CHAPTER XXVII

OTHER EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING I BOETHIUS, ISIDORE, BEDE, GREGORY THE GREAT
Aridity of early medieval learning — Historic importance of The Con- solation of Philosophy — Medieval reading — Influence of the w^orks of Boethius — His relation to antiquity and middle ages — Attitude to the stars — Fate and free vi^ill — Music of the stars and universe — Isidore of Seville — Method of the Etymologies — Its sources — iSlatural marvels "-Isidore is rather less hospitable to superstition than Pliny — Portents —Words and numbers — History of magic — Definition of magic — Future influence of Isidore's account of magic — Attitude to astrology — In the De natura rerum — Bede's scanty science — Bede's De natura rerum — Divination by thunder — Riddles of Aldhelm — Gregory's Dialogues — Signs and wonders wrought by saints — More monkish miracles — A monastic snake-charmer — Basilius the magician — A demon salad — In- cantations in Old Irish — The Fili.
The erudite fortitude of students of the Merovingian period commands our admiration, but sometimes inclines us to wonder whether anyone without a somewhat dry-as-dust constitution could penetrate far or tarry long in the desert of early medieval Latin learning without perishing of intel- lectual thirst. As a rule the writings of the time show no originality whatever, and least of all any scientific investi- gation; they are of value merely as an indication of what past books men still read and what parts of past science they still possessed some interest in. Under the same cate- gory of condemnation may be placed most of the Carolingian period so far as our investigation is concerned. We shall therefore traverse rapidly this period of sparse scientific productivity and shall be doing it ample justice, if from its meager list of writers we select for consideration Boethius of Italy at the opening of the sixth century and Gregory the Great at its close, Isidore of Spain at the opening of the
6l6
CHAP. XXVII EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING
617
seventh century, and Bede in England at the beginning of the eighth century, with some brief allusion to the riddles of Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, and to Old Irish litera- ture. We should gain little or nothing by adding to the list Alcuin at the close of the eighth century and Rabanus Mau- rus in the ninth century, although it may be noted nov^ that later medieval writers cite Rabanus for statements which I have failed to find in his printed works. In general it may be said that the writers whom we shall consider are those during the period who are most cited by the later medieval authors.
Of the distinguished family and political career of Boe- thius who lived from about 480 to 524 A. D., and his final exile, imprisonment, and execution by Theodoric the East Goth, we need scarcely speak here. Our concern is with his little book. The Consolation of Philosophy, one of those memorable writings which, like The City of God of Augus- tine, stand out as historical landmarks and seem to have been written on the right subject by the right man at the most dramatic moment. The timely appearance of such works, produced in both these cases not under the stimulus of triumphant victory but the sting of bitter defeat, is never- theless perhaps less surprising than is their subsequent pres- ervation and enormous influence. We often are alternately amused and amazed by the mistakes concerning historical and chronological detail found in medieval writers. Yet medieval readers showed considerable appreciation of the course of history, of its fundamental tendencies, and of its crucial moments by the works which they included in their meager libraries.
But were medieval libraries as meager as we are wont to assume? Bede and Alcuin both tell of the existence of sizeable libraries in England,^ and Cassiodorus urged those monks whose duty it was to tend the sick to read a number of standard medical works.^ I sometimes wonder if too
Historic impor- tance of The Con- solation of Phi- losophy.
Medieval reading.
*R. L. Poole, Medieval Thought,i8S4, pp. 19, 21. *Migne, PL 70, 1146.
6i8
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
much attention has not been given to medieval writing and too Httle to medieval reading, of which so much medieval writing, in Latin at least, is little more than a reflection. We get their image, faint perhaps and partial ; but they had the real object. It has been assumed by some modern scholars that medieval writers had usually not read the works, es- pecially of classical antiquity, which they profess to cite and quote, but relied largely upon anthologies and florilegia. In the case of various later medieval authors we shall have occasion to discuss this question further. For the present I may say that in going through the catalogues of collec- tions of medieval manuscripts I have noticed few florilegia or anthologies from the classics in medieval Latin manu- scripts,— perhaps Byzantine ones from Greek literature are more common — and few indeed compared to the number of manuscripts of the old Latin writers themselves. We owe the very preservation of the Latin classics to medieval scribes who copied them in the ninth and tenth centuries; why deny that they read them ? Latin florilegia of any sort do not exist in impressive numbers, but other kinds are as often met with as are those from classic poets or prose writers, for instance, selections from the church fathers themselves. On the whole, the impression I have received is that those authors included in florilegia, commonplace books, and other manuscripts made up of miscellaneous ex- tracts, were likewise the authors most read in toto. I am therefore inclined to regard the florilegia as a proof that the authors included were read rather than that they were not. But from extant Latin manuscripts one gets the impression that the whole matter of florilegia is of very slight impor- tance, and that the theory hitherto based upon them is a survival of the prejudice of the classical renaissance against "the dark ages."
At any rate, however scanty medieval libraries may have been, they were apt to include a copy of The Consola- tion of Philosophy, and however little read some of their volumes may have been, its pages were certainly well
XXVII
EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING
619
thumbed. Lists of its commentators, translators, and imi- tators, and other indications of its vast medieval influence may be found in Peiper's edition.^ Other writings of Boe- thius were also well known in the middle ages and increased his reputation then. His translations and commentaries upon the Aristotelian logical treatises ^ are of course of great importance in the history of medieval scholasticism. His translations and adaptations of Greek treatises in arithme- tic, geometry, and music occupy a similar place in the his- tory of medieval mathematical studies.^ Indeed, his treatise on music is said to have "continued to be the staple requisite for the musical degree at Oxford until far into the eight- eenth century." ^ The work on the Trinity and some other theological tracts, attributed to Boethius by Cassiodorus and through the middle ages, are now again accepted as genuine by modem scholars and place Boethius' Christianity beyond question.^
Boethius has often been regarded as a last representative His rela- of Roman statesmanship and of classical civilization. His antiquity defense of Roman provincials against the greed of the Goths, ^1^ his stand even unto death against Theodoric on behalf of the ages, rights of the Roman senate and people, his preservation through translation of the learned treatises of expiring an-
^ Anicii Manlii Severini Boetii Philosophiae Consolationis Libri quinque, ed. R. Peiper, Lipsiae, 1871, pp. xxxix-xlvi, li-lxvii. See also Manitius (1911), pp. 33-5.
