Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/367

Books and Science in the Middle Ages 269 ascribed to Alexander the Great, .-Eneas, and Caesar. As for their own history, the epics relating to the earlier course of events in France and the rest of Europe were hopelessly confused. 443. Medieval Popular Science. Of what we should call scientific books, there were practically none. It is true that there was a kind of encyclopedia in verse which gave a great deal of misinformation about things in general. Everyone continued to believe, as the Greeks and Romans had done, in strange animals like the unicorn, the dragon, and the phoenix, and in still stranger habits of real animals. The most improbable things were repeated from generation to generation without its occurring to anyone to inquire whether there was any truth in them. From the Roman and early Christian writers, the Middle Ages got the idea of strange races of men and manlike creatures of various kinds. We find the following in an encyclopedia of the thirteenth century: "Satyrs be somewhat like men, and have crooked noses, and horns in the forehead, and are like to goats in their feet. . . . There be wonderful creatures that have heads as hounds, and seem beasts rather than men ; and some be called Cyclops, and have that name because each of them hath but one eye, and that in the middle of the forehead ; and some be all head- less and noseless and their eyes be in the shoulders ; and some have plain faces without nostrils, and the lower lips of them stretch so that they veil therewith their faces when they be in the heat of the sun." Two old subjects of study were revived and received great attention in Europe from the thirteenth century onward until recent times. These were astrology and alchemy. 444. Astrology. Astrology ( 49) was based on the belief that the planets influence the make-up of men and consequently their fate. Following an idea of the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, it was believed that all things were compounded of u the four elements" earth, air, fire, and water. Each person was a particular mixture of these four elements, and the position of the planets at the time of his birth was supposed to influence his mixture or "temperament"; that is to say, his character.