Alexander Neckam

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Alexander Neckam
Alexander Neckam
Alexander Neckam
Born September 8, 1157
St Albans, Hertfordshire, England
Died 1217
Kempsey
Nationality English

Alexander of Neckam (sometimes spelled "Necham" or "Nequam") (September 8, 1157 – 1217), was an English scholar and teacher.

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[edit] Life

Born at St Albans, Hertfordshire, England, on the same night as King Richard I, Neckam's mother nursed the prince with her own son, who thus became Richard's foster-brother. He was educated at the St Albans Abbey school (now St Albans School), and began to teach as schoolmaster of Dunstable, dependent on St Albans Abbey. He later spent several years at Petit Pons in Paris (c. 1175 - 1182). By 1180 he had become a distinguished lecturer on the arts at the University of Paris.

By 1186 he was back in England, where he again held the place of schoolmaster, first at Dunstable in Bedfordshire and then as Master of St Albans School until about 1195. He is said[who?] to have visited Italy with the Bishop of Worcester, but this statement has been doubted[who?]; the assertion that he was ever prior of St Nicolas's Priory, Exeter, seems a mistake[citation needed]; on the other hand, he was certainly much at court during some part of his life.

Having become an Augustinian canon, he was appointed abbot of Cirencester Abbey in 1213. He died at Kempsey in Worcestershire, and was buried at Worcester.

[edit] Works

Besides theology, Neckam was interested in the study of grammar and natural history, but his name is chiefly associated with nautical science. In his De naturis rerum and De utensilibus (the former of which, at any rate, had become well known at the end of the 12th century, and was probably written about 1180) Neckam has preserved to us the earliest European notices of the magnet as a guide to seamen, the early compass. Outside China, these seem to be the earliest records (the Chinese encylopaedist Shen Kuo gave the first clear account of suspended magnetic compasses a hundred years earlier in 1088 AD with his book Mengxibitan, or Dream Pool Essays). It was probably in Paris that Neckam heard how a ship, among its other stores, must have a needle placed above a magnet (the De utensilibus assumes a needle mounted on a pivot), which would revolve until its point looked north, and guide sailors in murky weather or on starless nights. Neckam does not seem to think of this as a startling novelty: he merely records what had apparently become the regular practice of many seamen of the Catholic world.

See Thomas Wright's edition of Neckam's De naturis rerum and De laudibus divinae sapientiae in the Rolls Series (1863), and of the De utensilibus in his Volume of Vocabularies. Neckam also wrote Corrogationes Promethei, a scriptural commentary prefaced by a treatise on grammatical criticism; a translation of Aesop into Latin elegiacs (six fables from this version, as given in a Paris manuscript, are printed in Robert's Fables inedites); commentaries, still unprinted, on portions of Aristotle, Martianus Capella and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and other works.

Of all these the De naturis rerum, a sort of manual of the scientific knowledge of the 12th century, is by far the most important: the magnet passage referred to above is in book ii. chap. xcviii. (De vi attractiva), p. 183 of Wright's edition. The corresponding section in the De utensilibus is on p. 114 of the Volume of Vocabularies.

He versified Aesop's Fables, as elegiac verse[1], in his Novus Aesopus. This is a collection of 42 fables, taken from the prose Romulus. He also composed a shorter Novus Avianus, taken from Avianus.[2].

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Roger Bacon's reference to Neckam as a grammatical writer (in multis vera et utitia scripsit: sed ... inter auctores non potest numerari) may be found in Ebenezer Cobham Brewer's (Rolls Series) edition of Bacon's Opera inedita, p. 457.
  • R. W. Hunt, Margaret Gibson, The Schools and the Cloister: The Life and Writings of Alexander Nequam (1157-1217) (1984)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Alexander of Neckam
  2. ^ Daniel T. Kline, Medieval Literature for Children (2003), p. 17.

[edit] See also

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