Natural Knowledge in the Latin Middle Ages 87istotle into Latin, he completed several of Aristotle’s logical works and
Euclid’s Elements, fragments of which survived into the early Middle Ages.
He coined quadrivium (the fourfold way) for the Platonic mathematical
disciplines of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, and wrote in-
troductions to them: “whoever neglects these has lost the whole teaching
of philosophy.”^12
Boëthius’s advice came too late for Rome, but not for posterity, to
which he also passed on Aristotle’s distinction among the three theo-
retical parts of philosophy, ascending from “physics” (physica) through
mathematics to theology.^13 The latter term meant not the revealed tenets
of Christianity, but rather the subject matter of Aristotle’s Metaphysics,
or what Augustine called “natural theology” (theologia naturalis), that is,
rational inquiry into the fi rst cause and being in general.^14 Boëthius identi-
fi ed the “mathematical part” of philosophy with the quadrivium, and the
“natural part” (physica) with natural philosophy, theoretically the study
of all change or motion in nature. In late antiquity and the later Middle
Ages, natural philosophy effectively came to mean Aristotle’s works on the
subject, excluding the change- related topics he had omitted (for example,
medicine and alchemy).^15 Before the translation of Aristotle into Latin in
the twelfth century, however, the quadrivium passed for the main areas of
learning about nature.^16
Early medieval scholars preserved defi nitions and organized summa-
ries but, in Grant’s words, “it apparently did not occur to them to pose
broad questions about nature and its operations... they were not is-
sue oriented.”^17 A growing number of exceptions, however, went beyond
the encyclopedic tradition, raised questions, or examined specimens. The
concerns of Gregory of Tours (d. 594 CE) about the proper celebration of
Easter drew him into calendaric work, including some observations of the
stars.^18 New research has shown that scholars in the Carolingian era went
beyond the calendar, for example, grappling with discrepancies between
inherited sources, improving on them, and reviving planetary astronomy,
which had no liturgical or calendaric signifi cance.^19 Books of Anglo- Saxon
plant remedies displayed a keen knowledge of local fl ora and an organi-
zation useful for identifying plants in the fi eld.^20 Other developments in
cosmology and medicine should cause us to pause much longer than we
can here.^21 These endeavors, which fell mostly outside the quadrivium,
were beginning to leave the older taxonomy behind.
From the tenth century onward, the contacts of Latin scholars with
Islamic civilization began to change the intellectual landscape. In his ca-
thedral school teaching, Gerbert of Aurillac (d. 1003 CE) used armillary
spheres and astrolabes that he had brought back from Spain. These, and