gems, early lapidaries, Albertus Magnus, magical properties, medicine, Guillaume, clerc de Normandie

Recent publications have drawn the attention of archaeologists to certain medieval compositions known as bestiaries, volucraires, and lapidaries. They contain descriptions of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fish, and stones, accompanied by explanations whose purpose was to remind the faithful of certain moral or religious truths. These types of works are, in our view, of great importance: they offer us a way to complete the little we know about the state of the natural sciences in the Middle Ages, and they can also add valuable material to the history of religious thought, whose deep imprint can be found in all the monuments of that era. Writers who have undertaken to trace the course and progress of scientific studies in the Middle Ages have paid only modest attention to the natural sciences. The authors of the Histoire littéraire de la France have mentioned them only in passing, so to speak, in the overview of letters, sciences, and arts that they place before the history of each century. The natural sciences occupy only a very small place in the writings on the same subject published in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres by Abbé Lebeuf and by Goujet. Cuvier could have shed considerable light on the history of this branch of human knowledge in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but he merely pointed out a few illustrious names and provided a summary list of a small number of works that he could not omit to mention.