life. Ptolemy of Lucca explains that German bishops had to use the sword too much for Albert’s taste. In his work on animals Albert alludes in one passage to his villa on the Danube.[1708] In 1256 he went to Rome to defend the friars against the attacks of William of St. Amour, and while in Italy discovered the De motibus animalium of Aristotle. In his theological Summa he speaks of having collected the material for his treatise On the Unity of the Intellect against Averroes, when he was “in the curia at the command of Lord Alexander the Pope.”[1709] In 1259, when the general chapter of the Dominicans met at Valenciennes, he was appointed upon a committee to draw up a course of study for the Order along with Aquinas and Pietro di Tarantasia, who in 1276 became Pope Innocent V. After resigning the bishopric of Ratisbon in 1262, Albert returned to teaching at Cologne, but in 1263 he preached the crusade in Germany and Bohemia, and his name appears in documents at Würzburg in that year and those immediately following.[1710] In his Politics he speaks of having been papal nuncius in Saxony and Poland, where he found the barbaric custom still observed of killing the old men of the tribe when they had outlived their period of usefulness.[1711] We are told that in 1270 he despatched a treatise to Paris to help Aquinas in connection with the affair of Siger de Brabant, and in 1277 visited that city again in person to defend his own Aristotelian teaching and the memory of Aquinas in connection with the condemnation by Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, and other doctors of 219 opinions ascribed to the same Siger de Brabant and others,[1712]—an affair of which we shall have more to say later. The Catholic Encyclopedia and Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique repeat the assertion of fifteenth century biographers that Albert attended the Council of Lyons in 1274, but the Histoire Littéraire de la France eighty years ago assured us that his name is not mentioned in the records of that assembly.[1713]

Albert at Cologne.

This brief account of Albert’s life has made it evident that he stayed in no one place for long at a time, and his own works show that he had traveled widely. He seems, however, to have returned repeatedly to Cologne, and to have passed more time there than at any other one place. There he saw ruined remains of Roman buildings excavated;[1714] there he says that he wrote his De natura locorum;[1715] and there other of his writings, partly in his own hand, were still treasured when Peter of Prussia wrote his life near the close of the fifteenth century.[1716]

Contemporary estimates of Albert.

We have seen that Albert was already cited as an authority during his lifetime by such writers as Petrus Hispanus and Vincent of Beauvais. Roger Bacon in 1267 mentioned “Brother Albert of the Order of Friars Preachers” and William of Shyrwood as two of the foremost scholars of the time, although he seems rather jealous of Albert and inclined to rank William of Shyrwood and of course himself above him.[1717] Such envy only proves the great reputation that Albert had. In the Summa philosophiae ascribed to Grosseteste but which we have seen was apparently written some years after his death, following a long list of ancient and Arabian philosophers and some comparatively modern Christian writers such as Gundissalinus, Constantinus, and Alfred of England, the author mentions as even “more modern” Alexander minor, presumably Alexander of Hales the Franciscan who died in 1245, and Albert of Cologne of the Order of Preachers. He regards them as distinguished philosophers but not to be held for authorities. However, he later prefers Albert’s explanation of the virtues of gems to those of Democritus, Pythagoras, Plato, Hermes, and Avicenna. He also calls Albert “the most famous of modern theologians,” and gives his arguments against vision being by extramission.[1718] Ulrich Engelbert of Strasburg, a contemporary and pupil of Albert, in the fourth book of his Summa theologiae described “my lord Albert, once bishop of Ratisbon,” as “a man in every science so divine that he may well be called the wonder and miracle of our time.”[1719] Thomas of Cantimpré, in his moralizing Bonum universale de apibus, a farrago of monkish gossip and incredible tales, written apparently in 1276 or shortly after, emphasizes the saintly character of Albert who is apparently well along in years when Thomas writes.[1720] He represents Albert as having told him that at Paris a demon appeared to him in the likeness of a certain friar in an attempt to keep him from his studies but departed at the sign of the cross.[1721] Or again Thomas assures us that as Albert’s auditor for a considerable time when he occupied the chair of theology he had seen for himself and “most certainly tested” how Albert for many years almost daily participated in the prayers by day and night and read the psalter of David and often sweated in religious contemplation and meditation. “What wonder,” piously ejaculates Thomas, “that a man of such whole-hearted devotion and piety should show superhuman attainments in science!”[1722]

II. As a Scientist

The scope of Albert’s scientific treatises.

It may be well at the start to indicate the scope and character of Albert’s works in the field of science. In general they follow the plan of the natural philosophy of Aristotle and parallel the titles of the works then attributed, in some cases incorrectly, to Aristotle. We have eight books of physics, psychological treatises such as the De anima and De somno et vigilia, both in three books, and works dealing with celestial phenomena, such as the De meteoris and De coelo et mundo in four books each, and with the universe and life in general, such as the De causis et procreatione universi, De causis et proprietatibus elementorum et planetarum, and the De generatione et corruptione. Geography is represented by the De natura locorum, zoology by the twenty-six books on animals, botany by the seven books on vegetables and plants, and mineralogy by the five books on minerals. Björnbo called attention to a work on mirrors or catoptric ascribed to “Albert the Preacher” in several manuscripts but which is not included in the editions of Albert’s works and which has never been printed.[1723] I do not know if this is the same treatise as a treatise on Perspective attributed to Albertus Magnus in a manuscript which Björnbo did not mention.[1724] A work on the planting of trees and preserving of wine is sometimes ascribed to Albert in the manuscripts, but is probably rather by Petrus de Crescentiis or Galfridus de Vino Salvo.[1725] I think that I have encountered only once in the manuscripts the attribution to Albert of an epitome of the Almagest of Ptolemy[1726] and of a Summa astrologiae.[1727] Fairly frequently one meets with some brief compendium of all natural philosophy ascribed to Albert, of which perhaps the most common is the Philosophia pauperum or “Introduction to the books of Aristotle on physics, sky and universe, generation and corruption, meteorology, and the soul.”[1728] These are either spurious, or, if based on Albert’s writings, add nothing of importance to them. Finally we may note a group of works lying on the border of natural and occult science and which have been regarded as spurious: treatises on alchemy and chiromancy, the Speculum astronomiae, the De secretis mulierum, the Liber aggregationis, and the De mirabilibus mundi. Of some of these we shall treat in separate chapters.

Can a gradual intellectual development be traced in Albert’s works?

The order in which Albert’s numerous works were written is a matter difficult to determine but of some interest, although not of very great importance, for our investigation. The statement of Peter of Prussia that the translation of Aristotle “which we now use in the schools” was made by Thomas of Cantimpré at the suggestion of Aquinas, “for in Albert’s time all commonly used the old translation,”[1729] would, if true, suggest that Albert wrote his Aristotelian treatises early in life, since he actually outlived Aquinas. But not much reliance is to be placed in this statement of Peter, since it is reasonably certain that Thomas of Cantimpré at least did not translate Aristotle. I have been impressed by differing and almost inconsistent attitudes in different treatises by Albert, for instance in his attitude towards magic, which seem to hint that his opinions changed with the years, although it may be attributable, as in some other authors, to the fact that in different works he reflects the attitude of different authorities, or approaches different subjects with a different view-point, writing of theology as a theologian, but of Aristotle as a philosopher. However, Baeumker and Schneider, pursuing in connection with Albert’s writings a different line of investigation from mine, have been struck with the same thing and have concluded that Albert underwent a gradual intellectual development. They note that in his Commentaries on the Sentences he is still glued to the Augustinian tradition, while in his Summa he is strongly influenced by Aristotle and working for a synthesis of Aristotle and Augustine. Finally, in his philosophical and scientific works, related to the genuine and spurious works of Aristotle, “he goes very far with this Arabian-trimmed Neo-Platonism, often so far that he finally feels compelled to explain such exposition as mere citation, and in the strife of conflicting masses of thought surging within him refers for his own personal interpretation to his theological writings.”[1730] From this it would seem that most of Albert’s theological treatises were written before his scientific works, based upon Aristotle and spurious Arabic and other additions. But we have seen that many of his Aristotelian treatises were completed before the Speculum naturale of Vincent of Beauvais, whereas his Sentences name 1246 and 1249 as current dates.[1731]

His best works are those on natural science.

But while Albert may sometimes refer to his theological works for his own personal views, he does not do so in those passages which will especially concern us, and it is in his works on natural science that he seems to the modern reader more original. Indeed Jessen declared that repeated perusal of Albert’s many writings in the field of natural history had convinced him that he was “original everywhere, even where he seems to copy.”[1732] Jessen, indeed, held that Albert would have been even more original and outspoken than he is, but for fear of the charge of heresy; but in my opinion there is little to support such a view. Be that as it may, in his works on natural science Albert does not merely repeat past ideas whether of Aristotle or others, but adds chapters of his own drawn in large measure from his own observation, experience, and classification. It is in his scientific works that he is as superior to Aquinas as the latter is generally considered to surpass him in the purely metaphysical and theological field. Since writing the foregoing sentences I have found that Peter of Prussia expressed much the same view in his life of Albert written toward the close of the fifteenth century. Peter says, “Moreover, this should be understood, that after Aristotle faith is to be put in Albert above all who have written in philosophy, because he has himself illuminated the writings of almost all philosophers and has seen wherein they spoke truly or falsely, nay more, since he himself was experienced above all others in natural phenomena. It may be that some, relying on their metaphysics or logic, can impugn him by certain arguments, but I think that no matter of great concern, since Albert himself says that faith is to be put in anyone who is expert in his art.”[1733]

Albert’s fame in the early nineteenth century.

Albert’s scientific fame perhaps reached its zenith shortly before the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. In 1836 and 1837 Ernst Meyer published in Linnaea[1734] his “Albertus Magnus, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Botanik im XIII Jahrhundert,” and later in his History of Botany[1735] ranked Albert as the greatest botanist during the long period between Aristotle and Theophrastus on the one hand and Andrea Cesalpini on the other. “Yes, more than that. From Aristotle, the creator of scientific botany, until his time this science sank deeper and deeper with time. With him it arose like the Phoenix from its ashes. That, I think, is praise enough, and this crown shall no one snatch away from him.”[1736] In the meantime, at Paris in 1853, Pouchet had published his History of the Natural Sciences in the Middle Ages with the sub-title, Or Albertus Magnus and his age considered as the point of departure of the experimental school.[1737] But the extreme praise of Albert had occurred a little earlier in lectures on the history of science delivered by De Blainville at the Sorbonne in 1839-1841 and published a few years later.[1738] De Blainville too centered his discussion of medieval science about Albert, to whom alone he devoted some ninety pages, extolling him for affirming the permanence of species and for “broadening” Aristotle to fit the requirements of theology. In ten theses in which De Blainville undertook to sum up briefly the chief legacies of Albert to science, he held that he completed and terminated the circle of human knowledge, adding to Aristotle the scientific demonstration of the relations of man with God; that he extended the scope of observation to every scientific field except anatomy; that he created the description of natural bodies, a thing unknown to the ancients; and that in filling in the gaps in Aristotle’s writings he was the first to embrace all the natural sciences in a complete plan, logical and perfectly followed. “In accepting therefore with the Christian Aristotle,” concluded De Blainville, “the first verse of Genesis, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth,’ and the consequences which follow it, we have, in my opinion, reached the apogée of the encyclopedia of human knowledge, which can now only extend itself in respect to the number and the deeper knowledge of material objects.”

A survival of the medieval attitude.

This passage from De Blainville, who seems to have been a Roman Catholic, is very interesting as showing how the progress of modern science in his own time and the centuries just preceding could be almost completely miscomprehended by a professed historian of science. We must not, however, suppose that such misconceptions of the progress of science were universal or even general in the first half of the nineteenth century. The article on Albertus Magnus in the Histoire Littéraire de la France, which was published in 1838, recognizes that Albert did not extend the bounds of the sciences as much as had been supposed, and that progress had been made since the sixteenth century which rendered that part of his works “almost useless.”[1739] The passage from De Blainville is interesting also as showing the same intimate connection presupposed between Christian theology, natural science, and Aristotelianism as in the days of the great Dominicans themselves. Again, it reveals the extent to which natural science, since the appearance of The Origin of Species, has tended to the opposite extreme.

Recent historians of science and Albert.

As for historians of science, they have been rather scarcer of late than in the earlier years of the nineteenth century, when the subject seems to have had a great vogue in France. Or at least the historians of science have been less sympathetic with the distant past. Perhaps the inclination has been to go almost as far toward the other pole of neglect as De Blainville went toward that of extollation. But the modern eulogies of the scientific attainments of Roger Bacon, supposed to be a thorn in the side of the medieval church and falsely regarded as its victim, and as the one lone scientific spirit of the middle ages, have been rather more absurd than the earlier praises of Albert, who was represented both as a strong pillar in the church and the backbone of medieval and Christian science. Indeed, the Histoire Littéraire, in the same passage which we a moment ago quoted against De Blainville, also states with probable justification that Albert did “more than any other doctor of his day” to introduce the natural sciences into the course of public and private studies, and that it was his taste for those subjects which won him his popular renown and the homage of scholars until the end of the seventeenth century. At no period, however, has Albert been entirely without defenders. Jessen in 1867 regarded him as an original natural scientist. Stadler in 1906 recognized that “he made many independent observations, perhaps even carried out experiments,” and showed great interest in biology.[1740]

Albert’s scientific spirit.

Coming back from the opinions of others concerning Albert to his own attitude towards natural science, it is to be noted that, while he may make all sorts of mistakes judged by modern standards, he does show unmistakable signs of the scientific spirit. This will become more apparent as we proceed, but for the present we may cite two examples of it, and these from a work based upon a pseudo-Aristotelian treatise and one which at first sight might seem quite superstitious and unscientific to the modern reader, since it is full of astrology, the De causis et proprietatibus elementorum et planetarum.[1741] In the first passage Albert repeats the justification of natural science against a narrow religious attitude which we heard from the lips of William of Conches in the previous century. When Albert finds that some men attribute the deluge simply to the divine will and believe that no other cause for it should be sought, he replies that he too ascribes it ultimately to the divine will, but that he believes that God acts through natural causes in the case of natural phenomena, and that, while he would not presume to search the causes of the divine will, he does feel free to investigate those natural causes which were the divine instruments. A little further on in the same chapter Albert declares that “it is not enough to know in terms of universals, but we seek to know each object’s own peculiar characteristics, for this is the best and perfect kind of science.”[1742]

Philosophical generalization and scientific detail.

This desire for concrete, specific, detailed, accurate knowledge concerning everything in nature is felt by Albert in other of his writings to be scarcely in the spirit of the Aristotelian natural philosophy which he follows and sets forth in his parallel treatises. In his work on animals a cleavage may be observed between those parts where Albert discusses the general natures and common characteristics of animals and seems to follow Aristotle rather closely, and those books where he lists and describes particular animals with numerous allusions to recent experience and considerable criticism of past authorities. At the beginning of his twenty-second book he apologizes for listing particular animals in alphabetical order, which is “not appropriate to philosophy,” by saying that “we know we are debtors both to the wise and to the unlearned, and those things which are told in particular terms better instruct a rustic intelligence.” But while this desire to describe particular objects precisely is felt by Albert to be not in accord with traditional philosophic methods of presentation, it is a desire which many of his contemporaries share with him. At the beginning of his sixth book on vegetables and plants, where particular herbs and trees are listed, he explains, “In this sixth book of vegetables we satisfy the curiosity of our students rather than philosophy, for philosophy cannot deal with particulars.”

Medieval interest in nature.