It was by seeking comfort in The Consolation of P-hitosophy after the death of Beatrice that Dante was led into a new world of literature, science, and phi- losophy, as he tells us in his Con- vivio; cited by Orr (1913), p. i.
^Manitius (1911), pp. 29-32.
''Ibid., 26-8. At the time I went through the various cata- logues of MSS in the British Mu- seum item by item it was not my intention to include Boethius in this investigation, and I am there- fore unable to say whether the Museum has MSS which may
throw further light upon the problems connected with the mathematical treatises ascribed to Boethius. Manitius mentions no English MSS in this connection, but there are likely to be some at London, Oxford, or Cambridge.
* Boethius' Consolation of Phil- osophy, translated from the Latin by George Colville, 1556; ed. with Introduction by E. B. Box, Lon- don, 1897, p. xviii.
* Manitius (1911) pp. 35-6; Usener, Anccdota Holdcri, Bonn, 1877, pp. 48-59; E. K. Rand, Der dent Boethius sugcschriebene Traktat De fide catholica, 1901. The De fide catholica, however, is not mentioned by Cassiodo- rus and is regarded as spurious.
620 MAGIC 'AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
tiquity, and the almost classical Latin style and numerous allusions to pagan mythology of The Consolation of Phi- losophy:— all these combine to support this view. But the middle ages also made Boethius their own, and several points may be noted in which The Consolation of Philosophy in particular foreshadowed their attitude and profoundly in- fluenced them. Both a Christian and a classicist, both a theologian and a philosopher, Boethius set a standard which subsequent thought was to follow for a long time. The very form of his work, a dialogue part in prose and part in verse, remained a medieval favorite. And the fact that this sixth century author of a work on the Trinity consoled his last hours with a work in which Christ and the Trinity are not mentioned, but where Phoebus is often named and where Philosophy is the author's sole interlocutor : — this fact, com- bined with Boethius' great medieval popularity, gave per- petual license to those medieval writers who chose to dis- cuss philosophy and theology as separate subjects and from distinct points of view. The great medieval influence of Aristotle and Plato, and in particular of the latter's Timaeus, also is already manifest in The Consolation of Philosophy. Aristotle, it is true, appears to be incorrectly credited by Boethius with the assertion that the eye of the lynx can see through solid objects,^ but this ascription of spurious state- ments to the Stagirite also corresponds to the attribution of entire spurious treatises to him later in the middle ages.
Of the ways in which The Cofisolation of Philosophy influenced medieval thought that which is most germane to our investigation is its attitude toward the stars and the problem of fate and free will. The heavenly bodies are apparently ever present in Boethius' thought in this work, and especially in the poetical interludes he keeps mention- ing Phoebus, the moon, the universe, the sky, and the starry constellations. Per ardna ad astra was a true saying for those last days in which he solaced his disgrace and pain with philosophy. It is by contemplation of the heavens
^De consol. philos., Ill, 8, 21.
XXVII EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING 621
that he raises his thought to lofty philosophic reflection; his mind may don swift wings and fly far above earthly things
"Until it reaches starry mansions And joins paths with Phoebus." ^
He loves to think of God as ruling the universe by perpetual reason and certain order, as sowing stars in the sky, as bind- ing the elements by number, as Himself immovable, yet re- volving the spheres and decreeing natural events in a fixed series.^ The attitude is like that of the Timaens and Aris- totle's Metaphysics, closely associating astronomy and the- ology, favorable to belief in astrology, in support of which later scholastic writers cite Boethius.
We may further note the main points in Boethius' ar- Pate and gument concerning fate and free will, providence and pre- ^^^^ ^'^^• destination,^ which was often cited by later writers. He declares that all generation and change and movement pro- ceed from the divine mind or Providence,* while fate is the regular arrangement inherent in movable objects by which divine providence is realized.^ Fate may be exercised through spirits, angelic or daemonic, through the soul or through the aid of all nature or "by the celestial motion of the stars." ® It is with the last that Boethius seems most in- clined to identify fati series mohilis. "That series moves sky and stars, harmonizes the elements one with another, and transforms them from one to another." More than that, "It constrains human fortunes in an indissoluble chain of causes, which, since it starts from the decree of immov- able Providence, must needs itself also be immutable." '^ Boethius, however, does not believe in a complete fatalism, astrological or otherwise. He holds that nothing escapes
^ De consol. philos., IV, i. solet." To the ensuing argument
^ Ibid., III. 9, i; III, 12, 14; are devoted the sixth and seventh
III, 9, 10; III, 12, 99; II, 8, 13. chapters of Book IV and all of
'Ibid., IV, 6, 10, "In hac enim Book V.
de providentiae simplicitate, de * Ibid., IV, 6, 21.
fati serie, de repentinis casibus, ^ Ibid., IV, 6, 30.
de cognitione ac praedestinatione ^ Ibid., IV, 6, 48.
divina, de arbitrii libertate quaeri ' Ibid., IV, 6, yy.
622
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Music of the stars and uni- verse.
divine providence, to which there is no distinction between past, present, and future.^ As the human reason can con- ceive universals, aUhough sense and imagination are able to deal only with particulars, so the divine mind can foresee the future as well as the present. But there are some things which are under divine providence but which are not sub- ject to fate.^ Divine providence imposes no fatal necessity upon the human will, which is free to choose its course.^ The world of nature, however, existing without will or rea- son of its own, conforms absolutely to the fatal series pro- vided for it. As for chance, Boethius agrees with Aristotle's Physics that there is really no such thing, but that what is commonly ascribed to chance really results from an unex- pected coincidence of causes, as when a man plowing a field finds a treasure which another has buried there.* Thus Boethius maintains the co-existence of the fatal series ex- pressed in the stars, divine providence, and human free will, a thesis likely to reassure Christians inclined to astrology who had been somewhat disturbed by the fulminations of the fathers against the genethliaci, just as his constant rhap- sodizing over the stars and heavens would lead them to re- gard the science of the stars as second only to divine worship. Indeed, his position was the usual one in the subsequent middle ages.
