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

by Lynn Thorndike

CHAPTER XLIII

ALEXANDER NECKAM ON THE NATURES OF THINGS

Birth and childhood—Education—The state of learning in his time—Popular science and mechanical arts—His works—De naturis rerum—Neckam’s citations—His knowledge of Aristotle—Use of recent authors—Contemporary opinion of Neckam—His attitude toward natural science—Science and the Bible—His own knowledge of science—Incredible stories of animals—A chapter on the cock—Effect of sin upon nature—Neckam on occult virtues—Fascination—His limited belief in astrology—Neckam’s farewell.

Birth and childhood.

In the year 1157 an Englishwoman was nursing two babies. One was a foster child; the other, her own son. During the next fifty years these two boys were to become prominent in different fields. The fame of the one was to be unsurpassed on the battlefield and in the world of popular music and poetry. He was to become king of England, lord of half of France, foremost of knights and crusaders, and the idol of the troubadours. He was Richard, Cœur de Lion. The other, in different fields and a humbler fashion, was none the less also to attain prominence; he was to be clerk and monk instead of king and crusader, and to win fame in the domain of Latin learning rather than Provençal literature. This was Alexander Neckam. Of his happy childhood at St. Albans he tells us himself in Latin verse somewhat suggestive of Gray’s lines on Eton:

Hic locus aetatis nostrae primordia novit

Annos felices laetitiaeque dies

Hic locus ingenuis pueriles imbuit annos

Artibus et nostrae laudis origo fuit,

Education.

A number of years of his life were spent as teacher at Dunstable in a school under the control of the monastery of St. Albans. It was at Paris, however, that he received his higher education and also taught for a while. Scarcely any place, he wrote late in life, was better known to him than the city in whose schools he had been “a small pillar” and where he “faithfully learned and taught the arts, then turned to the study of Holy Writ, heard lectures in Canon Law, and upon Hippocrates and Galen, and did not find Civil Law distasteful.” This passage not only illustrates his own broad education in the liberal arts, the two laws, medicine, and theology, but also suggests that these four faculties were already formed or forming at Paris. Neckam visited Italy, as his humorous poem bidding Rome good-by attests, and from two of the stories which he tells in The Natures of Things[546] we may infer that he had been in Rouen and Meaux. In 1213 Neckam was elected abbot of Cirencester, and died in 1217. An amusing story is told in connection with Neckam’s first becoming a monk. He is said to have first applied for admission to a Benedictine monastery, but when the abbot made a bad pun upon his good name, saying, Si bonus es, venias; si nequam, nequaquam (If you are a good man you may come; if Neckam, by no means), he joined the Augustinians instead.[547]

The state of learning.

Neckam gives us a glimpse of the learned world of his time as well as of his own education. He thinks past times happy, when he recalls that “the greatest princes were diligent and industrious in aiding investigation of nature,” and that it was then commonly said, “An illiterate king is a crowned ass.”[548] But he is not ashamed of the schools of his own day. After speaking of the learning of Greece and Egypt in antiquity and stating that schools no longer flourish in those lands, he exclaims, “But what shall I say of Salerno and Montpellier where the diligent skill of medical students, serving the public welfare, provides remedies to the whole world against bodily ills? Italy arrogates to itself proficiency in the civil law, but celestial scripture and the liberal arts prefer Paris to all other cities as their home. And in accord with Merlin’s prophecy the wisdom now flourishes at Oxford which in his time was in process of transfer to Ireland.”[549] Neckam’s assertion that there were no schools in the Greece and Egypt of his day is interesting as implying the insignificance of Byzantine and Mohammedan learning in the second half of the twelfth century. He perhaps does not think of Constantinople as in “Greece,” but in Egypt he must certainly include Cairo, where the mosque el-Azhar, devoted in 988 to educational purposes, “has been ever since one of the chief universities of Islam.”[550] At any rate it is clear that to his mind the intellectual supremacy has now passed to western Europe.

Popular science and mechanical arts.

