MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY IITH AND 12TH CENTURIES 87 



his work. It was translated again in the twelfth century by 

 Richard Burgundio of Pisa, who was under the impression that 

 it was written by Gregory of Nyssa. Alfanus's version was used 

 by Albertus Magnus, and Burgundio's is quoted by Peter 

 Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. 



Some remnants of these distinctions are transmitted to the 

 Middle Ages by Isidore of Seville. Cassiodorus (490-583) had 

 recommended the reading of Latin translations of Hippocrates 

 and Galen,"*' but manuscripts of these early translations have 

 not been found. He does not treat elements in his Institutiones, 

 but a section on the four elements is added in a later inter- 

 polation.^^ It deals with the order of elements familiar in 

 meteorology from the heavenly bodies to earth, and explains 

 the sequence of fire, air, water, and earth, by combinations of 

 the properties incorporeal, corporeal, immobile, mobile, sharp, 

 blunt (fire is sharp, incorporeal, mobile, as well as hot and dry; 

 earth is blunt, corporeal, immobile, as well as cold and dry) 

 which are caused by the influence of proximate elements. The 

 elements are also equated with regular solids and numbers: 

 fire with the pyramid and 12; air with the sphere and 24; water 

 with the icosahedron and 48; earth with the cube and 96. In 

 a diagram, the four elements, the upper three and the lower 

 three are connected by three sets of lines drawn in groups of 

 four to points numbered 576 (12 X 48) , 1152 (24 X 48) , and 

 2304 (48 X 48) . The text says that the lines indicate ways 

 in which the elements by their obvious contacts with each 

 other both prepare substances of different species from them- 

 selves and are combined because of the diversities in themselves. 

 This is the bond binding the union of the world, the relation 

 assembling the elements. The interpretation may be based on 



"'Cassiodorus, Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum, I, 31, PL 70, 

 1146. He also recommends the reading of Caelius Aurelianus' On Medicine which 

 treats the problems of elements. 



" Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1937), pp. 

 167-8. 



