appeared to be hidden from view. Both were, at least in theory, subsumed within a unified natural order.138
But ironically, at the same time that theologians and natural philosophers were revising the Augustinian conception of wonders, knowledge of and interest in the wondrous was dramatically on the rise. To begin with, the twelfth century saw the increased circulation of works of paradoxography, as the “renaissance of the twelfth century” spurred interest in classical texts (such as the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder) that catalogued hundreds of “natural wonders.”139 Late antique animal lore also became increasingly available, as the Greek Physiologus was edited into numerous recensions of Bestiaries, which quickly achieved widespread popularity.140 And ancient knowledge concerning the magical and medical properties of gemstones and certain herbs was spread in flourishing genres of lapidaries and herbals.141 At the same time that classical descriptions of natural wonders were becoming widespread, moreover, interest in contemporary marvels was being fed as well. The high Middle Ages saw a flourishing of travel writings, including the popular works of authors like Marco Polo and Gerald of Wales (and, eventually, the hugely popular Travels of Sir John Mandeville). In their descriptions of their journeys, these authors called attention to the wondrous natural phenomena that they observed or heard about in the course of their travels. Elements of these paradoxographic texts and travel narratives made their way into epic romances as well142—the so-called “Alexander Romance” was particularly influential, and different versions incorporated elements of the flourishing paradoxographic discourse.143 All of these developments ensured a wide audience for and interest in these exotic marvels.144
Thus, just as the European interest in natural wonders was reaching its zenith, a number of influential European intellectuals were engaged in a battle to “‘de-wonder’ anomalies”145—as the Pseudo-Albertine text De mirabilibus mundi put it, “The philosopher’s work is to make marvels cease.”146 One common strategy seized upon by thinkers committed to the notion of a stable natural order was to insist that “wonders” are not contrary to the workings of nature, but merely to what we know of nature. The English canon lawyer Gervase of Tilbury, for instance, insisted that wonders are “perspectival,”147 that is, only “wondrous” to those who are ignorant of their (wholly natural) workings. “We call things marvels that are beyond our understanding,” he explains, “even when they are natural.”148 The recognition that the experience of wonder derived solely from one’s knowledge, or lack thereof, rather than from the ontological status of the wondrous object itself, similarly led the twelfth-century natural philosopher Adelard of Bath (whose Quaestiones naturales first imported much Arabic scientific knowledge to northwestern Europe) to deride his imagined interlocutor for his frequent expressions of amazement: “I do not wonder at your wonder, for the blind person speaks thus of sight.” Or elsewhere, more programmatically: “Why is it that you so wonder at this thing? Why are you amazed, why are you confused? … I know that the darkness that holds you, shrouds and leads into error all who are unsure about the order of things. For the soul, imbued with wonder and unfamiliarity, when it considers from afar, with horror, the effects of things without considering their’ causes, has never shaken off its confusion. Look more closely, consider the circumstances, propose causes, and you will not wonder at the effects.”149 The desire to overcome wonder could thus serve as an impetus toward further investigation, and various scientific thinkers contributed to a growing corpus of texts treating wonders from a scientific perspective, culminating in the encyclopedic De causis mirabilium of the fourteenth-century scientist Nicholas Oresme.150 Certain scholastics sought to distinguish the universal natura simpliciter (“unqualified nature”) from natura secundum quod (“qualified nature”); the former referred to a universal order governed by teleological causes, the latter to the particular exceptions and deviations that could nonetheless be explained in a rational fashion.
But despite “bending over backward to contain randomness itself within the ambit of a purposeful natural order,”151 the scholastics found that, despite their best efforts, there remained observable phenomena stubbornly impervious to rational inquiry.152 These thinkers arrived, by necessity, at a compromise position. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, posited the existence of a middle ground between the natural and the supernatural, which he called the “preternatural.”153 In theory, preternatural objects and phenomena had natural qualities and operated in accordance with reason; but in practice, the scholastics admitted that they remained ignorant of the inner workings of these marvels. The invention of the category of the preternatural was to some extent a face-saving measure—it allowed the scholastics to remain committed to the proposition that everything had a rational explanation, while nonetheless admitting that there were phenomena that still needed to be more completely understood.
An object or phenomenon could fall into the category of the preternatural for a variety of reasons: for example, it might be subject to chance, to an unpredictable confluence of natural forces that cause it to behave as it does. The most common explanation, however, for why a preternatural phenomenon behaves as it does was the imputation to it of “occult qualities.” This designation, which continued to be invoked until well into the early modern period,154 essentially meant that the reason an object behaved in a certain manner was natural but inexplicable according to the known laws of natural causation. Or, to use the more technical language of the scholastics themselves, an occult quality was the “specific form” of an object or phenomenon, which conferred its particulars upon it; this stood in contrast to the “manifest properties” of natural objects, which could be accounted for by reference to their elemental composition. Scholastic thinkers sought to account in this manner for the routine, predictable, yet mysterious workings of seemingly supernatural phenomena.155
This sort of elite intellectual engagement with the wondrous and the occult had implications for the medieval conception of magic as well. Ever since the publication of Lynn Thorndike’s magisterial History of Magic and Experimental Science, scholars have increasingly come to recognize that magic was part and parcel of the medieval learned discourse over the workings of the natural order. Theologians, of course, were quick to condemn “necromancy,” magical praxis accomplished via the adjuration of demons, and magia could certainly be used as a term of opprobrium. But many theologians and natural philosophers alike tended to accept the validity and permissibility of so-called “natural magic,” which harnessed the occult properties of various objects in order to exploit natural “sympathies” and “antipathies” for concrete ends.156 Thus, the lines between what we would today call “science” and “magic” were for medieval thinkers very blurry indeed: lapidaries and medical treatises contained detailed descriptions of the amulets that could be made from various precious stones,157 and descriptions of materia medica in herbals were consulted by physicians and magicians alike.158 Pursuits such as physiognomy and, of course, astrology were also firmly within the “scientific” mainstream during this time period.159
Conceptually related to both occult “wonders” and natural magic was another discourse that flourished during this time period, but one which, at first glance, seems unrelated: technical, mechanical, and artisanal knowledge. In order to understand the linkage between these spheres, let us return briefly to occult properties. While the scholastics’ imputation of these hidden qualities to preternatural objects was intended to subsume those objects within the natural world, it also entailed a value judgment as to their status relative to other natural phenomena. For the scholastics, the theoretical, speculative via rationis (way of reason) was the favored intellectual approach; the via experimentalis (way of experiment), rooted in empiricism and induction, was far lower on the epistemological hierarchy. Preternatural objects and their occult workings could only be apprehended through empiricism—the attractive pull of the magnet could be seen, after all, but never derived from the known laws of nature. As such, writings about “marvelous” objects and phenomena were frequently grouped together with writings about other spheres of interest that were dependent upon observation of nature. The foremost example of this latter
