CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, MIDDLE AGES 79 



that very reason it is of interest as a sample of the ideas about natural objects 

 which people entertained in those days. 



We find an author of another type in the person of the renowned Emperor 

 Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. As is well known, he was one of the most 

 remarkable rulers of the Middle Ages, Italian in his upbringing, half oriental 

 in his habits and mode of thinking. In his south Italian kingdom he gathered 

 round him learned men from the East and West. He had Aristotle's writings 

 translated from the Greek into Latin and founded a school of medicine at 

 Salerno, where for the first time since Alexandrine days human bodies were 

 dissected. He himself wrote a book, still extant, on falconry, a sport to which 

 princes and nobles were passionately addicted. Frederick's treatise is far more 

 than a mere dissertation on hunting; in a lengthy introduction he gives an 

 account of the anatomy of birds, in which he not only displays a knowledge 

 of Aristotle's anatomical writings, but is also able to point out inaccuracies 

 in his statements; further, he describes the habits of various birds, the move- 

 ments of migratory birds, etc. Unfortunately Frederick lived during the 

 period of ecclesiastical reaction in the thirteenth century, and after his death 

 his Church opponents eradicated most of the cultural progress he had 

 achieved; the dissection of human bodies was again prohibited and physi- 

 cians had henceforth, as before, to rely on the classical authorities. The 

 translation of Aristotle which he caused the learned Michael Scotus to 

 carry out was perhaps the most enduring evidence of his cultural aims; it 

 was on this work, in fact, that the scientists of the later Middle Ages in 

 general based their learned studies. 



Of these scientists of the later Middle Ages none has won greater fame 

 or survived longer in the popular mind than Albert von Bollstadt, known 

 both to his contemporaries and to posterity under the name of Albertus 

 Magnus (born about ixoo, died ii8o). He was of noble family, but from his 

 earliest youth devoted himself to learned studies and afterwards became a 

 member of the Dominican order, one of the then newly-founded orders of 

 mendicant friars. His reputation for learning spread rapidly throughout the 

 West; he was at one time a professor in Paris, being afterwards appointed to 

 a school in Cologne founded by the Dominicans, and finally becoming Bishop 

 of Regensburg. This last appointment, however, he did not hold for long; 

 he returned to the quiet monastic life and devoted himself entirely to science. 

 He believed his mission in life was to edit the writings of Aristotle — known 

 by him only in the above-mentioned Latin translation — and to harmonize 

 their results with the teaching of the Church. The majority of his many 

 writings deal with theology and philosophy, though natural science appears 

 to have occupied him most during the latter part of his life. As a natural 

 philosopher he is principally a chemist. He was the first to produce arsenic 

 in a free form and he made important discoveries in regard to particular 