The stars also come into Boethius' treatise on music, where one of the three varieties of music is described as mundane, where the music of the spheres is declared to exist although inaudible to us, and where each planet is con- nected with a musical chord. Plato is quoted as having said, not in vain, that the world soul is compounded of musical harmony, and it is affirmed that the four diff'erent and contrary elements could never be united in one system unless some harmony joined them.^
^ De consol philos., V, 4-6.
=■ Ibid., IV, 6, 58.
'Ibid., V, 2-3 and 6, 110, "tam- etsi nullam naturae habeat neces- sitatem atqui deus ea futura quae ex arbitrii libertate proveniunt
praesentia contuetur."
*Ibid.,V, I.
^ De musica libri quinque, I, 1-2 and 27; in Migne, PL 63, 1167- 1300.
XXVII EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING 623
Isidore was bom about 560 or 570, became bishop of Isidore of
Seville in 599 or 600, and died in the year 636. Although mention should perhaps be made of his briefer De natura rerunv,^ a treatise dedicated to King Sisebut who reigned from 612 to 620, Isidore's chief work from our standpoint is the Etymologiae? His friend, bishop Braulio, writing after Isidore's death, says that he had left unfinished the copy of this work which he made at his request, but this was apparently a second edition, since in a letter written to Isi- dore probably in 630, Braulio speaks of copies as already in circulation, although he describes their text as corrupt and abbreviated. But apparently the work had been com- posed seven years before this.^ The Etymologies was un- doubtedly a work of great importance and influence in the middle ages, but one should not be led, as some writers have been, into exaggerated praise of Isidore's erudition on this account.'* For the work's importance consists chiefly in showing how scanty was the knowledge of the early middle ages. Its influence also would seem not to have been en- tirely beneficial, since writers continued to cite it as an au- thority as late as the thirteenth century, when it might have been expected to have outlived its usefulness. We suspect that it proved too handy and convenient and tended to en- courage intellectual laziness and stagnation more than any anthology of literary quotations did. Arevalus listed ten
^Migne, PL 83, 963-1018. In Dark Ages; Isidore of Seville,
Harleian 3099, 1134 A. D., the 1912, in Columbia University
Etymologies at fols. i-iS4. are Studies in History, etc., vol. 48, pp.
followed by the De natura rerum, 1-274. For Isidorean bibliography
the last chapter of which (fol. see pp. 17, 22-3, 46-7 of Brehaut's
164V) is numbered 42 instead of introduction.
48 as in Migne. But up to chap- ' Manitius (1911), pp. 60-61; ter 27, Utrum sidera animam ha- Brehaut (1912), p. 34. beant, the division into chapters * To say, for example, that "so seems the same as in the printed hospitable an attitude toward pro- text, fane learning as Isidore displayed
* Migne, PL 82, 73-728, a reprint . . . was never surpassed through-
of the edition of Arevalus, Rome, out the middle ages" (Brehaut,
1796. Large portions of the Ety- p. 31), is unfair to many later
mologies have been translated into writers, as our discussion of the
English with an introduction of natural science of the twelfth and
some seventy pages by E. Bre- thirteenth centuries will show. haut, An Encyclopedist of the
Seville.
624
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Method of the Etymolo- gies.
Its sources.
printed editions of it before 1527, showing that it was as popular in the time of the Renaissance as in the middle ages.
The Etymologies is little more than a dictionary, in which words are not listed alphabetically but under subjects with an average of from one to a half dozen lines of deriva- tion and definition for each term. The method is, as Brehaut well says, "to treat each subject by , . . defining the terms belonging to it." ^ Pursuing this method, Isidore treats of various arts and sciences, human interests and natural phe- nomena : the seven liberal arts, medicine, and law ; chro- nology and bibliography ; the church, religion, and theology ; the state and family, physiology, zoology, botany, mineral- ogy, geography, and astronomy; architecture and agricul- ture ; war and sport ; arms and armor ; ships and costume and various utensils of domestic life. Such is the classification which later medieval writers were to adopt or adapt rather than the arrangement followed in Pliny's Natural History. Isidore's association of words and definitions under topics makes an approach, at least, to the articles of encyclopedias : sometimes there is a brief discussion of the general topic before the particular terms and names are considered ; some- times there are chronological tables, family trees, or lists of signs and abbreviations. In short, Isidore forms a con- necting link between Pliny and the encyclopedists of the thirteenth century.
In a prefatory word to Braulio Isidore describes the Etymologies as a collection made from his recollection and notes of old authors,^ of whom he cites a large number in the course of the work. It has been suspected that some of these writers were known to Isidore only at second or third hand ; at any rate he has not made a very discriminating se- lection from their works and he has been accused more than once of not clearly understanding what he tried to abridge. On the other hand, Isidore seems to me to display a notable
'Brehaut (1912), p. 34. lectum, atque ita in quibusdam
' Migne, PL 82, 73, "Opus de locis adnotatum, sicut exstat con-
origine quarumdam rerum, ex scriptum stylo maiorum."
veteris lectionis recordatione col-
XXVII EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING 625
power of brief generalization, of terse expression and telling use of words. We should not have to go back to the middle ages for textbook writers who have written more and said less. This power of condensed expression probably ac- counts for Isidore's being so much cited. Many of the deri- vations proposed for words are so patently absurd that we would fain ascribe them to Isidore's own perverse ingenuity, but it is doubtful if he possessed even that much originality, and they are probably all taken from classical grammarians such as Varro.^ Isidore, however, still displays a consider- able knowledge of the Greek language. And again it may be said in excuse of Isidore and his sources that the absurd etymologies are usually proposed in the case of words whose derivation is still problematic.
