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Book of the Month

Margarita philosophica - April 2006

Gregor Reisch. Margarita philosophica. Freiburg: Johann. Schott, 1503 [Rare Books Collection B765.R3 M2].

By Hugh Cahill, Senior Information Assistant, Foyle Special Collections Library.

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Fig. 1. Title page of: Gregor Reisch. Margarita philosophica. Freiburg: Johann. Schott, 1503. [Rare Books Collection B765.R3 M2].

The Margarita philosophica (the Philosophic pearl) is a beautifully illustrated encyclopaedia which was widely used as a university textbook in the early sixteenth century, particularly in Germany. It gives us an intriguing insight into the university curriculum and state of learning and scientific knowledge at the close of the Middle Ages and the start of the sixteenth century.

Its author, Gregor Reisch (c.1467-1525), was a Carthusian monk and a friend of many of the most celebrated Humanists of his era including, Erasmus, Beatus and Rheananus. He was prior of the Charterhouse of St John the Baptist near Freiburg-im-Breisgau from 1503 to 1525 and was confessor and counsellor to the Emperor Maximilian I. He was educated at the University of Freiburg where he received the degree of magister in 1489 and also taught there. The Margarita seems to have been conceived as a textbook for his students at Freiburg, among whom were many influential figures of the German Renaissance, notably the theologian Johann Eck.

The Margarita and the Medieval Curriculum

In the Margarita philosophica Reisch touches on all the subjects that a student would encounter in the arts faculty. The book does not contain many new ideas or insights nor does it try to cover all areas of knowledge or to provide an exhaustive treatment of any particular subject. Its purpose was quite different. According to Richard Yeo, the purpose of Latin compendia such as the Margarita was to give "pedagogical summaries in essay form of the major subjects from what was known as the 'encyclopedy' meaning the course of learning appropriate to the educated person." Reisch's text is divided into twelve chapters.The traditional subjects of the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy) each have a chapter devoted to them. Four of the five remaining chapters are concerned with natural philosophy and cover such things as the elements, meteorology, alchemy, the plant and animal kingdoms, optics and memory as well as heaven, hell and purgatory. The final chapter concerns moral philosophy. The Margarita takes the form of a dialogue between master and pupil - the pupil asks elementary questions and the master answers them. The usefulness of the book as an educational tool is enhanced by a detailed index and the liberal use of illustrations to clarify the text.

The illustrated title page (see fig. 1) neatly sums up the contents of the book. Philosophy is depicted as a winged female figure surrounded by the seven liberal arts. The circle arround them has the caption "Phil(osophia) triceps Naturalis, Rationalis, Moralis". This tripartite division of philosophy is reflected in the three faces of the central figure. On Philosophy's dress there is a depiction of the ladder of knowledge from practical to theoretical. At the foot of the ladder there is a letter Pi representing practical knowledge (Practica) while at the top of the ladder there is T representing theoretical knowledge (Theorica). Each of the liberal arts is represented as a female figure holding her traditional attribute - Arithmetic holds an abacus, Music a harp and Rhetoric a scroll etc. Above the circle we see Saint Augustine, Gregory the Great (holding a banner labelled philosophia divina), Saint Jerome and Saint Ambrose. In the corners below are two figures. In the bottom left we see Aristotle, representing philosophia naturalis, and on the right Seneca, representing philosophia moralis.

The Illustrations

Fig. 2. Nicostrata introducing a student to the tower of learning, from: Gregor Reisch. Margarita philosophica. Freiburg: Johann. Schott, 1503. [Rare Books Collection B765.R3 M2].

Much academic attention has been paid to the numerous woodcuts which illustrate the book and particularly to identifying the artists. It is obvious that they are the work of several different hands but all attempts to identify their artists apart from that of the marginal diagrams have proved inconclusive. Particularly fine are the full-page allegorical woodcuts which preface six of seven sections on the liberal arts (the chapter on geometry has no initial woodcut). The depiction of Grammar (see fig. 2) is typical of these illustrations. In Reisch's scheme Grammar is the foundation of all learning. She is depicted as Nicostrata (legendary inventor of the alphabet) holding a hornbook and key and introducing a child into a tower of learning with six levels. On the two bottom levels of the tower we see the grammarians Donatus and Priscian. The upper levels are taken up with various portraits of historical figures representing the subjects of the trivium, the quadrivium and natural and moral philosophy. On the uppermost the level of the tower, we see Peter Lombard representing Theology.

