C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1190–c. 1264)
Vincent of Beauvais, Latinized Vincentius Bellovacensis. A great mediæval encyclopædist; born about 1190; died about 1264. He was a Dominican friar. His voluminous works cover the whole field of mediæval science. The chief is ‘The Greater Mirror’ (Speculum Majus), a vast encyclopædia of fables, science, literature, etc., in three huge volumes of 80 books and 9,885 chapters; it comprises Natural, Doctrinal, Historical; another part, Moral, is by another hand. Part i. (ed. 1473–76) contains 848 folio pages, and treats of the whole visible world, and even of the Creator, angels, etc.; part ii., Doctrinal, is a summary of the scholastic philosophy, liberal and useful arts, government, grammar, arithmetic, theology, etc. The third part gives the Bible account of creation, the world’s secular history down to Constantine, and histories of the German, Frank, English, and other nations.