This healthy interest in nature and commendable curiosity concerning real things was not confined to Albert’s students nor to “rustic intelligences.” One has only to examine the sculpture of the great thirteenth century cathedrals to see that the craftsmen of the towns were close observers of the world of nature and that every artist was a naturalist too. In the foliage that twines about the capitals of the columns in French Gothic cathedrals it is easy to recognize, says M. Mâle, a large number of plants: “the plantain, arum, ranunculus, fern, clover, coladine, hepatica, columbine, cress, parsley, strawberry-plant, ivy, snapdragon, the flower of the broom and the leaf of the oak, a typically French collection of flowers loved from childhood.”[1743] Mutatis mutandis, the same statement could be made concerning the carved vegetation that runs riot in Lincoln cathedral. “The thirteenth century sculptors sang their chant de mai. All the spring delights of the Middle Ages live again in their work—the exhilaration of Palm Sunday, the garlands of flowers, the bouquets fastened on the doors, the strewing of fresh herbs in the chapels, the magical flowers of the feast of Saint John—all the fleeting charm of those old-time springs and summers. The Middle Ages, so often said to have little love for nature, in point of fact gazed at every blade of grass with reverence.”[1744] But it is not merely love of nature but scientific interest and accuracy that we see revealed in the sculptures of the cathedrals and in the note-book of the thirteenth century architect, Villard de Honnecourt,[1745] with its sketches of insect as well as animal life, of a lobster, two parroquets on a perch, the spirals of a snail’s shell, a fly, a dragonfly, and a grasshopper, as well as a bear and a lion from life, and more familiar animals such as the cat and swan. The sculptors of gargoyles and chimeras were not content to reproduce existing animals but showed their command of animal anatomy by creating strange compound and hybrid monsters—one might almost say, evolving new species—which nevertheless have all the verisimilitude of copies from living forms. It was these breeders in stone, these Burbanks of the pencil, these Darwins with the chisel, who knew nature and had studied botany and zoology in a way superior to the scholar who simply pored over the works of Aristotle and Pliny. No wonder that Albert’s students were curious about particular things.

Albert’s own attitude.

But one is inclined to wonder whether the passage from the De causis et proprietatibus elementorum et planetarum, which we quoted first, may not have been written after the passages which we have quoted from his works on plants and animals, and whether Albert had come, thanks possibly to that same stimulating scientific curiosity of his students, to cease to apologize for the detailed description of particular objects as unphilosophical and to praise it as “the best and perfect kind of science.” At any rate it is those portions of his works on animals, plants, and minerals which he devotes to such description of particular objects which possess most independent value, and it is perhaps also worth noting that Ptolemy of Lucca in looking back upon Albert’s work seems not only to distinguish his writings on logic and theology from those on nature, but also to imply a distinction between Aristotle’s natural philosophy and his “very well-known and most excellent contribution to the experimental knowledge of things of nature.”[1746] Ptolemy seems to say Aristotle’s contribution, but the credit really belongs largely to Albert and his students.

Albert and modern experimentation.

Pouchet was therefore not without justification in his sub-title, “Or Albertus Magnus and his Period Considered as the Beginning of the Experimental School.” His distinguishing, however, three stages of scientific progress in the history of civilization—the first, Greek, characterized by observation, and represented especially by Aristotle; the second, Roman, marked by erudition and typified by Pliny; the third, medieval, distinguished by experimentation, and having Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon as its two great representatives;—was rather too general and sweeping. Galen, for instance, was a great experimenter and the ancient Empirics put little trust in anything except experience. Albert himself, in discussing “the serious problem” whether life is possible in the Antipodes or southern hemisphere, states that “the most powerful kings and the most accomplished philosophers have labored over it from antiquity, the kings forsooth by experiment and the philosophers by rational inquiry.”[1747] Moreover, neither Roger Bacon nor Albert can be shown to have done much experimenting of the sort, carefully planned and regulated, which is carried on in modern laboratories. Meyer in his History of Botany,[1748] although Albert was a great favorite with him, felt constrained to renounce the credit for purposive experimentation which Pouchet had given him. “How gladly would I see this crown also placed deservedly upon my favorite’s head!... But I do not know of his undertaking an experiment in order to solve a physiological or physical problem in which he had a clearly defined purpose and the suitable materials at hand for carrying it out; his books on plants certainly do not contain a single one.”

Personal observation and experience of plants.

Albert’s work on plants does contain, however, many passages in which he recognizes experience as a criterion of truth or gives the results of his personal observations. Such passages occur especially in the sixth book where he tries to satisfy his students’ curiosity, but we may first note an earlier passage where he recommends “making conjectures and experiments” in order to learn the nature of trees in general and of each variety of tree, herb, fruit, and fungus in particular. Since, however, one can scarcely have personal experience of them all, it is also advisable to read the books which the experts (experti) of antiquity have written on such matters.[1749] But a mistrust of the assertions of others often accompanies Albert’s reliance upon personal observation and experience. Like Galen in his work on medicinal simples, he explains in opening his sixth book that merely to list the names of plants found in existing books would fill a volume, and that he will limit his discussion to those native varieties “better known among us.” Of some of these he has had personal experience; for the others he follows authors whom he has found unready to state anything unless it was proved by experience. For experience alone is reliable concerning particular natures. He cautions in regard to a tree which is said to save doves from serpents, “But this has not been sufficiently proved by certain experience, like the other facts which are written here, but is found in the writings of the ancients.”[1750] Of another assertion he remarks, “But this is proved by no experience”;[1751] and of a third he says, “As some affirm, but I have not tested this myself.”[1752]

Experience a criterion in zoology.

Personal observation and experience are equally, if not more, noticeable in Albert’s work on animals. He proposes to tell “what he knows by reason and what he sees by experience of the natures of animals”; he adds that science cannot be attained in all matters by demonstration, in some cases one must resort to conjecture.[1753] After listing various remedies for the infirmities of falcons from the work on falconry of the Emperor Frederick, he concludes, “Such are the medicines which one finds given for falcons and the experience of wise men, but the wise falconer will with time add to or subtract from them according to his own experience of what is beneficial to the state of health of the birds. For experience is the best teacher in all matters of this sort.”[1754]

Observations of Albert and his associates.

In the treatise on animals as in that on plants Albert’s allusions to experience occur mainly in the last few books where he describes particular animals. Here he often says, “I have tested this,” or “I and my associates have experienced,”[1755] or “I have not experienced this,” or “I have proved that this is not true.”[1756] Like Alexander of Neckam he rejects the story that the beaver castrates itself in order to escape with its life from its hunters; Albert says that experience near his home has often disproved this.[1757] In discussing whales he restricts himself entirely to the results of his own observation, saying, “We pass over what the Ancients have written on this topic because their statements do not agree with experience.”[1758] According to Pouchet[1759] Albert gives even more detailed information concerning whales than do the Norse sagas, and also includes animals of the north unknown to classical writers. He occasionally reveals his nationality by giving the German as well as the Latin names of animals, and he displays an acquaintance with the fauna of surrounding countries such as Norway, Sweden, Bohemia, and Carinthia.[1760] He asserts that there are no eels in the Danube and its tributaries, but that they abound in the other rivers of Germany.[1761] He tells of observing the habits of eagles in Livonia,[1762] or supports the account in Solinus of a monstrous beast with fore legs like human arms and hind legs like human legs by stating that he has seen both male and female of the species captured in the forests of Russia (Sclaviae).[1763] Of his wide travels and observation of natural phenomena we shall meet other examples as we proceed.

Experiments with animals.

Albert has not only observed animal life widely, he has also performed experiments with animals as he apparently did not do with plants. He and his associates, for instance, have proved by experiment that a cicada goes on singing in its breast for a long time after its head has been cut off.[1764] He also proved to his satisfaction that the turtle, although a marine animal, would not drink sea water, unless possibly fresh water which flowed into the sea, by experimenting with a turtle in a vessel of water.[1765] He has heard it said that the ostrich eats and digests iron, but the many ostriches to whom he has offered the metal have consistently declined it, although they would devour with avidity stones and bones cut into small bits.[1766] Crude experiments these may be, but they are at least purposive.

Past authors questioned.

Albert also often expresses doubt as to certain statements concerning animals on the ground that they have not been tested by experience, even if he has had no opportunity to disprove them. And he draws a sharp distinction between authors who state what they themselves have seen and tested and those who appear simply to repeat rumor or folk-lore. That there are any such birds as gryphons or griffins, he believes is affirmed in story-books (historiae) rather than supported by the experiments of philosophers or arguments of philosophy.[1767] The story found in the Physiologus of the pelican’s restoring its young with its own blood he also considers as “read in story-books rather than proved philosophically by experience,”[1768]—a criticism which shows how mistaken those modern scholars have been who have declared the Physiologus and Bestiaries representative of the thirteenth century attitude towards nature. The accounts of harpies which one reads are also according to Albert “not based upon experience, but are the assertions of men of no great authority.”[1769] They are said to be rapacious birds with crooked nails and human faces, and when a harpy meets a man in the desert it is said to kill him, but afterwards, when it sees by its reflection in the water that its own face is human, it grieves all the rest of its life for the man whom it has slain. “But these statements,” says Albert, “have not been experienced and seem fabulous. Such tales are told especially by a certain Adelinus” (perhaps the Anglo-Saxon Aldhelm) “and Solinus and Jorach.” Albert is particularly chary of accepting the assertions of these last two authors, assuring us, anent their statement that certain birds can fly unharmed through flames, “These philosophers tell many lies and I think that this is one of their lies.”[1770] In yet other passages Albert calls one or the other of them a liar.[1771] He also sometimes rejects statements of Pliny, once classing him with Solinus among those who rehearse popular hearsay rather than disclose scientific experience.[1772]

Instances of credulity.

Albert thus displays considerable independence in dealing with past authorities. Yet at times statements in earlier writers which seem absurd to us pass him unchallenged. He is far, for example, from rejecting all of Pliny’s marvelous assertions. He still believes that the little fish eschinus can stop “a ship two hundred feet or more” in length by clinging to its keel, so that neither wind nor art nor violence can move it.[1773] And he adds something to Pliny’s tale of hunters who make good their escape to their ship with the tiger’s cubs by throwing them one at a time to the pursuing tigress, who takes each whelp back to her lair before returning to the pursuit of the hunters.[1774] Albert’s emendation is that the hunters provide themselves with glass spheres which they roll one at a time towards the pursuing tigress.[1775] Seeing her own reflection on a small scale in the glass ball, she thinks it one of her cubs until she has vainly tried to give it milk, when she discovers the fraud and bounds after the hunters again. But a second and a third glass ball deceive her temporarily as before, and so the hunters reach their ship without having had to surrender any of the real cubs. This imputation of singular stupidity to the tigress should be kept in mind to set against other passages in medieval writers where almost human sagacity is ascribed to animals. Although in two or three preceding passages Albert has refuted the doctrine of spontaneous generation of animal life,[1776] he attributes the following passage to Pliny without adverse criticism.[1777] “There is a worm shaped like a star, as Pliny says, which shines like a star at night; but it never appears except when after great clouds it predicts clear weather.[1778] He says that there is so much rigid cold in this worm that it extinguishes fire like ice. And if a man’s flesh is touched with its slime, all the hair falls off and what it touches decays. And he says that they beget nothing, nor is there male or female among them. Therefore they are generated from decaying matter.” Albert also accepts the story of the poisoned maiden sent to Alexander the Great.

Incredible “experiences.”

Albert also is unduly credulous of utterances about animals supposed to be based upon experience, although he cannot be called a mere empiricist, since he tries to test particular statements by the general laws concerning living beings which he has read in Aristotle or derived from his own experience and reflection. He denies, for example, Pliny’s statement that other animals are attracted by the pleasant smell which the panther emits as it sleeps after overeating, on the ground that man is the only animal who is pleased or displeased by odors.[1779] But it would seem that some of the fishermen, fowlers, and hunters from whom he gleaned bits of zoological information were not so trustworthy as he imagined. He says that “a trustworthy person” told him that he saw in an eagle’s nest three hundred ducks, over a hundred geese, about forty hares, and many large fish, all of which were required to satisfy the appetites of the young eagles.[1780] He also “heard from trustworthy persons” that a serpent with the virgin countenance of a beardless man “was slain in an island of Germany and there displayed in our times to all who wished to see it until the flesh putrefied.”[1781] Such reports of mermaids and sea-serpents have still, however, a certain currency. Experienced hunters said that worms could be killed in any beast by suspending from its neck a strip of citron (sticados citrinum) immediately after it had been dried.[1782] German artificers of Albert’s day told him that the hyena bore a gem in its eyes, or more truly in its forehead.[1783] Albert sometimes has a tall story of his own to tell. At Cologne in the presence of himself and many associates a little girl of perhaps three years was exhibited who, as soon as she was released from her mother’s hands, ran to the corners of the room searching for spiders, “and ate them all large and small, and flourished on this diet and greatly preferred it to all other food.”[1784] Albert also learned by personal experience that moles gladly eat frogs and toads. For once he saw a mole who held by the foot a big toad which “cried loudly because of the mole’s bite.”[1785] He also found by experience that both frogs and toads would eat a dead mole. In affirming that the custom of killing off the old men is still prevalent within the borders of Saxony and Poland, Albert says, “As I have seen with my own eyes”; but really all that he has seen is the graves of their fathers which the sons have shown to him.[1786]

Minerals and experience.

Albert’s general attitude towards past authorities and present experience remains the same in his treatise on minerals. He will give the names of the important gems and state their virtues as known from authorities and experience, but he will not repeat everything that has been said about precious stones because it is not profitable for science. “For natural science is not simply receiving what one is told, but the investigation of causes in natural phenomena.”[1787] Concerning metals, too, he intends to state “rationally either what has been handed down by the philosophers or what I myself have experienced.”[1788] He adds that once he wandered far in exile to places rich in mines in order that he might test the natures of metals. “And for this same reason I investigated the transmutation of metals among the alchemists, in order that I might observe something of the nature and characteristics of the metals.” In a later chapter he alludes to workers in copper “in our parts, namely, Paris and Cologne, and in other places where I have been and seen things tested by experience.”[1789] Fui et vidi experiri, such is Albert the Great’s peaceful paraphrase, probably unintentional, for warring Caesar’s Veni, vidi, vici.

Minerals and credulity.

Again, also, in the treatise on minerals, reliance upon experience proves to be no sure guarantee against incorrect notions, credulity, and unquestioning trust in authority. Albert still repeats[1790] the old notion that “adamant,” hard as it is, is softened and dissolved by the blood and flesh of a goat, especially if the goat for some time before has been fed on a diet of certain herbs and wine.[1791] He adds that this property of goat’s blood makes it beneficial for sufferers from stone in the bladder. Albert repeats with a qualifying “It is said” the statement that the emerald comes from the nests of gryphons or griffins,[1792] but he does not stop to deny the existence of those birds, as we have heard him do elsewhere. He adds, however, as to the source of the emerald that “a truthful and curious experimenter coming from Greece” had said that it was produced in rocks under the sea. This expression, “curious experimenter” (curiosus experimentator), or perhaps better “inquisitive observer,” Albert also applied to one of his associates who saw Frederick II’s peculiar magnet.[1793] In the present discussion of the emerald he adds that experience in his own time has proved that this stone, “if good and true,” cannot endure sexual intercourse, so that the reigning king of Hungary, who was wearing an emerald upon his finger when he went in to his wife, broke it into three pieces. “And that is probably why they say that this stone inclines its wearer to chastity.”

Tale of a toad and an emerald.

Albert, however, had told as a personal experience a stranger tale than this of an emerald in his work on vegetables and plants in order to illustrate “the many effects of stones and plants which are known by experience and by which wonders are worked.” But as a matter of fact, the incident is concerned not with an emerald and a plant, but an emerald and a toad, an animal which one would infer was in Albert’s day often the subject of experiment.

“An emerald was recently seen among us, small in size but marvelous in beauty. When its virtue was to be tested, someone stepped forth and said that, if a circle was made about a toad with the emerald and then the stone was set before the toad’s eyes, one of two things would happen. Either the stone, if of weak virtue, would be broken by the gaze of the toad; or the toad would burst, if the stone was possessed of full natural vigor. Without delay things were arranged as he bade; and after a short lapse of time, during which the toad kept its eye unswervingly upon the gem, the latter began to crack like a nut and a portion of it flew from the ring. Then the toad, which had stood immovable hitherto, withdrew as if it had been freed from the influence of the gem.”[1794]

Experience versus Aristotle.

