Alexander Neckam

English monk and scholar

• Born: September 8, 1157
• Birthplace: St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England
• Died: Probably March 31, 1217
• Place of death: Kempsey, Worcestershire, England

Neckam typified the broadening humanistic interests of the twelfth century through his writing and teaching in areas including grammar, science, and theology.

Early Life

Little is known about the family of Alexander Neckam except that his mother, Hodierna, was probably nurse to Richard the Lion-Hearted, the future king of England, who was also born in 1157. He began his education at the monastery school of St. Albans. His pleasant memories of the school as well as its high reputation suggest that his early education fostered the abilities that were to produce his later literary achievements.

He continued his education in Paris, which, in the second half of the twelfth century, was the preeminent European intellectual center in the liberal arts and theology. Neckam was associated with the school of Petit Pont, which the logician Adam of Petit Pont made famous for its subtle disputation in the mid-twelfth century. Neckam’s studies also included theology, medicine, and canon and civil law. He probably taught as a master and also began writing during his years in Paris. Although they contain no definitive date of composition, several of his works fit well into probable interests connected with his studies in Paris. The Commentary on Martianus Capellus (c. 1177-1190) deals primarily with mythology based on the standard treatise on the liberal arts by this late antique author. The Novus avianus (c. 1177-1190; new aviary) and Novus Esopus (c. 1177-1190; new Aesop) contain bird and animal fables that probably represent exercises in his ability to write on set themes. De nominibus utensilium (c. 1177-1190; on the names of utensils) is characteristic of elementary school instruction: It is a list of words taken from all facets of everyday life, from household furnishings to ships and sailing, put together in sentences whose purpose was to teach boys the Latin equivalents of these words. Its basic idea comes from a treatise on more difficult words by Adam of Petit Pont.

Life’s Work

When Neckam returned to England around 1182, he spent about twenty years as a teacher. First, he was a master at Dunstable, a school under the control of St. Albans monastery. After about a year, he obtained a teaching position at the St. Albans school during the abbacy of Warin (1183-1195). Variations on a story based on his name nequam, meaning worthless, naughty, or bad in Latin are connected with his assumption of the position at St. Albans. According to the thirteenth century account of Matthew Paris, Abbot Warin summoned him with a wordplay on his name: “Si bonus es venias; si nequam nequaquam” (if you are a good man, come; if worthless, by no means). In other versions, the abbot gives this response to Neckam’s petition to become a monk at St. Albans.

During the 1190’, Neckam taught at Oxford University. Although he is considered the first Scholastic theologian at Oxford, only a few traces of his teaching or lectures can be detected in his later writings. About fifty sermons, mainly from his Oxford period, survive. They are addressed to a variety of audiences, including scholars, laymen, and monks. Their form is simple, and they make only sparing use of the compositional techniques, rhetorical devices, and exempla that became characteristic of the developed sermon of the thirteenth century.

Neckam considered the monastic vocation the highest calling in life, and he fulfilled this ideal by entering the Augustinian abbey of Cirencester in Gloucestershire between 1197 and 1202. He became abbot in 1213. As an Augustinian canon, his learning and experience were called into service for both ecclesiastical and royal business. In 1212-1213, at the time of the interdict, he took part in royal affairs. In 1213, for example, King John ordered him to inquire into royal rights in the priory of Kenilworth. On several occasions, he was an ecclesiastical judge and a papal judge delegate. In 1215, he left England to attend the Fourth Lateran Council, and he returned in 1216. He died in March of 1217 at Kempsey, a manor of the bishop of Worcester, and was buried in Worcester Cathedral.

Most of the literary production on which Neckam’s reputation rests comes from his later life when he was a canon at the abbey of Cirencester. In some of his writings, he continued his interests in grammar. The Sacerdos ad altare (c. 1200-1210), whose title of convenience comes from the first words of the treatise, is similar to the earlier De nominibus utensilium in its presentation of words put together into sentences with lengthy glosses on points of grammar following each section. The types of words, however, are different because they represent a higher social and intellectual level with an emphasis on priests and their vestments, the church and monastery with furnishings, the royal court, and the student and his reading list. This course of study is of particular interest because it gives some insight into the curriculum of the schools at Paris in the late twelfth century.

The Corrogationes Promethei (c. 1200-1204) is the primary source of Neckam’s grammatical teaching. The meaning of the title, “collections of Prometheus,” is uncertain. It may refer to one medieval view of Prometheus, the brother of Atlas, as instructing men in the arts; thus, the work would be a collection for a basic education in the arts that began with grammar. The first part concerns the art of grammar, including figures of speech, construction of sentences, accents, and orthography, with much material based on Arelius Donatus and Priscian, the main Roman authors of grammatical texts that were used in the Middle Ages. The second part glosses difficult words or passages from the Bible.

Science was another area of intellectual inquiry to which Neckam made an important contribution. Although many of his works contain scattered pieces of scientific information, two of his writings are devoted primarily to scientific questions. The De naturis rerum (on the natures of things), written before 1205, is the earliest and most extensive. Neckam considered it a moral treatise, and moral or spiritual interpretations follow the descriptions of natural phenomena. The subjects he discusses, however, represent the state of knowledge of natural sciences in England in the late twelfth century. He begins with creation and the firmament, discussing astronomy, including eclipses and the marks on the moon. The remainder of De naturis rerum is structured according to the elements. He begins with air and some of its properties as seen in the theory of the vacuum. He also catalogs birds that inhabit the air. Similarly, he discusses some properties of water followed by aquatic creatures. For the earth, he begins with minerals, then vegetables, and finally ends with animals, culminating with humanity.

