0"T' LAERT> "! - USP

196
THE MIDDLE AGES.
gation, hardly any observations of nature can be credited
to this period.
The literature of medicine and the natural sciences consisted
chiefly of extracts from and commentaries on more
ancient works. Independent ideas and experiences hardly
ever found a place therein. To this category the following
compositions belong: the book of recipes of the Milanese
Archbishop BENEDICTUS CRISPUS, the encyclopaedic work
of HRABANUS MAURUS, Archbishop of Mainz and primus
preceptor Germanic which K. SCHMID translates as "the
first schoolman of Germany," the description of plants by
WALAFRIDUS STRABO, Abbot of Reichenau, the medical .,
writino-s of the Abbot BERTHARIUS, the book on the healing
virtues of plants by the enigmatical MACER FLORIDUS, the
Lapidarius of Bishop MARBOD of Rennes, the Bestaanus of f
the Englishman PHILLIP DE THAUN, the Natural Philosophy
of his fellow-countryman ALEXANDER NECKAM, the Physica
of ST. HlLDEGARD, Abbess of the monastery on the ,\
Rupertsberg near Bingen —" a treatise on materia medica
unmistakably founded on popular traditions" as MEYER* ,
appropriately designates this work—and the far-famed 4
Physiologus.
The intellectual life of Christian Europe at that time
resembled a landscape which fatigues by its uniform flatness
and desolate sterility, while only at rare intervals
there breaks upon the traveller's view a bit of scenery able
to engage his eye. Then in the south of our portion of the'
globe arose pictures, entrancing men with their gorgeous j
colouring, giving courage new life, and filling all hearts with
hope. The bright constellation of Arabian culture shed its
light over these lands and sent some rays to the other parts
of the Christian West—rays which served to foster intel- ;
lectual development and at the same time to illuminate the
path of its advance.
> * MEYER op. cit. iii, 518.