In the incident just narrated Albert was perhaps tricked by some traveling magician. But let us conclude our discussion of his general scientific method by some more rational instances of personal observation and experience. In his treatise on meteorology his discussion of the rainbow, which occupies some twenty-four pages of Borgnet’s text,[1795] is especially based upon experience and full of allusions to it—a very interesting fact in view of the large space which the discussion of the rainbow occupies in Roger Bacon’s better known eulogy of experimental science. Albert recounts his own observations when sailing over great waves or when looking down from the top of a castle built upon a high mountain, “and the time when this was seen was in the morning after a rainy night, and it was in the autumn with the sun in the sign of Virgo.” Albert takes exception to Aristotle’s assertion that rainbows caused by the moon at night appear only twice in fifty years. He and many others have seen a bow at night, and “truthful experimenters have found by experience” (veridici experimentatores experti sunt) that a rainbow has appeared twice at night in the same year. Nor can Albert conceive of any astronomical reason why it should appear only twice in fifty years. “And so I think that Aristotle stated this from the opinions of others and not from the truth of demonstration or experience, while those facts which have been adduced against his statement have been experienced beyond a doubt by myself and by other reliable investigators associated with me.” The very chapter headings of this portion of Albert’s treatise suggest an antithesis between the ancient authorities and recent experimental investigation, for instance: “Of the Iris of the Moon and what Ancients have said of it and what Moderns have tested by experience,”[1796] and “A Digression stating Seneca’s views concerning virgae and experiments with certain arcs seen in modern times.”[1797] Thus while Albert of course believes that the statements of many of his authorities are based upon experience, he seems to feel that he and his associates have founded an important modern school for the investigation of nature at first hand. We may choose to regard it as a mere school of observation, but he dignifies its members by the title of experimentatores. Again therefore we may admit that Pouchet was not unjustified in associating Albert with the modern experimental school.

III. His Allusions to Magic

At the close of his story of the toad and the emerald Albert adds that there are many other such virtues of stones and plants which are learned by experience, and that magicians investigate the same and work wonders by them. It is therefore quite appropriate for us to turn directly from his attitude to experimental method to his conception of magic. Like William of Auvergne he hints at an association between the two. His pupil and contemporary, Ulrich Engelbert of Strasburg, actually called him “expert in magic.”[1798]

Peter of Prussia on Albert’s occult science.

In his Life of Albert Peter of Prussia not only is evidently concerned to make him out a saint as well as a scientist, telling of his devotion to the Eucharist[1799] and the Virgin Mary and the wood of the Holy Cross[1800] and of the miraculous visions which he had from childhood, in which the Virgin and the Apostle Paul appeared to him,[1801] and how he advanced more in knowledge by prayer than by study and labor,[1802] and that he read the Psalter through daily.[1803] He also devotes a number of chapters[1804] to a defense of Albert against the charge of having indulged in occult sciences, and of having been “too curious concerning natural phenomena.”[1805] Peter explains that many superstitions were rife in Albert’s time and that nigromancers were fascinating the people by their false miracles, and pretending that their sorcery was worked by the sciences of astronomy, mathematics, and alchemy.[1806] It was therefore essential that some man who was equally learned and devout should thoroughly examine these sciences, proving what was good in them and rejecting what was bad.[1807] Peter is inclined to be disingenuous in stating Albert’s attitude toward some of the occult sciences, especially the engraving of stones with images according to the aspects of the stars, which he misrepresents Albert as prohibiting, whereas Albert really calls it a good doctrine, as we shall show later. Peter however states “how useful it is to know natural and occult phenomena in the nature of things, and that those who write about such things are to be praised for it.”[1808] Also “that it is useful and necessary to know the facts of nature even if they are indecent.”[1809] Later on, towards the close of his book, Peter denies various feats of magic that by his time had come to be popularly recounted of Albert, and then does his best to make up for the subtracted marvels by himself inventing many pious miracles in which he would have us believe Albert was concerned.[1810]

Trithemius on Albert’s study of magic.

The learned Trithemius (1462-1516), abbot of Sponheim, in a letter to John Westenburgh in which he defends himself against the charge of magic, admits that he “cannot say that he is entirely ignorant of natural magic,” a form of wisdom which he regards very highly; and adduces in his justification the example of “Albertus Magnus, that most learned man and among the saints truly most saintly, of the profoundest intellect, worthy of eternal memory, who scrutinized the depths of natural philosophy, and learned to know marvels unheard of by others.”[1811] Even to this day, continues Trithemius, he is unjustly regarded by the unlearned as a magician and devotee of superstition. For he was not ignorant of the magic of nature, and he had innocently read and mastered a great number of superstitious books by depraved men. For not the knowledge but the practice of evil is evil. Trithemius admits that he himself has read many books of superstitious and even diabolical magic, but contends that this is necessary, if one is to learn to distinguish natural from illicit magic.

Magnus in magia.

The brief but sane estimate of Albertus Magnus published eighty years ago in the Histoire Littéraire de la France, from which we have already had occasion to quote regarding his importance in the history of natural science, mentions the efforts of Trithemius and Naudé to defend him from the charge of magic, but adds that even his panegyrists have called him “great in magic, greater in philosophy, greatest in theology,” and agrees that he frequently shows a leaning towards the occult sciences. “He is an alchemist, he is an astrologer, he believes in enchantments; he delights like most savants of his age in explaining all phenomena that surprise him by supernatural causes.” This rough characterization contains much truth, although it is hardly true that Albert gave supernatural explanations for strange natural phenomena. Rather he believed in occult forces and marvels in nature which we no longer credit. We also have already stated it as our opinion that he was really much greater as a natural scientist than as a theologian. But we have now to examine what grounds there are for calling him magnus in magia, and in magicis expertus.

His varying treatment of magic.

Magic is often mentioned by Albert, both in his Biblical and Aristotelian commentaries, both in his theological writings and his works on natural science. Some references to magic arts, occurring chiefly in the Biblical commentaries, are too brief, incidental, and perfunctory to afford any particular information.[1812] The other passages seem scarcely consistent with one another and will require separate treatment. We shall first consider those in which Albert more or less adheres to the traditional Christian attitude of condemnation of magic as criminal and dealing with demons, of recognition of its marvels but jealous differentiation of them from divine miracle. It should be observed that all such passages occur in his theological writings and that in them he does little more than rehearse opinions which we have already encountered in the writings of the early Christian fathers with a few additional citations from books of necromancy or from Arabic works on natural science such as those of Algazel and Avicenna.

Reality of magic.

Albert has no doubt either in his scientific or religious writings that marvels can be worked by magic. It is true that one of its departments, praestigia, has to do with illusions and juggleries in which things are made to appear to exist which have no reality. But it also performs actual transformations.[1813] But even the actual performances of magic are deceptive in that demons by their means lead human souls astray, which is far worse than merely to deceive the eye.[1814]

Magic due to demons.

Albert affirms in his theological Summa that it is the consensus of opinion that magic is due to demons. “For the saints expressly say so, and it is the common opinion of all persons, and it is taught in that part of necromancy which deals with images and rings and mirrors of Venus and seals of demons by Achot Graecus and Grema of Babylon and Hermes of Egypt, and invocations for this purpose are described in the book of Hermogenes and Philetus, the necromancers, and in the book called the Almandel of Solomon.”[1815] In his Commentary on the Sentences[1816] Albert declares that to make use of “magic virtues” is evil and apostasy from the Faith, whether one openly resorts to “invocations, conjurations, sacrifices, suffumigations, and adorations,” or to some simple operation which none the less requires demon aid for its performance. One must beware even of “mathematical virtues,” that is, of astrological forces, especially in “images, rings, mirrors, and characters,” lest the practice of idolatry be introduced. In commenting upon the passage in the gospel where the Pharisees accuse Christ of casting out demons through the prince of demons, Albert admits that necromancers are able to cast out demons and to restrain them from doing external damage, but holds that they cannot like Christ restrain the evil spirits from inciting inward sin.[1817]

Magic and miracle.

Albert will not admit, however, that the marvels of magic compare with divine miracles. For one thing, feats of magic do not even happen as instantaneously as miracles, although they occur much more rapidly than the ordinary processes of nature. But except for this difference in speed the works of magic can usually be explained as the product of natural forces, and by the fact that the demons are aided in their operations by the influence of the stars. To change rods into snakes, for instance, as Pharaoh’s magicians did, is simply hastening the process by which worms generate in decaying trees. Indeed, Albert is inclined to believe that the demons “produce no permanent substantial form that would not easily be produced by putrefaction.”[1818] The magic power of fascination is after all only analogous to the virtue of the sapphire in curing ulcers or of the emerald in restraining sexual passion. Albert adds the comforting thought that neither fascination nor the magic art can harm anyone who has firm faith in God, but for us the most important thing to note is that even in his theological writings he has associated magic with natural forces and the stars as well as with demons. In this he resembles William of Auvergne rather than the early Christian fathers.

Good magic of the Magi.

Like some other Christian commentators, Albert exempts the Magi of the gospel story, who followed the star to Bethlehem, from the category of magicians in the evil sense that we have just heard him define magic. In his commentary upon the gospel by Matthew he asserts that “the Magi are not sorcerers (malefici) as some wrongly think.” He also affirms that there is a difference between a Magus and a mathematicus or an enchanter or necromancer or ariolus or aruspex or diviner. Like Isidore Albert adopts the incorrect etymology of connecting Magus and magnus. But for him the Magi are not so called on account of the magnitude of their sins. “Etymologically the Magi are great men” whose knowledge of, or conjecture from, the inevitable processes of cause and effect in nature often enables them to predict or produce marvels of nature. In his commentary on the Book of Daniel Albert quotes Jerome’s similar description of them as “masters who philosophize about the universe; moreover, the Magi are more particularly called astronomers who search the future in the stars.” It is interesting to note that this view of the Magi still persists among Roman Catholics; the recent Catholic Encyclopedia still insists concerning the wise men who came to Bethlehem, “Neither were they magicians: the good meaning of μάγοι, though found nowhere else in the Bible, is demanded by the context of the second chapter of Matthew.” But here is a still more interesting point to note: Albertus Magnus does not deny that the Magi were magicians. To contend that Magi were not magi was a contradiction of terms that was probably too much for his common sense. All that he tries to do is to exculpate them from the practice of those particular evil, superstitious, and diabolical occult arts which Isidore and others had included in their definitions of magic. From evil witchcraft and necromancy and fatalistic astrology, from augury and liver divination, from the arts of sortilegi and pythones, of enchanters “who by means of certain incantations perform certain feats with beasts or herbs or stones or images,” or of diviners who employ geomancy or “the chance of fire” or hydromancy or aerimancy: from all such practices he acquits them. “They were not devoted to any of these arts, but only to magic as it has been described. And this is praiseworthy.”[1819] Thus Albert not merely defends the Magi, he praises magic; and we begin to see the fitness of the epithet, Magnus in magia, as applied to him.

Natural magic.

But how does this praiseworthy magic differ from the magic which he condemned in his Summa and commentary on the Sentences? Presumably in that its objects are good not evil, and that it does not make any use of demons. It would seem to resemble closely the natural magic of William of Auvergne. It is like evil magic in that both employ the forces of nature and the influences of the stars, but it is unlike it in that it employs them exclusively and is free from any resort to demons and also apparently from the use of incantations or the superstitious devices of geomancers and other diviners.

Attitude in the scientific treatises.

If in his theological writings Albert thus distinguishes two varieties of magic, one good and one evil, one demoniacal and one natural, we need not be surprised if in his scientific treatises, where he is influenced mainly by Arabian astrology, the pseudo-Aristotelian treatises, the Hermetic literature, and other such writings rather than by patristic literature, he introduces yet a third conception of magic, which scarcely agrees with either of the others and yet has features in common with both. He nowhere in his commentaries on Aristotle or other works of natural science really stops and discusses magic at any length. But there are a number of brief and incidental allusions to it which imply that it is a distinct and definite branch of knowledge of which, although he himself does not treat, he gives no sign of disapproval. He also cites even enchanters and necromancers without offering any apology, and now seems to regard as sub-divisions of magic those occult arts from which we have just heard him exculpate the Magi.

Use of animals and herbs in magic.

In his treatise on animals Albert states that anointing a sleeper’s temples with the blood of a hoopoe makes him see terrible dreams, and that enchanters value highly the brain, tongue, and heart of this bird. He adds, “But we shall not discuss this matter here, for the investigation of it belongs to another science,”—presumably to magic.[1820] In his treatise on plants he says that certain herbs seem to have “divine effects”[1821] which those who study magic follow up further. Examples are the betony, said to confer the power of divination, the verbena, used as a love charm, and the herb meropis, supposed to open closed seas, and many other such plants listed in the books of incantations of Hermes the philosopher and of Costa ben Luca the philosopher and in the books of physical ligatures. “Enchanter” (Incantator), apparently the author or title of a book, is cited more than once for the virtues of herbs, and what enchanters in general say is also mentioned.[1822] “According to the testimony of the praestigia of the magi” the juice of a certain herb drunk in water makes a person do or say whatever the magician says or does.[1823] Students of magic believe that the seed of another herb extinguishes lust.[1824] Necromancers avow that betony indicates the future when plucked with an adjuration of Aesculapius,[1825] and students of necromancy say that a man invoking demons should have a character painted on him with the herb Jusquiam,[1826] and that gods invoked by characters and seals and sacrifices present themselves more readily if frankincense is offered them.[1827] Such passages seem to indicate that Albert regarded occult virtues as largely the concern of magic, but that at least in necromancy the invocation of gods and demons also enters.

Magic stones.

Many allusions to magic occur in Albert’s treatise on minerals, as the especially marvelous powers attributed to gems in antiquity might well lead us to expect. The magi, he tells us, make much use of the stone diacodos, which is said to excite phantasms but loses its virtue if it touches a corpse.[1828] But such things do not come within Albert’s present scope; he refers the reader for further information to the books of magic of Hermes, Ptolemy, and Thebith ben Chorath. The stone magnet is also stated in the magic books to have a marvelous power of producing phantasms, especially if consecrated with an adjuration and a character.

Magic images engraved on gems.

Albert twice assures us that the “prodigious and marvelous” powers of stones, and more particularly of images and seals engraved on stones, cannot be really understood without a knowledge of the three other sciences of magic, necromancy, and astrology.[1829] He therefore will not in this treatise on minerals discuss the subject as fully as he might, “since those powers cannot be proved by physical laws (principiis physicis), but require a knowledge of astronomy and magic and the necromantic sciences, which should be considered in other treatises.”[1830] For the reason why gems were first so engraved he refers his readers to “the science of the magi which Magor Graecus and Germa of Babylon and Hermes the Egyptian were among the first to perfect, and in which later wise Ptolemy was a marvelous light and Geber of Spain; Tebith, too, handed down a full treatment of the art.”[1831] And in this science it is a fundamental principle that all things produced by nature or art are influenced by celestial virtues. Thus we comprehend the close connection of astrology and magic. As for necromancy, the third “science” involved, Albert’s associates are curious to know the doctrine of images even if it is necromancy, and Albert does not hesitate to assure them that it is a good doctrine in any case. Yet in his theological writings he not only condemned necromancy, but declared the art of images to be evil “because it inclines to idolatry by imputing divinity to the stars, and ... is employed for idle or evil ends.”[1832]

Magic and alchemy; finding hidden metals.

Albert again refers to magic in his discussion of alchemy in the treatise on minerals, where he not only cites Hermes a great deal but refers to writings by Avicenna on magic and alchemy.[1833] Albert holds that it is not the business of a physical or natural scientist (physicus) to determine concerning the transmutation of metals; that is the affair of the art of alchemy, which thus seems to lie outside the field of natural science upon the borders of magic. Similarly the problem in what places and mountains and by what signs metals are discovered falls partly within the sphere of natural science and partly belongs to that magical science which has to do with finding hidden treasure. Albert perhaps has the employment of the divining rod in mind.

Fascination and magic.

The occult virtue of the human mind is another matter which Albert seems inclined to place within the field of magic. In the treatise on minerals[1834] he remarks that whether fascination is true or not is a question for magic to settle, and in his On Sleep and Waking[1835] he cites Avicenna and Algazel as adducing “fascination and magic virtues” as examples of occult influence exerted by one man over another. It will be remembered that he cited the same authors anent fascination in his Commentary on the Sentences,[1836] but there denied that fascination or magic could harm anyone who had firm faith in God, although he illustrated the possibility of potent human occult virtue exercised at will by the marvelous virtues exerted constantly by the sapphire and emerald. Peter of Prussia gives us to understand that Albert’s belief was that fascination did not operate naturally but by the aid of demons; nevertheless certain men are generated at rare intervals who work marvels like the twins in Germany in Albert’s time at whose approach bolts would open.[1837]

Interpretation of dreams and magic.

Albert also regards the interpretation of dreams as especially the affair of magic. In one passage of On Sleep and Waking[1838] he grants that probably the art of interpreting dreams cannot be acquired without a knowledge of magic and “astronomy.” In a second passage[1839] he speaks of the magicians as teaching the interpretation of dreams and the “astronomers” as talking of signs of prophecies, but not the sort of prophecy accepted among theologians. In a third passage[1840] he defines the kind of dreams “which wise men interpret and for which was invented the art of interpretation in the magical sciences.” Albert seems to have no particular objection, either moral or religious, to the interpretation of dreams, even if it is a branch of magic. Rather he censures Aristotle and other philosophers for not having investigated this side of the subject further, and he thinks that by physical science alone one can at least determine what sort of dreams are of value for purposes of divination and are susceptible to interpretation.[1841] Magicians make great use not only of dreams but also of visions seen when one is awake but with the senses distracted.[1842] The magicians indeed specialize in potions which clog and stupefy the senses, and thereby produce apparitions by means of which they predict the future.

