| Speculum maius | |
| Author: | Vincent of Beauvais |
| Language: | Latin |
| Genre: | Encyclopedia |
The Latin: Speculum Maius or Latin: Majus (Latin: "The Greater Mirror") was a major encyclopedia of the Middle Ages written by Vincent of Beauvais in the 13th century. It was a great compendium of all knowledge of the time. The work seems to have consisted of three parts: the Latin: Speculum Naturale ("The Mirror of Nature"), the Latin: Speculum Doctrinale ("The Mirror of Doctrine"), and Latin: Speculum Historiale ("The Mirror of History"). However, all the printed editions include a fourth part, the Latin: Speculum Morale ("The Mirror of Morals"), added in the 14th century and mainly compiled from Thomas Aquinas, Stephen of Bourbon, and a few other contemporary writers.
Vincent de Beauvais worked on his compendium for approximately 29 years (1235-1264) in the pursuit of presenting a compendium of all of the knowledge available at the time. He collected the materials for the work from libraries around the Île-de-France, and there is evidence to suggest even further than that. He found support for the creation of the Latin: Speculum Maius from the Dominican order to which he belonged as well as King Louis IX of France. The metaphor of the title has been argued to "reflect" the microcosmic relations of Medieval knowledge. In this case, the book mirrors "both the contents and organization of the cosmos". Vincent himself stated that he chose Latin: speculum for its name because his work contains "whatever is worthy of contemplation (Latin: speculatio), that is, admiration or imitation." It is by this name that the compendium is connected to the medieval genre of speculum literature.
The original structure of the work consisted of three parts: The Mirror of Nature (Latin: Speculum Naturale), The Mirror of Doctrine (Latin: Speculum Doctrinale), and The Mirror of History (Latin: Speculum Historiale). A fourth part, The Mirror of Morals (Latin: Speculum Morale), was initiated by Vincent but there are no records of its contents. All the printed editions of the Latin: Speculum Maius include this fourth part, which is mainly compiled from Thomas Aquinas, Stephen de Bourbon, and a few other contemporary writers by anonymous fourteenth century Dominicans. As a whole, the work totals 3.25 million words and 80 books and 9885 chapters. Additionally it is ordered "according to the order of sacred Scripture," utilizing the sequence of Genesis to Revelation, from "creation, to fall, redemption, and re-creation". This ordering system provides evidence that this "thirteenth-century encyclopedia must be counted among the tools for biblical exegesis". In this vein, the Latin: Speculum Naturale has connections to the hexameron genre of texts that are commentaries on the six days of creation. Additional generic connections come from Hélinand of Froidmont chronicle and Isidore of Seville's Etymologies. Isidore's influence is explicitly referenced by Vincent's prologue and can be seen in some minor forms of organization as well as the stylistic brevity used to describe the branches of knowledge.
The vast tome of The Mirror of Nature, divided into thirty-two books and 3,718 chapters, is a summary of all of the science and natural history known to Western Europe towards the middle of the 13th century, a mosaic of quotations from Latin, Greek, Arabic, and even Hebrew authors, with the sources given. Vincent distinguishes, however, his own remarks. Vincent de Beauvais began work on The Mirror of Nature from around 1235 to around the time of his death in 1264. During this period, it was first completed in 1244 and then expanded in a second version in 1259 or 1260.[1]
The second part, The Mirror of Doctrine, Education, or Learning, in seventeen books and 2,374 chapters, is intended to be a practical manual for the student and the official alike; and, to fulfil this object, it treats of the mechanic arts of life as well as the subtleties of the scholar, the duties of the prince and the tactics of the general. It is a summary of all the scholastic knowledge of the age and does not confine itself to natural history. It treats of logic, rhetoric, poetry, geometry, astronomy, the human instincts and passions, education, the industrial and mechanical arts, anatomy, surgery and medicine, jurisprudence and the administration of justice.
The most widely disseminated part of the Latin: Speculum Maius was The Mirror of History, which provided a history of the world down to Vincent's time. It was a massive work, running to nearly 1400 large double-column pages in the 1627 printing. While it has been suggested that the Chronicon of Helinand of Froidmont (d.) served as its model, more recent research points out that The Mirror of History differs from Helinand's work because it did not use chronology as a primary system of organization.
One remarkable feature of The Mirror of History is Vincent's constant habit of devoting several chapters to selections from the writings of each great author, whether sacred or profane, as he mentions him in the course of his work. The extracts from Cicero and Ovid, Origen and St John Chrysostom, Augustine and Jerome are but specimens of a useful custom which reaches its culminating point in book xxviii., which is devoted entirely to the writings of St Bernard.
Another notable aspect of The Mirror of History is the large space devoted to miracles. Four of the medieval historians from whom he quotes most frequently are Sigebert of Gembloux, Hugh of Fleury, Helinand of Froidmont, and William of Malmesbury, whom he uses for Continental as well as for English history.
The number of writers quoted by Vincent is substantial: in the Latin: Speculum Maius alone no less than 350 distinct works are cited, and to these must be added at least 100 more for the other two sections. His reading ranges from philosophers to naturalists including Peter Alphonso, Aristotle, Augustine, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), Julius Caesar (whom he calls Latin: Julius Celsus), Cicero, Eusebius, Peter Helias, the Latin: Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor, Quintilian, Seneca, and Thomas Aquinas's Latin: Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate. Beauvais also extracted information from another encyclopedic text heavily referenced in the Middle Ages, Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Additionally he seems to have known Hebrew, Arabic and Greek authors only through their popular Latin versions. He admits that his quotations are not always exact, but asserts that this was the fault of careless copyists.
Researchers have accounted for approximately 250–350 different manuscript copies of the Latin: Speculum Maius in varying degrees of completion. This is due to the fact that the Latin: Speculum Maius was rarely copied in full, with the possibility of only two complete sets of a tripartite copy surviving today. Beyond the labour involved in copying manuscripts, one historian has argued that such separation of the Latin: Speculum Maius was due in part to medieval readers not recognizing the work to be organized as a whole. The circulation of the four parts accordingly varied. While The Mirror of History was by far the most popular part to be copied within Europe, The Mirror of Nature was sometimes mistakenly discussed as the great work of William of Conches, the Latin: Magna de Naturis Philosophia ("The Great Philosophy of Nature").
With the advent of moveable type, the Latin: Speculum Maius saw renewed interest since it was easier to reproduce such a sizeable work. Accordingly, there were five editions of the Latin: Speculum Maius printed between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Printed editions of the Latin: Speculum Maius often include a fourth section called the Speculum Morale. The four-volume complete edition Latin: Speculum Quadruplex with the Latin: Speculum Morale was first printed in Douai by Balthazar Bellerus in 1624 and was reprinted in 1964/65 in Graz. While Beauvais had plans to write this book there is no historical record of its content. However, after 1300 a compilation was created and attributed to be part of the Latin: Speculum Maius. An eighteenth century writer remarked that this work was "a more-or-less worthless farrago of a clumsy plagiarist", one who merely extracted and compiled great swaths of text from other authors. A textual analysis of how the Latin: Speculum Maius integrated St. Thomas Aquinas's Latin: Summa Theologiae shows that, while heavily extracted, the compiler made conscious decisions about the placement of parts and also redirected the meaning of certain passages.