Medieval Popularization Of Science
The idea of collecting general information from many sources, of
bringing it together into an easily available form, so as to save others
labor, of writing it out in compendious fashion, so that it could
readily pass from hand to hand, is likely to be considered typically
modern. As a matter of fact, the Middle Ages furnish us with many
examples of the popularization of science, of the writing of compendia
of various k
trouble, and, above all, of the making of what, in the modern time, we
would call encyclopedias. Handbooks of various kinds were issued,
manuals for students and specialists, and many men of broad scholarship
in their time devoted themselves to the task of making the acquisition
of knowledge easy for others. This was true not only for history and
philosophy and literature, but also for science. It is not hard to find
in each century of the Middle Ages some distinguished writer who devoted
himself to this purpose, and for the sake of the light that it throws on
these scholars, and the desire for information that must have existed
very commonly since they were tempted to do the work, it seems worth
while to mention here their names, and those of the books they wrote,
with something of their significance, though the space will not permit
us to give here much more than a brief catalogue raisonne of such
works.
Very probably the first who should be mentioned in the list is Boethius,
who flourished in the early part of the sixth century. He owed much of
his education to his adoptive father, afterwards his father-in-law,
Symmachus, who, with Festus, represented scholarship at the court of the
Gothic King, Theodoric of Verona. These three--Festus, Symmachus, and
Boethius--brought such a reputation for knowledge to the court that they
are responsible for many of the wonderful legends of Dietrich of Bern,
as Theodoric came to be called in the poems of the medieval German
poets. The three distinguished and devoted scholars did much to save
Greek culture at a time when its extinction was threatened, and Boethius
particularly left a series of writings that are truly encyclopedic in
character. There are five books on music, two on arithmetic, one on
geometry, translations of Aristotle's treatises on logic, with
commentaries; of Porphyry's Isagoge, with commentaries, and a
commentary on Cicero's Topica. Besides, he wrote several treatises in
logic and rhetoric himself, one on the use of the syllogism, and one on
topics, and in addition a series of theological works. His great
Consolations of Philosophy was probably the most read book in the
early Middle Ages. It was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred,
into old German by Notker Teutonicus, the German monk of St. Gall, and
its influence may be traced in Beowulf, in Chaucer, in High German
poetry, in Anglo-Norman and Provencal popular poetry, and also in early
Italian verse. Above all, the Divine Comedy has many references to it,
while the Convito would seem to show that it was probably the book
that most influenced Dante. Though it is impossible to confirm by
documentary evidence the generally accepted idea that Boethius died a
martyr for Christianity, the tradition can be traced so far back, and it
has been so generally accepted that this seems surely to have been the
case. The fact is interesting, as showing the attitude of scholars
towards the Church and of the Church towards scholarship thus early.
The next great name in the tradition should probably be that of
Cassiodorus, the Roman writer and statesman, prime minister of
Theodoric, who, after a busy political life, retired to his estate at
Vivarium, and, in imitation of St. Benedict, who had recently
established a monastery at Monte Cassino, founded a monastery there. He
is said to have lived to the age of ninety-three. His retirement favored
this long life, for, after the death of Theodoric, troublous times came,
and civil war, and only his monastic privileges saved him from the storm
and stress of the times. He had been interested in literature and the
collection of information of many kinds before his retirement, and it is
not unlikely that his recognition of the fact that the monastic life
offered opportunities for the pursuit of this, under favorable
circumstances, led him to take it up.
While still a statesman he wrote a series of works relating to history
and politics and public affairs generally. These consisted mainly of
chronicles and panegyrics, and twelve books of miscellanies called
Variae. After his retirement to the monastery, a period of ardent
devotion to writing begins, and a great number of books were issued. He
evidently gathered round him a number of men whom he inspired with his
spirit, or, perhaps, selected, because he found that, while they had a
taste for a quiet, peaceful spiritual life, they were also devoted to
the accumulation and diffusion of knowledge. A series of commentaries on
portions of the Scriptures was written, the Jewish antiquities of
Josephus translated, and the ecclesiastical histories of Theodoric,
Sozomen, and Socrates made available in Latin. Cassiodorus himself is
said to have made a compendium of these, called the Historia
Tripartita, which was much used as a manual of history during
succeeding centuries. Then there were treatises on grammar, on
orthography, and a series of works on mathematics. In all of his
writings Cassiodorus shows a special fondness for the symbolism of
numbers.
