Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/318

3. The author describes himself at the opening of the sixth book:

^m Ea autem quae a magistris, dux serenissime, multotiens audivi, atque omnia quae recordatione usque ad meditationem memoriae commendavi, et ut firmius verba retinerem (quae irrevocabilia volant) stili officio designavi, et iam quae per viginti annos et eo amplius alios docui, adhuc vix plene et perfecte intelligo, vixque intellecta propriis et apertis verbis explicare valeo: et unde mihi tam hebes ingenium, tam rnodica memoria, tam imperfecta eloquentia? an quia in patria vervecum^[1] crassoque sub äere Nordmanniae sum natus? alios affirmare audio non solum minima, sed etiam maxima, quae nunquam a magistris audierunt, per se intellexisse, nihilque esse tam inusitatum, tam difficile, quod si sibi ostensum fuerit, statim non intelligant atque expedite alios doceant.

The passage therefore tells us what William's native country was,—and we have only to add the concordant testimony of ⁿ all the known manuscripts of the work, which bear any title, to identify the place as a matter of certainty with Conches;—it tells us also the author's age, as having been a teacher since about 1120–1125, besides some other particulars about him to which we shall return hereafter.

4. Walter of Saint Victor in his polemic against the opinions of Abailard, Gilbert of La Porrée, Peter Lombard, and Peter of Poitiers, written about the year 1180, expressly mentions, in his fourth book, William of Conches as having adopted the Epicurean doctrine of atoms: Quae forte Democritus cum Epicuro suo atomos vocat. Inde Willielmus de Conchis ex atomorum, id est, minutissimorum corporum, concretione fieri omnia. The passage occurs among the

1. The edition reads Vernecum for vervecum, as though it were a proper name: the reference, however, to Juvenal, Sat. x. 49, 50, is obvious,

   Summos posse viros et magna exempta daturos

   Vervecum in patria crassoque sub äere nasci.

   M. Hauréau had the right reading in his manuscript, and translates 'la patrie des béliers,' p. 231. [It is found also in the Arundel MS. 377 f. 131 in the British Museum.]