speculum Historiale, 1474

Presented in Memory of Helene Gilbert Baer
by the Friends of the Columbia Libraries
 

ROLAND BAUGHiVlAN
 

T THEIR meeting on March 19, the members of the
Council of the Friends of the Columbia Libraries au¬
thorized the purchase, in the name of the Friends, of a
book in memory of the late Helene Gilbert Baer. The book has
now been selected, and it is a most exceptional and worthy addi¬
tion to Columbia's resources. It is a huge three-volume edition of
Speculum Historiale by Vincent of Beauvais, printed in 1474 in
Augsburg at the press of the Benedictine Monastery of Saints
Ulrich and Afra.

Vincent of Beauvais, a French Dominican friar who enjoyed
great favor with Louis IX, lived from about 1190 to 1264. A
humanist rather than a schoolman in the strictest sense, he was
the greatest of the medieval encyclopedists. His chief work.
Speculum Maius, seeks to bring together and at times comment
upon the whole range of knowledge drawn from all the authori¬
ties available to a scholar of Vincent's time, pagan as well as
Christian, classical as well as medieval. It is in reality three works
in one: Speculum Naturale (the "Mirror of Nature"); Specidum
Doctrinale (the "Mirror of Instruction"); and Specuhnn His¬
toriale (the "Mirror of History"). A fourth part. Speculum
Morale, was not compiled by Vincent, but was attached to his
writings a generation or so after his death. The Historiale alone
has been estimated to run to nearly a million and a quarter words,
while the whole work (excluding the Morale) exceeds three and
a quarter million words! The gigantic task of compiling it was

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