book 2

, cosmography, astronomy and meteorology; books 3 to 6, geography; books 7 to 11, zoology, including man, and the invention of the arts; books 12 to 19, botany; books 20 to 32, medicines, vegetable and animal remedies, medical authors and magic; books 33 to 37, metals, fine arts, mineralogy and mineral remedies. Pliny, who died A.D. 79, was not a naturalist, a physician or an artist, and collected his work in his leisure intervals while engaged in public affairs. He says it contains 20,000 facts (too small a number by half, says Lemaire), collected from 2000 books by 100 authors. Hardouin has given a list of 464 authors quoted by him. His work was a very high authority in the middle ages, and 43 editions of it were printed before 1536.

Martianus Minneus Felix Capella, an African, wrote (early in the 5th cent.), in verse and prose, a sort of encyclopaedia, which is important from having been regarded in the middle ages as a model storehouse of learning, and used in the schools, where the scholars had to learn the verses by heart, as a text-book of high-class education in the arts. It is sometimes entitled _Satyra_, or _Satyricon_, but is usually known as _De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii_, though this title is sometimes confined to the first two books, a rather confused allegory ending with the apotheosis of Philologia and the celebration of her marriage in the milky way, where Apollo presents to her the seven liberal arts, who, in the succeeding seven books, describe their respective branches of knowledge, namely, grammar, dialectics (divided into metaphysics and logic), rhetoric, geometry (geography, with some single geometrical propositions), arithmetic (chiefly the properties of numbers), astronomy and music (including poetry). The style is that of an African of the 5th century, full of grandiloquence, metaphors and strange words. He seldom mentions his authorities, and sometimes quotes authors whom he does not even seem to have read. His work was frequently copied in the middle ages by ignorant transcribers, and was eight times printed from 1499 to 1599. The best annotated edition is by Kopp (Frankfort, 1836, 4to), and the most convenient and the best text is that of Eysserhardt (Lipsiae, 1866, 8vo).

Isidore, bishop of Seville from 600 to 630, wrote _Etymologiarum libri XX_. (often also entitled his _Origines_) at the request of his friend Braulio, bishop of Saragossa, who after Isidore's death divided the work into books, as it was left unfinished, and divided only into titles.

The tenth book is an alphabet of 625 Latin words, not belonging to his other subjects, with their explanations as known to him, and often with their etymologies, frequently very absurd. The other books contain 448 chapters, and are:--1, grammar (Latin); 2, rhetoric and dialectics; 3, the four mathematical disciplines--arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy; 4, medicine; 5, laws and times (chronology), with a short chronicle ending in 627; 6, ecclesiastical books and offices; 7, God, angels and the orders of the faithful; 8, the church and sects; 9, languages, society and relationships; 11, man and portents; 12, animals, in eight classes, namely, pecora et jumenta, beasts, small animals (including spiders, crickets and ants), serpents, worms, fishes, birds and small winged creatures, chiefly insects; 13, the world and its parts; 14, the earth and its parts, containing chapters on Asia, Europe and Libya, that is, Africa; 15, buildings, fields and their measures; 16, stones (of which one is echo) and metals; 17, de rebus rusticis; 18, war and games; 19, ships, buildings and garments; 20, provisions, domestic and rustic instruments.

Isidore appears to have known Hebrew and Greek, and to have been familiar with the Latin classical poets, but he is a mere collector, and his derivations given all through the work are not unfrequently absurd, and, unless when very obvious, will not bear criticism. He seldom mentions his authorities except when he quotes the poets or historians. Yet his work was a great one for the time, and for many centuries was a much valued authority and a rich source of material for other works, and he had a high reputation for learning both in his own time and in subsequent ages. His _Etymologies_ were often imitated, quoted and copied. MSS. are very numerous: Antonio (whose editor, Bayer, saw nearly 40) says, "plures passimque reperiuntur in bibliothecarum angulis." This work was printed nine times before 1529.

Hrabanus Maurus, whose family name was Magnentius, was educated in the abbey of Fulda, ordained deacon in 802 ("Annales Francorum" in Bouquet, _Historiens de la France_, v. 66), sent to the school of St Martin of Tours, then directed by Alcuin, where he seems to have learned Greek, and is said by Trithemius to have been taught Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldee by Theophilus an Ephesian. In his _Commentaries on Joshua_ (lib. ii. c. 5) he speaks of having resided at Sidon. He returned to Fulda and taught the school there. He became abbot of Fulda in 822, resigned in April 842, was ordained archbishop of Mainz on the 26th of July 847, and died on the 4th of February 856. He compiled an encyclopaedia _De universo_ (also called in some MSS. _De universali natura, De natura rerum,_ and _De origine rerum_) in 22 books and 325 chapters. It is chiefly a rearrangement of Isidore's _Etymologies_, omitting the first four books, half of the fifth and the tenth (the seven liberal arts, law, medicine and the alphabet of words), and copying the rest, beginning with the seventh book, verbally, though with great omissions, and adding (according to Ritter, _Geschichte der Philosophie_, vii. 193, from Alcuin, Augustine or some other accessible source) the meanings given in the Bible to the subject matter of the chapter; while things not mentioned in Scripture, especially such as belong to classical antiquity, are omitted, so that his work seems to be formed of two alternating parts. His arrangement of beginning with God and the angels long prevailed in methodical encyclopaedias. His last six books follow very closely the order of the last five of Isidore, from which they are taken. His omissions are characteristic of the diminished literary

## activity and more contracted knowledge of his time. His work was

presented to Louis the German, king of Bavaria, at Hersfeld in October 847, and was printed in 1473, fol., probably at Venice, and again at Strassburg by Mentelin about 1472-1475, fol., 334 pages.

Michael Constantine Psellus, the younger, wrote [Greek: Didaskalia pantodape], dedicated to the emperor Michael Ducas, who reigned 1071-1078. It was printed by Fabricius in his _Bibliotheca Graeca_ (1712), vol. v., in 186 pages 4to and 193 chapters, each containing a question and answer. Beginning with divinity, it goes on through natural history and astronomy, and ends with chapters on excessive hunger, and why flesh hung from a fig-tree becomes tender. As collation with a Turin MS. showed that 35 chapters were wanting, Harles has omitted the text in his edition of Fabricius, and gives only the titles of the chapters (x. 84-88).

The author of the most famous encyclopaedia of the middle ages was Vincent (q.v.) of Beauvais (c. 1190-c. 1264), whose work _Bibliotheca mundi_ or _Speculum majus_--divided, as we have it, into four parts, _Speculum naturale_, _Speculum doctrinale_, _Speculum morale_ (this part should be ascribed to a later hand), and _Speculum historiale_--was the great compendium of mid-13th century knowledge. Vincent of Beauvais preserved several works of the middle ages and gives extracts from many lost classics and valuable readings of others, and did more than any other medieval writer to awaken a taste for classical literature. Fabricius (_Bibl. Graeca_, 1728, xiv. pp. 107-125) has given a list of 328 authors, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Latin, quoted in the _Speculum naturale_. To these should be added about 100 more for the _doctrinale_ and _historiale_. As Vincent did not know Greek or Arabic, he used Latin translations. This work is dealt with separately in the article on VINCENT OF BEAUVAIS.

Brunetto Latini of Florence (born 1230, died 1294), the master of Dante and Guido Cavalcanti, while an exile in France between 1260 and 1267, wrote in French _Li Livres dou Tresor_, in 3 books and 413 chapters.

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