In the passages dealing with natural phenomena and sci- ence Isidore borrows chiefly from Pliny and Solinus, some- times from Dioscorides, giving us a faint adumbration of their much fuller confusion of science and superstition. Oc- casionally bits of information or misinformation are bor- rowed through the medium of the church fathers. A work of Galen, for instance, is cited ^ through the letter of Jerome to Furia against widows remarrying. Galen, in- deed, is seldom mentioned by Isidore who draws his unusu- ally brief fourth book on medicine chiefly from Caelius Au- relianus.^
In his treatment of things in nature Isidore seldom gives Natural their medicinal properties as Pliny does, and this reduces "^^.rvels. correspondingly the amount of space devoted to marvelous virtues. Indeed, of the twenty books of the Etymologies but one is devoted to animals other than man, one to vege- tation which is combined in the same book with agriculture, and one to metals and minerals. The book on animals is the longest and is subdivided under the topics of domestic
* See, for example, EtymoL, who cared for the sick to read
VIII, 7, 3, "Vates a vi mentis ap- Hippocrates and Galen as well as
pellatos, Varro auctor est." Dioscorides and Caelius Aurelia-
" Etymol, XX, 2, 37. nus ; Brehaut (1912), p. 87, note,
^ Cassiodorus, however, urged citing PL 70, 1146, in the De instit.
the monks of the sixth century divin. littcrarum.
626
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Isidore is rather less hos- pitable to super- stition than Pliny.
animals, wild beasts, minute animals, serpents, worms, fish, birds, and minute flying creatures. Isidore also tends to ascribe more marvelous virtues to animals than to plants or stones. From Pliny and Solinus are repeated the tales of the basilisk, echeneis, and the like,^ while Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms is cited for the story of the asp resisting the incantations of its charmers by laying one ear to the ground and stopping up the other ear with the end of its tail.^ On the other hand, Isidore omits Pliny's super- stitious assertions concerning the river tortoise and gives only his criticism that the statement that ships move more slowly if they have the foot of a tortoise aboard is incred- ible.^ Even in the books on minerals and vegetation we still hear of animal marvels : * how the coloring matter, cin- nabar, is composed of the blood shed by the dragon in its death struggle with the elephant, how the fiercest bulls grow tame under the Egyptian fig-tree, how swallows restore the sight of their young with the swallow-wort, or of the use of fennel and rue by the snake and weasel respectively, the former tasting fennel to enable him to shed his old skin, and the latter eating rue to make him immune from venom in fighting the snake. All these items, too, are from Pliny.
But on the whole I should estimate that Isidore contains less superstitious matter even proportionally to his meager content than Pliny does in connection with the virtues of animals, plants, and stones. In discussing plants he says nothing of ceremonial plucking of them and he contains practically no traces of agricultural magic. He describes as a superstition of the Gentiles the notion that the herb scylla, suspended whole at the threshold, drives away all evils. ^ He mentions the use of mandragora as an anaes- thetic in surgical operations, and remarks that its root is of human form, but says nothing of its applications in magic.^ In his discussion of stones he repeats after Pliny and So-
^ Etymol., XII, 4, 6 and 6, 34.
^Ibid., XII, 4, 12.
^Ibid., XII, 6, 56.
*lbid., XVII, 7, 17 and 9, 2>^;
XIX, 17, 8. " Ibid., XVII, 9, 85. Ubid., XVII, 9, 30.
XXVII
EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING
627
linus the marvelous virtues ascribed to a number of them, but follows Pliny's method of making the magicians re- sponsible for these assertions or of inserting a word of cau- tion such as "if this is to be believed" with each statement. Finally he introduces together a number of cases of mar- velous powers ascribed to stones with the introduction, "There are certain gems employed by the Gentiles in their superstitions." ^
Isidore lists a number of mythical monsters as well as Portents, cases of portentous births in the third chapter, De portentis, of his eleventh book. He there affirms that God sometimes wishes to signify future events by means of monstrous births as well as by dreams and oracles, and declares that this "has been proved by numerous experiences." ^
Brehaut is impressed by Isidore's "confidence in words," Words which he thinks "really amounted to a belief, strong though numbers perhaps somewhat inarticulate, that words were transcen- dental entities." ^ Isidore's faith in the power of words does not seem, however, to have led him to recommend the use of any incantations; he was content with etymologies and allegorical interpretation. He was also a great believer in the mystic significance of numbers and wrote a separate treatise upon those numbers which occur in the sacred Scriptures. In the Etymologies, too, he more than once dwells upon the perfection of certain numbers. We have already heard how perfect most of the numbers up to twelve are, but this is our first opportunity to hear the Pythagorean method applied to the number twenty-two. However, Isi- dore is not the first to do this ; he is, indeed, simply quoting one of the fathers, Epiphanius.^ "The modiits is so-called because it is of perfect mode. For this measure contains forty-four pounds, that is, twenty-two sextarii. And the reason for this number is that in the beginning God per- formed twenty-two works. For on the first day He made
^Etymol, XVI, 15, 21-26. ^ Ibtd., XI, 3, 4, "quod plurimis etiam experimentis probatum est." ' Brehaut (1912), p. 3.
* EfymoL, XVI, 26, 10, from Epiphanius, Liber de ponderibus et mensuris.
628 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
seven works, namely, unformed matter, angels, light, the upper heavens, earth, water, and air. On the second day only one work, the firmament. On the third day four things : the seas, seeds, grass, and trees. On the fourth day three things: sun and moon and stars. On the fifth day three: fish and aquatic reptiles and flying creatures. On the sixth day four : beasts, domestic animals, land reptiles, and man. And all twenty-two kinds were made in six days.^ And there are twenty-two generations from Adam to Jacob. . . . And twenty-two books of the Old Testament. . . . And there are twenty-two letters from which the doctrine of the divine law is composed. Therefore in accordance with these ex- amples the modius of twenty-two sextarii was established by Moses following the measure of sacred law. And al- though various peoples have added something to or igno- rantly subtracted something from its weight, it is divinely preserved among the Hebrews for such reasons." With such mental magic and pious "arithmetic," as Isidore's friend Braulio called it, might the Christian attempt to sate the inherited thirst within him for the operative magic and pagan divination in which his conscience and church no longer allowed him to indulge. History Isidore's chapter on the Magi or magicians, which oc-
curs in his eighth book on the church and divers sects, is a notable one, of whose great future influence we shall pres- ently speak. His own borrowing here is only in small part from Pliny's famous passage on the same theme. On such a subject Isidore naturally has recourse mainly to Christian writers : Augustine, Jerome, Lactantius, Tertullian. From the occasional similarity of his wording to these authors it seems fairly certain that his account is a patchwork from their works, and the context is too Christian to have been drawn in toto from some Roman encyclopedist now lost to us. Perhaps the most noteworthy point about Isidore's chap- ter is that he has made magic and magicians the general and
* Hence, presumably, the sextarii, from sex.
