The second aspect of how Pliny lays out a model for encyclopedias to come is that he does not speak of things he knows from experience but of things handed down to him by tradition, and he does not make the slightest effort to separate reliable empirical information from legend (he gives equal space to the crocodile and the basilisk). This point is extremely important in defining the encyclopedia as a theoretical model: the encyclopedia does not claim to register what really exists but what people traditionally believe exists—and hence everything that an educated person should know, not simply to have knowledge of the world, but also to understand discourses about the world.
This characteristic is already evident in the Hellenistic encyclopedias (a great many paragraphs in the pseudo-Aristotelian De mirabilibus, for example, employ a verbum dicendi such as “they say that” or “the story goes that” or “it is said that”), and it will remain a constant in medieval encyclopedias, as well as in those of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Foucault reminds us that Buffon was astonished that in a sixteenth-century naturalist like Aldrovandi there was “an inextricable mixture of exact descriptions, quotations from other authors, fables relayed uncritically, observations which dealt indiscriminately with the anatomy, habitat, and mythological properties of an animal, and the uses that could be made of it in medicine or in magic.” In fact, as Foucault goes on to comment:
When one goes back to take a look at the Historia serpentum et draconum, one finds the chapter “On the serpent in general” arranged under the following headings: equivocation (which means the various meanings of the word serpent), synonyms and etymologies, differences, form and description, anatomy, nature and habits, temperament, coitus and generation, voice, movements, places, diet, physiognomy, antipathy, sympathy, modes of capture, death and wounds caused by the serpent, modes and signs of poisoning, remedies, epithets, denominations, prodigies and presages, monsters, mythology, gods to which it is dedicated, fables, allegories and mysteries, hieroglyphics, emblems and symbols, proverbs, coinage, miracles, riddles, devices, heraldic signs, historical facts, dreams, simulacra and statues, use in human diet, use in medicine, miscellaneous uses. Whereupon Buffon comments: “Let it be judged after that what proportion of natural history is to be found in such a hotch-potch of writing. There is no description here, only legend.” And indeed, for Aldrovandi and his contemporaries, it was all legenda—things to be read. But the reason for this was not that they preferred the authority of men to the precision of an unprejudiced eye, but that nature, in itself, is an unbroken tissue of words and signs, of accounts and characters, of discourse and forms. When one is faced with the task of writing an animal’s history, it is useless and impossible to choose between the profession of naturalist and that of compiler: one has to collect together into one and the same form of knowledge all that has been seen and heard, all that has been recounted, either by nature or by men, by the language of the world, by tradition, or by the poets. (Foucault 1970: 38–39)
Foucault sees this tendency as typical of the sixteenth-century episteme, whereas, as we have seen and as we will see, it is a characteristic of every idea of encyclopedia, from Pliny to the present day. In fact what distinguishes a contemporary encyclopedia like the Britannica, the French Larousse or the Italian Treccani from Pliny’s encyclopedias or the medieval encyclopedias or Aldrovandi’s encyclopedia and so on, is simply the critical attention devoted to separating legendary ideas from those that are scientifically proven (but only because today this difference too, ontological in nature, is considered part of what every educated person should know). Aside from this difference—which acquires relevance, let’s say, between Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and Diderot and D’Alembert’s mid-eighteenth-century Encyclopédie—a contemporary encyclopedia is also expected in principle to tell us everything that has been said, whether it be about sulfuric acid or Apollo or the sorcerer Merlin.
