Speculum speculationum The
Speculum speculationum (edited by Rodney M. Thomson, 1988) is Neckam's major surviving contribution to the science of theology. It is unfinished in its current form, but covers a fairly standard range of theological topics derived from
Peter Lombard's
Sentences and
Augustine. Neckam is not regarded as an especially innovative or profound theologian, although he is notable for his early interest in the ideas of
St. Anselm of Canterbury. His outlook in the
Speculum, a work written very late in his life, probably in 1215, and perhaps drawing heavily on his teaching notes from the past decades, combines an interest in the
Platonic writings of earlier 12th-century thinkers such as
Thierry of Chartres and
William of Conches, with an early appreciation of the
newly translated writings of
Aristotle and
Avicenna. Neckam was a firm admirer of Aristotle as an authority in natural science as well as in the logical arts, one of the first Latin thinkers since antiquity to credit this aspect of the Stagirite's output. In the
Speculum speculationum Alexander identifies one of his key purposes as combating the
Cathar heresy, particularly its belief in
dualism. He spends a large part of Book 1 on this, and thereafter passes on to focus on his other key purpose, the application of
dialectic logic to the study of theology.
De utensilibus and De naturis rerum 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 utensilibus and
De naturis rerum (both written at about 1190), Neckam has preserved to us the earliest European notices of the magnetized needle as a guide to seamen and the earliest European description of the
compass. Outside
China, these seem to be the earliest records. It was probably in Paris that Neckam heard how a ship, among its other stores, must have a magnetised needle, mounted on a pivot, which would rotate until it pointed north and thus 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. However,
De naturis rerum itself was written as a preface to Neckam's commentary on the book of
Ecclesiastes, itself a part of a wider programme of biblical commentary encompassing the
Song of Solomon and the
Psalms, representing the three branches of
wisdom literature. It was not intended as an independent and free-standing encyclopedic work in its own right, and indeed it is mostly filled with fanciful moralising allegories rather than a detailed natural philosophy. 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. called
Novus Aesopus, is a collection of 42 fables taken from the prose
Romulus. He also composed a shorter
Novus Avianus, taken from
Avianus. A supplementary poem to
De laudibus divinae sapientiae, called simply the
Suppletio defectuum, covers further material on animals and the natural world, as well as cosmology, free will, astrology and the human soul. An edition of this and several of Neckam's minor poems, edited by P. Hochgurtel, was published as a part of the Brepols Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis series in 2008. It has been speculated (Spargo,
Virgil the Necromancer, 1934) that Neckam might also have been unwittingly responsible for starting the late medieval legends about
Virgil's alleged magical powers. In commenting on Virgil, Neckam used the phrase "Vergilius fecit Culicem" to describe the writing of one of Virgil's earlier poems,
Culex ("The Gnat"). This may have been misinterpreted by later readers as "Virgil made a gnat" and formed the basis for the legend of Virgil's magic fly which killed all other flies it came across and thus preserved civic hygiene. ==Selected publications==