Essay Review: Medieval Science Illustrated: Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Publications which reproduce late ancient and medieval depictions in the areas of medicine, pharmacy, and astronomy are given in separate bibliographical sections by Murdoch , respectively on pp. 372–3, 369, and 371. A recent notable addition is Jones Peter Murray , Medieval medical miniatures (London, 1984). One other field rather well represented in modern publications is geography, though Murdoch devotes only one illustration (#279) to this area. Among the general works on medieval geographical illustrations two useful studies are: Destombes Marcel (ed.), Mappemondes A.D. 1200–1500, Monumenta Cartographica Vetustioris Aevi, i: Mappaemundi. Imago Mundi, suppl. no. IV (sect. 52.2) (Amsterdam, 1964); Harley J. B. and Woodward David (eds), The history of cartography, i: Cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago, 1985). More specifically devoted to the relationships of verbal and visual information in medieval world maps, and offering criticisms of Destombes, is Ruberg Uwe , “Mappae Mundi des Mittelalters in Zusammenwirken von Text und Bild”, Text und Bild: Aspekte des Zusammenwirkens zweier Künste in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. by Meier C. and Ruberg U. (Wiesbaden, 1980), 550–92. Much geographical lore connected with medieval anthropology appears in Friedman John B. , The monstrous races in medieval art and thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 37–58, 217–25, although Friedman's interpretation of St Augustine and others should be compared to that of Flint Valerie I. J. , “Monsters and the Antipodes in the early Middle Ages and Enlightenment”, Viator, xv (1984), 65–80.

Murdoch's illustrations #274 and 275a present these themes, each the object of a study by d'Alverny Marie Thérèse , cited by Murdoch , p. 384. Two further studies by d'Alverny on important illustrated themes are “La sagesse et ses sept filles: Recherches sur les allégories de la philosophie et des arts libéraux du IXe au XIIe siècle”, Mélanges dédiés à la mémoire de Félix Grat (Paris, 1946), i, 245–78, and “L'homme comme symbole: Le microcosme”, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, xxiii (Spoleto, 1976), 123–83.

See, for example, Bober Harry , “An illustrated medieval school-book of Bede's ‘De natura rerum’”, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, xix–xx (1956–57), 64–97; and “In principio: Creation before time”, De artibus opuscula XL: Essays in honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. by Meiss M. (New York, 1961), 13–28.

On images for the seven liberal arts, of which the last four are arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics, see the study noted above by d'Alverny Mlle (ref. 2); the articles of Wirth Karl-August , “Eine illustrierte Martianus-Capella-Handschrift aus dem 13. Jahrhundert”, Städel-Jahrbuch, N. F. ii (1969), 43–74, and “Notes on some didactic illustrations in the margins of a twelfth-century psalter”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxxiii (1979), 20–40; and the very informative thesis of Evans Michael Wingfield , “The personifications of the artes from Martianus Capella up to the end of the fourteenth century”, University of London, Warburg Institute, 1971, which includes 238 illustrations.

Murdoch has a number for each illustration or small group of illustrations used to present a specific theme. For most convenient reference I shall use these numbers, appending a letter where needed to indicate which figure is intended in a numbered group.

The origin of this game seems obscure, but it appeared by the eleventh century. An introduction to simpler elements of the game is given by Smith D. E. and Eaton C. C. , “Rithmomachia, the great medieval number game”, American mathematical monthly, xviii (1911), 73–80; reprinted, with modifications, under the same title in Teachers college record, xiii, no. 5 (Nov. 1912), 29–38. The only printed, full and clear account of the game is that of Claude de Boissière, Le tres excellent et ancien jeu Pythagorique, dict Rithmomachie (Paris, 1554, 1556), also in German (Erfurt, 1577), and in a widespread Latin version, Nobilissimus et antiquissimus ludus… (Paris, 1556), translated and annotated by Richards John F. C. , “Boissière's Pythagorean game”, Scripta mathematica, xii (1946), 177–217. Historical bibliography appears in Sarton George , Introduction to the history of science (Baltimore, 1927–48), i, 757, 763; ii, 615.

I would not attribute quite as much misrepresentation as Murdoch to the illustration (#119a) in the London British Library MS Harl. 2686, f. 36r (s. IX), since I am convinced that the word “angularis” written above the semicircle goes with the “in solidum” inside the semicircle in order to indicate that the semicircle is to be imagined as angular to the square. While this does not adequately depict the cylinder, neither does it mean that a cylinder is composed of two shapes in the same place.

