CHAPTER XXVII

OTHER EARLY MEDIEVAL LEARNING: BOETHIUS, ISIDORE, BEDE, GREGORY THE GREAT Aridity of early medieval learning—Historic importance of _The Consolation of Philosophy_—Medieval reading—Influence of the works of Boethius—His relation to antiquity and middle ages—Attitude to the stars—Fate and free will—Music of the stars and universe—Isidore of Seville—Method of the _Etymologies_—Its sources—Natural marvels—Isidore is rather less hospitable to superstition than Pliny—Portent—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—Incantations in Old Irish—The _Fili_. [Sidenote: Aridity of early medieval learning.] 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 intellectual thirst. As a rule the writings of the time show no originality whatever, and least of all any scientific investigation; 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 category 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 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 literature. We should gain little or nothing by adding to the list Alcuin at the close of the eighth century and Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century, although it may be noted now 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. [Sidenote: Historic importance of _The Consolation of Philosophy_.] Of the distinguished family and political career of Boethius 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 Augustine, 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 nevertheless perhaps less surprising than is their subsequent preservation 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. [Sidenote: Medieval reading.] 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,[2522] and Cassiodorus urged those monks whose duty it was to tend the sick to read a number of standard medical works.[2523] I sometimes wonder if too much attention has not been given to medieval writing and too little 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, especially 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 collections of medieval manuscripts I have noticed few _florilegia_ or anthologies from the classics in medieval Latin manuscripts,—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 extracts, 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 importance, and that the theory hitherto based upon them is a survival of the prejudice of the classical renaissance against “the dark ages.” [Sidenote: Influence of the works of Boethius.] At any rate, however scanty medieval libraries may have been, they were apt to include a copy of _The Consolation of Philosophy_, and however little read some of their volumes may have been, its pages were certainly well thumbed. Lists of its commentators, translators, and imitators, and other indications of its vast medieval influence may be found in Peiper’s edition.[2524] Other writings of Boethius were also well known in the middle ages and increased his reputation then. His translations and commentaries upon the Aristotelian logical treatises[2525] are of course of great importance in the history of medieval scholasticism. His translations and adaptations of Greek treatises in arithmetic, geometry, and music occupy a similar place in the history of medieval mathematical studies.[2526] 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 eighteenth century.”[2527] 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 modern scholars and place Boethius’ Christianity beyond question.[2528] [Sidenote: His relation to antiquity and middle ages.] Boethius has often been regarded as a last representative of Roman statesmanship and of classical civilization. His defense of Roman provincials against the greed of the Goths, his stand even unto death against Theodoric on behalf of the rights of the Roman senate and people, his preservation through translation of the learned treatises of expiring antiquity, and the almost classical Latin style and numerous allusions to pagan mythology of _The Consolation of Philosophy_:—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 influenced 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, combined with Boethius’ great medieval popularity, gave perpetual license to those medieval writers who chose to discuss 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,[2529] but this ascription of spurious statements to the Stagirite also corresponds to the attribution of entire spurious treatises to him later in the middle ages. [Sidenote: Attitude to the stars.] Of the ways in which _The Consolation 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 mentioning Phoebus, the moon, the universe, the sky, and the starry constellations. _Per ardua 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 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.”[2530] He loves to think of God as ruling the universe by perpetual reason and certain order, as sowing stars in the sky, as binding the elements by number, as Himself immovable, yet revolving the spheres and decreeing natural events in a fixed series.[2531] The attitude is like that of the _Timaeus_ and Aristotle’s _Metaphysics_, closely associating astronomy and theology, favorable to belief in astrology, in support of which later scholastic writers cite Boethius. [Sidenote: Fate and free will.] We may further note the main points in Boethius’ argument concerning fate and free will, providence and predestination,[2532] which was often cited by later writers. He declares that all generation and change and movement proceed from the divine mind or Providence,[2533] while fate is the regular arrangement inherent in movable objects by which divine providence is realized.[2534] 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.”[2535] It is with the last that Boethius seems most inclined to identify _fati series mobilis_. “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 immovable Providence, must needs itself also be immutable.”[2536] Boethius, however, does not believe in a complete fatalism, astrological or otherwise. He holds that nothing escapes divine providence, to which there is no distinction between past, present, and future.[2537] As the human reason can conceive universals, although 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 subject to fate.[2538] Divine providence imposes no fatal necessity upon the human will, which is free to choose its course.[2539] The world of nature, however, existing without will or reason of its own, conforms absolutely to the fatal series provided 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 unexpected coincidence of causes, as when a man plowing a field finds a treasure which another has buried there.[2540] Thus Boethius maintains the co-existence of the fatal series expressed 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 rhapsodizing over the stars and heavens would lead them to regard the science of the stars as second only to divine worship. Indeed, his position was the usual one in the subsequent middle ages. [Sidenote: Music of the stars and universe.] 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 connected 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 different and contrary elements could never be united in one system unless some harmony joined them.