Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale

Speculum historiale, ‘The Mirror of History’, is a history of the world down to the 1240s in thirty-one books comprising 3,793 chapters. It is the third part of the Speculum maius, ‘The Great Mirror’, a monumental encyclopedia which was an attempt to encompass all forms of knowledge. The other two parts are Speculum naturale, ‘The Mirror of Nature’, a compendium of scientific knowledge in 32 books comprising 3,718 chapters, and Speculum doctrinale, ‘The Mirror of Doctrine’, a compendium of scholarship covering all manner of human affairs in seventeen books comprising 2,374 chapters. The production of this vast work was overseen by Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1190–1264), a friar attached to the Dominican houses in Paris, Beauvais, and later Royaumont on the Oise (which is near Paris). His activities as a writer had the support of the Capetian royal house, or at least this much is implied by the prefaces to his shorter tracts.

Speculum historiale has been included for discussion because it illustrates the trend towards ‘exhaustiveness’, the trend, that is, towards the accummulation of material on every possible historical subject which is one of the dominant tendencies in historical writing in the later Middle Ages. The production of compendia of this kind was largely achieved through systematic ‘plagiarism’: that is, by the copying out and aggregation en mass of material from other texts with some abbreviation but little other editorial intervention. Speculum historiale is itself based on an earlier chronicle of the same type compiled by the Cistercian monk Helinand of Froidmont (d. c. 1229). Though some discrimination in the selection of content is often apparent (typically where the material has some bearing on the reputation of the order or religious house under whose aegis such a chronicle was being produced), these compendia can seem like works whose size—the amount of space that they would occupy on the shelf—counted for more than the quality of their contents.

Manuscripts for Discussion: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MSS 13 + 14. These codices comprise two volumes of a large format, four-volume, copy of the Speculum Historiale. The first volume is presently held at St John’s College, Cambridge, where it is MS 43 (B.21), the fourth is lost. The 326 folios of Corpus 13 house books 9–16, the 328 folios of Corpus 14 house books 17–24. The text is laid out in double columns of fifty lines and written in a large well-rounded bookhand. There are some fine illustrations, including decorated initials and borders for each book (e.g. Corpus 13, fols. 2r, 46v, 91r, and so on). The motif of a greyhound chasing a hare occurs in many of the borders.

Provenance: Made at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, the four-volumes belonged to St Augustine’s, Canterbury. This much is clear from the abbey’s library catalogue which lists the set along with the name of the donor who gave them to the abbey—‘Abbot Thomas’, perhaps Thomas of Findon (1283–1310)—and the ‘second folio’ readings from each book. These readings comprise the first words at the top of the second leaf. Since copies of the same text often varied in the precise distribution of the words across the pages, recording the ‘second folio’ reading was a way of identifying a specific copy of a book. Corpus 13 has lost its medieval fly-leaves, but St John’s 43 and Corpus 14 have the ex libris of the donor ‘Abbot Thomas’. Corpus 13 has the required second folio (eua/cuauit ostendens at the top of fol. 3r in the present foliation), as does Corpus 14 (miscente, fol. 2r). For the catalogue, see B. C. Barker-Benfield (ed.), Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, vol. 13, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, 3 pts. (London, 2008), nos. BA1.901–4 (pp. 935–8) [ZVRea2]. Cf. M. R. James, Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 294 and 518 (nos. 901–904).

Facsimile: Both Corpus 13 and Corpus 14 are reproduced at the Parker Library on the Web.

Text: Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum quadruplex sive Speculum maius: naturale, doctrinale, morale, historiale, 4 vols. (Graz, 1964). PN.DQ.V6. A facsimile reprint of the Douai edition of 1624.

Commentary

For a much fuller treatment of Vincent and his project, see Hans Voorbij’s and Eva Albrecht’s excellent Vincent of Beauvais Website, which has a list of manuscripts and a much fuller bibliography. What follows is a brief list of some of the more useful items in English.

Aerts, W. J., E. R. Smits and J. B. Voorbij (eds), Vincent of Beauvais and Alexander the Great: Studies on the ‘Speculum Maius’ and its translations into medieval vernaculars, Mediaevalia Groningana 7 (Groningen 1986).
Albrecht, E., ‘The Organization of Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum maius and of Some Other Latin Encyclopedias’, in S. Harvey (ed.), The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy: Proceedings of the Bar-Ilan University Conference, Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought 7 (Dordrecht, 2000), pp. 46–57 and 71–74 (Appendix A–B).
Duchenne, M. C., G. G. Guzman and J. B. Voorbij, ‘Une liste des manuscrits du Speculum historiale de Vincent de Beauvais’, Scriptorium, 41 (1987), 286–94.
Gabriel, A. L., The Educational Ideas of Vincent of Beauvais (Notre Dame, IN, 1962). JAA.V6.
Guzman, G. G., ‘A Growing Tabulation of Vincent of Beauvais Speculum historiale Manuscripts’, Scriptorium, 29 (1975), 124–7.
Guzman, G. G., ‘The Testimony of Medieval Dominicans concerning Vincent of Beauvais’, in M. Paulmier-Foucart (ed.), Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et receptions d’une oeuvre encyclopedique au Moyen Age (Montreal, 1990), pp. 303–26.
Lusignan, S., M. Paulmier-Foucart and M.-C. Duchenne, Lector et compilator: Vincent de Beauvais, frère prêcheur. Un intellectuel et son milieu au XIIIe siècle, Rencontres à Royaumont (Grâne, 1997).
Panayotova, S. (ed.), The Cambridge Illuminations: Conference Proceedings, Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History 52 (Turnhout, 2007), p. 140.
Paulmier-Foucart, M., and M.-C. Duchenne, Vincent de Beauvais et le Grand Miroir du Monde, Témoins de Notre Histoire 10 (Turnhout, 2004).
Paulmier-Foucart, M., S. Lusignan and A. Nadeau (eds), Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et réceptions d'une œuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Age. Actes du XIVe Colloque de l'Institut d'études médiévales, Université de Montréal, 27–30 avril 1988, Cahiers d'études médiévales: Cahier spécial, 4 (Saint-Laurent and Paris, 1990).
Stones, A., ‘Prolegomena to a Corpus of Vincent of Beauvais Illustrations’, in M. Paulmier-Foucart (ed.), Vincent de Beauvais: intentions et receptions d’une oeuvre encyclopedique au Moyen Age (Montreal, 1990), pp. 301–44.
Voorbij, J. B., ‘Purpose and Audience: Perspectives on the Thirteenth-Century Encyclopedias of Alexander Neckam, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Thomas of Cantimpré and Vincent of Beauvais’, in S. Harvey (ed.), The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy: Proceedings of the Bar-Ilan University Conference, Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought 7 (Dordrecht, 2000), pp. 31–45.
Voorbij, J. B., ‘The Speculum historiale: Some Aspects of its Genesis and Manuscript Tradition’, in W. J. Aerts, E. R. Smits and J. B. Voorbij (eds), Vincent of Beauvais and Alexander the Great: Studies on the Speculum Maius and its Translations into Medieval Vernaculars (Groningen, 1986) pp. 11–55.