Alexander Neckam

Alexander Neckam, also Necham or Nequam, (* September 8, 1157 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England; † 1217 in Kempsey, Worcestershire ) was an English scientist and teacher.

He was born on the same night as King Richard I.. Neckams mother moved the prince with her son on together. Neckam was taught at the school of the Abbey of St Alban. He began as a schoolmaster to teach in Dunstable which was under the Abbey of St Albans. Later, around 1175 to 1182, he lived in Petit Pons in Paris. Around 1180 he was already a distinguished lecturer of Liberal Arts at the University of Paris.

To 1186 he was back in England, where he again held the office of a schoolmaster, first in Dunstable in Bedfordshire, and then to about 1195 as head of the school of St Albans. It has been said that he has visited together with the Bishop of Worcester Italy, but this has been doubted. The claim that he was Prior of St Nicholas, Exeter have been, it seems to be wrong. However, he certainly was for some time his life, often at court. After he became a canon at the Augustinian Canons, he was appointed in 1213 to the abbot of Cirencester in Gloucestershire. He died in Kempsey in Worcestershire, and was buried in Worcester.

In addition to the theology Neckam was the study of grammar and natural history interest, especially his name but is connected to the nautical science. In his writings De naturis rerum and De utensilibus, ( of which the former was probably written around 1180 and had become well known to the late 12th century ), has left us Neckam the earliest European records of the use of magnets as a means of navigation in shipping. Outside China, these records appear to be the earliest. ( The Chinese encyclopedist Shen Kua were a hundred years earlier in his 1088 book written Meng ch'i pi t'an the first clear account of suspended magnetic compasses. ) Probably in Paris Neckam had heard that a ship, in addition to other equipment, even a needle must have mounted on a magnet ( in De utensilibus is of a needle on a pivot pin, the speech ), the long rotates until it points north, and the seamen leads the way in gloomy weather or in starless nights. Neckam this seems not to be regarded as an exciting novelty - it holds only fixed what was apparently become common practice for many sailors the Christian world.

The antiquary Thomas Wright has 1857 Neckams treatise De utensilibus published in his band with vocabularies and 1863 De rerum and De naturis laudibus divinae sapientiae in his Rolls Series.

Neckam also wrote Corrogationes Promethei, a commentary on the Bible, with a treatise on grammatical criticism as an introduction; a translation of Aesop into Latin elegies ( six fables of this translation are after a Paris manuscript in Robert's Fables inedites printed ); unpublished comments on texts of Aristotle, Martianus Capella and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and other works. From the foregoing that De rerum naturis, a kind of manual of scientific knowledge of the 12th century, by far the most important. The section on magnets, of which referred above, is located in Book II, Chapter xcviii ( De vi attractiva - About the attraction ) the issue of Wright. The relevant section in De utensilibus is on p 114 in the Vokabularienband.

Roger Bacon's remarks about Neckam as grammarians ( in multis vera et utitia scripsit: sed ... inter auctores non potest numerari ) are on p 457 in Brewers "Rolls " Series edition of Bacon's Opera inedita. See also Thomas Wright's Biographia Britannica literaria, Anglo- Norman Period, pp. 449-459 (1846 ) ( Some of this was changed in 1863 in the edition of De rerum naturis ); C. Raymond Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, III, pp. 508f.

Swell

  • This article incorporates text from the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, which was placed in the public domain.
  • P. Hochgürtel (ed. ): Alexander Neckam, Suppletio defectuum, Carmina minora. Turnhout, Brepols 2008 ( Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis [ CCCM 221 ] ). ISBN 978-2-503-05211-3
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