Le scienze alla corte di Federico II (Micrologus: natura, scienze e società medievali, II) (review)

Reviews 305 one's self, a candle, an anus or an animal is likewise Bad: the humanity or otherwise of animal partners is irrelevant. Again, w e are told in the introduction that during the seventeenth century the influence of Descartes led to a view of animals as entirely lacking in reason and feeling. If the argument about laws against bestiality isright,it should follow that these laws were repealed in the seventeenth century (since people were confident of the differences between the human and the animal); but w e find, on the contrary, that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries bestiality had become a capital crime (p. 100). The coverage of literary material is wide, embracing classical, Germanic, and Romance literatures; but it is also patchy. The Fables of Henryson and Lydgate are perhaps too late to have been considered, but readers of Middle English wUl be surprised to find no mention of Chaucer: the celebrated portrait of the Prioress with her pampered dogs in the General Prologue to the Canterbury tales does not support the claim that the 'keeping of animals for mutual affection would have to wait until m o d e m times' (p. 11). T. L. Burton Department of English Language and Literature University of Adelaide Le scienze alia cone di Federico II (Micrologus: natura, scienze e societd medievali, II), Tumhout, Brepols, 1994; paper; pp. 244; 6 plates. R R P not notified. The Emperor Frederick n, dubbed 'stupor mundi' by his contemporaries, is well-known, and indeed notorious, for his interest in and patronage of the sciences, especially those with a more magicalflavour.His court contained several of the leading figures in the thirteenth-century transmission of scientific learning from the Arabic world to the Christian world, most notably his astrologer, Michael Scot. His personal involvement was active and energetic, ranging from discussions with scholars such as the mathematician, Fibonacci, to an elaborately illustrated treatise on the art of falconry. His credo, as stated in the prologue to that work, was: 'intentio vero nostra est manifestare . . . ea, que sunt, sicut sunt.' Despite its title, this volume is not really a reconsideration of the significance of Frederick's 'curia feconda, sapiens a crimine monda'. Instead, it offers a series of articles on specific sciences in the thirteenth 306 Reviews century, linked more or less closely to activities at the court of Frederick II. The second volume of Micrologus, an annual journal with thematic issues, it is published under the aegis of the Societa Internazionale per lo Studio del Medio Evo Latino in Florence. Within its loosely Frederican framework, this is a significant account of the sciences in the thirteenth-century West, offering surveys of contemporary knowledge in medicine, physiology, veterinary science and mathematics. Also covered are 'learned magic' and astrology, two fields particularly associated with Frederick. David Pingree, in his study of Hermetic and Salomonic magic, and Stefano Caroti, in his account of astrology, are at pains to emphasise the place of these subjects within the coverage of what thirteenth-century scholars understood by 'science'. A contribution of great interest is provided by Patrick Gautier Dalche\ who surveys the geographical knowledge of the time. H e emphasises the interplay between the more theoretical geographical and cosmological tradition and the very practical knowledge of merchants, pilgrims and travellers, which resulted in Tapparition de textes qui conjuguent ces approches'. T w o themes stand out in this collection. Thefirstis the great activity in the transmission of scientific knowledge from the Arabs to the Latins and from Spain to Italy. Steven J. Williams studies one aspect of this movement, the early circulation of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secrets ofsecrets in the Italy of the 1220s and 1230s. While the meagre evidence does not enable him to decide whether the papal or the imperial court was thefirstto circulate the Latin translation of this work, he shows clearly how the two courts formed 'a common cultural world', in which new scientific knowledge was rapidly shared. Piero Morpurgo discusses a different line of intellectual transmission: the twelfth-century medical school of Salerno as the root of the natural philosophy of Frederick's circle, which emphasised the reconciliation of theological knowledge with biological...