Le Sieur Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt (see A.D. 1269) alludes clearly to the polarity of the needle in an epistle, “Ad Sigerum de Foucaucourt—Fontancourt—militem de Magnete,” written toward the end of the thirteenth century, and the magnet is, at about the same period, referred to in the following lines of the minstrel Gauthier d’Espinois, contemporary of the Count of Champagne, Thibaud VI, who lived before the middle of the thirteenth century (“Hist. Lit. de la France,” 1856, Vol. XXIII—chansonniers—pp. 576, 831):
“Tout autresi (ainsi) comme l’aimant déçoit (détourne)
L’aiguilette par force de vertu
A ma dame tot le mont (monde) retennue
Qui sa beauté connoit et aperçoit.”
Vincent de Beauvais applies the terms zohron and aphron (not afon) to the south and north ends of the needle, and Mr. J. Klaproth (“Lettre à M. de Humboldt sur l’invention de la Boussole,” Paris, 1834, pp. 49–51), says these words are Arabian, notwithstanding assertions made to the contrary by Martinus Lipenius in his “Navigatio Salomonis Ophiritica Illustrata,” 1660, cap. v. sec. 3, as well as by many others who have written upon the compass.
References.—Sonnini, in Buffon, “Minéraux,” VIII. p. 76; Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1859–1860, Vol. II. pp. 253–254, and Vol. V. p. 54; Azuni, “Boussole,” pp. 41, 42, and 44; Klaproth, p. 13; Miller, “History Philosophically Illustrated,” London, 1849, Vol. I. p. 179, note. “Simonis Maioli ... Dies Caniculares, seu Colloqui,” XXIII. 1597, p. 783; Dr. F. Ueberweg, “Hist. of Phil.” (Morris’ translation, 1885), Vol. I. pp. 433, 435; “Journal des Savants” for Feb.-Mar. 1892; “Vincenti Bellov. Speculi Naturalis,” Vol. II. lib. ix. cap. 19.
It may be added that the “Mirror of Nature”[12] is one of the four pretentious works which, however popular they may at any time have been and however powerfully they may have influenced the age in which they were written, do not, says Humboldt, fulfil by their contents the promise of their titles. The other three are the “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon, the “Liber Cosmographicus” (Physical Geography) of Albertus Magnus, and the “Imago Mundi” (Picture of the World) of Cardinal Petrus de Alliaco—Pedro de Helico—Pierre d’Ailly. (For the celebrated French theologian Pierre d’Ailly (1350–1420), Chancellor of the Paris University, see “Histoire de l’Astronomie,” J. F. C. Hœfer, Paris 1873, p. 290; “Paris et ses historiens,” Le Roux de Lincy et L. M. Tisserand, Paris, 1867, p. 402 (etched portrait); “New Int. Encycl.,” New York, 1902, Vol. I. p. 231; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. I. pp. 952–954; also works relating to him by Aubrelicque, Compiègne, 1869, by Arthur Dinaux, Cambrai, 1824, and by Geo. Pameyer, Strasbourg, 1840.) The last-named work by Pierre d’Ailly was the chief authority at the time and exercised a greater influence on the discovery of America than did the correspondence with the learned Florentine Toscanelli (Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1849, Vol. II. p. 621; “La lettre et la carte de Toscanelli,” par Henri Vignaud, Paris, 1901, or “Toscanelli et Christophe Colomb” in the “Annales de Géographie,” No. 56, 11e année, Mars 15, 1902, pp. 97–110; “Toscanelli in der älteren und neuren Columbus literatur,” E. Geleich Mitteil. Wien, Vol. XXXVI. 10, 1893).
Two of the above-named works partake of the encyclopædic, and in this class likewise properly enter the twenty books “De Rerum Natura” of Thomas Cantapratensis of Louvain (1230), the “Book of Nature,” by Conrad Van Meygenberg of Ratisbon (1349), and the great “Margarita Philosophica,” or “Circle of the Sciences,” of Father Gregorius Reisch (1486). (See the different entries concerning the last-named work at pp. 663–664 of Libri’s Catalogue, Vol. II, for 1861.) One more work bears title “Picture of the World”—“l’Image du Monde”—written by Gautier de Metz, a French poet of the thirteenth century, on the lines of still another encyclopædic “Imago Mundi,” by Honorius d’Autun (Neubauer, “Traductions historiques de l’Image du Monde,” 1876, p. 129; Haase, likewise Fritsche, “Untersuch ... der Image du Monde,” 1879 and 1880; Fant, “l’Image du Monde, étudié dans ses diverses rédactions françaises,” Upsal, 1886. Chas. Bossut, in his “Hist. Générale des Mathém.,” Paris, 1810, Vol. I. p. 229, also mentions an encyclopædic “Mirroir du Monde,” in Turkish Gian Numah; “The Final Philosophy,” Chas. W. Shields, New York, 1877, p. 133).
A.D. 1254.—Albertus Magnus, of the family of the Counts of Bollstädt, one of the most prominent philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, likewise alludes to the book “De Lapide” already referred to at A.D. 1250, and to the Arabic terms zohron and aphron, giving to these words, however, a wrong interpretation.[13]