Vincent of Beauvais - Assessment

Assessment

Vincent has hardly any claim to be reckoned as an original writer. But it is difficult to speak too highly of his immense industry in collecting, classifying and arranging these three huge volumes of 80 books and 9885 chapters. The undertaking to combine all human knowledge into a single whole was in itself a colossal one and could only have been born in a mind of no mean order. Indeed more than six centuries passed before the idea was again resuscitated; and even then it required a group of brilliant Frenchmen to do what the old Dominican had carried out unaided.

The number of writers quoted by Vincent is almost incredible: in the Speculum Naturale alone no less than 350 distinct works are cited, and to these must be added at least 100 more for the other two Specula. His reading ranges from Arabian philosophers and naturalists to Aristotle, Eusebius, Cicero, Seneca, Julius Caesar (whom he calls Julius Celsus), and even the Jew, Peter Alphonso. But Hebrew, Arabic and Greek he seems to have known solely through one or other of the popular Latin versions. He admits that his quotations are not always exact, but asserts that this was the fault of careless copyists.