XXVII EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING 629
inclusive head under which he presently lists various other minor occult arts and their practitioners for separate defi- nition. But first we have a longer discussion, though long only by comparison, of magic in general. Its history is sketched; Zoroaster and Democritus, as in Pliny, are men- tioned as its founders, but it is not forgotten that the bad angels were really responsible for its dissemination. From the first Isidore identifies magic and divination; after stating that the magic arts abounded among the Assyrians, he quotes a passage from Lucan which speaks of the prevalence of liver divination, augury, divination from thunder, and as- trology in Assyria. Also the magic arts are said to have prevailed over the whole world for many centuries through their prediction of the future and invocation of the dead. Brief allusion is further made to Moses and Pharaoh's ma- gicians, to the invocation of Samuel by the witch of Endor, to Circe and the comrades of Ulysses, and to several other passages in classical literature anent magic.
Next comes a formal definition of the Magi. They are Definition "those who are popularly called maleiici or sorcerers on ac- ° i"ag*c. count of the magnitude (a characteristic bit of derivation) of their crimes. They agitate the elements, disturb men's minds, and slay merely by force of incantation without any poisoned draught. Hence Lucan writes, 'The mind, though polluted by no venom of poisoned draught, perishes by en- chantment.' ^ For, summoning demons, they dare to work their magic so that anyone may kill his enemies by evil arts. They also use blood and victims and sometimes corpses." After this very unfavorable, although sufficiently credulous, definition of magic, which is represented as seeking the worst ends by the worst means, Isidore goes on to list and briefly define a number of subordinate or kindred occult arts. First come necromancers; then hydromancy, geomancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy; next diviners, those employing incantations, arioli, aruspices, augurs, auspices, pythones, astrologers and their cognates, the genethliaci and mathe-
^"Mens hausti nulla sanie polluta veneni Incantata peril . . ."
630
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Future in- fluence of Isidore's account of magic.
matici, who as Isidore notes are spoken of in the Gospel as Magi, and horoscopi. "Sortilegi are those who profess the science of divination under the pretended guise of rehgion through certain devices called sortes sanctorimi and predict by inspection of certain scriptures." Salisatores are those who predict from the jerks of their limbs. To this list of magic arts Isidore adds in the words of Augustine all liga- tures and suspensions, incantations and characters, which the art of medicine condemns and which are simply the work of the devil. With mention of the origin of augury among the Phrygians, the discovery of praestigium^ which deceives the eye by Mercury, and the revelation of aruspicina by Ta- gus to the Etruscans, Isidore closes the chapter. Some of its items will be found again in his De diiferentiis verborum,^ listed under the appropriate letters of the alphabet. It may also be noted that he briefly treats of transformations worked by magic in the fourth chapter of the eleventh book of the Etymologies.
We turn to the future influence of this account of magic which seems to have been first patched together by Isidore. Juiceless as it is, it seems to have become a sort of stock or stereotyped treatment of the subject with succeeding Chris- tian writers down into the twelfth century. Somewhat al- tered by omission of poetical quotations or the insertion of transitional sentences, it was otherwise copied almost word for word by Rabanus Maurus (about 784 to 856), in his De consanguine orum nuptiis et de magorum praestigiis falsisque divinationihus tractatus, and by Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres (died 11 15) in their respective collections of Decreta, while Hincmar of Rheims in his De divortio Lotharii et Tetbergae copied it with more omis- sions.^ It was also in substance retained in the Decretum of
»Migne, PL 83, 9-
'For Rabanus' account see Migne, PL no, 1097-1110; Bur- chard, PL 140, 839 et seq.; Ivo, PL 161, 760 et seq.; Hincmar, PL 125, 716-29. Moreover, Bur- chard continues to follow Raba-
nus word for word for some ten columns after the conclusion of their mutual excerpt from Isi- dore, while Ivo is identical with Burchard for fifteen more col- umns. In "Some Medieval Con- ceptions of Magic," The Monist.
XXVII
EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING
631
Gratian in the twelfth century, when, too, Hugh of St. Vic- tor probably made use of it and John of Salisbury made it the basis of his fuller discussion of the subject. Isidore's account of magic, like his discussion of many other topics, sounds as if he had ceased thinking on the subject, and it must have meant still less to those who copied it. John of Salisbury is the first of them to put any life into the sub- ject and give us any assurance that such arts were still prac- ticed in his day. We have, however, other evidence that magic continued to be practiced in the interval. And such practices as the sortes sanctorum, though included in Isi-
January, 1915, XXV, 107-39, I stated (p. 109, note 2) that I thought that I was the first to point out the identity of these four accounts with Isidore's.
Since then, however, I have no- ticed that Manitius (1911), p. 299, notes the identity of Rabanus with Isidore, "Dass Hraban sich auch sonst ganz an Isidor anlehnt, beweist er in der Schrift De con- sanguineorum nuptiis im Ab- schnitt de magicis artibus (Migne, 109, I097ff.) der aus Etym. 8, 9 stammt." Also Mr. C. C. I. Webb, in his 1909 edition of the Poly- craticus notes John of SaUsbury's borrowings from Isidore and Ivo of Chartres. Finally, J. Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition, und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter, 1900, at p. 49 notes that Isidore's sketch of the history of magic keeps re- curring in medieval writings, at p. 71 the dependence of Rabanus and Hincmar upon Isidore, and perhaps he somewhere notes the identity with the foregoing of the accounts of magic in Burchard and the other decretalists, but in the absence of an index to his volume I do not find such a pas- sage. At p. 128, however, he notes that John of Salisbury's de- scription of magic is in part taken word for word from Isidore and Rabanus.
