ALBERT THE GREAT AND THE SPECULUM ASTRONOMIAE

THE STATE OF THE RESEARCH AT THE BEGINNING

OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Jeremiah Hackett

The Speculum astronomiae is a short work that provides the medieval

reader with a guided tour in quantitative astronomy and judicial astrol-
ogy. The aim of this deliberately “anonymous” text is to set out a divi-
sion between “licit” and “illicit” books in astronomy/astrology with a view
to distinguishing them from books of magic that misuse titles of valid
astronomy/astrology books. Written most likely at Paris in the mid-13th
century, the author is critical of those in authority who, in matters relating
to astrology/astronomy, tend to dismiss the good with the bad. This is the
kind of work that indicates the reading concerns of those Christian schol-
ars such as Albert the Great, Campanus of Novara, or Roger Bacon. For
most of the past century, scholars associated the text with either Albert
the Great or with Roger Bacon. It is now clear from recent scholarship that
the author of the Speculum astronomiae was acquainted with the work of
Campanus of Novara.
The purpose of this chapter is quite modest. It is simply a brief and
selective introduction to the development of the scholarship since the
beginning of the 20th century. It will become apparent, however, that the
scholarship of the past 30 years has made advances in our understand-
ing of this important work. It has also for the first time provided ade-
quate palaeographical, codicological, and historical contexts for a proper
understanding of the Speculum astronomiae. This work is a most help-
ful introduction for the modern reader; it presents a guidebook towards
understanding the issues in astronomy/astrology that 13th-century theo-
logians and canonists would have found to be problematic.
The recovery of Aristotle, as the late Richard Lemay had argued for a
long time, was accompanied by the discovery of many books on science
and on what we might call pseudo-science. The distinction between the
two was not always clear to medieval readers. The “anonymous writer”
of the Speculum astronomiae wished to put his expertise at the service
of Christianity. He is designated as “a certain person dedicated to faith
and philosophy” (quidam vir, zelator fidei et philosophiae). Further, he is
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aware that certain “powerful persons” (magni viri) had, in his judgment,
condemned good astronomy/astrology works with the bad and dangerous
pseudo-works.

1. From Mandonnet to Paravicini-Bagliani

Pierre Mandonnet placed the Speculum astronomiae in the context of the

Parisian Condemnations of 1270 and 1277. He remarks:
Roger Bacon, who cherished an exaggerated faith in the divinatory sciences,
and had written with enthusiasm about them, must have felt particularly
called upon by the action of the Bishop of Paris. Inconsiderate as he was, he
wrote the Speculum . . . Notwithstanding the moderation of the tone—com-
mendable for Bacon—and the appellative of “friends” addressed to the pro-
moters of the condemnation, the Speculum was nevertheless a very serious
critical venture, as the work of a private individual who dared oppose the
effects of the Episcopal condemnation . . . The wrong position Bacon soon
found himself in, as well as the sanction which immediately followed the
publication of the Speculum, brings us to suppose that the Bishop of Paris
had something to do with the serious subsequent events which overran the
Franciscan Friar.1
This is perhaps an allusion to the condemnation of Roger Bacon in 1278
“on account of certain suspected novelties”.2
Whereas Mandonnet attributed the authorship of the Speculum to
Roger Bacon, Robert Steele, the editor of Bacon’s works, doubted the attri-
bution to Bacon mostly on stylistic grounds; Mandonnet and Geyer, as
we will see below, saw stylistic parallels between Bacon’s works and the
Speculum, whereas G.G. Meersemann concluded that the content of the

1 Pierre Mandonnet, “Roger Bacon et le Speculum Astronomiae,” Revue neo-Scholastique

de philosophie 17 (1910), 313–335, see 330–331, as well as 320–321 where Mandonnet notes
the absence of the attribution of the Speculum in Dominican lists, and where Mandonnet
calls into question the trustworthiness of the attribution of the text to Albert in the later
Middle Ages.
2 Chronica XXIV Generalium Ordinis Fratrum Minorum (1209–1374), (Analecta Francis-
cana) 3 (Quaracchi: 1897), 360: “Hic Generalis frater Hieronymus de multorum fratrum
consilio condemnavit et reprobavit doctrinam Frater Rogerii Bachonis Anglici, sacrae theo-
logiae magistri, continens aliquas novitates suspectas, propter quas idem Rogerius carceri
condemnatus, praecipiendo omnibus fratribus ut nullus illam teneret, sed ipsam vitaret,
ut per Ordinem reprobatum. Super hoc etiam scripsit Domino Papae Nicaolao praefato, ut
per eius auctoritatem doctrina illa periculosa totaliter sopiretur.” This imprisonment must
not have lasted long. Sometime ca. 1278–80, Bacon was back in Oxford where he edited the
Secretum secretorum. See Steven J. Williams, “Roger Bacon and his Edition of the Pseudo-
Aristotelian Secretum secretorum,” Speculum 50 (1994), 57–73.