In his praises of learning Neckam is a little too inclined, like many other Latin writers, to speak slightingly of the vulgus or common crowd. In antiquity, he affirms, the liberal arts were the monopoly of free men; mechanical or adulterine arts were for the ignoble.[551] This does not mean, however, that his eyes are closed to the value of practical inventions, since both in The Natures of Things and his De utensilibus we find what are perhaps the earliest references to the mariner’s compass[552] and to glass mirrors.[553] Indeed, he often entertains us with popular gossip and superstition, mentioning for the first time the belief in a man in the moon,[554] and telling such stories of daily life as that of the lonely sailor whose dog helped him reef the sails and manage the ropes of the boat in crossing the Channel,[555] or of the sea-fowl whose daily cry announced to the sheep in the tidal meadow that it was time to seek higher pasture, until one day its beak was caught by the shell of an oyster it tried to devour and the sheep were drowned for lack of warning.[556]

His works.

Neckam’s writings were numerous, and, as might have been expected from his wide studies, in varied fields. They include grammatical treatises,[557] works on Ovid and classical mythology, commentaries upon the books of the Bible such as the Psalms and Song of Songs, and the writings of Aristotle, and other works of a literary, scientific, or theological character.[558] Most of them, however, if extant, are still in manuscript. Only a few have been printed;[559] among them is The Natures of Things which we shall presently consider.

Neckam is a good illustration of the humanistic movement in the twelfth century. He wrote Latin verse[560] as well as prose; took pains with and pride in his Latin style; and shows acquaintance with a large number of classical authors. He had some slight knowledge, at least, of Hebrew. He was especially addicted, according to Wright,[561] to those ingenious but philologically absurd derivations of words in which the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville had dealt, explaining, for example, the Latin word for corpse (cadaver) as compounded from the three roots seen in the words for flesh (caro), given (data), to worms (vermibus). Yet in one chapter of The Natures of Things Neckam attacks “the verbal cavils” and use of obsolete words in his time as “useless and frivolous,” and asks if one cannot be a good jurist or physician or philosopher without all this linguistic and verbal display.[562] Wright, moreover, was also impressed by Neckam’s interest in natural science, calling him “certainly one of the most remarkable English men of science in the twelfth century,”[563] and noting that “he not infrequently displays a taste for experimental science.”[564]

De naturis rerum.

The Natures of Things, however, is not primarily a scientific or philosophical dissertation, as Alexander is careful to explain in the preface, but a vehicle for moral instruction. Natural phenomena are described, but following each comes some moral application or spiritual allegory thereof. The spots on the moon, for instance, are explained by some as due to mountains and to depressions which the sun’s light cannot reach, by others as due to the greater natural obscurity of portions of the moon. Neckam adds that they are for our instruction, showing how even the heavenly bodies were stained by the sin of our first parents, and reminding us that during this present life there will always be some blot upon holy church, but that when all the planets and stars shall stand as it were justified, our state too will become stable, and both the material moon and holy church will be spotless before the Lamb.[565] Neckam intends to admire God through His creatures and in so doing humbly to kiss as it were the feet of the Creator. Despite this religious tone and the moralizing, Wright regarded the work “as an interesting monument of the history of science in western Europe and especially in England during the latter half of the twelfth century,”[566] and as such we shall consider it. That it was written before 1200 is to be inferred from a quotation from it by a chronicler of John’s reign.[567] It seems to have been the best known of Neckam’s works. The brevity of The Natures of Things, which consists of but two books, if we omit the other three of its five books which consist of commentaries upon Genesis and Ecclesiastes, hardly allows us to call it an encyclopedia; but its title and arrangement by topics and chapters closely resemble the later works which are usually spoken of as medieval encyclopedias. Later in life Neckam wrote a poetical paraphrase of it with considerable changes, which is entitled De laudibus divinae sapientiae.

Neckam’s citations.