As a further clarification to Murdoch's explanation (p. 143) of #131a, it should be said that the MS text is correct and the diagram wrong for the Moon. The addition of an apogee in the diagram depends on an independent diagram tradition, in which a confusion in the text of Bede's De natura rerum in the late ninth century carried over to diagrams for the text of Pliny's description of the same subject. Also, the text on apsides immediately preceding the diagram in this MS does not end with a reference to an appended illustration, which was a canonical part of the text. Therefore the diagram may actually be meant to accompany its surrounding text on planetary order and periods. Here let me also modify what is said (p. 143) about #131b; this diagram uses an eccentric to locate the solar apogee in Gemini; while the design shows twelve zodiacal divisions with Greek names, there is neither an image nor a Latin name present for Libra.

The use by William of Conches in his Dragmaticon of solar epicycles for Mercury and Venus (#132d) derives from Martianus Capella and Capellan diagrams, not from Macrobius or traditional Macrobian diagrams (Murdoch, p. 145). In his earlier Philosophia William held to a modified Macrobian pattern in which three equal and mutually intersecting circles, for Sun-Mercury-Venus, centre on the Earth; this pattern derived from both Plinian and Capellan interpretations of the Macrobian text. In his later Dragmaticon William adhered to a straightforward Capellan interpretation of the motions of Mercury and Venus with respect to the Sun, although other MS diagrams show the pattern a bit more clearly than #132d.

Murdoch notes this modification to #249d on p. 339. The illustration in #249d, taken from Oxford St. John's MS 17, should, along with most of that MS, now be dated to the late eleventh rather than to the twelfth century. In Manuscripts at Oxford: An exhibition in memory of Richard William Hunt (Oxford, 1980), 22, Lapidge M. describes this MS as in the main written c. 1080, at Ramsey Abbey.

In the rectangular grid diagrams for planetary latitudes, the Plinian pattern shows Venus with a span of 14°, e.g. Murdoch #249c. In #249d Venus is given a latitude of 12°, and this change, which occurred in other MS designs of this type, signals an importation of a datum from an author considered more authoritative in astronomy in the eleventh century. See Martianus Capella ed. by Willis James (Leipzig, 1983), 334, 15 (VIII, 882).

Bamberg Staatsbibliothek MS Patr. 5, fr. lv. Beginning at top centre and proceeding clockwise the medallions illustrate (1) a book completed, (2) assembling leaves for a gathering, (3) sewing the leaves together, (4) cutting to uniform size, (5) making clasps, (6) a book in use for instruction, (7) trimming the boards for a cover, (8) preparing parchment, (9) drafting a copy on wax tablets, (10) trimming a pen. Another relevant illumination is that in Paris BN MS lat. 818, f. 2v, from eleventh century Troyes, showing a scriptorium with scribe, ruled parchment leaves, and a scribe with a desk on his lap.

This is the case in the 512 codex, Wien NB MS med. gr. 1; also in the cases of insects and higher animals (e.g. the Nicander MS Paris BN suppl. gr. 247) depicted in MSS surveyed by Kádár Zoltan , Survivals of Greek zoological illuminations in Byzantine manuscripts, transl. by Wilkinson T. and Kretzoi M. (Budapest, 1978). Kádár is overly optimistic in his claims to identify images based on naturalistic Hellenistic originals. (There are unfortunate problems of translation in this important and highly unusual book).