[2541] [Sidenote: Isidore of Seville.] Isidore was born about 560 or 570, became bishop of Seville in 599 or 600, and died in the year 636. Although mention should perhaps be made of his briefer _De natura rerum_,[2542] a treatise dedicated to King Sisebut who reigned from 612 to 620, Isidore’s chief work from our standpoint is the _Etymologiae_.[2543] 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 Isidore 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 composed seven years before this.[2544] The _Etymologies_ was undoubtedly 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.[2545] 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 entirely beneficial, since writers continued to cite it as an authority 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 encourage intellectual laziness and stagnation more than any anthology of literary quotations did. Arevalus listed ten printed editions of it before 1527, showing that it was as popular in the time of the Renaissance as in the middle ages. [Sidenote: Method of the _Etymologies_.] 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 derivation and definition for each term. The method is, as Brehaut well says, “to treat each subject by ... defining the terms belonging to it.”[2546] Pursuing this method, Isidore treats of various arts and sciences, human interests and natural phenomena: the seven liberal arts, medicine, and law; chronology and bibliography; the church, religion, and theology; the state and family, physiology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geography, and astronomy; architecture and agriculture; 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; sometimes there are chronological tables, family trees, or lists of signs and abbreviations. In short, Isidore forms a connecting link between Pliny and the encyclopedists of the thirteenth century. [Sidenote: Its sources.] In a prefatory word to Braulio Isidore describes the _Etymologies_ as a collection made from his recollection and notes of old authors,[2547] 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 selection 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 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 accounts for Isidore’s being so much cited. Many of the derivations 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.[2548] Isidore, however, still displays a considerable 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 science Isidore borrows chiefly from Pliny and Solinus, sometimes from Dioscorides, giving us a faint adumbration of their much fuller confusion of science and superstition. Occasionally bits of information or misinformation are borrowed through the medium of the church fathers. A work of Galen, for instance, is cited[2549] through the letter of Jerome to Furia against widows remarrying. Galen, indeed, is seldom mentioned by Isidore who draws his unusually brief fourth book on medicine chiefly from Caelius Aurelianus.[2550] [Sidenote: Natural marvels.] In his treatment of things in nature Isidore seldom gives their medicinal properties as Pliny does, and this reduces 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 vegetation 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 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,[2551] 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.[2552] On the other hand, Isidore omits Pliny’s superstitious 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 incredible.[2553] Even in the books on minerals and vegetation we still hear of animal marvels:[2554] how the coloring matter, cinnabar, 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. [Sidenote: Isidore is rather less hospitable to superstition than 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.[2555] He mentions the use of mandragora as an anaesthetic in surgical operations, and remarks that its root is of human form, but says nothing of its applications in magic.[2556] In his discussion of stones he repeats after Pliny and Solinus the marvelous virtues ascribed to a number of them, but follows Pliny’s method of making the magicians responsible for these assertions or of inserting a word of caution such as “if this is to be believed” with each statement. Finally he introduces together a number of cases of marvelous powers ascribed to stones with the introduction, “There are certain gems employed by the Gentiles in their superstitions.”[2557] [Sidenote: Portents.] Isidore lists a number of mythical monsters as well as 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.”[2558] [Sidenote: Words and numbers.] Brehaut is impressed by Isidore’s “confidence in words,” which he thinks “really amounted to a belief, strong though perhaps somewhat inarticulate, that words were transcendental entities.”[2559] 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, Isidore is not the first to do this; he is, indeed, simply quoting one of the fathers, Epiphanius.[2560] “The _modius_ 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 performed twenty-two works. For on the first day He made 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.[2561] 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 examples the _modius_ of twenty-two _sextarii_ was established by Moses following the measure of sacred law. And although various peoples have added something to or ignorantly 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. [Sidenote: History of magic.] Isidore’s chapter on the _Magi_ or magicians, which occurs in his eighth book on the church and divers sects, is a notable one, of whose great future influence we shall presently 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 chapter is that he has made magic and magicians the general and inclusive head under which he presently lists various other minor occult arts and their practitioners for separate definition. 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 mentioned 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 astrology 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 magicians, 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. [Sidenote: Definition of magic.] Next comes a formal definition of the _Magi_. They are “those who are popularly called _malefici_ or sorcerers on account 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 enchantment.’[2562] 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 _mathematici_, 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 religion through certain devices called _sortes sanctorum_ 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 ligatures 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 Tagus to the Etruscans, Isidore closes the chapter. Some of its items will be found again in his _De differentiis verborum_,[2563] 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_. [Sidenote: Future influence of Isidore’s account of magic.] 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 Christian writers down into the twelfth century. Somewhat altered 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 consanguineorum nuptiis et de magorum praestigiis falsisque divinationibus tractatus_, and by Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres (died 1115) in their respective collections of _Decreta_, while Hincmar of Rheims in his _De divortio Lotharii et Tetbergae_ copied it with more omissions.