Professor Hamilton, in one of his papers on Storm-Making Springs, which appeared at about
the same time as my article {Ro- manic Reznew, V, 3, 1914; but, owing probably to war conditions, this issue did not actually appear until after the number of The Monist containing my article), came near noting the same thing when he spoke (p. 225) of Isi- dore's chapter as "quoted at length" by Gratian — who seems to me, however, to give the sub- stance of Isidore's chapter rather than his exact wording — and further noted that four lines of Latin which he quoted were found alike in Rabanus, Hincmar, Ivo, and the Polycraticus of John of Salisbury.
In my article I also stated : "Professor Burr, in a note to his paper on 'The Literature of Witchcraft' (American Historical Association Papers, IV (1890)2 p. 241) has described the accounts of Rabanus and Hincmar but without explicitly noting their close resemblance, although he characterizes Rabanus' article as 'mainly compiled.' " Professor Burr subsequently wrote to me, "That I did not mention the re- lation in my old paper on "The Literature of Witchcraft" was partly because they borrowed from other sources as well and partly because Isidore is himself a compiler. I hoped to come back to the matter in a more careful study of the whole genesis of these stock passages."
632
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Attitude to as- trology.
In the De
natura
rerum.
dore's stock definition of magic, were probably not generally- regarded as reprehensible.^
Isidore's repetition of the views of the fathers concern- ing demons is so brief and trite ^ that we need not further notice it, but turn to his attitude toward astrology. We have just heard him associate astrologers with practitioners of the magic arts, but in his third book in discussing the quadrivium he states that astrology is only partly supersti- tious and partly a natural science. The superstitious variety is that pursued by the mathematici who augur the future from the stars, assign the parts of the soul and body to the signs of the zodiac, and try to predict the nativities and characters of men from the course of the stars. Such super- stitions "are without doubt contrary to our faith; Chris- tians should so ignore them that they shall not even appear to have been written." Mathesis, or the attempt to predict future events from the stars, is denounced, according to Isi- dore, "not only by doctors of the Christian religion but also of the Gentiles, — Plato, Aristotle, and others." Isidore also states that there is a distinction between astronomy and as- trology, but what it is, especially between astronomy and natural astrology, he fails to elucidate.^
In the preface to his De natura rerum, which deals chiefly with astronomical and meteorological phenomena, Isidore asserts that "it is not superstitious science to know the na- ture of these things, if only they are considered from the standpoint of sane and sober doctrine." He also states that ,his treatise is a brief sketch of what has been written by the men of old and especially in the works of Catholics. In it some of the stock questions which gave difficulty to Christian scientists are briefly discussed, for instance, "Con- cerning the waters which are above the heavens," and "Whether the stars have souls?" ^ Isidore rejects as "ab-
* See below, chapter 60 on Aqui- astronomy in Etymol., Ill, 27. In nas. Etymol., Ill, 25, he ascribes the
'Etymol., VIII, II, 15-17; Dif- invention of astronomy to the
ferentiarum, II, 14. Egyptians and that of astrology
* Indeed, Differentiarum, II, 39, to the Chaldeans, he defines astrology as he had * Caps. 14 and 27.
XXVII EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING 633
surd fictions" imagined by the stupidity of the Gentiles their naming the days of the week from the planets, "because by the same they thought that some effect was produced in themselves, saying that from the sun they received the spirit, from the moon the body, from Mercury speech and wisdom, from Venus pleasure, from Mars ardor, from Jupiter temperance, from Saturn slowness." ^ Yet later in the same treatise we find him saying that everything in na- ture grows and increases according to the waxing and wan- ing of the moon.^ Moreover, he calls Saturn a cold star and explains that the planets are called errantia, not be- cause they wander themselves but because they cause men to err.^ He also describes man as a microcosm,^ Like most ecclesiastical writers, no matter how hostile they may be to astrologers, he is ready to assert that comets signify political revolutions, wars, and pestilences,^ In the Ety- mologies he not only attributes racial and temperamental differences among the peoples of different regions to "force of the star" ^ and "diversity of the sky," '^ phrases which seem to imply astrological influence rather than the mere influence of climate in our sense. He also encourages as- trological medicine when he says that the doctor should know astronomy, since human bodies change with the qual- ities of the stars and the change of times. ^ Isidore might as well have taken the planets as signs in the astrological sense as have ascribed to them the absurd allegorical sig- nificance in passages of Scripture that he did. He states that the moon is sometimes to be taken as a symbol of this world, sometimes as the church, which is illuminated by Christ as the moon receives its light from the sun, and which has seven meritorious graces corresponding to the seven forms of the moon.^
^De nat. rer., Ill, 4; PL 83, 71, 16.
968. "EtymoL, XIV, 5, "vim sideris."
''Ibid., XIX, 2. ''Ibid., IX, 2, "secundum diver-
^ Ibid., XXII, 2-3. sitatem enim coeli."
*Ibid., IX, 1-2. 'Ibid., IV, 13, 4-
'Ibid., XXVI, 15; EtymoL, III, " De nat. rcrum, XVIII, 5-7.
634 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Bede's The scientific acquisitions of Bede have too often been
sdence. referred to in exaggerated terms. Sharon Turner said of him, "He collected and taught more natural truths with fewer errors than any Roman book on the same subjects had accomplished. Thus his work displays an advance, not a retrogradation of human knowledge; and from its judicious selection and concentration of the best natural philosophy of the Roman Empire it does high credit to the Anglo-Saxon good sense." ^ Dr. R. L. Poole more mod- erately says of Bede, "He shows an extent of knowledge in classical literature and natural science entirely unrivalled in his own day and probably not surpassed for many genera- tions to come." ^ Bede perhaps knew more natural science than anyone else of his time, but if so, the others must have known practically nothing; his knowledge can in no sense be called extensive. As a matter of fact, we have evidence that his extremely brief and elementary treatises in this field were not full enough tO' satisfy even his contemporaries. In the preface to his De temporum ratione ^ he says that previously he had composed two treatises, De natura rerum and De ratione temporum, in brief style as he thought fitting for pupils, but that when he began to teach them to some of the brethren, they objected that they were reduced to a much briefer form than they wished, especially the De tem- poribus, which Bede now proceeds to revise and amplify. It is noteworthy that in order to fulfill the monks' desire for a fuller treatment of the subject he found it necessary to do some further reading in the fathers. In addition to Bede's own statement of his aim, the frequency with which we find manuscripts of early date * of the De natura rerum and
^History of the Anglo-Saxons, BN 15685, 9th century; BN nouv.
