The Library
1693 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
301–400
1 work
c. 378
Greek
Basil the Great · c. 330–379
Nine sermons on the six days of creation, preached morning and evening to a working congregation, refusing allegory and dwelling instead on the natural world as it actually is.
401–500
1 work
415
Latin
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A line-by-line answer to Pelagius's On Nature, conceding that human nature was created good and insisting that it is now wounded and cannot heal itself.
601–700
1 work
c. 680–690
Latin
Enigmata
Aldhelm · c. 639–709
A hundred verse riddles in which ordinary things — a candle, a bookcase, silkworms, a storm — speak in the first person about what they are.
1101–1200
4 works
c. 1150–1158
Latin
Physica
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Nine books on plants, elements, trees, stones, fish, birds, animals, and metals, giving the properties and medicinal uses of each.
c. 1150–1160
Latin
Causae et Curae
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
A medical handbook on the humours, digestion, sleep, conception, and remedies, including frank descriptions of sexual physiology from a woman's viewpoint.
c. 1160–1180
Greek
Michael Glykas · 12th century
A world chronicle whose opening section on creation is packed with natural history, and whose author also wrote a prison poem in the vernacular.
c. 1182–1184
Latin
Alan of Lille · c. 1128–1202
Nature convenes the virtues to make a perfect man; Prudence rides a chariot built by the liberal arts to heaven to fetch a soul for him.
1201–1300
2 works
c. 1240
Latin
De Proprietatibus Rerum
Bartholomaeus Anglicus · c. 1203–1272
Nineteen books on God, angels, the human body, illness, air, birds, stones, colours, and smells, compiled by a friar teaching in Germany.
c. 1258–1262
Latin
De Animalibus
Albert the Great · c. 1200–1280
Twenty-six books on animals, mixing Aristotle with first-hand observation — of falcons, of whales caught off the North Sea, of ants he had watched himself.
1301–1400
1 work
1336
Latin
Francesco Petrarca · 1304–1374
A letter describing a climb up a mountain for no reason but the view, and the shock of opening Augustine's Confessions at the summit on a passage rebuking such curiosity.
1601–1700
1 work
1650, enlarged 1655
English
Henry Vaughan · 1621–1695
Poems of light, childhood, and the natural world, written in Wales after the death of a brother and the destruction of the church he loved.
11 of 1693 works