Magic and divination.

In this same treatise On Sleep and Waking Albert lists together “the astronomer and augur and magician and interpreter of dreams and visions and every such diviner.”[1843] He admits that almost all men of this type delight in deception and are poorly educated and confuse what is contingent with what is necessary, but he insists that “the defect is not in the science but in those who abuse it.” Thus magic and divination in general are closely associated.

Summary of Albert’s accounts of magic.

This last passage, like the connecting of enchanters and necromancers with magic which we have noted in a previous paragraph, is hard to reconcile with the passage in his commentary upon the Gospel of Matthew where Albert separated the Magi and magic from diviners, enchanters, necromancers, and their arts. So far as mere classification is concerned, Albert’s references to magic in his scientific writings are in closer accord with his discussion of magic in the Summa and Sentences, where too he associated magic with the stars, with occult virtues, with fascination, and with images. But the emphasis which he there laid upon the evil character of magic and its connection with demons is now almost entirely lacking. Our attention is rather being continually called to how closely magic, or at least some parts of it, border upon natural science and astronomy. And yet we are also always being reminded that magic, although itself a “science,” is essentially different in methods and results from natural science or at least from what Albert calls “physical science.” Overlapping both these fields, apparently, and yet rather distinct from both in Albert’s thought, is the great subject of “astronomy” which includes both the genuine natural science and the various vagaries of astrology. It is all like some map of a feudal area where certain fiefs owe varying degrees of fealty to, or are claimed by, several lords and where the frontiers are loose, fluctuating, and uncertain. Perhaps the rule of the stars can be made to account for almost everything in natural science or in magic, but Albert seems inclined to leave room for the independent action of divine power, the demons, and the human mind and will. But his attitude to the stars and to astrology will be considered more fully later; we shall first examine in more detail his own attitude towards marvelous virtues in inferior nature and towards some of the other matters which he has located expressly or by implication along the ill-defined frontier of “magic and astronomy.” In concluding the present section let us make the one further observation that while Albert describes magic differently and even inconsistently in different passages, it is evident enough that he is trying to describe the same thing all the time.

IV. Marvelous Virtues in Nature

Properties of the lion.

So many instances have already been given from other authors of the occult virtues ascribed to parts of animals that we shall note in Albert’s treatise on animals only two or three passages, chiefly for purposes of comparison. The properties which he ascribes to the carcass of the lion,[1844] for instance, bear a certain resemblance to Pliny’s paragraph on its medicinal virtues and to Thomas of Cantimpré’s compilation concerning it, yet are considerably different. Its fat is hotter than that of other animals, and they flee from anyone who is anointed with it, while fumigation therewith keeps wolves away from sheep. A diet of lion’s flesh benefits paralytics. Garments wrapped in its skin are secure from moths, and the hair falls out of a wolf’s skin which is left near a lion’s skin. If the tooth of a lion which is called caninus is suspended about a boy’s neck before he loses his first teeth, he will be free from toothache when his second teeth come. Lion’s fat mixed with other unguents removes blotches, and rubbing cancer with its blood cures that disease. Drinking a little of its gall cures jaundice; its liver in wine checks pain in the liver. Its brain, if eaten, causes madness; but remedies deafness, if inserted in the ear with some strong oil. Its testicle, administered pulverized with roses, causes sterility—a case, it would seem, of sympathetic magic operating by contraries. But no doctrine of sympathy and antipathy is needed to explain the further assertion that its excrement drunk with wine makes one abhor wine.

Nasty recipes: illusory lights.

The last two items are very characteristic of Albert’s section on quadrupeds, where the medicinal and other properties of such parts as stercus, virga, and testiculus are incessantly mentioned, and are sometimes used in charms, as in the following: “Si virga lupi in alicuius nomine viri vel mulieris ligetur, non poterit coire donec nodus ille solutus fuerit.”[1845] The saliva of a fasting human being cures abscesses and removes scars and blotches.[1846] It kills serpent or scorpion, if it falls into its mouth or wound so as to reach its inner parts. If the tip of an arrow or sword has touched the lips of a fasting man, it inflicts a poisonous wound, say those who have tested it. Others say that if the wax and dirt from dogs’ ears are smeared on wicks of new cotton, and these are placed in a crucible in green oil and lighted, the heads of persons present will appear entirely bald.[1847] This sort of half-magical, half-chemical experiment with various combustible or illuminating compositions, which are supposed to produce optical or other illusions, is not infrequently met with in medieval manuscripts, especially alchemical ones, and we shall in a later chapter encounter further specimens thereof in works ascribed to Albert himself.

Dragons.

Albert is rather unusually sceptical concerning dragons, which are generally the theme of so many marvelous stories. That a dragon is large enough to crush an elephant with a twist of its tail, that the Ethiopians eat the flesh of dragons to cool themselves, that dragons are afraid of thunder and therefore enchanters imitate it with drums in order to capture dragons and ride on them through space,[1848]—all such assertions Albert treats as rumors rather than tested facts. He also suggests that meteors or flaming vapors have been mistaken for dragons flying through the air and breathing forth fire. We have already, however, heard his tale of a serpent with a human face.

The basilisk.

Albert still believes, moreover, that the mere glance and hiss of the basilisk are fatal. But while the reptile’s glance will kill as far as its vision extends, its hiss is not fatal as far as it can be heard but only as far as it is propagated by the basilisk’s breath.[1849] Albert rejects as neither true nor reasonable Pliny’s assertion that if a man sees a basilisk first, his glance is fatal to it. “Nor do Avicenna and Semerion, philosophers who tell what they have experienced, mention this.” But Albert repeats Pliny’s story of the horseman who was killed by touching with the end of his long lance a corpse slain by a basilisk. He rejects, however, as false and impossible the notion that the basilisk is generated from a cock’s egg, and the books of wise philosophers do not support the assertion that there is a flying variety of basilisk. But scattering the ashes of a basilisk expels spiders and other venomous creatures, and hence in antiquity its ashes were scattered in temples. Hermes says that silver rubbed with its ash takes on the splendor and weight and solidity of gold; Hermes also teaches that the basilisk is generated in glass, but Albert interprets this as an allusion to some alchemical elixir by which metals are transmuted.

Remedies for falcons and mad dogs.

Very amusing are the detailed recipes for every ailment of the birds in the chapters on the infirmities of falcons. [1850] These appear to be culled chiefly from the works on falconry of the Emperor Frederick and of King William, one of the Norman line which preceded him in the kingdom of Sicily. To make the birds fierce one is advised to feed them flesh soaked in urine. If a falcon develops a cataract, one should inject into its eye a mixture of pulverized fennel seed and the milk of a woman bearing a male child. Several prayers and incantations are recommended for use when taking up the falcon in the morning, when releasing it in fowling, and in order to preserve it from injury from eagles. In the last case the words to be repeated are, “Leo conquers of the tribe of Judah, root of David, Alleluia.” Albert adds, however, “But these last items,” meaning probably the incantations, “are not so reasonable as the first,” meaning probably the more purely medicinal directions. Equally diverting is a cure of a mad dog borrowed by Albert from a king of Valencia. For nine days the hound should be so immersed in hot water that his hind legs barely touch the ground while his fore legs are held erect. After that his head should be shaved and his hair well plucked out so that the skin is wounded. Then he should be anointed with beet juice and ducked often and soaked in the same juice. “And if he eats anything, give him some pith of the elder tree, for it will do him good. And if this treatment fails to benefit him within the space of seven days, kill him, for he is incurable.”[1851]

Habits and remedies of animals.

Albert’s treatise on animals not only ascribes marvelous properties and medicinal virtues to various portions of their carcasses, but also continues to some extent the tradition of crediting them with semi-human intelligence and medical knowledge. Albert discredits, however, the report of the adultery of the lioness with the leopard and her craftiness in concealing it, and he also rejects as contrary to the wise provision of nature the statement that the lion suffers continually from quartan fever.[1852] But he believes that a sick lion cures itself by eating an ape or drinking the blood of a dog. Even the tortoise (tortuca?), although it seems to Albert a sort of reptile and lacking in “noble virtues of the soul,” yet from mere natural sagacity eats wild origanum after it has eaten the viper in order to overcome the chill of the venom by the heat of the herb.[1853] And someone in Aristotle’s time learned by experience that it will not eat a viper except in a place where this herb is available, and that if the herb is removed while it is eating the viper it will die from want of it. Avicenna tells a similar experience of an old man who was an experienced hunter and deserving credence. He saw a bird of slow movement and weak flight fighting with a viper. As often as it was wounded, it would retreat, eat some of a certain herb, and then return renewed to the fight. The observer covertly removed the herb and when the bird returned again and failed to find it, it raised a great outcry and died. From the old hunter’s description of the plant’s shape and color Avicenna judged it to be wild lettuce (lectuca agrestis).

The virtues of herbs.

Thus the remedies employed by animals bring us to the virtues of herbs. The “divine effects” of certain plants, as we have seen, Albert regards as lying within the province of magic rather than that of his treatise on plants, but he mentions a few, such as that planting a certain herb on the roof protects the house from lightning,[1854] and that carrying another stirs up quarrels and hatreds,[1855] while a woman who wears a third about her neck will not become pregnant.[1856] But he believes that there is strong virtue in herbs in general. Their elemental qualities are unusually acute and closely akin to the excellencies of the pure elements. They grow close to the ground and “recede less from the first fertilizing humor in the earth.”[1857] In them matter predominates more and the form of the vegetable soul is less developed than in other kinds of vegetation. Consequently they are more efficacious in altering other bodies and are used by physicians more than any other class of remedies.

Their medicinal use.

Most, indeed, of the virtues of herbs mentioned by Albert are medicinal. Sometimes the method of applying them is injudicious, as when a root of parsley is hung from the neck to cure toothache, or artemisia is bound to the legs to prevent wayfarers from feeling weariness.[1858] More often, however, our criticism is that the same disease is represented as curable by too many different plants, or that a single herb is made a cure for a long list of very miscellaneous and unrelated ills, not content with which Albert often concludes, “And it has many other effects.” Selecting an example at random, we may note what he says of the nasturtium.[1859] “It possesses acidity, is hot and dry, acts as a gentle purgative and laxative, and dries up the putridity of an empty belly. Used as a potion and liniment, it keeps the hair from falling out. Combined with salt and water, it helps abscesses and carbuncles, and mixed with honey, it eradicates Persian Fire and is good for all softening of the muscles. It purifies the lungs and relieves asthma by its sharp, cutting qualities. It warms the stomach and liver and cures enlarged spleen, but its disturbing quality is bad for the stomach. Auget coitum et multiplicat menstrua et eiicit foetum, sed tamen si non teratur et confringatur, retinet ipsum. It is good for venomous bites, and if carefully prepared, works many other effects.”

Occult virtue of herbs due to the stars.

According to Albert the properties of plants are produced by the combination of five virtues: that of the element which preponderates in the composition of the plant, the cooperating virtue of the other elements which are mixed with it, the virtue of the proportion in which they are mixed, the influence of the stars, and the virtue of the vegetable soul. “The virtue of the place (where the plant grows) and the virtue of the surrounding air are also effective, but they do not enter into the plant’s nature so essentially as the aforesaid five virtues.”[1860] “Its specific form,” upon which its occult virtues largely depend, is given to the plant by the motion of the heavens, especially by the movement of the planets through the circle of the zodiac,[1861] and their position in relation to the fixed stars. Plants receive this influence at the time of their formation, when vapors, potentially seminal and formative, ascend from the depths of earth and meet the dewy air as it descends.

Occult virtue of stones.

It is unnecessary to repeat the marvelous powers attributed to particular gems and stones by Albert in his treatise on minerals, since they are either copied from or similar to those of Marbod, Costa ben Luca, and Constantinus Africanus. What, however, he has to say on the general subject of their occult virtue is worth noting. He states that many doubt if stones really have such powers as to cure ulcers, counteract poisons, conciliate human hearts, and win victories. Such sceptics contend that a compound substance like a gem can exert only such powers as one can account for from the elements which enter into its composition and the composition itself. Albert grants that the wonders worked by means of stones seem “more prodigious and marvelous” than those produced by simple substances, that the physical constitution of stones does not seem to justify the existence of such powers in them, and that “the cause of the virtue of stones is indeed occult.” But he maintains that such occult virtues are well established by experience, “since we see the magnet attract iron and the adamant restrict that virtue in the magnet.”[1862] Albert has seen with his own eyes a sapphire which removed ulcers.

Due to the stars.

Albert finds that students of nature (physiologi)—it will be noted that the word cannot possibly refer here to the authors of such works as the Physiologus—have assigned very diverse causes for this marvelous virtue of stones. He rejects as “most absurd” the suggestion of certain Pythagoreans that it is due to the action of souls or of a world-soul in stones. Alexander Aphrodisiensis argues from the operations of alchemy that some chemical change makes the compound stone far more potent than any or all of its constituents. Plato thinks that all inferior objects are imbued with superior ideas; Hermes and Avicenna suggest that celestial virtue is responsible. Albert himself concludes that the occult virtue of stones resides in their specific forms, in which, as in the case of herbs, the influence of the stars plays the chief part. Albert’s discussion of the virtue of gems is repeated in a Summa philosophiae ascribed to Robert Grosseteste, but in part at least written after his death. The author regards “Albert of Cologne” as having “spoken more certainly than others in this matter.”[1863]

Pseudo-Albert De lapidibus.

Albert’s discussion of the engraving of images and seals on stones in his treatise on minerals has already been mentioned in connection with his attitude toward magic and will come up again in connection with his attitude towards astrology. Besides the treatise on minerals there seems to be another work on stones ascribed to Albert which is spurious. It deals with the colors and virtues of stones, and, like Thetel and the fourteenth book of Thomas of Cantimpré, with their sculpture and consecration.[1864]

Alchemy.

In his third book concerning minerals Albert judiciously discusses alchemy, citing Avicenna and Hermes especially. He says that of all the arts alchemy most closely imitates nature.[1865] Albert regards the various metals as distinct species, and hardly accepts the assertions of Hermes, Gilgil, Empedocles, and other alchemists that in each metal there are several species and natures, one manifest and another occult,[1866] one external and another internal, one superficial and another deep. Albert then considers the remark of Avicenna, incorrectly ascribed by some to Aristotle, that the alchemists cannot alter species but can make them appear alike, as when they color copper so that it seems to be gold.[1867] Avicenna has also remarked in his Alchemy, however, that species can perhaps be reduced to first matter and then by the aid of the art formed into the species of the desired metal. Albert thinks that perhaps, as physicians by their medicines purge away corrupt matter and afterwards restore health, so skilled alchemists may purify a great mass of quicksilver and sulphur, which according to Avicenna are the material constituents of all metals, and then combine these in due ratio of elemental and celestial virtues for the composition of the metal which they wish to obtain.[1868] But those who merely color the metal white or yellow, while the species of the baser metal remains in the material, are beyond doubt deceivers and do not make true gold or true silver. Unfortunately all alchemists proceed in this fashion to a greater or less extent, and Albert has subjected gold made by them to fire and has found that it is finally consumed, after it has stood the test of fire perhaps six or seven times.

Albert thus suggests that the transmutation of metals by means of human art is possible, although he does not regard the alchemists as having yet employed the right method. But it is hard to see how Peter of Prussia got the notion that Albert had condemned the art of alchemy in the De mineralibus and could not be the author of a treatise on the subject.[1869] In other passages Albert speaks of alchemy without disapproval and apparently with respect. He cites “alchemical experiments” concerning the evaporation of water when heated.[1870] He repeats the argument of Alexander of Aphrodisias that the occult virtues of gems are due to the mixture of the elements in them, as is proved by the operations of alchemy, in which simple substances effect little, but when mixed together produce truly marvelous effects.[1871] And as one instance of the influence exerted by the moon he states that skilled alchemists work during the waxing of the moon because then they produce purer metals and purer stones, especially when they are really expert and do not hurry their operations but await the opportune time when the process will be aided by celestial virtue.[1872] On the whole, however, as these passages show, Albert’s mentions of alchemy are mainly allusive. He does not treat of it fully in his Aristotelian treatises apparently because, as we saw earlier, he regarded it as a separate subject from physics or physical science, bordering more on the field of natural magic. The question therefore next arises whether he ever wrote a work or works dealing especially with alchemy, just as the question will arise whether he ever wrote any works in the field of natural magic.

