Flora Unveiled

(backadmin) #1
The Rebirth of Naturalism j 307

307 307


Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and the Revival
of Descriptive Botany
As we have seen, after the death of Theophrastus, Greek natural philosophy declined pre-
cipitously. Roman agricultural writers had little patience with Greek philosophical abstrac-
tions, and Christian Europe branded as heresy any ideas that conflicted with the Bible
or Church teachings. But medieval Christianity’s obsession with the afterlife eventually
gave way to the troubadour poets and to Saint Francis of Assisi, who turned away from the
Church’s fixation on death by celebrating the beauty and spirituality of God’s Creation, the
natural world. By the twelfth century, European scholars were actively seeking to reconnect
with the philosophers, mathematicians, and physicians of ancient Greece because, paradox-
ically, this seemed to be the best way to move forward.
The field of medicine had undergone a small but significant advance as early as the tenth
century with the establishment of an important medical school in Salerno. “Advance” in
this case meant a return to Greek medical practices, facilitated by the availability of Greek
medical and pharmacological texts at a nearby Benedictine monastery. Soon, new medical
schools patterned after Salerno were flourishing throughout Europe. By bringing together
scholars engaged in teaching medicine and pharmacology, these new medical schools made
it all but inevitable that the deficiencies of the Greek texts would eventually come to light,
compelling physicians to carry out direct observations of both their patients and plants to
correct the errors.
Just as the faculties of the new medical schools were returning to Greek medical texts,
scholastic philosophers such as Adelard of Bath in England were engaged in reviving
Greek natural philosophy. Adelard of Bath was perhaps best known as the translator
of Euclid’s Elements, which led to the rediscovery of geometry. His conviction that the
universe is a finite system susceptible to elucidation by logic and reason derives in large
measure from his expertise in geometry. His highly influential Quaestiones Naturales
(1107 ad) was a list of seventy- six questions and answers about the natural world written
as a dialog between the philosopher and his nephew. Although Adelard stated that his
answers to these questions were based on “the opinions of the Saracens,” this may have
been a ploy to shield himself from criticism. Modern scholars have identified two main
sources for Adelard’s answers: Plato’s Timaeus and Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, as well
as other Greek writers.^46
Quaestiones Naturales begins with six questions about plants (representing the simplest
and most basic life forms) and ends with questions about the stars (the highest beings on
the Scala Natura). Both the questions and the answers about plants are simply a rehash of
Aristotelian botany (e.g. “Why do plants grow from unsown soil?” and “Why do hot plants
grow from cold earth?”). Significantly, however, plants are treated as living organisms wor-
thy of study in their own right, not merely as “simples” for medicine.
Between 1175 and 1225, a flurry of translations from Arabic into Latin made com-
plete versions of Galen, Hippocrates, and Aristotle’s zoological writings available to
European scholars for the first time. A  Latin translation of Nicolaus’s De Plantis also
made its appearance in Europe during this period, and because it was attributed to
Aristotle, such luminaries as Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus devoted considerable
attention to it.
Free download pdf