The citations of authorities in the De naturis rerum are of much interest. A number of references to the law books of Justinian show Neckam’s knowledge of the Roman law,[568] and, as we should expect after hearing of his commentary upon Ovid’s Metamorphoses, allusions to that work, the Fasti, and the Ars amandi are frequent. Claudian is once quoted for two solid pages and considerable use is made of other Latin poets such as Vergil, Lucan, Martial, and Juvenal. Neckam believed that the diligent investigator could find much that was useful in the inventions of the poets and that beneath their fables moral instruction sometimes lay hid.[569] Neckam quotes Plato, perhaps indirectly, and repeats in different words the fable of the crow and fox, as given in Apuleius.[570] The church fathers are of course utilized—Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Basil, and a more recent theologian like Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury; and familiarity is shown with the early medieval standard authorities, such as Boethius, Cassiodorus, Bede, and Isidore. Of writers who may be regarded as dealing more particularly with natural science there are mentioned Pliny and Solinus on animals—but he seems to use Pliny very little and Solinus a great deal, Macer and Dioscorides on the properties and effects of herbs,[571] while works in the domain of astronomy or astrology are attributed to Julius (perhaps really Firmicus) and Augustus Caesar as well as to Ptolemy.[572]

His knowledge of Aristotle.

But what is most impressive is the frequent citation from Euclid and Aristotle, especially the latter. Not only the logical treatises are cited, but also the History of Animals[573] and the Liber Coeli et Mundi, while allusion is also made to Aristotle’s opinions concerning vision, motion, melancholy, waters, and various astronomical matters.[574] Such passages—as well as the fact that commentaries on Aristotle are ascribed to Neckam—suggest that Roger Bacon was mistaken in the much-quoted passage in which he states that the works of Aristotle on natural philosophy were first introduced to the medieval (Latin) learned world in Latin translations by Michael Scot about 1230. Neckam perhaps cites the History of Animals indirectly: at any rate he makes little use of it; but his numerous mentions of Aristotle’s views on nature make it evident that “the truth of Aristotelian” doctrine is already known in the twelfth century. And he already regards “the most acute Aristotle” as the pre-eminent authority among all philosophers. After stating that “all philosophers generally seem to teach” that the planets move in a contrary direction to the firmament like flies walking on a rushing wheel, Neckam adds a number of objections to this view, and adds, “It therefore was the opinion of Aristotle, the most acute, that the planets moved only with the firmament.” He then expresses his amazement that the other philosophers should have dared to oppose Aristotle, should have presumed to set their opinions against so great a philosopher. It is as if a peacock spread its spotted tail in rivalry with the starry sky, or as if owls and bats should vie with the eagle’s unblinking eye in staring at the mid-day sun.[575]

Use of recent authors.

That Neckam had some acquaintance with Arabic and Jewish writers is indicated by his citing Alfraganus and Isaac. Of Christian writers of the century before him Neckam quotes from Hildebert, and four times from Bernard Silvester. He cites the Pantegni or Tegni of Constantinus Africanus more than once.[576] He does not mention Adelard of Bath by name but in discussing experiments with vacuums repeats the experiment of the water jar. In another chapter he states that, if the earth were perforated, an enormous weight of lead would fall only to the center. Neckam’s chapter on “Why in the same earth plants grow of contrary effects” is similar to the third chapter of the Natural Questions of Adelard, and his chapter on “Why certain animals ruminate” is like Adelard’s seventh in the same work.[577]

Contemporary opinion of Neckam.

Roger Bacon, whose estimates of his contemporaries have sometimes been accepted at too high a value, wrote of Neckam some fifty years after Alexander’s death: “This Alexander wrote true and useful books on many subjects, but he cannot with justice be named as an authority.”[578] Bacon himself, however, seems on at least one occasion to have used Neckam as an authority without naming him.[579] On the other hand, another Englishman of note in science, Alfred of Sarchel or Sareshel, dedicated his book on The Movement of the Heart (De motu cordis) to Neckam.

His attitude toward natural science.

Whatever Neckam’s own scientific attainments may have been, there can be no doubt that he had a high regard for scientia and that he was not wanting in sympathetic appreciation of the scientific spirit. This fact shines out in the pages of the De naturis rerum amid its moral lessons and spiritual illustrations, its erroneous etymologies and popular anecdotes. “Science is acquired,” he says in one passage, “at great expense, by frequent vigils, by great expenditure of time, by sedulous diligence of labor, by vehement application of mind.”[580] But its acquisition abundantly justifies itself even in practical life and destructive war. “What craftiness of the foe is there that does not yield to the precise knowledge of those who have tracked down the elusive subtleties of things hidden in the very bosom of nature?”[581] He often cites these experts in natural science, whom he always seems to regard with respect as authorities.[582] Not that he believes that they have solved all problems. Some things forsooth are so hidden that it seems as if Nature is saying, “This is my secret, this is my secret!”[583] On the other hand, there are many natural phenomena too familiar through daily use and experience to need mention in books, since even those who do not read are acquainted with them. Neckam consequently will follow a middle course in selecting the contents of his volume.

