A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our EraThorndike, Lynn
History
A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era
Thorndike, Lynn
Magic -- History; Science -- History
Both versions seem to be regarded as the _Experimentarius_ of Bernard
Silvester, for in the manuscripts where they occur together the
first usually follows its prologue, while the second is preceded by
his picture and the line, _Translator Bernardus Silvester_.[303]
In one manuscript[304] the prologue is immediately followed by the
second version and the first set of Judges does not occur. In some
manuscripts,[305] however, the second version occurs without the
first and without the prologue, in which cases, I think, there is
nothing to indicate that it is by Bernard Silvester or a part of the
_Experimentarius_. The first version ends in several manuscripts with
the words, _Explicit libellus de constellationibus_[306] rather than
some such phrase as _Explicit Experimentarius_. Furthermore in some
manuscripts where it occurs alone this first set of Judges is called
the book of Alchandiandus or Alkardianus.[307] He may, however, have
been the Arabic author and Bernard his translator, and the _liber
alkardiani phylosophi_ opens in at least one manuscript with words
appropriate to the title, _Experimentarius_, “Since everything that is
tested by experience is experienced either for its own sake or on some
other account.”[308]
[Sidenote: Other modes of divination.]
There are so many treatises of this type in medieval manuscripts and
they are so frequently collected in one _codex_ that they are liable
to be confused with one another. Thus in two manuscripts a method of
divination ascribed to the physician of King Amalricus[309] is in such
juxtaposition to the _Experimentarius_ that Macray takes it to be part
of the _Experimentarius_, while the catalogue of the Sloane Manuscripts
combines the two as “a compilation ‘concerning the art of Ptolemy.’”
Macray also includes in the _Experimentarius_ a _Praenostica Socratis
Basilei_, which is of frequent occurrence in the manuscripts, and
other treatises on divination which are either anonymous or ascribed
to Pythagoras and, judging from the miniatures prefixed to them, to
Anaxagoras and Cicero, who thus again is appropriately punished for
having written a work against divination. I doubt if these other modes
of divination are parts of the _Experimentarius_, which often is found
without them, as are some of them without it. But they are so much
like it in general form and procedure that we may consider them now,
especially as they are of such dubious date and authorship that it
would be difficult to place them more exactly.
[Sidenote: Divination of the physician of King Amalricus.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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