Works of alchemy ascribed to Albert.

Berthelot gives the impression in his La Chimie au Moyen Age[1873] that there was but one alchemistic treatise current under the name of Albertus Magnus. This he describes as a serious and methodical work but written a little after Albert’s time. But the manuscripts seem to contain several, or rather, nearly a dozen, different works of alchemy ascribed to Albert.[1874] In the University library at Bologna alone there appear to be six different alchemistic treatises ascribed to Albert, and three of them in one manuscript. [1875] In one manuscript of the British Museum is a rather lengthy “Practica of Brother Albert in alchemy which is called by the same the Secret of Secrets,” in seven books. The text, however, cites Albert’s work on minerals, stating that the Latins in general have discovered very little for themselves experimentally in alchemy but have been dependent upon translations from other languages, but that “Albert, once of Ratisbon, the crown of the Latins,” studied it and discovered some secrets by experimentation, as he bears witness in his “De mineralibus.”[1876] Presently Albert is again cited in a list of old masters who labored at this art, Alexander the Great, Dioscorides, and others.[1877] In another manuscript at the British Museum is a much briefer Of the hidden things of nature ascribed to Albertus Magnus.[1878] What seems to be still another brief tract on alchemy ascribed to Albert occurs in a manuscript at Cambridge. It concludes with the statement, “And I Albert say that I have tested these two operations and that there is no other perfect work by me except these two works, and they are true. Euclid, too, and many philosophers agree with me and assert that all the value of this art consists in Mercury and the Moon and in Mercury and the Sun, and you should know that all others are vain and illusory. Thanks to God.”[1879]

A more detailed description of one of them: preface.

Of these various treatises in alchemy ascribed to Albert we shall now consider in more detail the one which has been included in editions of his works,[1880] and which is perhaps the most likely of any of them to be genuine. It is ascribed to Albert in a manuscript list of the writings of Dominicans drawn up before 1350, and also by Pignon.[1881] It is also an unusually intelligible treatise for a work of alchemy and so the better lends itself to description and summary. After opening in devout tone with praise of God and invocation of His aid, the author proceeds to tell in somewhat Albertine style how he has traversed many regions, provinces, cities, and castles with great labor for the sake of the science which is called alchemy, and has diligently inspected the books on the subject by men of erudition and learning, but has found nothing true in them. He has also encountered “many very rich men, scholars, abbots, praepositi, canons, physicians, and illiterate persons,” who have expended much money and toil without result. He did not despair, however, but went to infinite expense and labor, keeping his eyes open and constantly moving from place to place, until at last he found what he sought “not by any science of mine but by the grace of the Holy Spirit.” He therefore, the least of philosophers, intends to write to his friends and associates concerning this art, true, easy, and infallible, yet so that seeing they shall not see and hearing they shall not understand. And he adjures them to keep it secret and not to show his book to the foolish.

Experimental method and equipment.

After this preface, the first of the fifty-seven chapters, for the most part brief, into which the treatise is divided, lists various “errors” which have made the previous efforts of alchemists a failure. The author also strikes an experimental key-note for his work, stating that after seeing so many fail he has decided to write true and approved works and the best which all the philosophers have to offer, works furthermore in which he has labored and which he has tested by experience, and he will write nothing but what he has seen with his own eyes.[1882] After suggesting a derivation for the word “alchemy”[1883] and a theory for the origin of metals and “proof that alchemy is a true art,”[1884] the author lays down eight precepts for alchemists to follow. The alchemist should work silently and secretly or he may be arrested as a counterfeiter. He should have a laboratory, “a special house away from the sight of men in which there are two or three rooms in which experiments may be conducted.”[1885] He must observe time and seasons; the process of sublimation, for instance, cannot be successfully performed in winter. He must be a sedulous, persevering, untiring, and constant worker. In his operations he must observe due order: first contributio; then sublimatio; third, fixio; fourth, calcinatio; fifth, solutio; sixth, coagulatio; processes which are further explained in chapters 30 to 35. All the vessels which he uses should be made of glass. He should fight shy of princes and potentates, and finally, should have plenty of money. Chapters four to eight then deal with the subject of furnaces, and chapter nine tells how to glaze clay vessels.

Differences between transmuted and natural metals.

In the tenth chapter, besides discussing what are the four “spirits” of metals which dye or color, the author states his opinion as to the extent to which metals can be transmuted. He believes that metals can be produced by alchemy which are the equal of natural metals in almost all their qualities and effects, except that the iron of alchemy is not attracted by the stone adamant, and that the gold of alchemy does not stimulate the human heart or cure leprosy, while a wound inflicted by it swells up as one made by natural gold would not do. “But in every other operation, hammering, testing, and color, it will endure forever.” In the two following chapters the author discusses what the Elixir is and the kinds of medicines.

Substances and processes of alchemy.

A number of chapters are next devoted to description of various minerals, chemicals, dyes, and coloring matter, such as mercury, sulphur, orpiment, arsenic, salts of ammonia, common salt, various other salts, azure, minium, ceruse, and so on. We are then instructed in various processes such as whitening quicksilver or sulphur or orpiment or arsenic, the making of powders, solutions, and distillations, leading up finally in the last two chapters to two brief recipes for the making of the precious metals. The general plan of this treatise is one to which many others conform; it is noteworthy further for the absence of mysticism and magic procedure.

Ligatures and suspensions.

We have already noted in Albert’s works some instances of marvels worked by herbs bound to the body or suspended from the neck. In his treatise on plants he cited books concerning physical ligatures[1886] for the divine effects of plants with which magic is especially concerned. But in his treatise on minerals, after stating that the marvels worked by images engraved on gems cannot be explained by the laws of physical science but require a knowledge of “astronomy” and magic and necromancy,[1887] he adds that ligatures and suspensions of stones seem to operate naturally and belong more to physical science.[1888] He cites, however, Socrates, probably through the medium of Costa ben Luca, to the effect that ligatures and suspensions are one of four kinds of incantations, and that they affect the mind, depressing or elating it and so affecting the health of the body. This half-sceptical attitude seems to influence Albert little, for he states that for the present he intends to treat only of ligatures and suspensions of stones, of which he proceeds to list examples for a page and a half drawn largely from Costa ben Luca’s treatise. In his work on animals Albert again quotes Costa ben Luca to the effect that dogs will not bite the wearer of a dog’s heart.[1889] Others say that they will not bark at one who holds in his hand the tooth of a black dog, “and so robbers carry such a tooth with them at night.” Albert further finds in the book of sixty animals—probably the work ascribed to Rasis—that dog’s teeth should be suspended from the neck of a patient suffering from jaundice.

Incantations.

Albert does not expressly discuss the power of words or incantations. It is rarely that he repeats any incantations, and it will be remembered that those which he quoted from books on falcons were accompanied with a word of caution. His belief in the power of characters or images engraved on gems may be best discussed in connection with his attitude towards astrology.

Fascination.

The power of fascination possessed by one human being over another is touched upon by Albert in three different treatises.[1890] We have already heard him identify it with magic. He cites certain Pythagoreans as affirming that the soul of a man or other animal can act upon another, fascinating it and impeding its working. He quotes Hermes as telling Esclepius that man is so endowed with divine intellect and raised above the world, that its matter follows his thought, and so the sage can work transformations and miracles in nature or fascinate another person through sight or some other sense. Avicenna and Algazel “say that souls can in so far conform to the celestial intelligence that it will alter material bodies at their pleasure, and then such a man will work wonders.” It is not clear, however, to what extent Albert agrees with the authorities he has cited; he remarks that the power of the soul in fascination can scarcely be proved by philosophy, but he perhaps simply means that it can be proved by magic.

Physiognomy.

In a passage of his treatise on animals[1891] Albert describes physiognomy as a science which divines a man’s character from the physical form of the various parts of his body. He explains, however, that the configuration of one’s physical features does not absolutely force one to a corresponding course of action. Thus he upholds human free will against a mechanistic view of man, or rather he shows that the physiognomists themselves do. He cites Aristotle, to whom we have seen that a treatise on physiognomy was ascribed, for the following story: The disciples of Hippocrates made a perfect image of him and submitted it to an excellent physiognomist, who declared it the likeness of a man given to luxury, deceit, and lusts of the body. The disciples were angered at this slur upon the character of their master, who they knew lived a sober and upright life; but Hippocrates himself told them that the physiognomist had judged aright as to his natural traits, and that it was only by love of philosophy and integrity and a life of study and effort that he had triumphed over nature. A treatise on chiromancy is ascribed to Albert in more than one manuscript.[1892]

Aristotle on divination from dreams.

In the third book of his De somno et vigilia[1893] Albert complains that Aristotle’s treatment of divination from dreams is unsatisfactory; being “brief, deficient in proof, naïve, unphilosophical, imperfect,” and having “many doubtful points because it leaves the causes of such dreams uncertain.” Aristotle’s attitude was in fact a vacillating one, since he found it “not easy either to despise or to believe” in that kind of divination. Yet Roger Bacon tells us that one reason why the study of the books of Aristotle on natural philosophy was forbidden at Paris before 1237 was this third book of his De somno et vigilia dealing with divination from dreams.[1894] But perhaps this was because of commentaries of Averroes which accompanied it or errors in translation of which Bacon speaks.

Albert on divination from dreams.

Little as Aristotle said, he came nearer the truth in Albert’s opinion than any other extant philosophers, among whom there is great diversity of view. However, that dreams are prophetic “is no idle report but the testimony of experience,”[1895] and Albert thinks that there is scarcely anyone who has not been warned in his dreams of many future events. “Socrates put great faith in divination from dreams.”[1896] Interpretation of dreams is necessary, for dreams cannot be exact images of future events, since these are as yet non-existent.[1897] Predictions from dreams, even if correctly made, do not invariably come true, just as medical prognostications and the predictions of augurs—of whom we are surprised to hear Albert speak approvingly—sometimes fail owing to the arising of some conflicting cause.[1898] The dreamer must be free from care and passion. Albert agrees with Aristotle that dreams requiring interpretation do not come from God but have a natural cause; while the future cannot be foretold from dreams which have an accidental cause.[1899] More specifically he finds the cause of dreams not, like Socrates and Plato, in demons and corporeal and incorporeal gods,[1900] nor, like Democritus, in atoms streaming from the stars through the pores of the dreamer into his inmost soul, but in the motion of the stars acting upon the body of man, who is in a sense a microcosm or image of the universe (imago mundi).[1901] The interpreter of dreams must be quick to see associations and similarities from the realm of nature and of art, he must understand astronomy and astrology, and the state of health and mind of the dreamer.[1902] Albert again discusses divination from dreams in much the same way in the second part of his Summa de creaturis and in his De apprehensione.[1903]

Augury.

In the De somno et vigilia he mentions one further variety of vision “when the celestial influence is so strong that it affects even while awake one whose attention is not occupied by the distractions of sense.” Such visions move the bodies of animals even when they are awake, “and then their movements have some future signification, which augurs endeavor to note and interpret. On so much ground of reason is divination by augury based.”[1904]

V. Attitude Toward Astrology

His emphasis upon the influence of the stars.

We come finally to that influence of the heavens and stars which makes the art of augury and divination from dreams possible, which serves to explain the occult virtue of herbs and stones, and to that “astronomy,” or astrology as we should say, which is so closely associated with the science of the magi and with necromancy. Albert’s astrological view’s crop out in almost all his scientific treatises rather than merely in those dealing with astronomical subjects, such as the Meteorology, the De coelo et mundo, and the De causis et procreatione universi. Especially astrological in character is the treatise On the Causes and Properties of the Elements and Planets.[1905]

Problem of the authorship of the Speculum astronomiae.

Another treatise very important in the history of astrology is the Speculum astronomiae, hitherto usually placed among Albert’s works[1906] but recently declared by Father Mandonnet[1907] to be the work of Roger Bacon. Although Mandonnet adduced no evidence of manuscripts in favor of the Baconian authorship, other students of Roger Bacon[1908] have since unquestioningly accepted this attribution of the Speculum to him, but I shall show that there is no good reason for it. This may best be done, however, by delaying our consideration of the Speculum astronomiae itself until after we have taken up Roger Bacon and his views. But in our present discussion of Albert’s other writings we may break the backbone of Mandonnet’s argument, which is his extraordinary contention that Albert did not believe in astrology and that Roger Bacon was “the only ecclesiastical author in the second half of the thirteenth century who has undertaken the defense of judicial astrology and of the other occult sciences which depend more or less directly upon it.”[1909] Mandonnet criticized Charles for saying of Roger Bacon’s astrological views, “These doctrines, which seem contemptible to us, were widespread in the thirteenth century; Albert was not free from them; St. Thomas merely expressed some reservations but did not deny the science.” Mandonnet declares that Charles “has given no evidence for his conclusion and could not do so,”[1910] but our detailed presentation of the opinions of the men named and of others will show that Charles was quite right and that Mandonnet is all wrong.

Mandonnet fails to prove Albert hostile to astrology.

Mandonnet, in fact, gives no sign of having ever candidly examined the works of Albert to see what his attitude towards astrology really was, so that it seems arrant presumption on his part to question Charles’ statement. And he himself gives no justification for having questioned it. He cites only one passage directly from Albert’s works, and it is merely a repetition of the argument of the saints that the star at Christ’s birth was a miraculous apparition in the upper air rather than the sky.[1911] Then he quotes three passages from the fifteenth century biography of Peter of Prussia as if they were Albert’s own statements. If they are, why does not Mandonnet state where they are to be found in Albert’s works? Also why does he not state that these passages occur in chapters where Peter is making an effort, none too successful or disingenuous, to defend Albert from the charge of having devoted too much attention to nigromancy and such arts rather than to mere astrology? Mandonnet does note that Peter believed Albert to be the author of the Speculum astronomiae, but he does not note that Peter in these very chapters which he cites relies chiefly on the Speculum astronomiae to clear Albert from the charge of dabbling in nigromancy. In brief, Peter proves from the Speculum that Albert did not favor nigromancy; then Mandonnet proves from Peter that Albert did not believe in astrology and so could not have written the Speculum! In succeeding chapters[1912] Peter goes on to try to make out from the Speculum that Albert opposed astrological images and interrogations and that he was more outspoken against them than Aquinas. But this Mandonnet says nothing of, and it would not fit his argument.

The passages from Peter which Mandonnet does select as suited to his purpose are as follows:

“The pursuits of magicians and necromancers are evil and superfluous and forbidden by the church.... That mathematici or idolaters sometimes predict the future is the outcome of conjecture and fatuous presumption, not of certitude.... There are three things to which some men have recourse, namely, sorcerers, enchanters, and mathematici, but which really are not wisdom but foolishness, for the Chaldeans rely on such methods. The mathematici seek to reduce the effects of the stars to fixed hours, and those who investigate such things are far from the one science of God.”[1913]

Even if these passages are from Albert’s works, they are no proof that he condemned astrology. Roger Bacon penned very similar passages, and the Speculum astronomiae expresses no approval of either enchanters or sorcerers or magicians or mathematici. We have already repeatedly seen that mathematici was used in two senses and that one might condemn the mathematici as diviners and yet accept astrology. Albert himself made such a distinction in his Commentary on Matthew[1914] where he differentiates between two, or rather three, kinds of mathematics. One is the abstract science in our present sense of the word; the other, more properly called mathesis and pronounced with a long middle syllable, is “divination by the stars,” but it in turn may be either good or bad, superstitious or scientific. Thus it is proved by a direct examination of Albert’s writings that, contrary to the impression which Mandonnet strives to give by his citation from Peter of Prussia, even in his theological works Albert did not condemn all mathematici even, to say nothing of astrology. And we have further seen that in his scientific writings he sometimes does not condemn even magic. We shall now proceed to show from numerous passages in other works than the Speculum astronomiae how favorably inclined toward astrology Albert really was.

Nature of the heavens and the stars.