I list here certain minor addenda and corrigenda that have come to my attention. Not the fault of the author, the two photographs for #178 are excessively indistinct, and #274a has been printed from a reversed negative, making a right-left inversion and all script backwards. Page 183, #167a-right side: Despite the label, this cannot be removal of cataract, which could only be ‘couched’ (cut loose and depressed within the eye), not cut out. Page 276, #246, the upper diagram's numbers for the planetary orbits of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and the Sun are drawn from the diagram tradition for Isidore's De natura rerum, 23, where the planetary numbers are not annual periods; a good example is Basel UB MS lat. F. III. 15 (a), f. 5r, from Fulda, late eighth or beginning of the ninth century, in which the planetary numbers are 30-12-15-19-9-20-8 from Saturn in to the Moon (cf. #48, which calls these orbital periods-what kind of periods? #246 shows the same numbers for Saturn to the Sun; these four periods correspond in length to the last four of the seven stages of life according to 'Arib ibn Sa id of Cordova (died c. 980)). Page 281, #247, the late eleventh century English MS, Oxford Bodl. Auct. F. 2.20, f. 5v, the last of Murdoch's six here, abandons all pretence of depicting a cube and says in the text that the doctrine concerned is depicted by subiecti circuli; nor did the text of Isidore specify a cube, though it is the example he chose; the eleventh century copyist not only changes the text to specify circuli in place of pictura but also adds the following admission that he is not following the diagram tradition, which is too confused: “Haec figura solita est secundum geometricam rationem, non est in hoc exemplari.” Page 285, line 12, the thirty parts would have to be 12° each, not 10°, to equal the zodiac, and the interpretation here seems less plausible than making the thirty parts stand for the degrees in one sign, since the grid clearly does not stand for a single circuit of the zodiac. The MS used for #50, 131, 251, and 280 is dated in these locations respectively as late thirteenth, thirteenth, late twelfth century, and c. 1200; the last two of these dates are appropriate, since Baltimore Walters MS W.73 is dated to c. 1190–1200 by Harry Bober. Page 361, #289a, the semicircle on the right side of f. 52r with thirteen feather-like segments is a degenerate version of the marginal design added to Macrobius , Commentaries on Scipio's Dream, I, xx, 26–29, intended to show how to measure the Sun's diameter; a better example of this diagram, in association with its proper text, can be seen in London BL MS Add. 11943, f. 26v, of the eleventh century. In the bibliography, p. 373 (right column), it should be noted that there is now a modern edition with translation into German of William of Conches, Philosophia, ed. and transl. by Maurach Gregor (Pretoria, South Africa, 1980), and an edition with translation of the Dragmaticon is expected shortly. In the list of picture sources and credits: P. 382, #213, the pages in Cairo Tibb Taimur 100 are pp. 314, 316; to #223 the projection cited by North J. D. (1975) is in München CLM 210, f. 113v, and should be compared with the tenth century example in Bern MS 88, f. 10v; for #291 the folia in CLM 2655 are ff. 104v–105r.

I exclude ancient Greek illustrations in this account. For those readers interested to note separately the Byzantine illustrations, they are numbers 10, 78, 88, 117, 121c, 122a, 125a, 131b, 160, 162a, 168b, 183a, 188, 193a, 196, 200a, 202c, 222a, 245b, 257a, 269b.

Anastos Milton V. , “The history of Byzantine science: Report on the Dumbarton Oaks symposium of 1961”, Dumbarton Oaks papers, xvi (1962), 409–11; Wolfson Harry , “The problem of the souls of the spheres from the Byzantine commentaries on Aristotle through the Arabs and St. Thomas to Kepler”, ibid., 67–93; Temkin Owsei , “Byzantine medicine: Tradition and empiricism”, ibid., 95–115.

Published since 1892, this is the basic bibliographical source for Byzantine studies. It is now under the editorship of Armin Hohlweg and published in Munich.

This fundamental text is edited and translated by Giet Stanislas , Homélies sur I'Hexaéméron (2nd edn, Paris, 1968).

Announcement in Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies Bulletin of the Association of Alumni, viii, no. 2 (July 1984), 5.

Pingree David , “Gregory Chioniades and Paleologan astronomy”, Dumbarton Oaks papers, xviii (1964), 133–60; “The astrological school of John Abramius”, ibid., xxv (1971), 189–215; “The Byzantine version of the Toledan tables: The work of George Lapithes?”, ibid., xxx (1976), 85–132; “The horoscope of Constantinople”, Prismata: Festschrift für Willy Hartner, ed. by Maeyama Y. and Saltzer W. G. (Wiesbaden, 1977), 305–15; “An illustrated Greek astronomical manuscript…”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xlv (1982), 185–92.

Catalogus codicum astrologorum Graecorum, ed. by Boll F. Cumont F. (12 vols in 20 pts, Brussels, 1898–1953).

Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs, ed. by Bidez J. Cumont F. and Lagercrantz O. (8 vols, Brussels, 1924–38). See vols vi-vii for longer translations.

Pre-eminently, Weitzmann Kurt , Ancient book illumination (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pt 1, and Studies in Classical and Byzantine manuscript illumination, ed. by Kessler H. (Chicago, 1970), chs 2, 6, 8.

See above, ref. 13.

CCAG, viii, pt 1, final leaf; viii, pt 2, pl. I; ix, pt 2, 141–7; xii, final leaves.

See pls 30–33 of the last item in ref. 20 above.