Ill, 403. acq. 1612, 1615, and 1632, all 9th
''Illustrations of the History of or loth century; Amiens 222, 9th
Medieval Thouffht, 1884, p. 20; p. century; Cambrai 925, 9th cen-
18 in 1920 edition. tH^'y: J^rea 3, 9th century ; Ivrea
6, loth century; Berlin 128, 8-9th
Migne, PL 90, 293-4. century; Berlin 130, 9-ioth cen-
"A few MSS, chiefly from tury; CLM 18158, nth century;
France, earlier than the 12th cen- CLM 21557, nth century,
tury, are: BN 5543, 9th century; I have not noted the MSS of
XXVII EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING 635
De tempofibus suggests that they were employed as text- books in the monastic schools of the early middle ages. As the Carolingian poet expressed it,
Beda del famulus nostri didasculus evi Fake pia sophie veterum sata lata peragrans.
Of Bede's Hexaemeron we spoke in an earlier chapter. His chief extant genuine scientific treatise is the aforesaid De natura rerum,^ a very curtailed discussion of astronomy and meteorology. It is very similar to Isidore's treatise of the same title, but is even briefer, omitting for the most part the mention of authorities and the Biblical quotations and allegorical applications which make up a considerable portion of Isidore's brief work. One of the few authorities whom Bede does cite is Pliny in a discussion of the circles of the planets.^ Like Isidore he accepts comets as signs of war and political change, of tempests and pestilence.* He also states that the air is inhabited by evil spirits who there await the worse torments of the day of judgment.* In his Biblical commentaries Bede briefly echoes some of the views of the fathers concerning magic and demons, for in- stance, in his treatment of the witch of Endor.^
Bede also translated into Latin a treatise on divination Divina- from thunder, perhaps from the works of the sixth century t^^nder Greek writer, John Lydus. In the preface to Herefridus, at whose request he had undertaken the translation, he speaks of it as a laborious and dangerous task, sure to expose him to the attacks of the invidious and detractors who will per- haps insinuate that he is possessed of an evil spirit or is a practitioner of magic. The three chapters of the treatise give the significance of thunder for the four points of the compass, the twelve months of the year, and the seven days of the week. For instance, if thunder arises in the east,
Bede in the British Museum and 'Ibid., Cap. 24.
Bodleian collections. * Ibid., Cap. 25.
^ PL go, 187-278 ; the text occu- " In Sanvuelem prophetam al-
pies but a small portion of these legorica expositio, IV, 7; PL 91,
columns. 701.
^ Ibid., Cap. 14.
636 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
according to the traditions of subtle philosophers there will be in the course of that year copious effusion of human blood. Each signification is introduced with some bombas- tic phraseology concerning the agile genius or sagacious in- vestigation of the philosophers who discovered it.^ Other tracts on divination which were attributed to Bede are prob- ably spurious and will for the most part be considered later in connection with other treatises of the same sort.^ Riddles of Some interest in and knowledge of natural science is
displayed in the metrical riddles ^ of St. Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, "the first Englishman who cultivated classical learning with any success and the first of whom any literary remains are pre- served." Most of them are concerned with animals, such as silkworms, peacock, salamander, bee, swan, lion, ostrich, dove, fish, basilisk, camel, eagle, taxo, beaver, weasel, swallow, cat, crow, unicorn, minotaur, Scylla, and elephant; or with herbs and trees, such as heliotrope, pepper, nettles, hellebore, and palm ; or with minerals, such as salt, adamant, and magnet ; or with terrestrial and celestial phenomena, such as earth, wind, cloud, rainbow, moon, Pleiades, Arcturus, Lucifer, and night. There is a close resemblance between some of these riddles and a score of citations from an Ad- helmus made in the thirteenth century by Thomas of Cantim- pre in his De natiira rerum} Pitra,^ however, suggested
^De tonitruis libcllus ad Here- ing onocentaur do not correspond
fridum, PL 90, 609-14. to the riddle De monocero sive
^ See below, chapter 29. unicorni; the two accounts of
* The Aenigmatum Liber forms Scylla are diflferent; and I do
a part of the Liber de septenario not find cacus or onager or harpy
et de metris in Aldhelm's works or siren or locust or the Indian
as edited by Giles, Oxford, i8z|4, ants larger than foxes in the Rid-
and reprinted in Migne, PL 89, dies as edited by Giles. 183-99. The passages in which Thomas
■* Cantimpre's citations of Ad- of Cantimpre cites Adhelmus are
helmus seem almost certainly printed together by Pitra (1855)
drawn from the Aenigmata in III, 425-7.
the cases of Leo, ciconia, hirun- ° Pitra (1855) III, xxvi. Only
dinus, nycticorax, salamander, lu- in the case of the salamander
ligo (or, loligo), perna, dragun- does Pitra say, "Thomas hue ad-
tia lapis (natrix), myrmicoleon, duxit Adhelmi Shirbrunensis
colossus, and molossus. On the aenigma de Salamandra vatemgue
other hand, the citations concern- a philosopho clare distinxit."
XXVII EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING 637
that the Adhelmus cited by Thomas of Cantimpre was a brother of John the Scot of the ninth century.
