The Speculum Maius—Events of his life—Was the Speculum naturale finished in 1250?—Order of the three Mirrors—Chronological relation to Albert and Aquinas—General character of the Speculum naturale—Vincent’s method of compilation—Use of Pliny and Aristotle—More recent authorities—Credulity concerning the barnacle birds—A sign of his scientific inferiority—Demons, magic, and superstition—Divination from dreams—The stars—Their influence—Virtues of gems—A chapter on the jasper—Alchemy—Virtues of plants—Animals—The tree of life and the bodies of the damned—Who sinned the more, Adam or Eve?—Classification of the sciences—Concluding estimate of the Speculum naturale.
The Speculum Maius.
Of medieval encyclopedists and compilers Vincent of Beauvais may be ranked as chief by reason of his Speculum Maius, which really consists of three voluminous “Mirrors,” the Speculum naturale, with which we shall be chiefly concerned,[1514] and the Speculum doctrinale and Speculum historiale. The Speculum morale, once attributed to him, has been shown to be a later production. The Speculum naturale may be regarded as capping the series begun with Neckam’s De naturis rerum and continued by Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum and Bartholomew of England’s De proprietatibus rerum. The Mirror of History is a world chronicle written from the Christian standpoint. The Mirror of Doctrine is not merely concerned with doctrine in the theological sense but with all fields of art and learning, industry and society, beginning with a discussion of schools of philosophy and educational method and a dictionary of some 3200 words, and running through grammar, logic, rhetoric, poetics, monastic and economic and political institutions, the useful and military arts, medicine, physics, and natural philosophy, mathematics and metaphysics, and finally reaching theology in its seventeenth and last book. Indeed, Vincent himself well described it as concerned with “all arts,” as the other two Mirrors reflect “all things” and “all times.”[1515] It is considerably briefer than the Mirror of Nature which contains almost twice as many books.
Events of his life.
Little is known of Vincent’s life and the years of his birth and death are uncertain. He speaks of himself as “Vincent of Beauvais of the Order of Preachers,” and in 1246 was a sub-prior of the Dominican monastery at Beauvais. Like another learned friar of his time, Roger Bacon, he speaks of laborious duties which interrupted his literary activities and forced him to employ copyists. Probably the most important external circumstance of his career was his connection with the royal family of St. Louis. Although a Dominican, Vincent held the post of reader in the Cistercian abbey of Royaumont which Louis had founded in 1228. Vincent seems to have served Louis IX in the triple capacity of royal librarian, chaplain, and tutor of the king’s children. His treatise On the Education of the Royal Children was composed at some time after the return of St. Louis from the Holy Land in 1254, and his Consolatory Letter dealt with the death of Prince Louis in 1260. The date 1264, often mentioned as that of Vincent’s death, rests on the statement of Louis à Valleoleti who wrote in the early fifteenth century. Ptolemy of Lucca who wrote a century nearer to Vincent’s time cites him concerning the three year vacancy in the papacy following the death of Clement IV, which would bring the completion of the Speculum historiale down to 1271 at least, but Daunou showed that this citation was incorrect and that the passage in question was from Martin of Poland, not Vincent of Beauvais. This is perhaps also the case with another passage in Ptolemy of Lucca which Daunou failed to note and which says, “Historians in general state, but Vincent in particular writes” of a comet which portended the death of Pope Urban IV in 1264. Although the duration of the comet was three months, the pope sickened as soon as it appeared and died on the very day that it disappeared.[1516] If the citation is from Vincent, he must have lived beyond 1264.
Was the Speculum naturale finished in 1250?
It has been customary to give 1250 as the precise date for the completion of the Speculum naturale, because its last book, which is geographical and historical, states that it will bring the history of the world down to the present year, 1250. Valentin Rose accepted this date so confidently as to argue on the basis of it that, because Vincent did not cite the work of Albertus Magnus on minerals,[1517] that treatise was not written until after 1250. But that such statements of the current year in Vincent’s works cannot be relied upon too implicitly is shown in his Mirror of History. From the list of popes given in its eighth book we should infer that it was composed in 1244 or 1245, since it speaks of Innocent IV as having now sat on the throne for two years; and again the closing chapter of its thirty-first[1518] book states that the author has brought the history of the sixth age of the world down to the current year, that is, the eighteenth of Louis IX and the second of Innocent IV and the thirty-fourth of Frederick II. But other events are mentioned which happened in 1250 and 1254.[1519]
Order of the three Mirrors.
It is also difficult to determine the order in which the three Mirrors were completed. Daunou assumed that the Speculum naturale was finished first, and that the Speculum doctrinale treated again of some topics which had already been discussed in the other. He also placed the Speculum historiale later than the Mirror of Nature, believing that it was published at some time after 1254 rather than ten years earlier, and pointing out that in its ninth book Vincent mentioned having used Pliny’s Natural History in his Speculum naturale. On the other hand, the revised edition of Potthast’s Wegweiser regards the Mirror of History as completed about 1244 before the Mirror of Nature. As an intermediate work it mentions Memoriale omnium temporum, an extract in eighty chapters made by Vincent himself from the Speculum historiale. This extract was then embodied in the last book of the Speculum naturale, where an account of the years 1242-1250 was added to it. And in the last chapter of the Speculum naturale, where the coming of antichrist and the last judgment are discussed, we are told that these matters are more fully treated at the close of the Speculum historiale. Thus we have both the Mirror of History looking back on the Mirror of Nature as an earlier work, and vice versa. Thus we apparently have to do with a revised edition of one or both of the works, or with later additions and interpolations which a study of the manuscripts would be necessary to unravel, although very likely it would fail to do so. One might hazard the conjecture that the Mirror of History was first issued in 1244, as it says, and that this edition was the one cited in the Mirror of Nature; that after 1254 a revised edition of the Mirror of History was issued and that in this the Speculum naturale was referred to. There are further objections even to this view, however, as we shall presently see.
Chronological relation to Albert and Aquinas.