Fig. 3. Boethius and Pythagoras in competition, from: Gregor Reisch. Margarita philosophica. Freiburg: Johann. Schott, 1503. [Rare Books Collection B765.R3 M2].

The chapter on arithmetic also opens with a decorative allegorical woodcut (see fig. 3). Here we see Arithmetica supervising a competition between Boethius (sometimes credited with the introduction of Hindu-Arabic numbers into Christian Europe) using the new Arabic numerals and Pythagoras using a counting board. However, most of the images illustrating the scientific and mathematical sections of the book have a purely didactic purpose. The margins of the pages of geometry are liberally filled with diagrams clarifying the text and in the sections dealing with astronomy there are detailed woodcuts of scientific instruments such as the astrolabe, as well as detailed diagrammatic representations of the Ptolemaic universe.

The Margarita also contains a number of remarkable depictions of the human body, including what is thought to be the earliest schematic diagram of the human eye in print, as well as one of the earliest depictions of the thoracic and abdominal organs in print. In the chapter on astronomy there is a charming illustration of Zodiac Man (see fig.4), where the various parts of the body are labelled with the astrological signs which were thought to govern them. However, Reisch, like Augustine, was sceptical about the value of astrology. In his view God controlled the world and it was best understood through reason and scripture. Also of interest is the widely reproduced woodcut depicting the brain (see fig. 5). During the middle ages it was widely thought that the various mental faculties were each located in three ventricles in the brain. The first ventricle was where information from the sense organs was received and initially processed before being passed to the middle ventricle, the seat of reason, for cogitation. Eventually thoughts were transferred to the third ventricle which was the seat of memory. This theory, in its many variations, was accepted throughout the Middle Ages and was not really challenged until Vesalius questioned it in his De humani corporis fabrica in 1543.

Publishing History

Fig. 4. The signs of the Zodiac and the parts of the body they govern, from: Gregor Reisch. Margarita philosophica. Freiburg: Johann. Schott, 1503. [Rare Books Collection B765.R3 M2].

The Margarita philosophica had a complicated journey to the press. Although Reisch seems to have completed a version of the text by 1496 it was not finally published until 1503. Reisch had put his manuscript into the hands of the renowned Basel printer, Johann Amerbach, who employed a Dominican monk, Ludwig Graf, to prepare the text for publication and to draw the marginal diagrams. Correspondence between Graf and Amerbach indicates that this task had largely been completed by the end of 1498. However, no further progress seems to have been made in bringing the book to press and in May 1502 Johann Schott, a Strasbourg printer, wrote to Amerbach asking him to turn Reisch's manuscript over to him for publication. In the previous year Amerbach had given Schott Mantuanus's Parthenice prima and Parthenice secunda for publication. Amerbach, who had a number of major projects in hand at the time, granted Schott's request and handed Reisch's manuscript over to him along with, presumably, the woodcuts that had already been designed for the book. The Amerbach-Graf correspondence only mentions the parts of the book dealing with the seven liberal arts and this is probably the text that was released to Schott. This helps explains why it took a further year for the book to be printed and why Schott moved his press to Frieburg - the second half of the Margarita was not ready for the press and Schott needed to be near the author to facilitate its speedy preparation and revision.

Fig. 5. The ventricles of the brain and the location of the inner senses, from: Gregor Reisch. Margarita philosophica. Freiburg: Johann. Schott, 1503. [Rare Books Collection B765.R3 M2].

The book was an instant success after it eventually left the press, as testified to the number of editions published during the sixteenth century. In 1504, after returning to Strasbourg, Schott printed a second edition and issued another edition at Basel in 1508 in partnership with Michael Furter, who himself issued an edition in 1517. The first of a number of unauthorised editions was published as early February 1504 by the Strasbourg printer, Johann Grüninger. Grüninger brought out further editions in 1508, 1512 and 1515, freely adding material such as Architecturae et perspectivae rudimenta by Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1521?) to Reisch's original work. In 1535 a new edition appeared at Basel with the text added to and amended by the French mathematician, Oronce Fine (1494-1555), which was reissued in 1583. In 1599 two editions of the astronomer Giovanni Paolo Gallucci's Italian translation of Fine's version were printed in Venice.