Science and the Bible.

Although a Christian clergyman, Neckam seems to experience little difficulty in adopting the scientific theories of Aristotle; or, if there are Aristotelian doctrines known to him with which he disagrees, he usually quietly disregards them.[584] But he does raise the question several times of the correctness of Biblical statements concerning nature. He explains that Adam’s body was composed of all four elements and not made merely from earth, as the account of creation in the Book of Genesis might seem to imply.[585] And of the scriptural assertion that “God made two great lights” he says, “The historical narrative follows the judgment of the eye and the popular notion,” but of course the moon is not one of the largest planets.[586] In a third chapter entitled, “That water is not lower than earth,” he notes that the statement of the prophet that “God founded the earth upon the waters” does not agree with Alfraganus’ dictum that there is one sphere of earth and waters.[587] Wright quite unreasonably interprets this chapter as showing “to what a degree science had become the slave of scriptural phraseology.”[588] What it really shows is just the contrary, for even the Biblical expositors, Neckam tells us, say that the passage is to be taken in the sense that one speaks of Paris as located on the Seine. Neckam then makes a suggestion of his own, that what is really above the waters is the terrestrial paradise, since it is even beyond the sphere of the moon, and Enoch, translated thither, suffered no inconvenience whatever from the waters of the deluge. Moreover, the terrestrial paradise symbolizes the church which is founded on the waters of baptism. All of which is of course far-fetched and fanciful, but in no way can be said to make science “the slave of scriptural phraseology.” On the contrary it makes scriptural phraseology the slave of mysticism, while it subjects Enoch’s translation to somewhat material limitations. Possibly there may be used here some of the apocryphal books current under Enoch’s name.[589] On one occasion Neckam does accept a statement of the Bible which seems inconsistent with the views of philosophers concerning the four elements. This is the assertion that after the day of judgment there will be neither fire nor water but only air and earth will be left. To an imaginary philosopher who seems unwilling to accept this assertion Neckam says, “If you don’t believe me, at least believe Peter, the chief of the apostles, who says the same in his canonical epistle. Says what? Says that fire and water will not exist after the judgment day.”[590] But if Neckam prefers to believe his Bible as to what will occur in the world of nature after the day of judgment, he prefers also, as we have seen, to follow natural science in regard to present natural phenomena. Moreover, in neither the canonical nor apocryphal books can I find any such statement in the Epistles of Peter as Neckam here credits him with, unless after the elements have melted with fervent heat, the new heavens and a new earth are to be interpreted as made respectively of air and earth!

His own knowledge of science.

We may agree at least with Wright that Neckam’s scientific attainments are considerable for his time. In physics and astronomy he shows himself fairly well versed. He knows something of vacuums and syphoning; he argues that water tends naturally to take a spherical shape;[591] he twice points out that the walls of buildings should not be exactly parallel, since they should ultimately meet, if prolonged far enough, at the center of the earth;[592] and he asserts that the so-called “antipodes” are no more under our feet than we are under theirs.[593] He gives us what is perhaps our earliest information of some medieval inventions, such as the mariner’s compass and mirrors of glass.[594] But he does not attempt to explain differences in the images in convex and concave mirrors.[595] He is modest in regard to his biological attainments, saying that he “is not ashamed to confess” that there are species of which he does not even know the names, to say nothing of their natures.[596] But when Wright calls Neckam’s account of animals “a mere compilation” and says that “much of it is taken from the old writers, such as Solinus, Isidore, and Cassiodorus,”[597] he is basing his conclusion simply on the fact that marginal notes in the medieval manuscripts themselves ascribe a number of passages to these authors. This ascription is correct. But there are many passages on animals where the manuscripts name no authorities, and with one exception—the chapter on the hyena from Solinus—Wright fails to name any source from which Neckam has borrowed these other passages. It is easy to show that Neckam is a compiler when he himself or others have stated his authorities but it is equally fair to suppose that he is honest and original when he cites no authorities or has not been detected in borrowing. And he sometimes criticizes or discriminates between the earlier writers. After quoting Bernard Silvester’s statement that the beaver castrates itself to escape its hunters, he adds, “But those who are more reliably informed as to the natures of things assert that Bernard has followed the ridiculous popular notion and not reached the true fact.”[598] Neckam also questions the belief that a lynx has such keen sight that it can see through nine walls. This is supposed to have been demonstrated experimentally by observing a lynx with nine walls between it and a person carrying some raw meat. The lynx will move along its side of the walls whenever the meat is moved on the other side and will stop opposite the spot where the person carrying the meat stops. Neckam does not question the accuracy of this absurd experiment, but remarks that some natural scientists attribute it rather to the animal’s sense of smell than to its power of vision.[599]

