I have used the following edition of the Mirror of Nature: Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum naturale, sine nota (Nurembergae, Anth. Koburger, 1485), in two huge folio volumes. Later editions than this are apt to be very faulty. I have used an edition of the Speculum doctrinale of 1472 (?) and one of the Speculum historiale of 1473.
[1515] Prologue, cap. 17; cited HL XVIII, 475.
[1516] Ptolemy of Lucca XXII, 26, in Muratori, X, 1155. I unfortunately omitted to verify the citation from the Speculum historiale, at the time that I had access to that work.
[1517] As a matter of fact Vincent cites Albert concerning the odors of certain metals (V, 106) without naming any book.
[1518] Or thirty-second book in some editions. As a matter of fact the date 1244-1245 is also indicated at the close of the preceding book.
[1519] In book XXXII, edition of 1473, he mentions the death of Edmund Rich, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1247; and (cap. 102) tells how St. Louis in 1250 sent his brothers Alphonse of Poitou and Charles of Anjou back to console their mother; while in caps. 103-4 we read of Peter of Milan being canonized by Innocent IV in the tenth year of his pontificate or about 1254.
[1520] Vincent does not seem to know or use Albert’s De vegetabilibus et plantis in seven books, citing instead apparently Alfred of England’s translation of the two books of the De plantis. I doubt, however, if Vincent’s failure to cite a work by Albertus Magnus can be taken as sure proof that the work had not yet been written. Vincent was far from noting or including everything that was known in his time or had been written before, although some lazy investigators of the past have seen fit to assume that his work adequately depicted the entirety of medieval natural science.
[1521] Spec, nat., XXVII, 74 and 82; see also 101.
[1522] HL XVIII, 485.
[1523] HL XVIII, 504.