Manuscript annotations indicate that the copy of the Margarita philosophica at King's was acquired soon after publication by the Franciscan friary at Ingolstadt in Bavaria. It was later owned by the woollen manufacturer and noted collector of books and manuscripts, Sir Thomas Brooke (1830-1908), before passing into the hands of the noted educationalist and founder of the teacher training department at King's College, Professor John William Adamson (1857-1947), who bequeathed it to the College.

Further Reading and acknowledgements

I am indebted to Professor Steve Killings of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, for his interpretation of the figure of Philosophia.

The following books and articles were important in the compilation of this piece:

Robert Collison. Encyclopaedias: their history throughout the ages. London : Hafner, 1964. [Humanities Store Z5848. COL]

Miriam Usher Chrisman. Lay Culture, Learned Culture: books and social change in Strasbourg, 1480-1599. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. [Humanities Books BR 372. ST8 C46]

John Ferguson. "The Margarita philosophica of Gregorius Reisch : a bibliograpy". The Library, vol. s4-X (2), no. 194, 1929.

Christopher D. Green. "Where did the ventricular localization of mental faculties come from?" Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 39(2), 131–142, 2003. [Online] Available: http://www.yorku.ca/christo/papers/ventricles.pdf [Accessed 29/3/06]

Barbara Halporn "The Margarita Philosophica: a case study in early modern book design ". Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History, vol. 3, 2000.

Richard Yeo. Encyclopaedic visions: scientific dictionaries and enlightenment culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001

Also of interest

Books on education bequeathed by Professor John William Adamson:

Diomedes. Diomedis vetustissimi ac diligentissimi grammatici, emunctum opus, nec non phocae. Venice: per J.R. and B. Vercellensis, 1511. [Rare Books Collection FOL. PA6379.D35 R5]

Cuthbert Tunstall. De arte supputandi libri quatuor. Paris: ex officina Roberti Stephani, 1538 . [Rare Books Collection QA33 T83]

Other encyclopaedia, encyclopaedic dictionaries and educational books of note:

John Barrow. Dictionarium polygraphicum, or, The whole body of arts regularly digested. London : printed for C. Hitch and C. Davis ... and S. Austen, 1735. [Rare Books Collection N33 B3]

Pierre Bayle. Dictionnaire historique et critique. Nouvelle éd. augmentée de notes extraites de Chaufepie, Joly, La Monnie, L.-J. Leclerc, Prosper Marchand etc. Paris : Desoer, 1820. [LGF Humanities Books Store AE25. B31]

Thomas Blount. Glossographia, or, A dictionary, interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language, now used in our refined English tongue. London: Thomas Newcomb, 1674. [Marsden Collection O8/8 ]

John Brinsley. Ludus literarius, or, The grammar schoole : shewing how to proceede from the first entrance into learning, to the highest perfection required in the grammar schooles. London : inprinted by Felix Kyngston for Andrew Hebb, 1627. [Rare Books Collection LA631.5 B77 ]

William Henry Hall. The new royal encyclopaedia, or, Complete modern universal dictionary of arts & sciences, on a new and improved plan : in which all the respective sciences, are arranged into complete systems, and the arts digested into distinct treatises ... [Guy’s Hospital Historical Books Collection FOL. AE4 HAL]

John Harris. Lexicon technicum, or, An universal English dictionary of arts and sciences: explaining not only the terms of art, but the arts themselves. London : Printed for J. Walthoe ... , 1736. [Rare Books Collection FOL. PE275 H2]

Pliny. The historie of the world. Commonly called, the naturall historie of C. Plinius Secundus. Translated into English by Philemon Holland Doctor in Physicke. London : printed by Adam Islip, 1601. [Rare Books Collection FOL. QH41.P7 H71 ]