There is a well-grounded tradition that he insisted on the study of the
Greek classics of medical literature, especially Hippocrates and Galen,
and awakened the interest of the monks in the necessity for making
copies of these fathers of medicine. The tradition that he established
at Vivarium is also found to have existed at Monte Cassino among the
Benedictines, and, doubtless, to this is to be attributed the foundation
of the medical school of Salerno, where Benedictine influence was so
strong. It is probable, therefore, that to Cassiodorus must be
attributed the preservation in as perfect a state as we have them of the
old Greek medical writers.
His main idea was, of course, the study of Scriptures, but with just as
many helps as possible. He thought that commentators, and historians,
not alone Christian, but also Hebrew and Pagan, should be studied to
illustrate it, and then the commentaries of the Latin fathers, so that a
thoroughly rounded knowledge of it should be obtained. He thus began an
Encyclopedia Biblica, and set a host of workers at its accomplishment.
Every country in Europe shared this movement for the diffusion of
information during the early Middle Ages, and the works of men from each
of these countries in succeeding centuries has come down to us,
preserved in spite of all the vicissitudes to which they were so liable
during the centuries before the invention of printing and the easy
multiplication of books. To many people it will seem surprising to learn
that the next evidence of deep broad interest in knowledge is to be
found in the next century in the distant west of Europe, in the Spanish
Peninsula. It is a long step from the semi-barbaric splendor of the
Gothic court at Verona, to the bishop's palace in Seville in Andalusia.
The two cities are separated by what is no inconsiderable distance in
our day. In the seventh century they must have seemed almost at the
other end of the world from each other. Those who recall what we have
insisted on in several portions of the body of this work with regard to
the high place Spanish genius won for itself in the Roman Empire, and
how much of culture among the Spaniards of that time the occurrence of
so many important writers of that nationality must imply, will not be
surprised at the distinguished work of a great Christian Spanish writer
of the seventh century.
Indeed, it would be only what might be expected for evidences of early
awakening of the broadest culture to be found in Spain. The important
name in the popularization of science in the seventh century is St.
Isidore of Seville. He made a compendium of all the scattered scientific
traditions and information of his time with regard to natural phenomena
in a sort of encyclopedia of science. This consisted of twenty
books--chapters we would call them now--treating almost de omni re
scibili et quibusdam aliis (everything knowable and a few other things
besides). It is possible that the work may have been written by a number
of collaborators under the patronage of the bishop, though there is no
sure indication of this to be found either in the volume itself or even
contemporary history. All the ordinary scientific subjects are treated.
Astronomy, geography, mineralogy, botany, and even man and the animals
have each a special chapter. Pouchet, in his History of the Natural
Sciences During the Middle Ages, calls attention to the fact that, in
grouping the animals for collective treatment in the different chapters,
sometimes the most heterogeneous creatures are brought under a common
heading. Among the fishes, for instance, are classed all living things
that are found in water. The whale and the dolphin, as well as sponges,
and oysters, and crocodiles, and sea serpents, and lobsters, and
hippopotamuses, all find a place together, because of the common watery
habitation. The early Spanish Churchman would seem to have had an
enthusiastic zeal for complete classification that would surely have
made him a strenuous modern zooelogist.
The next link in the tradition of encyclopedic work is the Venerable
Bede, whose character was more fully honored by the decree on November
13, 1899, by Pope Leo XIII declaring him a Doctor of the Church. Bede
was the fruit of that ardent scholarship which had risen in England as a
consequence of the introduction of Christianity. It had been fostered by
the coming of scholar saints from Ireland, but was, unfortunately,
disturbed by the incursions of the Danes. While Bede is known for his
greatest work, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which
gives an account of Christianity in England from its beginning until his
own day, he wrote many other works. His history is the foundation of all
our knowledge of early British history, secular as well as religious,
and has been praised by historical writers of all ages, who turned to it
for help with confidence. He wrote a number of other historical works.
Besides, he wrote books on grammar, orthography, the metrical art, on
rhetoric, on the nature of things, the seasons, and on the calculation
of the seasons. These latter books are distinctly scientific. His
contributions to Gregorian Music are now of great value.
After this, Alcuin and the monks, summoned by Charlemagne, take up the
tradition of gathering and diffusing information, and the great
monasteries of Tours, Fulda, and St. Gall carry it on. Besides these,
in the ninth century Monte Cassino comes into prominence as an
institution where much was done of what we would now call encyclopedic
work. After his retirement from Salerno Constantine Africanus made his
translations and commentaries on Arabian medicine, constituting what was
really a medical encyclopedia of information not readily available at
that time.
