Alexander Neckam
Biography
Alexander Neckam (sometimes spelled Neckham) was born in 1157 in St Albans in England. He is also known Alexander Nequam and Alexander of St Albans. He received his education at the abbey school in St Albans and later in Paris, where he lived from around 1175 to 1182. He was a lecturer at the University of Paris by 1180. Around 1186 he returned to England to become master at a school in Dunstable. The name "Nequam", the Latin word for "bad", was supposedly as the result of his application to be master of the St Albans school, to which he received the jesting reply Si bonus es venias, si nequam, nequaquam (If you are good, come, if you are bad, by no means). He moved to Oxford to teach around 1190, where he joined the Augustinian order. By around 1200 he was at St Mary's Abbey in Cirencester, England becoming abbot there in 1215. It is at St Mary's where he wrote most of his texts, including the De naturis rerum. He died in 1217.
Writing
Alexander was a prolific writer. His major works include:
His encyclopedia, De naturis rerum, is of most interest here, but he also wrote on the subject of animals in Laus divinae sapientae and Suppletio defectuum.
De naturis rerum
De naturis rerum, more completely titled De naturis rerum et super Ecclesiasten (On the Natures of Things and on Ecclesiastes), was written in the early thirteenth century. The first part of the text is an encyclopedia in two books. An additional three books, not directly connected to the first two, make up the second part; the texts in that part are an extended commentary on the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. It is possible the two parts were originally intended as two separate works.
In his edition of the text, Thomas Wright says "The book in itself was intended to be a manual of the scientific knowledge of the time, and as such would be merely regarded as an interesting monument of the history of science in western Europe, and especially in England, during the latter half of the twelfth century; but it derives a still greater value for us from the love of its author for illustrating his theme by the introduction of contemporary anecdotes and stories relating to the objects treated of, as well the mention of popular facts and articles of belief which had come under his observation or knowledge, many of which offer singular illustrations of the condition and manners of the age. His system of nature is a very simple one, and is that which was commonly accepted in his time. The whole universe reduced itself primarily to the four elements, and as each class of created objects was believed to partake specially of one of the elements more than of the others, it was classified as properly belonging to that element which was the one supposed to predominate in it. Thus, birds belonged to air, fishes to water, animals, vegetables, and minerals to earth."
Unlike other twelfth and thirteen century encyclopedias, such as those by Albertus Magnus and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Neckam used his accounts of natural things as subjects for moralization, and virtually every chapter has its moral or allegorical meaning explained.
Also unlike other medieval encyclopedias, De naturis rerum is not divided into sections for each general topic, but only into continuous chapters. While the chapters are usually grouped by subject, this structure is not rigidly followed, so some chapters appear in unexpected places. The general topics of groups of chapters of Book 1 and 2 are shown here; the number following the topic name gives the Book (1 or 2) and range of chapters in that group (e.g. Book 1, chapters 10 to 20 is listed as 1.10-20). Chapter numbers reset to 1 at the start of Book 2. Note that these topic names do not appear anywhere in the text of De naturis rerum.
Sources
Neckam quotes extensively from several authors, but he does not always name his sources. His named sources include Ovid, Cassiodorus, Gaius Julius Solinus, Isidore of Seville, `Aristotle, Lucan and Pliny the Elder. He quotes poems from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, and animal descriptions from the Etymologies by Isidore, from the De mirabilibus mundi by Solinus, and from from various works by Cassiodorus. Some of his stories are taken from Greek and Roman mythology.
Manuscripts
There are at least 15 manuscripts containing De naturis rerum, though some include only excerpts or fragments. None are illustrated. The full five books of the text are found in some manuscripts, with just the first two books appearing in others. There are slight variations in chapter numbering in different manuscripts, with chapters combined or split. For consistency the chapter order and numbering found in the Thomas Wright edition is used here.
Thomas Wright gave the letter designations A, B, C, D to the four manuscripts he used for his 1863 edition. For reference here, other manuscripts are given a letter starting at E.
Animals
The De naturis rerum describes 143 animals in three sections (birds; fish and marine animals; land animals, serpents and insects). Most chapters have a brief description of the animal, followed by one or more moralizations. Several animals have extra chapters (titled "Item de ...", "also of the ...") that provide more information. Some of the chapters tell stories about the interaction between two or more animals (see the Text tab for examples).
The animal lists below are derived from the Wright edition of 1868. Not all manuscripts follow this chapter order exactly, sometimes adding a chapter, omitting a chapter, splitting one chapter in two, or combining one or more chapters into one. Such chapters are marked (if known) with a § symbol followed by a letter designating the variant manuscript. See Manuscripts above for the letter designations; see the manuscript descriptions for more details on the variations.