Note 12 — Introductory material

Vincent de Beauvais desired to facilitate the pursuit of learning by collecting into one large work everything useful to be known in art, history, natural science and philosophy, “so that the great edifice of science should be once more presented with all its halls and porticos forming one harmonious whole, domed over, if we may so express ourselves, with theology and surmounted by the Cross” (“Eccl. History,” Rohrbacher, Vol. XVIII. p. 444, quoted at pp. 86 and 89 of “Christian Schools and Scholars,” London, 1867). His “Speculum Majus,” of which the most trustworthy edition was that published at Strasbourg in ten large folio volumes during 1473, consisted of three parts: “Speculum Naturale,” 32 books and 3718 chapters; “Speculum Doctrinale,” 17 books and 2374 chapters; “Speculum Historiale,” 31 books and 3793 chapters, a total of 80 books and 9885 chapters (“Encycl. Britan.,” ninth ed., Vol. XXIV. p. 235; “Paris et ses historiens,” Paris, 1867, p. 100, note, indicating that, according to Fabricius, the “Speculum Naturale” mentions as many as 350 different names of Arabian, Greek and Latin authors). The influence of the mediæval encyclopædias of Vincent de Beauvais, Brunetto Latini and Bartholomew Anglicus on Western Literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is presented in Liliencron’s “Festrede,” München, 1876 (J. E. Sandys, “Classical Scholarship,” 1903, p. 558).