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]