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
Pedro’s _Disciplina clericalis_,[173] although a collection of
oriental tales rather than a work of natural science,[174] contains
one or two passages of interest to us. Asked by a disciple what the
seven arts are, the master gives a list somewhat different from the
common Latin _trivium_ and _quadrivium_, namely, logic, arithmetic,
geometry, physics, music, and astronomy. As to the seventh there is
some dispute, he says. Philosophers who believe in divination make
necromancy the seventh; other philosophers who do not believe in
predictions substitute philosophy; while persons who are ignorant of
philosophy affirm that grammar is one of the seven arts.[175] Thus
while Pedro retains all four arts of the _quadrivium_, he holds only
to logic in the case of the _trivium_, omitting rhetoric entirely
and tending to substitute physics and necromancy for it and grammar.
This tendency away from _belles-lettres_ to a curriculum made up
of logic and philosophy, mathematical and natural science, also
soon became characteristic of Latin learning, while the tendency to
include necromancy as one of the liberal arts or natural sciences,
although less successful, will be found in other writers who are to
be considered in this chapter. In the passage just discussed the
importance of the number seven also receives emphasis, as the master
goes on to speak of other sevens than the arts. One is impressed also
in reading the _Disciplina clericalis_ by a sceptical note concerning
magic and the marvelous properties of natural objects, as in the tale
of the thief who repeated a charm seven times and tried to take hold of
a moonbeam, but as a result fell and was captured, and in the tale of
the Churl and the Bird, who promised his captor, if released, to reveal
three pieces of wisdom.[176] The first was not to believe everyone.
“This saide,” in the quaint wording of the medieval English version,
“the litel brid ascendid vpon the tree and with a sweete voice bigan to
synge: ‘Blessid be god that hath shit and closed the sight of thyn eyen
and taken awey thi wisdam, forwhi if thow haddest sought in the plites
of myn entrailes thow shuldest have founde a jacinct the weight of an
vnce.’” When the churl wept and beat his breast at this announcement of
his lost opportunity, the bird again warned him not to be so credulous.
“And how belivistow that in me shuld be a jacynt the weight of an vnce,
whan I and al my body is nat of somoche weight?”
[Sidenote: John of Seville.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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