Incredible stories of animals.

But as a rule Neckam’s treatment of animals is far more credulous than sceptical. He believes that the barnacle bird is generated from fir-wood which has been soaked in the salt water for a long time,[600] and that the wren, after it has been killed and is being roasted, turns itself on the spit.[601] He tells a number of delightful but incredible stories in which animals display remarkable sagacity and manifest emotions and motives similar to those of human beings. Some of these tales concern particular pets or wild beasts; others are of the habits of a species. The hawk, for example, keeps warm on wintry nights by seizing some other bird in its claws and holding it tight against its own body; but when day returns it gratefully releases this bird and satisfies its morning appetite upon some other victim.[602] Neckam also shares the common belief that animals were acquainted with the medicinal virtues of herbs. When the weasel is wounded by a venomous animal, it hastens to seek salubrious plants. For “educated by nature, it knows the virtues of herbs, although it has neither studied medicine at Salerno nor been drilled in the schools at Montpellier.”[603]

A chapter on the cock.

Neckam’s chapter on the barnyard cock perhaps will illustrate the divergences between medieval and modern science as well as any other. As a rooster approaches old age, he sometimes lays an egg upon which a toad sits, and from which is hatched the basilisk. How is it that the cock “distinguishes the hours by his song”? From great heat ebullition of the humors within the said bird arises, it produces saltiness, the saltiness causes itching, from the itching comes tickling, from the tickling comes delectation, and delectation excites one to song. Now nature sets certain periods to the movements of humors and therefore the cock crows at certain hours. But why have roosters crests and hens not? This is because of their very moist brains and the presence near the top of their heads of some bones which are not firmly joined. So the gross humor arising from the humidity escapes through the openings and produces the crest.[604]

Effect of sin upon nature.

Neckam harbored the notion, which we met long before in the pagan Philostratus, in the Hebraic Enoch literature, in the Christian Pseudo-Clementines and Basil’s Hexaemeron, and more recently in the writings of Hildegard, that man’s sin has its physical effects upon nature. To Adam’s fall he attributes not only the spots on the moon but the wildness of most animals, and the existence of insects to plague, and venomous animals to poison, and diseases to injure mankind.[605] But for the fall of man, moreover, all living creatures would be subsisting upon a vegetarian diet.

Neckam on occult virtues.

Magic is hardly mentioned in the De naturis rerum. In a passage, however, telling how Aristotle ordered some of his subtlest works to be buried with him, Neckam adds that he so guarded the neighborhood of his sepulcher “by some mysterious force of nature or power of art, not to say feat of the magic art, that no one in those days could enter it.”[606] But Neckam is a believer in occult virtues and to a certain extent in astrology. He would also seem to believe in the force of incantations from his assertion that “in words and herbs and stones diligent investigators of nature have discovered great virtue. Most certain experience, moreover, makes our statement trustworthy.”[607] He mentions a much smaller number of stones than Marbod, but ascribes the same occult virtues to those which he does name. In the preface to his first book he says that some gems have greater virtue when set in silver than when set in gold. A tooth separated from the jaw of a wild boar remains sharp only as long as the animal remains alive, an interesting bit of sympathetic magic.[608] The occult property of taming wild bulls possessed by the fig-tree which we have already seen noted by various authors is also remarked by Neckam.[609] A moonbeam shining through a narrow aperture in the wall of a stable fell directly on a sore on a horse’s back and caused the death of a groom standing nearby. Out-of-doors the effect would not have been fatal, since the force of the moon’s rays would not have been so concentrated upon one spot and the humidity would have had a better chance to diffuse through space.[610]

Fascination.