There is one exception to this. Some of the early (ninth century) MSS of Martianus give diagrams of the vexing question of the orbits of Mercury and Venus with respect to the Sun. Two of these MSS append a set of ten astronomical diagrams at the end of the text, e.g. Paris BN lat. 8671, f. 84r, but there is some question about the date of these additions. The Mercury-Venus-Sun diagrams are identified and explained in my “The chaster path of Venus (orbis Veneris castior) in the astronomy of Martianus Capella”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxxii (1982), 145–58.

Paris BN MS lat. 16677, f. 41v.

Paris BN MS n.a.l. 454, f. 56r.

Strasbourg BN MS 326, f. 124r (Figure 4); this figure is identical with that in Paris BN 5239, f. 125v (s.X).

Monza B.Capit. MS lat. F.9.176, f. 72v (Figure 5); this figure is almost identical to Madrid BN 3307, f. 65v, dated to a.d. 820–40.

Bern 347, f. 24r.

Zürich ZB , Car.C.122, f. 41v (Figure 7); this figure is identical with the contemporary in München CLM 14436, f. 60v.

In an earlier study I have described part of this evolution. See my “Notes on the planetary configuration in Aberystwyth N.L.W. MS. 735C, f. 4v”, National Library of Wales journal, xxii (1981), 129–40. A complete account of the larger set of textual, pictorial, and cosmological interactions is presented in my forthcoming study of medieval heliocentrism up to and including the twelfth century.

Paris BN 8671, f. 84r (s.IX), see ref. 27 above. The pattern of Martianus is the middle one of three on an arc on the lower half of the page.

Thus in the lower of two diagrams in the contemporary marginalia to the Macrobius passage in Vat. lat. 1546, f. 47r (s. XIex.). See also the illustration which is the focus of my 1981 study, cited in ref. 34 above.

See for example Pseudo-Bede , De mundi celestis terrestrisque constitutione, ed. and transl. by Burnett Charles (London, 1985), 36, no. 207. An anonymous commentary on the relevant text of Macrobius, written at the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century claims that Macrobius harmonized the two opposing views of Plato and Cicero on planetary order, which harmonizing is then related explicitly to the two theories of intersecting circles and epicyclic circles; see Köln DB MS 199, ff. 34vb–35ra.

Vat. Regin. lat. 72, f. 94r (s.XII), Philosophia. For the prior commentary of William on Macrobius regarding the orbits of Sun-Mercury-Venus see København Gl. kgl. Saml. 1910. 4°, ff. 83r–v, 95r–v.

For example, Glass Dorothy , “In principio: The creation in the Middle Ages”, Approaches to nature in the Middle Ages, ed. by Roberts L. D. (Binghamton, 1982), 67–104, esp. p. 97, where the author concludes that “visual images tend to interpret rather than simply illustrate [the text]” with respect to her topic. However, she does not distinguish radically the form and content of the images. A more self-conscious concern with this distinction can be found in Uspensky Boris , The semiotics of the Russian icon (Lisse, 1976).

London BL Harl. 2637, f. 30v.

Murdoch has some interesting examples of divisions of the sciences in ch. 5 (#28–32, 34), but none of these is earlier than the twelfth century, and none uses a real-life animate figure.

Schadt Hermann , Die Darstellungen der Arbores Consanguinitatis und der Arbores Affinitatis: Bildschemata in juristischen Handschriften (Tübingen, 1982), 364.

Of some relevance here are Hagen Margaret , “Generative theory: A perceptual theory of pictorial representation”, The perception of pictures (New York, 1980), ii, 3–46, and Preziosi Donald , The semiotics of the built environment (Bloomington, 1979), esp. ch. 4.

I take this definition of schema to be in accord with that intended by Bober Harry , “In principio”, Festschrift Panofsky (ref. 3), 19; see Murdoch #283 and credits thereto.

Murdoch gives examples of each of these in #37, 247, 280a, and 286, respectively. With regard to the third of these, it should be added to Murdoch's description that the wind rota is a cosmic schema, not just a representation of the winds in directional order.

See Rykwert Joseph , The idea of a town (Hilversum, Netherlands, n.d.); Bronder Barbara , “Das Bild der Schöpfung und Neuschöpfung der Welt als orbis quadrata”, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, vi (1972), 188–210.

Some very suggestive ideas appear in Esmeijer Anna , Divina quaternitas: A preliminary study in the method and analysis of visual exegesis (Assen, 1978).

Edgerton Samuel Y. Jr , The Renaissance rediscovery of linear perspective (New York, 1975).

Evans Michael W. , “The geometry of the mind”, Architectural Association quarterly, xii, no. 4 (1980), 32–55.