[2564] It was also in substance retained in the _Decretum_ of Gratian in the twelfth century, when, too, Hugh of St. Victor 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 subject and give us any assurance that such arts were still practiced 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 Isidore’s stock definition of magic, were probably not generally regarded as reprehensible.[2565] [Sidenote: Attitude to astrology.] Isidore’s repetition of the views of the fathers concerning demons is so brief and trite[2566] 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 superstitious 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 superstitions “are without doubt contrary to our faith; Christians 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 Isidore, “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 astrology, but what it is, especially between astronomy and natural astrology, he fails to elucidate.[2567] [Sidenote: In the _De natura rerum_.] 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 nature 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, “Concerning the waters which are above the heavens,” and “Whether the stars have souls?”[2568] Isidore rejects as “absurd 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.”[2569] Yet later in the same treatise we find him saying that everything in nature grows and increases according to the waxing and waning of the moon.[2570] Moreover, he calls Saturn a cold star and explains that the planets are called _errantia_, not because they wander themselves but because they cause men to err.[2571] He also describes man as a microcosm.[2572] 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.[2573] In the _Etymologies_ he not only attributes racial and temperamental differences among the peoples of different regions to “force of the star”[2574] and “diversity of the sky,”[2575] phrases which seem to imply astrological influence rather than the mere influence of climate in our sense. He also encourages astrological medicine when he says that the doctor should know astronomy, since human bodies change with the qualities of the stars and the change of times.[2576] Isidore might as well have taken the planets as signs in the astrological sense as have ascribed to them the absurd allegorical significance 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.[2577] [Sidenote: Bede’s scanty science.] The scientific acquisitions of Bede have too often been 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.”[2578] Dr. R. L. Poole more moderately 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 generations to come.”[2579] 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_[2580] 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 temporibus_, 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[2581] of the _De natura rerum_ and _De temporibus_ suggests that they were employed as text-books in the monastic schools of the early middle ages. As the Carolingian poet expressed it, _Beda dei famulus nostri didasculus evi Falce pia sophie veterum sata lata peragrans._ [Sidenote: Bede’s _De natura rerum_.] Of Bede’s _Hexaemeron_ we spoke in an earlier chapter. His chief extant genuine scientific treatise is the aforesaid _De natura rerum_,[2582] 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.[2583] Like Isidore he accepts comets as signs of war and political change, of tempests and pestilence.[2584] He also states that the air is inhabited by evil spirits who there await the worse torments of the day of judgment.[2585] In his Biblical commentaries Bede briefly echoes some of the views of the fathers concerning magic and demons, for instance, in his treatment of the witch of Endor.[2586] [Sidenote: Divination by thunder.] Bede also translated into Latin a treatise on divination from thunder, perhaps from the works of the sixth century 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 perhaps 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, 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 bombastic phraseology concerning the agile genius or sagacious investigation of the philosophers who discovered it.[2587] Other tracts on divination which were attributed to Bede are probably spurious and will for the most part be considered later in connection with other treatises of the same sort.[2588] [Sidenote: Riddles of Aldhelm.] Some interest in and knowledge of natural science is displayed in the metrical riddles[2589] 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 preserved.” 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 Adhelmus made in the thirteenth century by Thomas of Cantimpré in his _De natura rerum_.[2590] Pitra,[2591] however, suggested that the Adhelmus cited by Thomas of Cantimpré was a brother of John the Scot of the ninth century. [Sidenote: Gregory’s _Dialogues_.] The total lack of originality and the extremely abbreviated character of the infrequent scientific writing 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 investigation, 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,[2592] pope from 590 to 604. We shall sufficiently illustrate the nature of this farrago of pious folk-lore by a résumé 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 emphasize 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 naïve 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. [Sidenote: Signs and wonders wrought by saints.] 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 experience or indirectly from the statements of good and trustworthy 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 presently 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 avalanche 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 looking as if they were sure to fall. [Sidenote: More monkish miracles.] 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 Honoratus 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. [Sidenote: A monastic snake-charmer.] 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: “In the name of 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. [Sidenote: Basilius the magician.] 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.[2593] According 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 expelled 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 injure anyone who was in it. This is more detailed information concerning the nature of Basilius’ magic than Cassiodorus gives us. Gregory further adds that not long after Basilius was burned to death at Rome by the zeal of the Christian people. [Sidenote: A demon salad.] A female servant of this same monastery once ate a lettuce 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. 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. [Sidenote: Incantations in Old Irish.] We may add a word at this point concerning Old Irish literature[2594] which, as it has reached us, is almost entirely religious in character,[2595] produced and preserved by the Christian 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 language which is ascribed to St. Patrick is a _Hymn_ or incantation 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 century codex preserved in Carinthia. [Sidenote: The _Fili_.] 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 divination. 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.