The total lack of originality and the extremely abbrevi- Gregory's
, , . , . r • T • • • 1 Dialogues.
ated character of the infrequent scientmc writmg in the west is not, however, a fair example of the total thought and writing of early medieval Latin Christendom, When we turn to the lives of the saints, to the miracles recorded of contemporary monks and missionaries, we find that in the field of its own supreme interests the pious imagination of the time could display considerable inventiveness and was by no means satisfied with brief compendiums from the Bible and earlier Fathers. Here too the superstition and credulity, which had been held back by fear of paganism in the case of natural and occult science, ran luxuriant riot. Such literature lies rather outside the strict field of this in- vestigation, but it is so characteristic of the Christian thought of the period that we may consider one prominent specimen, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great,^ pope from 590 to 604. We shall sufficiently illustrate the nature of this farrago of pious folk-lore by a resume of the contents of the opening pages of the first of its four books. We need not dwell upon the importance of Gregory in the history of the papacy, of monasticism, and of patristic literature, further than to em- phasize the point that so distinguished, influential, and for his times great, a man should have been capable of writing such a book. Similar citations which might be multiplied from other authors of the period could not add much force to this one impressive instance of the naive pious credulity and superstition of the best Christian minds of that age. Not only were the Dialogues well known throughout the medieval period in the Latin reading world, but they were translated into Greek at an early date and in 779 from that language into Arabic, while King Alfred made an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Latin in the closing ninth century.
* I have used the text in Migne, PL vol. 77.
638
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
In the Dialogues Gregory narrates to Peter the Deacon some of the virtues, signs, and marvelous works of saintly men in Italy which he has learned either by personal experi- ence or indirectly from the statements of good and trust- worthy witnesses. The first story is of Honoratus, the son of a colonus on a villa in Samnium. When the lad evinced his piety by abstaining from meat at a banquet given by his parents, they ridiculed him, declaring that he would find no fish to eat in those mountains. But when the servant pres- ently went out to draw some water, he poured a fish out of the pitcher upon his return which provided the boy with enough food for the entire day. Subsequently the lad was given his freedom and founded a monastery on the spot. Still later he saved this monastery from an impending ava- lanche by frequent calling upon the name of Christ and use of the sign of the cross. By these means he stopped the landslide in mid-course and the rocks may still be seen look- ing as if they were sure to fall.
A tale follows of Goths who stole a monk's horse, but found themselves unable to force their own horses to cross the next river to which they came until they had restored his horse to the monk. In another case where Franks came to plunder this same monk, he remained invisible to them. This same monk was a disciple of the afore-mentioned Hon- oratus and once raised a woman's child from the dead by placing upon its breast an old shoe of his master which he cherished as a souvenir. Thus he contrived to satisfy the mother's pleading and at the same time preserve his own modesty and humility. Gregory does not doubt that the woman's faith also contributed to the miracle. Gregory adds, however, that he thinks the virtue of patience greater than signs and miracles and tells another story of the same monk to illustrate that virtue.
We may pass on, however, to the third chapter which contains a story of the gardener of a monastery who set a snake to catch a thief who had made depredations upon the garden, adjuring the snake as follows: 'Tn the name of
XXVII
EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING
639
Jesus I command you to guard this approach and not permit the thief to enter here." The serpent obediently stretched its length across the path, and when the gardener returned later, he found the thief hanging head first from the hedge, in which his foot had caught as he was climbing over it and had been surprised by the sight of the serpent. The monk of course then freely gave the thief what he had come to steal, but also of course gave him a brief moral lecture which was perhaps less welcome.
After a brief account of a miraculous release from sexual passion Gregory comes to a tale of Basilius the magician. This is the same man concerning whose arrest and trial on the charge of practicing magic and sinister arts we find directions given in two of the letters of Cassiodorus.^ Ac- cording to Gregory he took refuge with the aid of a bishop in a monastery, although the abbot saw something diabolical about him from the very start. Soon a virgin who was under the charge of the monastery became so infatuated with Basilius as to call publicly for him, declaring that she should die unless he came to her aid. The abbot then ex- pelled him from the monastery, on which occasion Basilius confessed that he had often by his magic arts suspended the monastery in mid-air but that he had never been able to in- jure anyone who was in it. This is more detailed informa- tion concerning the nature of Basilius' magic than Cassi- odorus gives us. Gregory further adds that not long after Basilius was burned to death at Rome by the zeal of the Christian people.
A female servant of this same monastery once ate a let- tuce in the garden without making the sign of the cross first, and became possessed of a demon straightway. When the abbot was summoned, the demon attempted to excuse himself, exclaiming, "What have I done? what have I done ? I was just sitting on a lettuce when she came along and ate me." The abbot nevertheless indignantly proceeded to drive the evil spirit out of his serf.
* Variorum IV, Epist. 22-23, Migne, PL 69, 624-25.
640 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap xxvii
Such are a few specimens of the monkish magic that was considered perfectly legitimate and rapturously admired at the same time that men like Basilius were burned at the stake on charges of magic by the zealous Christian populace.
We may add a word at this point concerning Old Irish literature ^ which, as it has reached us, is almost entirely religious in character,^ produced and preserved by the Chris- tian clergy. Yet we find a number of traces of magic in these remains of Celtic learning and literature during the dark ages. Indeed, the sole document in the Irish lan- guage which is ascribed to St. Patrick is a Hymn or incan- tation in which he invokes the Trinity and the powers of nature to aid him against the enchantments of women, smiths, and wizards. By repeating this rhythmical formula Patrick and his companions are said to have become invisible to King Loigaire and his Druids. The spell is perhaps as old as Patrick's time. Three other incantations for urinary disease, sore eyes, and to extract a thorn are contained in the Stowe Missal. An Irish manuscript of the eighth or ninth century in the monastery of St. Gall has four spells for similar purposes and another is found in a ninth cen- tury codex preserved in Carinthia.
The Irish had their Fili corresponding somewhat to the Druids of Gaul or Britain. They were perhaps less closely connected with heathen rites, since the church seems to have been less opposed to them than to the Druids. They were poets and learned men, and a large part of their learning, at least originally, seems to have consisted of magic and div- ination. There are many instances in Irish literature of their disfiguring the faces of their enemies by raising blotches upon them by the power of words which they uttered. St. Patrick forbade two of their three methods of divination.
* I derive the following facts whether preserved in Ireland, from E. C. Qiiiggin, "Irish Lit- Scotland, or elsewhere, . . . are erature," in EB V, 622 et seq., all, or nearly all, of foreign ori- where further bibliography is gin" : — Mackinnon, in the Inter- given, national Congress of Medicine^
' "The Gaelic medical MSS, London, 1913, p. 413.