Albert accepts the Aristotelian description of the sky and heavenly bodies as formed of a fifth element distinct from the four elements of which earthly objects are composed.[1915] In another passage he subdivides the heavenly substance into three elements composing respectively the sun, the moon and stars, and the sky apart from the celestial bodies.[1916] In any case the stars are nobler than inferior bodies, “less involved in the shadows and privations of matter,” and closer to the first cause of the universe.[1917] Their motion is eternal, unchangeable, incorruptible.[1918] Some have called them animals but Albert holds that they are not animals in the sense that we apply that word to inferior creatures.[1919]

The First Cause and the spheres.

Again like Aristotle, Albert regards the heavens and stars as instruments of the first mover or intelligence, just as the hand is the instrument of the human intellect in making works of art.[1920] They are mediums between the first cause and matter. Albert believes in a number of heavens “existing from the first heaven to the sphere of the moon.”[1921] The first mover moves the first heaven and through it the other spheres included within it. Whether every other heaven has its own celestial intelligence to move it is a question upon which Albert is somewhat obscure.[1922] Others certainly thought so. He mentions, for instance, the opinion of certain Arabs that floods are due to the imagination of the intelligence which moves the sphere of the moon, and concedes that there is some truth in it.[1923] The ancient Stoics and Epicureans, he tells us in another passage, ascribed divinity to the virtue of the circle of the zodiac, which ruled and governed life under the God of gods, as they called the First Cause. Apuleius in the De deo Socratis says that they called the twelve signs incorporeal gods, and the planets and other stars corporeal gods, and the chief effects of the celestial virtue upon inferior nature terrestrial gods.[1924] But probably Albert mentions this merely as an illustration of the great influence exerted by the circle of the zodiac. In a third passage he says that the movers of the celestial spheres, whom the philosophers have called celestial intelligences, are mediate causes between the First Cause and matter; but he presently adds that philosophers of better understanding have said that there is only one Mover of everything, and that the so-called movers of the other spheres are but the virtues and members of the first heaven and its Mover.[1925] Translated from terms of Aristotelian physics into those of Christian theology, this means that the stars are merely God’s instruments, and that, if there are spirits or intelligences delegated to move the particular heavens, these angels are also merely God’s agents.

Things on earth ruled by the stars.

Since the celestial spheres and the stars are the instruments and mediums through which the First Cause governs the world of inferior creation, it follows that the four elements are generated by the motion of the heavens and that plants, stones, minerals, animals—in short, whatever exists in the inferior world is caused by the motion of the superior bodies. This general law that the world of nature and of life on this earth is governed by the movements of the stars is expressly repeated again and again in Albert’s works, and its truth is assumed even oftener.[1926] We may note by way of illustration a few of the specific applications of this general law to be found in Albert’s writings. Arguing the question whether life is possible in the torrid zone at the equator, Albert points out that the rays of the stars are more multiplied there and fall perpendicularly and directly and therefore are even more favorable to the generation of life than in our climate.[1927] In another passage he explains the pagan attribution of the thunderbolt to the god Jupiter as probably a mistake due to the influence of the planet Jupiter in provoking thunder-storms.[1928] A third passage ascribes the height of the inundation of the Nile to the planets, stating that Venus and the Moon produce a greater overflow than other drier stars.[1929]

Conjunctions.

Albert has a good deal to say of the effects produced by the conjunctions of the planets,[1930] ascribing to them great mortality and depopulation, or “great accidents and great prodigies and a general change of the state of the elements and of the world.”[1931] To a conjunction of Jupiter and Mars with others aiding in the sign of Gemini he attributes pestilential winds and corruption of the air resulting in a plague by which a multitude of men and beasts suddenly perish.[1932]

Comets.

Albert also discusses comets, and why they signify wars and the death of kings and potentates rather than of some poor man.[1933] Their especial connection with wars is explained by the astrologer Albumasar as due to their association with the planet Mars. As for kings, owing to their greater fame and power, the relation of celestial phenomena to their destinies has been observed more carefully than the fate of the poor, and as their horoscopes have more planetary dignity, so it is customary to refer greater portents to them.

Man and the stars.

Despite the allusion just made to royal horoscopes, Albert makes an exception to the control of the stars over this world in the case of man. Strictly speaking, however, this is no exception, since man is not to be classed with other inferiors inasmuch as his soul is a superior being, derived from the First Intelligence and still subject to Its illumination. “The essence of the soul is wholly and solely from the first cause.”[1934] It is true that Plato says that the soul receives something in each sphere or heaven, memory from the sphere of Saturn and so on; but Albert regards this doctrine as simply a description of the process of fitting the mind or soul to the body which it must occupy.

Free will.

But the human reason and will remain free and are not necessarily subjected to the movements of the stars. Thus in his theological Summa Albert admits that the stars govern even the souls, vegetable and sensitive, of plants and brutes, but denies that they coerce the loftier rational soul and will of man, who is made in the image of God, except as he yields to sin and the flesh.[1935] But this last is a very important exception as we see from a passage in the treatise on minerals.[1936] “There is in man a double spring of action, namely, nature and the will; and nature for its part is ruled by the stars, while the will is free; but unless it resists, it is swept along by nature and becomes mechanical (induratur).”

Ptolemy on free will.

Albert is aware that neither the Peripatetic philosophy nor the art of astrology itself slavishly subjects the human mind and will to the stars.[1937] Rather he keeps citing Ptolemy to show that the astrologers themselves do not believe in fatal necessity and that consequently the art of astrology is not incompatible with Christianity.[1938] Ptolemy declares that the mind apprehends the superior bodies in their spheres, and can freely turn away from those things towards which the motions of the stars incline it, and can turn towards other things by the wisdom of its intellect.[1939] In another passage Ptolemy is quoted as saying that the effects of the stars can be impeded by the science of men skilled in astrology.[1940] If the average “astronomer and augur and magician and interpreter of dreams and visions” has brought divination into disrepute, it is, says Albert in a third passage, because “almost all men of this class delight in deception and, being poorly educated, they think that what is merely contingent is necessary, and they predict that some event will certainly occur; and when it does not, those sciences are cheapened in the sight of unskilled men, although the defect is not in the science, but in those who abuse it. For this reason wise Ptolemy says that no judgment should be made except in general terms and with the cautious reservation that the stars act per aliud et accidens (subject to other forces and to accidents) and that their significations meet many impediments. Moreover, the pursuit of sciences dealing with the future would be idle, if one could not avoid what one foresaw.”[1941]

Nativities.

But free will no more restrains Albert than it did Ptolemy from accepting the art of genethlialogy[1942] or casting of nativities, as his mention of royal horoscopes has already suggested. He states elsewhere that the astrologer who understands the virtues of the signs of the zodiac and of the stars situated in them at the moment of birth can prognosticate so far as lies within the influence of the sky concerning the entire life of the person born.[1943] Indeed, Albert ascribed to Ptolemy a treatise De accidentibus parvis particularibus[1944] concerning the events in the life of the individual born under this or that constellation, as contrasted with great social events involving large numbers of men such as political revolutions, racial migrations, and religious movements, of which Ptolemy is said by Albert to have treated in another work in eight parts called De accidentibus magnis universalibus in mundo.[1945]

Galen on the stars and human generation.

Albert even believed that the influence of the stars upon man was stronger in some respects than upon other animals. He attributed to Galen in the treatise De spermate a statement, which I have failed to find in Galen’s De semine or other works, that “in the generation of brutes the sperm is not altered according to the order of the hours and the operations of the planets and signs as it is in man.” Albert prefers his own explanation of this circumstance to that offered by Galen. It is that the human body is less material and terrestrial than those of the brutes and more nearly resembles the heavens, and so more readily follows the impressions from the sky, and is a sort of microcosm as a beast is not. On the other hand, Albert grants that changes of the atmosphere and weather are felt more quickly by the beasts, who have little else to distract their attention.[1946]

Plato on boys and the stars.

Albert states that Plato, as well as Ptolemy and Galen, proved the influence of the stars upon human beings from the case of boys, who are still too young to make much use of free will against nature and the force of the heavens. For boys often display a special aptitude, due to celestial influence, for some one art and become perfect workmen if they are trained in it; but if they are forced into another occupation, never attain proficiency therein because of their natural ineptitude for it.[1947] This is of course the same point as was illustrated in the pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets by the story of the weaver’s son whose horoscope showed a predilection to govern, and the king’s son whose sole interest was in the mechanical arts.

The doctrine of elections.

Naturally Albert finds no difficulty in accepting the astrological doctrine of elections, by which the astrologer applies his knowledge of the movements and effects of the stars and their relationships to inferior bodies to the selection of a favorable hour for beginning a contemplated action.[1948] This doctrine of course implies and requires freedom of election and will, and shows that astrology is an operative as well as divining art. In another passage Albert mentions the famous and historic, as he regards it, royal example of eugenics, when Nectanabus, the natural father of Alexander, in having intercourse with his mother Olympias observed the hour when the Sun was entering Leo and Saturn was in Taurus, since he wished his son to receive the figure and force of those planets.[1949]

Influence of the stars on works of art.

If astrology is thus operative as well as divinatory by its power to select the proper and most advantageous moment for entering upon any course of action, and to harness so to speak the power of the planets, it becomes evident that it is or should be an all-important factor in all the arts. Albert well asserts therefore that a fundamental principle of this science is that all things which are made by nature or art are moved first by celestial virtues. He adds that no one doubts this concerning nature, and that it is also true of art, in which it is the influence of the stars which incites the artist to make something.[1950] The force of the stars is potent in alchemy, for example,[1951] for those who try to transmute metals and stones produce purer metals and stones when the moon is waxing and ascending, “and particularly the more skilful they are, not hurrying their operations, but awaiting the opportune time when the process is assisted by celestial virtue.”

Astrological images.

Of all the arts the most astrological is that of images, to which Albert devotes several chapters of his treatise on minerals.[1952] In it images of the stars are engraved on gems or metals at the favorable moment when the celestial force is strongest, “and marvels are worked by such images” because some force from the celestial figure flows into the work of art.[1953] Incidentally Albert remarks that “in the science of geomancy” the figures traced from the points are of no value unless they can be made to conform to such astronomical images. Albert mentions several particular astronomical conditions which must be observed in engraving such images. Gems from India are the best for this purpose. Some images engraved in antiquity are no longer efficacious. Albert gives a number of examples of the effects expected from these images.[1954] Stones engraved with Aries or Leo or Sagittarius are good for fevers, dropsy, and paralysis, and are said to make their possessors talented and fluent and highly honored. Stones carved with Gemini and Libra and Aquarius temper hot humors and promote friendship, justice, civility, and observance of law.

Discussion of fate in the Summa theologiae.

In the foregoing sketch of Albert’s attitude to astrology, based chiefly on his writings in the field of natural science, some allusion has also been made to his discussion of the subject in his Summa of theology, which occurs in the section On fate,[1955] “which those maintain who deny providence” and which is generally identified with the influence of the stars. I have in the main, however, reserved this section for separate treatment here, partly because it might be expected to show a more conservative and less favorable attitude to astrology than Albert’s scientific writings, since its authorities would presumably be the church fathers, while the scientific works reflect the views of Aristotle and other Greeks and Arabs. And partly for another reason, that I am inclined to question whether a supplementary passage at the close of this section is by Albert or added by another hand.

Attempt to reconcile the fathers with the astronomers.

Although Albert in this section of the Summa approaches the subject of the influence of the stars from the unfavorable standpoint of fate instead of the favoring one of nature, it is noteworthy that he is not content merely to reproduce the attacks upon astrologers by Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa, but endeavors to reconcile them with the views of such scientific or pseudo-scientific authorities as Ptolemy, Hermes Trismegistus, “Socrates,” and other Astronomi. The keynote of his solution is found in the definition of Boethius that “Fate is the disposition inherent in movable things by which Providence binds each by its order.” Thus there is no necessary conflict between Providence and the rule of the stars. But Albert maintains that “neither fate nor stars nor even Providence takes away from human free will its liberty of action,”[1956] quoting Ptolemy as usual to the effect that the wise man rules the stars and that what the stars do they do per aliud et accidens. Albert therefore rejects absolute fatal necessity as heretical[1957] and the doctrine of the magnus annus that history repeats itself as the stars repeat their courses as “horrible.”[1958] On the other hand, he insists that “it cannot be denied that the stars by the figures of their positions pour radiations of diverse figures upon the place of generation,”[1959] or that “the stars in truth are rulers of the world in those things which are subject to the world,”[1960] namely, things corporeal. He also admits that the soul may be inclined to the body, though not coerced. Thus a choleric person is likely to choose different food and occupation from a phlegmatic one. Hence Socrates “says that voluntary elections are made in accordance with the diversity of habits previously existing in the chooser.”[1961] But Socrates means that such habits incline but do not compel us. Later Albert qualifies Gregory of Nyssa’s assertion that our choosing precedes “fortune” by again pointing out that the influence of the stars “inclines the will to choose this or that.”[1962]

Glossing over Augustine.

Albert has to force his authorities a good deal to arrive at this compromise. Thus he interprets Augustine’s grudging concession that it “can be said not utterly absurdly that certain sidereal afflations effect mere differences of bodies, as we see that the seasons of the year vary with the approach and withdrawal of the sun and some sorts of things, such as shellfish and the wonderful tides of ocean, increase and diminish with the waxing and waning of the moon,”—Albert interprets this as favoring his own much more sweeping assertion that the stars rule the universe in most respects and change the souls as well as the bodies of plants and brutes.[1963] Again, Augustine, asking “What is so pertinent to the body as sex?” contended against the astrologers that twins of opposite sex might be born under the same constellation; yet Albert maintains that Augustine did not mean here that sex of the body is not subject to the stars, but only that the constellations are not the sole and entire cause of natural bodily processes, and this for the reasons given above from Ptolemy, namely, that the influence of the stars depends upon the capacity of matter to receive it and operates per aliud et accidens.[1964]

Christ and the stars.

In connection with the question, “Whether Christ was subject soul and body to fate or fortune or eupraxia?” Albert makes an exception to the influence of the stars, and apparently holds that even in respect to His body Christ was not subject to the power of the constellations. The argument is advanced that the Lawgiver is not subject to the law. The opposing contentions that in becoming man Christ assumed the defects of our mortality and that, since fate is the disposition inherent in all mobile objects, Christ was subject to fate as much as any other man,—these are denied on the ground that Christ became man voluntarily and suffered as man only what and when He would, and that from the moment of conception He possessed “grace and all knowledge.” It is also held that when the Magi said that they had seen His star in the east, they did not mean a constellation ruling His nativity but a new celestial sign which demonstrated the new birth of a heavenly king.[1965]

Patristic arguments against astrology upheld, but perhaps not by Albert.

Scarcely consistent with the apparent approval with which Albert cited the views of the “astronomers” and such a work as the Tetrabiblos or Quadripartitum of Ptolemy in the preceding discussion, and with the general tone of much of it, seems a supplementary passage at the close of this section on fate[1966] after he has apparently completed the discussion of the four questions concerning fate which he put at the start. In this supplementary passage are upheld against the “calumnies” of the astrologers such objections of Augustine and Gregory the Great to the art of nativities[1967] as that Jacob and Esau were conceived and born under the same constellation, that a queen and slave may be conceived at the same instant, and that there are countries where no one born under Aquarius becomes a fisherman or under the Balances a money-changer. The argument employed in this connection, which we cannot follow in detail, involves such a dubious piece of physics as that the pyramid of light which gradually spreads from a distant luminous point exercises the same force on all points lying within its base. The astronomers would doubtless retort that the rays of light falling perpendicularly and the shortest distance would be stronger and more efficacious than the oblique ones, or that pyramids must also be taken into account with the point in the object affected and the base in the constellation. Indeed, Albert in this very section On fate has previously shown[1968] from the science of perspective and Liber de speculis that in Ethiopia the sun’s direct ray “reflected upon itself” produces fire and makes the child born there fiery and black, while near the pole the great obliquity of the incidences of the rays produces cold and damp. For such reasons as these I am inclined to wonder if this supplementary passage, which is not essential to the plan or main argument of the section On fate, has not been added by someone other than Albert. Whoever the author is, he also agrees with Augustine that, when asked to account for two persons falling sick, growing worse, and recovering at the same times, Hippocrates gave the better answer in saying that they were conceived and born together of the same parents, than Posidonius did in saying that they were born under the same constellation. For Hippocrates named the immediate cause, whereas Posidonius mentioned the extrinsic and indirect one, for the stars are not a cause, it is again reiterated, except per aliud et accidens. But the author, like Albert before, holds that Augustine does not deny that there is some force from the stars inclining though not compelling us. This is equivalent to sanctioning astrology.

[1692] Hist. Eccles., XXII, 17 (Muratori, XI, 1150).

