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PLINY the ELDER's NATURAL HISTORY: ENCYCLOPEDIA for CAROLINGIAN ASTRONOMY and COSMOLOGY Already Important to Bede (673–735)

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PLINY the ELDER's NATURAL HISTORY: ENCYCLOPEDIA for CAROLINGIAN ASTRONOMY and COSMOLOGY Already Important to Bede (673–735) CHAPTER THREE PLINY THE ELDER’S NATURAL HISTORY: ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR CAROLINGIAN ASTRONOMY AND COSMOLOGY Already important to Bede (673–735) while circulating in excerpts and partial copies during the early eighth century, Pliny’s Natural History (NH) was appreciated by Alcuin, Charlemagne, and their contempo- raries for supplying a tremendous increase in astronomical information. Analogously, of the earlier astronomical-cosmological works entitled De natura rerum (DNR) by Isidore of Seville (ca. 613) and Bede (ca. 701), it was Bede’s, which made more extensive and more explicit use of Pliny, that was clearly preferred in the Carolingian world. Pliny’s compendium of knowledge was a touchstone for authority in astronomy at the time of Charlemagne and afterwards and was used selectively, not slavishly, when its offerings provided what the moment required.1 While speci c, practical questions in astronomy often arose in the correspondence of Alcuin and others, the answers to those questions were sought less to build a body of technical knowledge than to con rm and recon rm the view that God’s cosmos displayed an order perceptible to human reason. Among the more effective ways developed by the Carolingians to af\ rm this view was the invention of diagrams that incorporated limited quantitative information but gave primary emphasis to qualita- tive patterns in an imagery of cosmic order. Plinian texts received such treatment early in the ninth century. 1 An introduction to Pliny’s astronomy appears in two essays in French and Greenaway, eds., Science in the Early Roman Empire; see Pedersen, “Some Astronomical Topics in Pliny,” pp. 162–96, and Eastwood, “Plinian Astronomy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,” pp. 197–251; the latter appears in a corrected version in Eastwood, Revival of Planetary Astronomy, ch. 2. See ibid., ch. 3, for “Plinian Astronomical Diagrams”. There is a large amount of interesting material in Borst, Das Buch der Naturgeschichte, esp. chs 3–5. Each of the above sources has something to say about the availability of parts of Pliny’s work before the Carolingian era. That Book 18 was available to Bede only in brief excerpts on astronomy is argued well by Meyvaert, “Discovering the Calendar (annalis libellus),” pp. 16–25. The complexity of the question of excerpts from Pliny by Charlemagne’s time nds witness in Ferrari, “La biblioteca del monastero di S. Ambrogio,” pp. 84–101. 96 chapter three Pliny’s encyclopedic range offered Carolingians detailed answers to questions about interplanetary distances, the causes and timing of eclipses, the changes in speed and brightness of each planet, and many other points. Of the thirty-seven books in Pliny’s compilation, Books 2 and 18 are the essential sources for astronomy and cosmology.2 By the later eighth century, fragmentary or incomplete manuscripts of the work had been produced that still survive, and complete copies remain to us from the ninth century.3 An attractive copy of the rst seventeen books of the Natural History, produced in the rst half of the ninth century, probably at the royal monastery of Lorsch, exists at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.4 2 There is no convenient, thorough, and dependable survey of Pliny’s cosmology and astronomy in these two books of NH. Stahl, Roman Science, pp. 101–16 offers a brief, acerbic summary. In 1862 Friese composed Kosmologie des Plinius Secundus, 44 pp., in which he made detailed analyses of various astronomical doctrines reported by Pliny. Friese argued that Pliny’s theory of the inner planets must have assumed epicycles for these two planets. This is an argument that has appeared in more than one analysis since Friese’s time, although Pliny’s text does not support it. Campbell, Plinii Secundi Naturalis Historiae liber secundus, pp. 51–91, offers a commentary on Book 2. More useful is the commentary provided by Beaujeu, included with his edition and translation of Histoire naturelle, livre II. See also Histoire naturelle, livre XVIII, ed. and trans., Le Bonniec and Le Boeuf] e. 3 From around the year 800 comes Leiden Voss. lat. Q.69, ff. 54, with 71 excerpts from Books 2, 3, 4, and 6 at ff. 39v–46r; see de Meyier’s catalogue of the quarto manuscript books, Codices latini Vossiani, vol. 2, pp. 159–163; Lowe, Codices latini antiquio- res, vol. 10, nr. 1585. For an earlier discussion of the manuscript and a transcription of the full text of the excerpts see Rück, “Exzerpte aus der Naturalis Historia,” pp. 257–87; Rück copied but did not identify separately the excerpt/chapter “De marte” (after “De iove”, f. 39vb), which brings the total to 71 rather than 70. Two surviving parts of a continuous manuscript of the whole of Pliny’s work, from s. VIII ex., are Vat. lat. 3861, ff. 173, and Leiden Voss. lat. F.61, ff. 152; these two parts (from north- eastern France) now contain NH II, 187–XIX, 156 and NH XX, 186–XXXVI, 97, respectively. The parts of the text now missing at the beginnings and ends of these two halves of Pliny’s work were surely present for Carolingian readers. On these two manuscripts see Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores , vol. 10, nr. 1580; Munk Olsen, L’Etude, vol. 2, p. 249; Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries, p. 64, n. 43. For some ninth-century manuscripts of Pliny see Reynolds, “The Elder Pliny,” in Texts and Transmission, pp. 307–16, esp. 311–2. Unfortunately Borst, Das Buch der Naturgeschichte, pp. 360–74, gives neither page/folio numbers, nor precise contents, nor dating of any kind in his list of medieval manuscripts of Pliny. Thus a reader must struggle with Borst’s references to his notes elsewhere in the book to determine which items contain material of inter- est, which are early manuscripts, and which are later; these internal references vary greatly in utility for readers. 4 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library M.871, ff. 183. On this manuscript see Desanges, “Le manuscrit (Ch) et la classe des recentiores perturbés;” Bischoff, Lorsch, pp. 32–3, plate 11, describes the ms. as “Saint-Vaast-Stil aus Lorsch.” This copy of Pliny lacks the preface and the beginning of Book 1; it ends at NH XVII, 178. It has no diagrams and almost no glosses added to it. .
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