After this, of course, the tradition is taken up by the universities,
and it is only when, with the thirteenth century, there came the
complete development of the university spirit, that encyclopedias
reached their modern expression. Three great encyclopedists, Vincent of
Beauvais, Thomas of Cantimprato, and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, are the most
famous. Vincent consulted all the authors sacred and profane that he
could lay hold on, and the number was, indeed, prodigious. I have given
some account of him in The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries (Catholic
Summer School Press, New York, third edition, 1910).
It would be very easy to conclude that these encyclopedias, written by
clergymen for the general information of the educated people of the
times, contain very little that is scientifically valuable, and probably
nothing of serious medical significance. Any such thought is, however,
due entirely to unfamiliarity with the contents of these works. They
undoubtedly contain absurdities, they are often full of misinformation,
they repeat stories on dubious authority, and sometimes on hearsay, but
usually the source of their information is stated, and especially where
it is dubious, as if they did not care to state marvels without due
support. Books of popular information, however, have always had many
queer things,--queer, that is, to subsequent generations,--and it is
rather amusing to pick up an encyclopedia of a century ago, much less a
millennium ago, and see how many absurd things were accepted as true.
The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, issued one hundred
and fifty years ago, furnishes an easily available source of the
absurdities our more recent forefathers accepted. The men of the Middle
Ages, however, were much better observers as a rule, and used much more
critical judgment, according to their lights, than we have given them
credit for. Often the information that they have to convey is not only
valuable, but well digested, thoroughly practical, and sometimes a
marvellous anticipation of some of our most modern thoughts. There is
one of these encyclopedias which, because it was written in my favorite
thirteenth century, I have read with some care. It is simply a
development of the work of preceding clerical encyclopedists, and often
refers to them. Because it contains some typical examples of the better
sorts of information in these works, I have thought it worth while to
quote two passages from it. The author is Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and the
quaint English in which it is couched is quoted from Medical Lore
(London, 1893). The book is all the more interesting because in a dear
old English version, issued about 1540, the spellings of which are among
the great curiosities of English orthography, it was often read and
consulted by Shakespeare, who evidently quotes from it frequently, for
not a little of the quaint scientific lore that he uses for his figures
can be traced to expressions used in this book.
The first of the paragraphs that deserves to be quoted, discusses
madness, or, as we would call it, lunacy, and sums up the causes, the
symptoms, and the treatment quite as well as that has ever been done in
the same amount of space:
Madness cometh sometime of passions of the soul, as of
business and of great thoughts, of sorrow and of too great
study, and of dread: sometime of the biting of a wood hound,
or some other venomous beast; sometime of melancholy meats,
and sometime of drink of strong wine. And as the causes be
diverse, the tokens and signs be diverse. For some cry and
leap and hurt and wound themselves and other men, and darken
and hide themselves in privy and secret places. The medicine
of them is, that they be bound, that they hurt not themselves
and other men. And namely, such shall be refreshed, and
comforted, and withdrawn from cause and matter of dread and
busy thoughts. And they must be gladded with instruments of
music, and some deal be occupied.'
The second discusses in almost as thorough a way the result of the bite
of a mad dog. The old English word for mad, wood, is constantly used.
The causes, the symptoms, and course of the disease, and its possible
prevention by early treatment, are all discussed. The old tradition was
already in existence that sufferers from rabies or hydrophobia, as it is
called, dreaded water, when it is really only because the spasm
consequent upon the thought even of swallowing is painful that they turn
from it. That tradition has continued to be very commonly accepted even
by physicians down to our own day, so that Bartholomew, the Englishman,
in the thirteenth century, will not be blamed much for setting it forth
for popular information in his time some seven centuries ago. The idea
that free bleeding would bring about the removal of the virus is
interesting, because we have in recent years insisted in the case of the
very similar disease, tetanus, on allowing or deliberately causing
wounds in which the tetanus microbe may have gained an entrance, to
bleed freely.
The biting of a wood hound is deadly and venomous. And such
venom is perilous. For it is long hidden and unknown, and
increaseth and multiplieth itself, and is sometimes unknown to
the year's end, and then the same day and hour of the biting,
it cometh to the head, and breedeth frenzy. They that are
bitten of a wood hound have in their sleep dreadful sights,
and are fearful, astonied, and wroth without cause. And they
dread to be seen of other men, and bark as hounds, and they
dread water most of all things, and are afeared thereof full
sore and squeamous also. Against the biting of a wood hound
wise men and ready use to make the wounds bleed with fire or
with iron, that the venom may come out with the blood, that
cometh out of the wound.
More
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The fame of these great thinkers and writers in philosophy and in medicine came to be known not only through the distribution of their books long after their death, but during their lifetime, and in immediately subsequent generations, ardent seekers... Avenzoar
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