After telling of the fatal glances of the basilisk and wolf, Neckam says that fascination is explained as due to evil rays from someone who looks at you. He adds that nurses lick the face of a child who has been fascinated.[611]

His limited belief in astrology.

Neckam will not believe that the seven planets are animals.[612] He does believe, however, that they not merely adorn the heavens but exert upon inferiors those effects which God has assigned to them.[613] Each planet rules in turn three hours of the day. As there are twenty-four hours in all, the last three hours of each day are governed by the same planet which ruled the first three. Hence the names of the days in the planetary week, Sunday being the day when the sun governs the first three and last three hours, Monday the day when the moon controls the opening and closing hours of day, and so on.[614] But the stars do not impose necessity upon the human will which remains free. Nevertheless the planet Mars, for instance, bestows the gift of counsel; and science is associated with the planet Venus which is hot and moist, as are persons of sanguine temperament in whom science is wont to flourish. Neckam also associates each of the seven planets which illuminate the universe with one of the seven liberal arts which shed light on all knowledge.[615] He alludes to the great year of which the philosophers tell, when after 36,000 years the stars complete their courses,[616] and to the music of the spheres when, to secure the perfect consonance of an octave, the eighth sphere of the fixed stars completes the harmony of the seven planets. But he fears that someone may think he is raving when he speaks with the philosophers of this harmony of the eight spheres.[617]

Neckam’s farewell.

At Jesus College, Oxford, in a manuscript of the early thirteenth century, which is exclusively devoted to religious writings by Neckam,[618] there occurs at the close an address of the author to his work, which is in the same hand as the rest of the manuscript, which we may therefore not unreasonably suppose to have been Neckam’s own writing. As he is spoken of in the manuscript as abbot of Cirencester, perhaps these are also actually the last words he wrote. We may therefore appropriately terminate our account of Neckam by quoting them.

“Perchance, O book, you will survive Alexander, and worms will eat me before the book-worm gnaws you; for my body is due the worms and book-worms will demolish you. You are the mirror of my soul, the interpreter of my meditations, the surest index of my meaning, the faithful messenger of my mind’s emotions, the sweet comforter of my grief, the true witness of my conscience. To you as faithful depositary I have confided my heart’s secrets; you restore faithfully to me those things which I have committed to your trust; in you I read myself. You will come, you will come into the hands of some pious reader who will deign to pour forth prayers for me. Then indeed, little book, you will profit your master; then you will recompense your Alexander by a most grateful interchange. There will come, nor do I begrudge my labor, the devotion of a pious reader, who will now let you repose in his lap, now move you to his breast, sometimes place you as a sweet pillow beneath his head, sometimes gently closing you with glad hands, he will fervently pray for me to Lord Jesus Christ, who with Father and Holy Spirit lives and reigns God through infinite cycles of ages. Amen.”

[546] I, 37 and II, 158.

[547] For references to the sources for the above facts of Neckam’s life see the first few pages of the preface to Thomas Wright’s edition of the De naturis rerum, and the De laudibus divinae sapientiae, in Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, vol. 34, London, 1863. All references in this chapter, unless otherwise noted, will be to this volume, and to the book and chapter of the De naturis rerum.

[548] II, 21.

[549] II, 174.

[550] S. Lane-Poole, The Story of Cairo, London, 1902, p. 124.

[551] II, 21.

[552] II, 98. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, p. 96.

[553] II, 154, and Wright, Preface, p. 1, note. Wright gives no authority for his further observation, “The employment of glass for mirrors was known to the ancients, but appears to have been entirely superseded by metal.”

[554] I, 14.

[555] II, 20.