[1693] Epitaphs of Albert and Aquinas, opening respectively, “fenix doctorum” and “in luctu citharae,” are preserved in CLM 19608, 15th century, fols. 219-21. A portrait of Albert is found in CLM 27029, fol. 88, in the midst of a treatise copied in 1388 A. D.

[1694] Hist. Eccles. XXII, 19 (Muratori, XI, 1151).

[1695] Pouchet (1853), p. 210.

[1696] In Dict. Theol. Cath., (1909-). Also Revue Thomiste V, 95; Siger de Brabant, 2nd edition (1911 and 1908), p. 36.

[1697] Henry of Hereford, ed Potthast, Göttingen, 1859. Over this point quite a war of pamphlets and monographs has recently been waged.

[1698] Peter of Prussia (1621), p. 65, “qui ab ipso puerili aevo ut ipse testatur ad decrepitam usque aetatem iugum Domini mira cum hilaritate in eodem Ordine portavit.”

[1699] Meteor., III, ii, 12.

[1700] Mineral., II, iii, 1.

[1701] Vita Alberti (1621), p. 90.

[1702] Meteor., I, iii, 5. See also Ashmole 393, fol. 77, “Cometa” seu “De generatione comete” secundum Januensem, Papiam, et Albertum in summa (an. 1240).

[1703] Amplon. Quarto 296.

[1704] Although the treatise on Minerals has always been accepted as authentic, since its opinions in connection with magic and astrology are rather extreme, it may be well to list here some early MSS of it. Berthelot (1893) I, 290, regarded BN 6514, written about 1300, as “almost contemporary,” but some of the following are older, if the dating in the MSS catalogues is dependable.

CLM 353, 13th century, fol. 55- Lapidarius, fol. 69- liber de mineralibus.

CLM 540A, anno 1298, fols. 1-106, libri V mineralium.

CLM 23538, 13-14th century, 54 fols., de mineralibus libri V.

Amplon. Quarto 189, about 1300 A. D., fols. 40-67, liber de mineralibus et lapidibus.

Amplon. Quarto 293, 13th century, fols. 57-85, quatuor (vel potius quinque) libri mineralium domini Alberti Magni.

Magdalen 174, close of 13th century, fol. 51v- de mineralibus libri tres (?).

The Minerals is found in the following 14th century MSS, and doubtless in many others: Digby 119, 26; 183, 1; 190, 1; Ashmole 1471, fols. 1-48; Merton 285; S. Marco XIII, 18, fols. 1-31, “Explicit liber de lapidibus secundum fratrem Albertum qui liber oculo intitulatur”; CLM 16129, fols. 25-112; BN 7156, 2; BN 7475, 8.

[1705] Mineral., IV, i, 6, “Hi autem qui in cupro multum operantur in nostris partibus Parisiis videlicet at Coloniae et in aliis locis in quibus fui et vidi experiri.” Ibid., II, ii, 11, “Narravit mihi unus ex nostris sociis curiosus experimentator quod vidit Fredericum Imperatorem habere magnetem qui non traxit ferrum sed ferrum vice versa traxit lapidem.”

[1706] De animalibus, XXIII, i, 40.

[1707] Schools were established by the general chapter of the Dominicans in that year at Cologne, Oxford, Bologna, and Montpellier.

[1708] De animalibus, VII, i, 6, “quod expertus sum in villa mea super Danubium”; cited by v. Hertling (1914), p. 16.

[1709] Summa, XIII, 77, iv; cited by v. Hertling (1914), p. 14.

[1710] Sighart (1857), pp. 157, 159, 162.

[1711] Politics, VII, 14; cited by v. Hertling (1914), p. 13.

[1712] CE, “Albertus Magnus.” I have not found original sources for these events and fear that they may be inferences from the Speculum astronomiae.

[1713] HL XIX, 365; and v. Hertling (1914), p. 19. But he is called “Bishop of Lyons” in a 15th century MS at Munich; CLM 15181, fols. 167-77, Compendium magistri Magni Alberti episcopi Lugdunensis de disputatione corporis et animae.

[1714] De causis et proprietatibus elementorum, I, ii, 3, “In Colonia vidimus altissimas fieri foveas et in fundo illarum inventa sunt paramenta (pavimenta?) mirabilis schematis et decoris quae constat ibi homines antiquitus fecisse et congestam fuisse terram super ea post ruinas aedificiorum”; quoted by v. Hertling (1914), p. 11.

[1715] De natura locorum, III, 2; v. Hertling (1914), p. 11 note.

[1716] Petrus de Prussia (1621), pp. 179-81. Recently H. Stadler has edited the Historia animalium from what is believed to be the autograph MS at Cologne in Beiträge zur Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mittelalters, vols. 15-16. See also his Vorbemerkungen zur neuen Ausgabe der Tiergeschichte des Albertus Magnus in Sitzungsberichte d. kgl. bayr. Akad. d. Wiss. phil. hist. Classe, Munich (1912), pp. 1-58. Stadler also edited from a Cologne MS, believed to be the archetype, Liber de principiis motus processivi, Munich, 1909.

[1717] Opus Tertium, ed. Brewer (1859), p. 14.

[1718] Summa philosophiae, I, 6; XIX, 6; XII, 17; Baur (1912), pp. 280, 633, 505.

[1719] Cited by Petrus de Prussia (1621), p. 126.

[1720] “venerabilis ille frater ordinis predicatorum magister Albertus.”

[1721] Bonum univ., II, 57, Partic. xxxv, “Simili prope modo magister Albertus theologus frater ordinis predicatorum narravit mihi quod Parisius illi demon in specie cuiusdam fratris apparuit ut eum a studio revocaret sed mox crucis virtute discessit.”

[1722] Ibid., Partic. li, “Vii et fortissimo expertus sum sicut auditor eius per multum tempus quam venerabilis ille frater ordinis predicatorum Albertus cuius superiors femurs mentionem multis annis fere quotidie cum tamen in cathedra theologie regeret tantum de die et nocte orationibus incumbebat ut psalterium davidicum legeret et interdum dictis horis et lectionibus et disputationibus terminatis contemplatione divine et meditationibus insudaret. Quid mirum ergo si talis homo super hominem in scientia profecerit qui tam sancte tam integre in virtute profecerit.”

[1723] Abhandl. z. Gesch. d. Math. 26, 139 (1911).

[1724] CLM 453, 15th century, fol. 87-.

[1725] Corpus Christi 125, fol. 16r- “Incipit tractatus fratris Alberti de Colonia de plantacionibus arborum.”

Ashmole 1471, late 14th century, fols. 137-43, “Incipit tractatus Alberti de plantationibus arborum et de conservatione vini ... / ... Explicit tractatus Alberti de plantationibus arborum et de conservatione vini. aliqui tamen asserunt Euclidem hunc librum fecisse.”

Arundel 251, written on the back of the cover binding is “Albertus Magnus de Plantationibus arborum, etc.” But in the Arundel catalogue of 1834 the work is listed as “Anonymi cuiusdam tractatus de plantationibus arborum, de conservatione fructuum et de vino,” which has since been corrected to “Galfridi de Vino Salvo,” etc.

BN 9328, 14th century, fol. 124- Petrus de Crecenciis, De plantationibus arborum.

[1726] Vienna 5292, 15th century, fols. 1r-65v, Epitome in Almagestum Cl. Ptolomaei. Perhaps it is the same as CLM 56, 1434-1436 A. D., fols. 1-122, “Almagesti abbreviatum per mag. Thomam de Aquino,” which opens, “Omnium recte philosophantium....”

[1727] Vienna 5309, 15th century, fols. 127r-55v, Summa astrologiae, “In hoc tractatu brevi ... / ... habencia probabilitatis.”

[1728] It is included in Borgnet’s edition, vol. 5. Other such works are:

BN 16222, 14th century, fols. 22-67, Alberti compendium de negotio naturali; BN 16635, 14th century, fols. 1-53, Libri V Alberti Magni in philosophia naturali. Albertus Magnus, Summa naturalium, in Arundel 344, 13-14th century, fols. 40-65; Harleian 536, fols. 1-8; Harleian 4870, 14th century, #2.

[1729] Petrus de Prussia (1621), p. 294.

[1730] Clemens Baeumker, Die Stellung des Alfred von Sareshel (Alfredus Anglicus) und seiner Schrift De motu cordis in der Wissenschaft des beginnenden XIII Jahrhunderts, (June 7, 1913), p. 12, in Sitzungsberichte d. Königl. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., Philos-philol. u. hist. Klasse; citing Arthur Schneider, Die Psychologie Alberts des Grossen, II, Münster, 1906, pp. 293-308, in Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Philos. des Mittelalters, IV, 5-6.

[1731] Grabmann (1916), pp. 165-6, citing Pangerl (1912). Grabmann notes further that Albert did not leave his theological Summa unfinished, but that the part which has never been printed exists in a MS at Venice.

[1732] C. Jessen (1867), p. 99.

[1733] Petrus de Prussia (1621), p. 288.

[1734] Halle, X, 641-741; XI, 545.

[1735] Geschichte der Botanik, Königsberg, 1855, IV, 39.

[1736] Meyer (1855), p. 40.

[1737] Pouchet’s fifth chapter (p. 203-644) was devoted to École Expérimentale, and of this pp. 203-320 to Albert himself.

[1738] M. H. De Blainville, Histoire des sciences de l’organisation ... Rédigée d’après ses notes et ses leçons faites à la Sorbonne de 1839 à 1841, avec les dêveloppements nécessaires et plusieurs additions, par F. L. M. Maupied, in 3 vols, Paris, 1847.

[1739] HL XIX, 377.

[1740] Stadler (1906), p. 2.

[1741] I, ii, 9.

[1742] “Non autem sufficit scire in universali sed quaerimus scire unumquodque secundum quod in propria natura se habet, hoc enim optimum et perfectum est genus sciendi.” Galen had expressed much the same thought eleven centuries before.

[1743] Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France in the Thirteenth Century, translated from the third edition by Dora Nussey, 1913, p. 52.

[1744] Ibid., 53.

[1745] Published in facsimile at London, 1859, and Paris, 1908.

[1746] Hist. Eccles., XXII, 18. “Hic commentatus est totam logicam Aristotelis, philosophiam naturalem et quantum ad naturalem experientiam naturarum clarissima et excellentissima tradidit. Hic theologiam declaravit.” I assume that Aristotle is understood as the subject of tradidit.

[1747] De natura locorum, I, 7.

[1748] IV, 40.

[1749] De veget. et plantis, I, ii, 12.

[1750] VI, i, 30.

[1751] VI, i, 2.

[1752] De veget. et plantis, VI, i, 35.

[1753] De animalibus, XI, i, 1.

[1754] XXIII, i, 40 (xix).

[1755] XXII, ii, 10 and 99; XXIII, i, 5 and 34-35 and 83 and 123; XXVI, i, 10 and 14 and 20.

[1756] XXIII, i, 9 and 14 and 23 and 57 and 83 and 104.

[1757] XXII, ii, 1.

[1758] XXIV, i, 28.

[1759] Pouchet (1853), pp. 285-6.

[1760] XXII, ii, 29 and 39 and 41 and 51 and 97.

[1761] XXIV, i, 9.

[1762] XXIII, i, 9.

[1763] XXII, ii, 28.

[1764] XXVI, i, 10.

[1765] XXIV, i, 123.

[1766] XXIII, i, 104.

[1767] XXIII, i, 54.

[1768] XXIII, i, 93.

[1769] XXIII, i, 55.

[1770] XXIII, i, 22.

[1771] XXII, ii, 56. Sed iste Jorach frequenter mentitur. XXV, i, 5. Et sicut in multis mentitur Solinus, ita et in hoc falsum dicit.

[1772] XXV, i, 26. Hoc est verius quod de draconibus ab expertis Philosophorum invenitur. Si autem sequamur dicta eorum qui potius referunt audita vulgi quam physica dictorum suorum ostendant experta, tunc sequendo Plinium et Solinum et quosdam alios dicemus.... For further criticism of Pliny see XXV, i, 13, and XXIII, i, 9.

[1773] XXIV, i, 47. Pliny, NH XXXII, i, spells it echenais or echeneis, as does Plutarch. We have seen other medieval authors spell it echinus.

[1774] NH, VIII, 25.

[1775] XXII, ii, 101.

[1776] XVII, ii, 1; XXIII, i, 14; see also Meteor., IV, i, 11.

[1777] I have been unable, however, to run it down in the Natural History; perhaps it is in the Medicina of the Pseudo-Pliny.

[1778] XXVI, i, 37.

[1779] XXII, ii, 88.

[1780] XXIII, i, 9.

[1781] XXV, i, 28.

[1782] XXII, ii, 19.

[1783] XXII, ii, 56.

[1784] VII, ii, 5.

[1785] XXII, ii, 99.

[1786] Polit., VII, 14.

[1787] Mineralium, II, ii, 1.

[1788] III, i, 1.

[1789] IV, i, 6.

[1790] II, ii, 1.

[1791] Pliny, NH XXXVII, 15, agrees with the passage in Albert only in the general notion that goat’s blood will break adamant.

[1792] II, ii, 17.

[1793] II, ii, 11.

[1794] De veget. et plantis, VI, ii, 1. “Smaragdus enim nuper apud nos visus est parvus quidem quantitate et mirabiliter pulcher, cuius cum virtus probari deberet, adstitit qui diceret, quod si circa bufonem circulus smaragdo fieret et postea lapis oculis bufonis exhiberetur, alterum duorum, quod aut lapis frangeretur ad visum bufonis si debilem haberet lapis virtutem, aut bufo rumperetur si lapis esset in naturali suo vigore: nec mora factum est ut dixit et ad modicum temporis intervallum, dum bufo adspiceret lapidem nec visum averteret ab ipso, crepitare coepit lapis sicut avellana rumperetur et exilivit ex annulo una pars eiusdem, et tunc bufo qui ante stetit immobilis, coepit recedere ac si absolutus esset a lapidis virtute.”

[1795] Meteor., III, iv, 8-26 (Borgnet, vol. IV, 674-97).

[1796] III, iv, 11.

[1797] III, iv, 28.

[1798] Peter of Prussia (1621), 126.

[1799] Cap. 20.

[1800] Caps. 21-24.

[1801] Caps. 1, 25, 29.

[1802] Cap. 3.

[1803] Cap. 19.

[1804] Caps. 8-18.

[1805] P. 106.

[1806] P. 107.

[1807] P. 108.

[1808] Cap. 17, p. 161.

[1809] Cap. 18, p. 165.

[1810] Cap. 44, et seq., pp. 299-341.

[1811] Quoted in Latin by Wolfgang E. Heidel in his Vita Trithemii, prefixed to his edition of the Steganographia, cap. xvii, “Trithemium non fuisse alchymistam, astrologum et magum, ostenditur.”

[1812] For instance, Commentary on Micah, VI, 11, “Maleficia are veneficia by which men are deceived in the works of necromancers and of idols.”

[1813] Sententiae, II, 7, F, vi.

[1814] Summa, II, 30.

[1815] Summa, II, 30, ii.

[1816] Sententiae, II, 7, L, xii.

[1817] In Evang. Lucae, XI, 15.

[1818] Sententiae, II, 7, viii.

[1819] The Latin of the essential portions of these passages is as follows. In Evang. Matth., II, 1. “Magi enim grammatice magni sunt.... Nec sunt Magi malefici sicut quidam male opinantur. Magus enim et Mathematicus et Incantator et Maleficus sive Necromanticus et Ariolus et Aruspex et Divinator differunt. Quia Magus proprie nisi magnus est, qui scientiam habens de omnibus necessariis et effectibus naturarum coniecturans aliquando mirabilia naturae praeostendit et educit....

Incantator ... qui carminibus quibusdam bestias aut herbas aut lapides aut imagines ad quosdam parat effectus....

Divinatores autem multi sunt valde: in punctis terrae et casu ignis et aqua et in aere divinantes....

Nulli istorum dediti fuerunt isti nisi magicis hoc modo prout dictum est. Et hoc est laudabile.”

In Daniel., I, 20. “Magi dicuntur secundum Hieronymum quasi magistri qui de universis philosophantur, magi tamen specialiter astronomi dicuntur qui in astris futura rimantur.”

[1820] XXIII, i, III.

[1821] De veget. et plantis, V, ii, 6.

[1822] De veget. et plantis, VI, i, 32; VI, ii, 17; VI, i, 30; VI, ii, 3.

