n6 NATURAL SCIENCES. 



more learned than Vincent of Beauvais, but he was a greater logician, and 

 ought not to have been subjected to the insult of being credited with the 

 authorship of a wretched rhapsody called the "Secrets of the Great Albert," 

 and of several similar productions, which, though equally unworthy of him, 

 were even more read than some of the most learned books which he really did 

 write. But, in response to the aspirations of science in the Middle Ages, he 

 had written treatises upon the properties of plants, stones, and animals, which 

 were afterwards disfigured and misrepresented by shameless charlatans. 

 Arnaud de Villeneuve, whose learning has, without sufficient grounds as it 

 seems, been compared to that of Albertus Magnus, had to submit, like the 

 latter, to a blundering and unfair interpretation of his doctrines. He had 

 studied in the schools of Italy and in that of Montpellier before coming to 

 teach, in the University of Paris, medicine and botany, philosophy and 

 astrology. This was the first time that lessons in natural history were 

 taught concurrently with theology and medicine. The immense number of 

 hearers lent still greater notoriety to these lessons, in which the professor 

 boldly declared that the most solemn mysteries of the Catholic faith were to 

 be explained by the teachings of natural history and experimental physics. 

 Scientific teaching so opposed to the dogmas of the Church excited the alarm 

 of the Inquisition, and Arnaud de Villeneuve was accused, not of impiety or 

 heresy, but of sorcery and magic. It was only through the special protection 

 of Charles of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, that he was enabled to leave 

 France without appearing before the tribunal of the Inquisition, and he 

 sought a refuge at the court of this French prince, who retained him as 

 physician. Arnaud de Villeneuve found at Naples and Palermo, where he 

 had established his residence, greater facilities than he would have enjoyed 

 elsewhere for completing his studies in natural history, for this science 

 appears to have been specially favoured at the court of the kings of the 

 house of Anjou, as at that of the kings of the house of Arragon. After the 

 Sicilian Vespers, Arnaud de Villeneuve quitted the service of Charles II., and 

 attached himself for the rest of his life to the court of Frederick II., who, 

 more than a-ny other sovereign of his time, favoured the study of the natural 

 sciences. This king of the Two Sicilies had Aristotle's "History of Animals " 

 translated into Latin ; he went to great expense in forming a collection of 

 the rarest animals for his royal menagerie from Asia and Africa ; and the 

 " Treatise on Falconry," which he found time, amidst the political anxieties 



