C. Hartwich

“ At last, also, a short but relatively bright period of scientific awakening broke over Central Europe during the reign of Charlemagne, who strove to increase culture and learning in his own land and to introduce them into the countries that he acquired, and for that purpose called learned men to his court, among them Alcuin of England. The cloister schools prospered greatly under Alcuin, and some among them cultivated knowledge with quiet assiduity in the midst of the decline that set in soon after his death. Of these was the cloister of Fulda, to which our Rabanus Maurus was attached. ”

“ Still more fascinating are such views in the case of men who came out into the life of the times, and, with their sharp minds schooled in the philosophy of the ancients, entered actively into the often erratic course of the world, and by word and writing presented themselves undismayed before those in power here checking the spirit of boundless avarice and wild excess, there defending the oppressed. It is with a man of this kind, the Abbot Rabanus Maurus Magnentius, of Fulda, that we have to do in this essay. ”

“ After the fall of the Roman Empire the spirit of knowledge became quite extinct, except for a few Greek minds in the Eastern Empire, and in England and Ireland, where gentler manners followed the introduction of the Christian faith and the Latin language, and learning gained a place of refuge ”

“ On the other hand, Rabanus has a few plants that I have not found in Isidore, such as lychnis, lichen, corchorus, fœnum, linum, byssus, farrago. The lichen is, as Fellner declares, Marchantia polymorpha. Fœnum is, according to Fellner, Fœnum græcum. Fellner identifies byssus with Gossypium herbaceum, but translates it in another place by wool, while the text says of the plant: "Byssus is a kind of flax. It is very soft and white; it arises out of the earth, is deprived of its moisture by several protracted processes, and is formed into a handsome cloth." ”

“ Such men will always be worthy of our esteem, and should be gratefully remembered by us. Rabanus was one of the most eminent among these men. He was incontestably the most learned man of his times; and he was the first German who ever wrote on science. ”

“ After the fashion of his time, he gave more attention to the mystic meaning of the objects of nature than to their real properties, and attached the greatest importance to the explanation of names, in which so curious ingenuity was employed as to justify the quoting of a few specimens: Death is called mors quod amara sit, or in English because it is bitter ”

“ The next division treats of the habitat of plants, and shows how each plant prefers a particular kind of soil, whence one will succeed better on one kind of soil, another on a different kind, and neither will do well in a situation badly adapted to it. ”

“ Man and his parts; 7. Kindred, longevity, marriage, death, monstrosities, and beasts of burden; 8. Other animals; 9. Astronomy and meteorology; 10. Chronology and festivals; 11. Water; 12-14. Geography; 15. Philosophers, poets, sorcerers, and heathen; 16. Languages, civic and military ordinances; 17. Mineralogy; 18. Measures, weights, music, and medicine; 19. Agriculture and plants; 20. War, armor, and the theatre; 21. Arts and trades; 22. Household and farming implements. ”