[556] II, 36.

[557] Such as his “Corrogationes Promethei” found at Oxford in the following MSS: Laud. Misc. 112, 13th century, fols. 9-42; Merton College 254, 14th century; Bodleian (Bernard 4094) and 550 (Bernard 2300), middle of 13th century.

[558] HL XVIII (1835), 521 was mistaken in saying that the De naturis rerum is the only one of Neckam’s works found in continental libraries, for see Evreux 72, 13th century. Alexandri Neckam opuscula, fol. 2. “Correctiones Promethei,” fol. 26v, “super expositione quarundem dictionum singulorum librorum Bibliothece scilicit de significatione eorum et accentu.” And there is a copy of his De utensilibus in BN 15171, fol. 176.

[559] The De utensilibus was also edited by Thomas Wright in 1857 in A Volume of Vocabularies. Professor Haskins has printed “A List of Text-books from the Close of the Twelfth Century” in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XX (1909), 90-94, which he argues is from a work by Neckam (Gonville and Caius College MS 385, pp. 7-61). In 1520 there was printed under the name of Albericus a work which is really by Neckam, as a MS at Oxford bears witness, Digby 221, 14th century, fol. 1. “Mithologie Alexandri Neckam et alio nomine Sintillarium appellatur”; Incipit, “Fuit vir in Egipto ditissimus nomine Syrophanes.” In the same MS, fols. 34v-85, follows another work, “Alexander Nequam super Marcianum de nuptiis Mercurii et Philologie.” See also in the Bodleian (Bernard 2019, #3, and 2581, #6) Scintillarium Poiseos in quo de diis gentium et nominibus deorum et philosophorum de eis opiniones ubi et de origine idolatriae.

[560] See M. Esposito, “On Some Unpublished Poems Attributed to Alexander Neckam,” in English Historical Review, XXX (1915), 450-71. He prints several poems on wine, etc., and gives a bibliography of Neckam’s works, five printed and eleven in MSS.

[561] P. xiii.

[562] II, 174.

[563] P. ix.

[564] P. xii.

[565] I, 14.

[566] Pp. xiv-xv.

[567] Wright (p. lxxvii) used four MSS of the 13th or very early 14th century. At Corpus Christi College, Oxford, there is a beautifully written twelfth century copy which he did not use, MS 45, folio, 186 fols., double columns. Comment, in Genesim et Ecclesiasten, sive de naturis rerum libri quinque; “Explicit tract. mag. Alex. Neckam super Ecclesiasten de naturis rerum.” Although Wright used two MSS from the Royal Library, he fails to note a third, MS 3737 in the Harleian collection of the British Museum. It is of the 13th century according to the catalogue and contains this interesting inscription, “Hic est liber S. Albani quam qui abstulerit aut titulum deleverit anathema sit. Amen.” (This book belongs to St. Albans. May he who steals it or destroys the title be anathema. Amen.)

[568] I, 75; II, 155, 173.

[569] II, 11; II, 107; II, 12; II, 126.

[570] In H. E. Butler’s translation, Oxford, 1909, given as Florida, cap. 26; in the MSS and in Hildebrand’s text, part II, Lipsiae, 1842, included in the prologus to the De Deo Socratis, with which we may therefore infer that Neckam was acquainted. Indeed there is a twelfth century manuscript of the De Deo Socratis in the British Museum—Harleian 3969.

[571] II, 166.

[572] II, 12.

[573] II, 44. Narcos piscis est tantae virtutis, ut dicit Aristoteles.... II, 159. Ut docet Aristoteles, omnia mula sterilis est. While the substance of these two passages is found in Pliny’s Natural History, he does not mention Aristotle in these connections nor use the Greek word “narcos.” Moreover, Neckam seems to give credit as a rule to his immediate sources and not to copy their citations; as we have seen, he credited the fable of the fox and crow to Apuleius and not to Aesop to whom Apuleius credits it.

