century at Oriel College, Oxford,[1] in the fitting company of excerpts from Adelard of Bath and Gundissalinus, are more than three double-column folio pages of extracts drawn from various portions of the 'Philosophia'. These begin with Daniel's excuse for borrowing the eloquence and wisdom of the infidels and with some of his utterances about the creation of the world. They include a number of his citations of other writers, his story of the two fountains outside the walls of Toledo which varied in fullness with the moon's phases and contained salt water although six days' journey from the sea, and other bits of his astrological doctrine. A similar, although not identical, selection of pearls from Daniel's philosophy is found in one of the note-books of Brian Twyne,[2] the Oxford antiquary, who gives the title of Daniel's work as 'De superioribus et inferioribus', and makes extracts both from its first and second book. Both Twyne and the fourteenth-century writer of the Oriel College manuscript appear from their extracts to have been particularly impressed with Daniel's views concerning the creation rather than his retailing of astrological doctrine from Toledo. Twyne first repeats Daniel's statement that the quantity of the universe reveals the power of its Maker; its quality, His wisdom; and its marvellous beauty, His unbounded goodwill. Twyne also notes Daniel's phrase, 'court of the world', for the universe. Both Twyne and the Oriel manuscript note Daniel's passage concerning the triple universe, and another in which he tells how the three human qualities, reason, irascibility, and desire, may be used either to discern and resist evil, or may be perverted to evil courses. Both also notice his contention that the chaos preceding creation was not hyle, or matter, but a certain contrariety present in matter.
As we have disproved Rose's assertion that no one read Daniel of Morley, so we must reject his further assertion, for which he gave no proof, that Daniel's book 'found no favour in the eyes of the church and was shunned like poison'. If it is true that Daniel's work was not as widely known as some others, the more probable reason for this may well be that his brief résumé of Arabian and astrological doctrines appeared too late in the twelfth century, when the fuller treatments of Ptolemy and of
- ↑ Oriel College MS. 7, fourteenth-century folio, fos. 194v–196v (191–3, according to Coxe), extracts from 'De Philosophia Danielis', opening, 'Nos qui mistice…' These extracts are immediately preceded in the manuscript by extracts from 'Adelardi Bathonensis … de decisionibus naturalibus'.
- ↑ Corpus Christi College MS. 263, early seventeenth century, written in Twyne's own hand, fos. 166v–167r, Ex Daniele de Merlai [or Merlac, as in Coxe] alias Morley in lib. de superioribus et inferioribus primo De creationis Mundi'. Twyne's extracts are followed by extracts 'from William of Conches who is together with Daniel Merlai in our library', and in Arundel MS. 377 Daniel's work is immediately followed by that of William of Conches.