The Laus sapiente divine (c. 1213; praise of divine wisdom) was composed just before he became abbot of Cirencester; in the last year of his life, the Suppletio defectum (1216), which is a supplement of lacking material, was added to it. The Laus sapiente divine is, in some ways, a versified form of the De naturis rerum. Its organization into ten distinctions differs, however, and the omission of many stories and more extensive treatment of some subjects, such as an enumeration of the stars and the theory of the elements, make it an equally interesting source for Neckam’s scientific views. The Suppletio defectum, also in verse, is divided into two sections. The first, dealing with birds, animals, and plants, covers material familiar from his other writings. The second section, on problems about humankind as well as astronomy, introduces some new information.

Because he was a cleric and canon educated at Paris, a substantial portion of Neckam’s writings concerns theological matters. Most are commentaries on books or passages in the Bible in the older monastic form consisting of lengthy discussions explaining the four senses of Scripture: literal or historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical. These works include the Solatium fidelis animae (after 1197; consolation of the faithful soul), a moralized interpretation of the days of creation; the Commentary on Ecclesiastes , which the two books of De naturis rerum introduce; the Commentary on the Song of Songs (before 1213), which emphasizes the relationship between Christ and the Virgin; the Commentary on Proverbs (before 1213); and the Tractatus super mulierem fortem (after 1213; treatise on strong women), which comments on Proverbs 31:10-31 in honor of Mary Magdalene, the Virgin, and the Church. The newer scholastic commentary of the schools appears in his Gloss on the Psalter (after 1197), which follows the scholastic reading of text and gloss on the Bible and the second part of the Corrogationes Promethei , which utilizes the scholastic distinctio on the meaning of biblical words. He expounds his theological views in the four books of the Speculum speculationum (before 1213; mirror of speculations), which is notable for his discussion of grace and free will in the fourth book. Also surviving in parts or excerpted collections (florilegia) are several hymns and minor works such as the Laus beatissime virginis (after 1197; praise of the most blessed Virgin).

Significance

Neckam is significant because in both his career and his writings he represents a transition from the developing schools and humanistic learning of the twelfth century to the expanded sources, new methods of teaching, and scientific interests of the later Middle Ages. In education, he was among the first authors of basic and practical descriptive vocabularies for primary instruction in Latin, although his grammatical glosses remained close to traditional expositions of Donatus and Priscian. Although he was instrumental in introducing Scholastic disputation in his Oxford teaching, his sermons and theological writings generally followed more traditional forms. For related theological and scientific problems, he demonstrated an early awareness of a broader corpus of the writings of Aristotle, whom he highly praised as great and most acute. Nevertheless, although various citations in his scientific writings point to some familiarity with Aristotle’s works on natural science, Neckam relied most heavily on the more widely known Aristotelian treatises on logic. Also, while he evidenced interest in scientific observation and gave perhaps the earliest references to the compass and to glass mirrors, he repeated much information, often fabulous, from older authors such as Isidore of Seville. Through his prolific writings in many fields, his teaching at several educational levels, and his active participation in monastic life as well as royal and ecclesiastical service, Neckam was important in transmitting and transforming the widening intellectual interests of the twelfth century into their scholastic form of the late medieval period.

Bibliography

Davenport, Anne A. “The Catholics, the Cathars, and the Concept of Infinity in the Thirteenth Century.” Journal of the History of Science in Society 88, no. 2 (June, 1997): 263. This substantial essay (thirty-three pages) focuses on the work of Neckam and Richard Fishacre, another thirteenth century theologian, with an eye to the social and political implications of the controversy between Cathar heretics and Catholics.

Gaselee, Stephen. “Natural Science in England at the End of the Twelfth Century.” Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 29, no. 3 (1937): 397-417. This piece contains a brief biography of Neckam. It remains one of the fullest descriptions of the contents of Neckam’s De naturis rerum.

Haskins, Charles Homer. Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924. Chapter 28 ascribes the Sacerdos ad altare to Alexander Neckam. It provides a transcription of the section on a student reading list.

Holmes, Urban Tigner. Daily Living in the Twelfth Century, Based on the Observations of Alexander Neckam in London and Paris. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1952. Based on Neckam’s writings, an account of what Neckam experienced during his time in Paris, with a focus on such aspects of daily life as his student quarters, food, and the medieval city of Paris, novelistically presented. Beautifully illustrated.

Hunt, R. W. The Schools and the Cloister: The Life and Writings of Alexander Nequam, 1157-1217. Edited and revised by Margaret Gibson. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1984. This book is a biography of Neckam with a discussion of all of his writings. It contains a complete list of the writings, in chronological order, giving all known manuscript sources and printed editions. It also has thorough bibliographical references to other works about Neckam.

Russell, Josiah C. “Alexander Neckam in England.” English Historical Review 47 (1932): 260-268. Discusses the documentation for Neckam’s life and career in England. An appendix contains emendations to M. Esposito’s list of Neckam’s works.

Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan, 1923. One chapter discusses Neckam’s life and learning, concentrating on his scientific writings and their contribution to scientific knowledge.