[574] II, 153. Sed Aristoteli magis credendum esse reor quam vulgo. I, 39. Dicit tamen Aristoteles quod nihil habet duos motus contrarios. I, 7. Aristoteles qui dicit, “Solos melancholicos ingeniosos esse.” II, 1. Secundum veritatem doctrinae Aristotelicae omnes aquae sunt indifferentes secundum speciem. I, 9. Placuit itaque acutissimo Aristoteli planetas tantum cum firmamento moveri. Sed quid? Aristoteli audent sese opponere?... etc.

[575] It would therefore seem that Professor Haskins (EHR, 30, 68) is scarcely justified in saying that “the natural philosophy and metaphysics of Aristotle” are “cited in part but not utilized by Alexander Neckam,” especially since he states presently that “Neckam himself seems to have been acquainted with the Metaphysics, De Anima, and De generatione et corruptione” (Ibid., 69, and “A List of Textbooks,” Harvard Studies, XX (1909), 75-94). Professor Haskins, however, believes that the new Aristotle was by this time penetrating England, but gives the main credit for this to Alfredus Anglicus or Alfred of Sareshel, the author of the De motu cordis, and the translator of the Pseudo-Aristotelian De vegetabilibus and of an appendix to the Meteorologica consisting of three chapters De congelatis, also translated from the Arabic. Alfred was no isolated figure in English learning, since he dedicated the De vegetabilibus to Roger of Hereford and the De motu cordis to Neckam: ed. Baruch, Innsbruck, 1878; and see Baeumker, Die Stellung des Alfred von Sareshel ... in der Wissenschaft des beginnenden XIII Jahrts., München, Sitzber. (1913), No. 9. On the whole it is probably safe to assume that his knowledge of Aristotle was soon at least, if not from the start, shared with others. Grabmann (1916), pp. 22-25, adds nothing new on the subject of Neckam’s knowledge of Aristotle.

[576] I, 39; II, 11; I, 49; II, 129, 140, 157; II, 157 and 161.

[577] I, 19; I, 16; II, 57; II, 162.

[578] Fr. Rogeri Bacon, Opera Inedita, ed. Brewer, p. 457 in RS, vol. 15.

[579] As I shall point out when I come to Roger Bacon, there are one or two rather striking resemblances between his interests and method and those of Neckam.

[580] II, 155.

[581] II, 174.

[582] For instance, II, 148. “Qui autem in naturis rerum instructi sunt.”

[583] II, 99.

[584] I, 16, a citation from Aristotle gives him a little trouble.

[585] II, 152.

[586] I, 13. “Sed visus iudicium et vulgarem opinionem sequitur historialis narratio.”

[587] II, 49.

[588] Preface, p. xxx.

[589] See I Hermas, iii, 42. “Hear therefore why the tower is built upon the water: because your life is and shall be saved by water....”

[590] I, 16.

[591] II, 14. Vitruvius, VIII, v. 5, ascribes this doctrine to Archimedes.

[592] II, 172; and p. 109 of De utensilibus.

[593] II, 49.

[594] Wright points out (p. 1, note) that in Beckman’s History of Inventions no instances are given of allusions to glass mirrors earlier than the middle of the thirteenth century.

[595] II, 154.

[596] II, 99.

[597] P. xxxix.

[598] II, 140.

[599] II, 138.

[600] I, 48.

[601] I, 78.

[602] I, 25.

[603] II, 123. This reminds one of the account of the tunny fish by Plutarch which we noted in our chapter on Plutarch, where he says that the tunny fish needs no astrological canons and is familiar with arithmetic; “Yes, by Zeus, and with optics, too.” It is unlikely that Neckam was acquainted with Plutarch’s Essays.

[604] I, 75; the reasoning is somewhat similar to Adelard of Bath’s explanation why his nephew wept for joy.

[605] II, 156.

[606] II, 189.

[607] II, 85.

[608] II, 139.

[609] II, 80.

[610] II, 153; this item is also found in the De Natura rerum of Thomas of Cantimpré.

[611] II, 153.

[612] I, 9.

[613] I, 7.

[614] I, 10. See p. 670 for Bacon’s different account of this point.

[615] II, 173.

[616] I, 6.

[617] I, 15.

[618] Jesus 94. The MS includes a gloss on the psalter, a commentary on the proverbs of Solomon, two sermons, and three books on “Who can find a virtuous woman?” by Bede.