1.3.2. Medieval Encyclopedias
Compared with Pliny, medieval encyclopedias have a different origin and serve different purposes. If we are to understand their nature, we must begin with Augustine, whose concern was with the problem of the correct interpretation of Scripture and took into consideration, not only the signs produced by human beings in an effort to convey meaning, and the natural phenomena that may be interpreted as signs (De doctrina christiana II, 1, 1), but also, since Scripture speaks not only in verbis but also in factis (De trinitate XV, 9, 15), events and things of sacred history that have been supernaturally arranged so as to be read as signs.18 Augustine taught how to resolve the question of whether a sign was to be understood in a literal or a figurative sense, and he said that we must suspect a figurative sense whenever Scripture appears to go against the truths of faith and moral behavior or gets lost in superfluitates or brings into play expressions not especially meaningful from the literal point of view (proper names, numbers and technical terms, elaborate descriptions of flowers, natural prodigies, precious stones, vestments and ceremonies, objects and events irrelevant from the spiritual point of view).
To interpret the figurative meaning of these facts we must appeal to our knowledge of the world. In De doctrina christiana (II, 57) Augustine insists at length upon the fact that lacunae in our knowledge of things render figurative expressions obscure. If we are to understand why Scripture commands us to be as wise as serpents, we must know that, in the real world, the serpent offers its entire body to the aggressor in order to protect its head. And only if we know that the serpent, by forcing itself through the narrow entrance of its hole, sloughs off its old skin and is endowed with fresh strength, can we understand what the Apostle means when he explains how to put off the old man and put on the new man by passing through the “strait gate” (Matt. 7: 13).19
The same thing is true of precious stones and herbs. Knowing that the carbuncle shines in the dark illuminates many obscure passages of Scripture, while knowing that hyssop is effective in freeing the lungs from catarrh explains why it is said: “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean” (Psalm 51: 7). To understand why Moses, Elijah, and Jesus fasted for forty days we must bear in mind that the course of the day and that of the year are measured in terms of the number 4, the day according to divisions into four groups of hours that make up morning, midday, evening, and night, the year according to the four seasons. Similarly, we need to have a good knowledge of music: if we come across a mention of a psaltery with ten strings, we must be aware that the actual instrument does not call for that many strings if we are to deduce that what we have here is a reference to the Ten Commandments.
It is basically as a response to this need to interpret the Scriptures that medieval encyclopedias come into existence and circulate. They are different from Roman encyclopedias in that, although they too are concerned with explaining what the world is like, they are still more concerned to explain how the sacred texts are to be understood. To give a single example among the many possible, in the ninth century Rabanus Maurus insists that he speaks not only of the nature of things “sed etiam de mystica earumdem rerum significatione” (“but also of the mystical meaning of those things,” De rerum naturis, PL 111, 12d).
The earliest encyclopedia of this type, however, antedates Augustine; we are referring to the first moralized bestiary, the Physiologus, a Greek work by an anonymous author composed in the early centuries A.D., though the Latin versions, each of which incidentally expands upon the original text, only appear toward the seventh century. This little work draws upon works by Pliny and other ancient authors (such as the Polyhistor of Solinus or the Alexander Romance) for information on the various animals, but to the description of each it adds an allegorical or moral interpretation. Here, for example, is the entry on “viper”:
John said to the Pharisees, “Ye generation of vipers” [Matt. 3:7 and Lk. 3:7]. Physiologus says of the viper that the male has the face of a man, while the female has the form of a woman down to her navel, but from her navel down to her tail she has the form of a crocodile. Indeed the woman has no secret place, that is, genitals for giving birth, but has only a pinhole. If the male lies with the female and spills his seed into her mouth, and if she drinks his seed, she will cut of the male’s necessaries (that is, his male organs) and he will die. When, however, the young have grown within the womb of their mother who has no genitals for giving birth, they pierce through her side, killing her in their escape.
Our Savior, therefore, likened the Pharisees to the viper; just as the viper’s brood kills its father and mother, so this people which is without God kills its father, Jesus Christ, and its earthly mother, Jerusalem. “Yet how will they flee from the wrath to come?” [Lk. 3:7].20
As we see, the form and behavior of the viper are described so as to demonstrate why it is a figure for the Pharisees. Or, when he explains how the hedgehog climbs up the grapevine to get at the grapes, then throws the