[1823] VI, ii, 12.

[1824] VI, i, 33.

[1825] VI, ii, 3.

[1826] VI, ii, 10.

[1827] VI, i, 34.

[1828] Mineralium, II, ii, 4.

[1829] II, iii, 1.

[1830] II, iii, 5.

[1831] II, iii, 3.

[1832] Sentent., II, 7, ix and xii.

[1833] Mineralium, II, i, 1.

[1834] II, i, 1 (Borgnet, V, 24).

[1835] III, i, 6.

[1836] II, 7, vii.

[1837] Petrus de Prussia (1621), cap. XII or p. 135, citing the De motibus animalium.

[1838] III, i, 1.

[1839] II, i, 3.

[1840] III, i, 10.

[1841] III, i, 1.

[1842] III, i, 3.

[1843] III, ii, 5.

[1844] De animalibus, XXII, ii, 61.

[1845] XXII, ii, 67.

[1846] XXII, i, 5.

[1847] XXII, ii, 18.

[1848] XXV, i, 26.

[1849] XXV, i, 13.

[1850] XXIII, i, 40 (17-23).

[1851] XXII, ii, 18.

[1852] XXII, ii, 61.

[1853] VIII, ii, 2.

[1854] De veget. et plantis, VI, ii, 3.

[1855] VI, i, 32.

[1856] VI, ii, 17.

[1857] VI, ii, 1.

[1858] VI, ii, 2.

[1859] VI, ii, 13.

[1860] V, ii, 1.

[1861] VI, ii, 22.

[1862] Mineralium, II, i, 1.

[1863] Tract., XIX, cap. 6 (ed. Baur, pp. 633-34).

[1864] I have not examined the work itself, but append the following notice of a MS of it: Corpus Christi (Cambridge), 243, 13-14th century, Pseudo-Albert de lapidibus; fol. 1-, Incipit liber de coloribus et virtutibus lapidum, Liber primus, including a prologue and then an alphabetical arrangement of stones; fol. 20v-, De sculturis de omnibus lapidibus; fol. 21v-, Liber II, de natione et ubi inveniuntur; fol. 27-, Liber III, de sculturis lapidum; fol. 40v-, Liber IV, de consecratione lapidum; fol. 44-, Liber V, de confectione et compositione lapidum.

There is said to be another copy at Glasgow in Hunterian, V, 6, 18.

I am not sure whether CUL 1175, 14th century, fols. 1-3, “Albertus de Colonia de lapidibus,” is a fragment of it or of the genuine treatise on minerals.

In CLM 353, 13th century, the Liber de mineralibus of Albertus Magnus at fol. 69 is preceded at fol. 55 by Lapidarius (deest lib. I, tract, i) also ascribed to him.

In the notice of CLM 16129, 14th century, fols. 25-112, Alberti Magni tractatus de passionibus aeris et impressionibus vaporum in alto, de mineralibus, de imaginibus lapidum et sigillis, de natura metallorum, it is scarcely clear whether De imaginibus lapidum et sigillis is a separate treatise from the De mineralibus or only the portion of it dealing with astronomical images.

[1865] III, i, 2.

[1866] Mineral, III, i, 8.

[1867] Ibid., III, i, 9.

[1868] Ibid., III. i, 4.

[1869] Vita Alberti, cap. 16.

[1870] Mineral., III, i, 2.

[1871] Mineral., II, i, 5.

[1872] De causis elementorum, I, ii, 7 (Borgnet, IX, 615).

[1873] I, 290.

[1874] Most of them I have not been able to examine or compare; but where the opening and closing words are given in the catalogues, they differ as well as the titles. It is possible, however, that some of them may be parts of the other treatises.

[1875] MS 138, 15th century, fols. 171-83, “Semita recta fratris Alberti Magni”; fols. 233-5, “Speculum secretorum philosophorum Alberti Magni de secretis naturae,” opening, “Ad instructionem multorum” and closing, “penuriam librorum”; fols. 235-7, “Liber xii aquarum Alberti Magni,” opening “Ovorum vitella,” and closing, “omne corpus.”

In the same library MS 139, 14th century, besides the Semita recta at fols. 3-35—this time Albert is not named as its author—occurs at fols. 107-21, “Incipit libellus ab Alberto compositus. Quoniam ignorantis ... / ... dum regnat Iupiter.”

Also in MS 270, II, 15-16th century, fol. 77, “Alberti Magni Alchymia. Callixtenes unus philosophorum ... / ... siccum.”

In MS 270, X, at fol. 99 the Speculum secretorum, etc., is again ascribed to Albert; and in MS 270, XV, fol. 3-, is “Ars experimentorum Alberti Magni. Sciendum vero ... / ... viscositate malve.”

[1876] Sloane 323, 14th century, fols. 1-84, “Practica Fratris Alberti in alchimiam, que ab eodem dicitur sec. sec.” The work is said to have been printed in the Theatrum Chymicum, II, 423.

[1877] Ibid., fol. 8r. The previous citation of Albert was at fol. 7v.

[1878] Arundel 164, written in 1422, fols. 127v-131, “De occultis nature,” opening, “In mutue allocutionis tractatu,” and closing, “sicut qui cum arcu sine torta sagutur (sagittur?) deo gratias.”

[1879] CUL 220, 16th century, occupying two leaves in an alchemical miscellany. It opens, “Aqua Mercurius et oleum sulphuris. Opus istud multis diebus abscondebatur....”

Possibly the following are also distinct treatises, but I do not have their Incipits and Explicits: CLM 12026, 15th century, fol. 32, Alberti de Colonia ars alchymiae; Wolfenbüttel 676, anno 1444, following the Semita recta at fols. 34-36, Varia Alberti Magni chymica; Riccard. 119, following the Semita recta, which is #32 in this miscellany, comes #33, an Alchimia ascribed to Albertus Magnus, while the second treatise bearing #37 (at fol. 177r) is Alberti quidam Tractatus.

[1880] It is included in vol. 21 of the edition of Lyons, 1651, by R. P. Jammy; and by Borgnet, vol. 37; 545-73, Alberti Magni libellus de alchimia. It had previously been printed at Basel, 1561, and Urcellis, 1602-1608, Theatrum chemicum, pp. 485-527. It is the same as the treatise called Semita recta in the MSS. Another MS of it is Corpus Christi 226, 15th century, fols. 59-69.

[1881] See Denifle (1886), 236.

[1882] “Videns ergo tot errare iam decrevi scribere vera et probata opera et meliora omnium philosophorum in quibus laboravi et sum expertus nihil aliud scribam nisi quod oculis meis vidi.” Or perhaps he means that his works are better than those of all the philosophers.

[1883] “Alchimia est ars ab Alchimo inventa et dicitur ab archymo Graece quod est massa Latine,” cap. 2.

[1884] Cap. 3, “Probat artem Alchimiae esse veram.” This done, however, the chapter continues with the eight precepts which follow.

[1885] “domum specialem extra hominum conspectum in qua sint duae camerae vel tres in quibus fiant operationes.”

[1886] Since he had just mentioned “the books of incantations of Hermes the philosopher and Costa ben Luca,” he very likely had in mind simply the Letter of the latter on Incantation, Adjuration, and Suspension from the Neck, of which we have previously treated, and which Albert uses for physical ligatures in his treatise on minerals.

[1887] II, iii, 5.

[1888] II, iii, 6.

[1889] XXII, ii, 18.

[1890] Mineral., II, i, 1; De animalibus, XXII, i, 5; De somno et vigilia, III, i, 6.

[1891] I-ii-2.

[1892] CLM 916, 15th century, fols. 25-30, Chiromantia Alberti: BN 7420A, 14th century, #15, Alberti de Colonia ars chiromantiae.

[1893] I presume that Vienna MS 2448, 14th century, 26 fols., “Expliciunt interpretaciones sompniorum reuerendi domini Magni Alberti Parisiis conscripta” is simply this third book, but perhaps it is some spurious treatise. MS 1158, 14th century, in the University Library at Bologna, fols. 41-52, catalogued as “Magistri Alberti theotonici de fato, de divinatione, de sortibus,” consists of the De fato ascribed to Aquinas; a second treatise De fato which in the MS itself is headed in the upper margin of fol. 45r, “Magri (Magistri) Alexandri”; a “Questio de divinatione Alexandri,” at fol. 47r; and an anonymous De sortibus.

[1894] Extract from the Compendium studii theologiae, quoted at page 412 of Charles’ Life of Roger Bacon. “Tarde venit aliquid de philosophia Aristotelis in usum Latinorum, quia naturalis philosophia eius et metaphysica cum commentariis Averrois et aliorum libris in temporibus nostris translatae sunt, et Parisiis excommunicabantur ante annum Domini 1237 propter aeternitatem mundi et temporis, et propter librum ‘De divinatione somniorum’ qui est tractatus ‘De somno et vigilia,’ et propter multa alia erronea translata.” It is found in Rashdall’s edition of the Compendium studii theologiae at pp. 33-4.

[1895] III, i, 2.

[1896] III, i, 1.

[1897] III, i, 4.

[1898] III, ii, 5.

[1899] III, ii, 3-4.

[1900] III, i, 8-9.

[1901] III, ii, 6.

[1902] III, ii, 9.

[1903] VI, 12.

[1904] III, i, 10.

[1905] I have not seen CUL 1705, 14th century, fols. 181v-183, “Albertus de naturis signorum,” opening, “Deus utitur corporibus celestibus” and closing “Saturnus enim tenebras significat.” It is not included in Albert’s printed works and is perhaps not by him.

[1906] See chapter 62 below for bibliography.

[1907] In his Siger de Brabant et l’averroisme latin au XIIIe siècle, deuxième édition revue et augmentée, Louvain, 1911, I, 244-48; and more fully in an article, “Roger Bacon et le ‘Speculum astronomiae,’” in the Revue Néo-Scolastique, vol. 17, August, 1910.

[1908] Theophilus Witzel in an otherwise excellent article on Roger Bacon in the Catholic Encyclopedia; A. G. Little, Roger Bacon Essays, Oxford, 1914, p. 25; Paschal Robinson, “The Seventh Centenary of Roger Bacon,” Catholic University Bulletin, January, 1914. Professor Ch. V. Langlois, however, made some strictures upon Mandonnet’s general method of arriving at conclusions, in his review of the first edition of the Siger de Brabant in Revue de Paris, Sept. 1, 1900, p. 71.

[1909] Revue Néo-Scolastique, XVII, 323-24.

[1910] Revue Néo-Scolastique, XVII (1910), 328.

[1911] Summa de Creaturis, tract. III, q. 15. art. 2: Opera omnia, ed. Borgnet, t. 34, p. 434.

[1912] Petrus de Prussia (1621), caps. 13-15, pp. 137-50.

[1913] Petrus de Prussia (1621), pp. 123, 131, 133; cited by Mandonnet (1910), p. 329, note 1.

[1914] In Matth., II, 1.

[1915] De causis et proprietatibus elementorum et planetarum, I, i, 1.

[1916] Ibid., II, i, 1.

[1917] Borgnet, X, 1-2.

[1918] De meteoris, I, i, 4.

[1919] Metaphysicorum, XI, ii, 12.

[1920] Idem. “Sicut manus est instrumentum intellectus practici in artificialibus, ita totus coelestis circulus est instrumentum huius intellectus ad totam materiam naturae quae ambit.” See also Metaphysicorum, V, ii, 4; De intellectu et intelligibili, I, 4, “Sic totus coeli concentus refertur ad causam primam”; De animalibus, XVI, i, 11, “Orbis autem revolvitur ab uno intellectu primo ad quem referuntur alii motores”; Liber de natura et origine animae, I, 5, “Intellectus qui est cum coelesti virtute, eo quod ipse coelum movet, et movet virtutes coelestes quae sunt in materia generabilium, et est intellectus purus et primus movens et informans omnia alia sub ipso instrumentaliter agentia.”

[1921] De animalibus, XX, ii, 2.

[1922] De causis et procreatione universi, I, iv, 7, “Utrum coelum moveatur ab anima vel a natura vel ab intelligentia.”

[1923] De causis et proprietatibus elementorum et planetarum, I, ii, 9.

[1924] De animalibus, XX, ii, 2.

[1925] De intellectu et intelligibili, I, 4. “Mediae autem causae sunt motores orbium coelestium quos intelligentias coelestes vocaverunt Philosophi. ... ideo melius intelligentes Philosophi totum unicum motorem dixerunt habere, et inferiores motores ad sphaeras dixerunt esse virtutes et membra primi coeli et sui motoris.” Yet in De coelo et mundo, II, iii, 5, he asserts again that the stars “sunt instrumenta intellectuum moventium,” as if there were more than one intelligence.

[1926] See De meteoris, I, i, 4 and 7; De causis et propriet. element., etc., I, ii, 2; Mineralium, II, iii, 3; De causis et procreat. universi, II, ii, 23.

[1927] De natura locorum, I, 6.

[1928] Meteor., III, iii, 22.

[1929] De causis et propriet., I, ii, 2.

[1930] Idem.

[1931] Ibid., I, ii, 9.

[1932] Ibid., II, ii, 1.

[1933] Meteor., I, iii, 11.

[1934] De intellectu et intelligibili, I, 4; also De natura et origine animae, I, 5, “Et ideo complementum ultimum quod est intellectualis formae et substantiae non per instrumentum neque ex materia sed per lucem suam influit intellectus primae causae purus et inmixtus.”

[1935] Pars prima, Quaest. 68.

[1936] II, iii, 3.

[1937] De intell. et intell., I, 4. “Quod autem anima praecipue sub motibus astrorum restringitur contra omnes est Peripateticos et contra Ptolemaeum.”

[1938] De generatione et corruptione, II, iii, 5.

[1939] Summa, I, 68, passim.

[1940] De natura locorum, I, 5.

[1941] De somno et vigilia, III, ii, 5.

[1942] I take it that geomantici should be genethliaci in the passage (De coelo et mundo, II, iii, 5) given in Borgnet’s text as follows: “Et hoc oportet relinquere scientiae electorum, quia alio nomine vocantur geomantici eo quod principalius quod inquirunt per stellarum figuras et effectus sunt nativitates ... et eventus nascentium....”

[1943] De gener. et corrupt., II, iii, 5.

[1944] De coelo et mundo, II, iii, 5.

[1945] Albert was of course also familiar with the Tetrabiblos or Quadripartite of Ptolemy and with the Centiloquium ascribed to him. He names three commentators upon it, namely, the well-known Arabian and Jewish authorities, Haly and Abraham, and a mysterious third, Bugaforus (Meteor., I, iii, 5).

[1946] De animalibus, XXII, ii, 1. The closest approach to the passage that I have found in Galen occurs in the De foetuum formatione (Kühn, IV, 700-701) where Galen mentions approvingly the theory of some Platonic masters that the world-soul is responsible for the marvelous process of the formation of the foetus, but adds that he regards it as impious and unfitting to ascribe the generation or formation of scorpions, spiders, flies, fleas, worms, vipers, and the like to the soul of the cosmos.

[1947] Mineral., II, iii, 3.

[1948] De coelo et mundo, II, iii, 5.

[1949] De animal., XXII, i, 3.

[1950] Mineral., II, iii, 3. “Est autem principium in ipsa scientia omnia quaecunque fiunt a natura vel arte moveri a virtutibus coelestibus primo; et hic de natura non est dubium. In arte etiam constat, eo quod aliquid modo et non ante incitat cor hominum ad faciendum; et hoc esse non potest nisi virtus coelestis, ut dicunt sapientes praenominati.” Then follows immediately an admission of the freedom of the human will which has already been cited.

[1951] De causis et propriet, element. et planet., I, ii, 7.

[1952] Liber II, Tractatus iii.

[1953] II, iii, 3.

[1954] II, iii, 5.

[1955] Summa, Pars prima, Quaestio 68, De fato; in Borgnet, vol. 31, pp. 694-714.

[1956] Ibid., p. 701.

[1957] P. 696, “Unde sic dicere fatum, est haereticum.”

[1958] P. 708.

[1959] P. 698.

[1960] P. 701.

[1961] Pp. 698 and 702.

[1962] Pp. 706 and 710.

[1963] P. 696.

[1964] Pp. 702, 704.

[1965] Pp. 707, 711.

[1966] Pp. 711-4.

[1967] Albert, of course, has already upheld free will against the doctrine of fatal necessity in nativities; it is therefore only the support of these particular arguments of Augustine and Gregory that seems strange.

[1968] P. 698.