282 AsTER History; DE CANTIPRATO 
the great genuine work of Albert Magnus with its nearly 400 
plants, and to do that for over 500 years, or until in 1836 Meyer 
made known the true proportions of the two to the world. Alber- 
tus Magnus had been held in veneration in other lines of mental 
activity; but his plant writings remained substantially unknown 
till Meyer’s rehabilitation. It was a singular fate that had befallen 
them ; only one writer of their time, Crescenzi, is known to have 
mentioned them, and they passed into neglect. Meanwhile the 
three spurious works were constantly reprinted, and finally becom- 
ing combined, they formed one farrago of diffuse inanities, which did 
much to cast disrepute upon the real learning of the Middle Ages, 
—obscuring even the towering forms of such men as De Lauingen, 
Crescenzi and Plateario, looming behind its little shadow. 
XLIX. Der CANTIPRATO 
Earliest of the three contemporary encyclopaedists who shine 
in the bright but transient glow of the thirteenth century Re- 
naissance, was Thomas Brabantinus or Thomas de Cantiprato, 
called Cantimpratensis, from his home at Cantimpré, Belgium. 
Born 1201, at Leuwis, a littletown near Brussels, entering school at 
five years, he was firstan Augustinian, then, about 1232, a Domin- 
ican monk, became a scholar and associate of Albertus Magnus at 
Cologne, made journeys in various lands, especially about Ger- 
many, lived later at Paris, and died in 1270. He was called by 
Roger Bacon “ one of the few men of Grecian learning of this age.” 
His great work, still unprinted, “‘ Vatura rerum,” is a treatise 
on natural history in nineteen books, written 1230 to 1244. For 
*It begins ‘*Incipit prologus in librum de natura rerum,” Cracow MS., fide 
Pfeiffer. 
t So concluded Pfeiffer in 1861 ; Meyer, 1857, had thought it written abo 
same time with Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ similar work (which would be abo ope 
and claimed that neither was cognizant of the other; but see infra, p- At the 
end of his nineteenth book De Cantiprato remarks of his purpose, that nee aim I have 
books ; but also in transmarine parts, in England and in the Orient, 1 accu 
books written concerning nature, and from all these I extracted the bett 
more suitable things. Whoever may come upon my collections, let him give ” 
prayer, that according to my labor, so may God render me reward in the future. Amen.” 
