magic--Five sub-divisions of magic--_De bestiis et aliis rebus_. [Sidenote: Relation of scholastic theology to our theme.] The names of Peter Abelard, 1079-1142, and Hugh or Hugo of St. Victor, 1096-1141, have been coupled as those of the two men who perhaps more than any others were the founders of scholastic theology. Our investigation is not very closely or directly concerned with scholastic theology, which I hope to show did not so exclusively absorb the intellectual energy of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as has sometimes been asserted. Our attention will be mainly devoted as heretofore to the pursuit of natural science during that period and the prominence both of experimental method and of magic in the same. But our investigation deals not only with magic and experimental science, but with their relation to Christian thought. It is therefore with interest that we turn to the works of these two early representatives of scholastic theology, and inquire what cognizance, if any, they take of the subjects in which we are especially interested. As we proceed into the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries in subsequent chapters, we shall also take occasion to note the utterances of other leading men of learning who speak largely from the theological standpoint, like John of Salisbury and Thomas Aquinas. Let us hasten to admit also that the scholastic method of instruction and writing made itself felt in natural science and medicine as well as in theology, as a number of our subsequent chapters will illustrate. In the present chapter we shall furthermore be brought again into contact with the topic of the _Physiologus_ and Latin Bestiaries, owing to the fact that a treatise of this sort has been ascribed, although probably incorrectly, to Hugh of St. Victor. [Sidenote: Character of Abelard’s learning.] There is no more familiar, and possibly no more important, figure in the history of Latin learning during the twelfth century than Peter Abelard who flourished at its beginning. His career, as set forth in his own words, illustrates educational conditions in Gaul at that time. His brilliant success as a lecturer on logic and theology at Paris reveals the great medieval university of that city in embryo. His pioneer work, _Sic et Non_, set the fashion for the standard method of presentation employed in scholasticism. He was not, however, the only daring and original spirit of his time; his learned writings were almost entirely in those fields known as patristic and scholastic; and, as in the case of _Sic et Non_, consist chiefly in a repetition of the utterances of the fathers. This is especially true of his statements concerning astrology, the _magi_, and demons. To natural science he gave little or no attention. Nevertheless his intellectual prominence and future influence make it advisable to note what position he took upon these points. [Sidenote: Incorrect statements of his views.] Although not original, his views concerning the stars and their influences are the more essential to expose, because writers upon Abelard have misunderstood and consequently misinterpreted them. Joseph McCabe in his Life of Abelard,[1] for instance, asserts that Abelard calls mathematics diabolical in one of his works. And Charles Jourdain in his in some ways excellent[2] _Dissertation sur l’état de la philosophie naturelle en occident et principalement en France pendant la première moitié du XIIe siècle_, praises Abelard for what he regards as an admirable attack upon and criticism of astrology in his _Expositio in Hexameron_, saying, “It will be hard to find in the writers of a later age anything more discriminating on the errors of astrology.”[3] Jourdain apparently did not realize the...