Walter of Odington
WALTER OF ODINGTON
(fl. Evesham and Oxford[?], England, 1280[?] – 1330[?]), alchemy, music.
As is the case with many medieval alchemists, the details of Walter’s life are obscure. There is confusion as to where and when he lived. Astronomical observations in his treatise “Motion of the Eighth Sphere” indicate that he probably was active in the last half of the thirteenth century (ca. 1280), but manuscript sources refer to him as having lived in the early fourteenth century. In his manuscripts he is referred to as either Walter of Odington or Walter of Evesham. Odington probably refers to his birthplace, which may be the Oddington in northern Oxfordshire, while Evesham is clearly a reference to the Benedictine abbey at Evesham Several sources testify to his being a Benedictine monk, Since he was a member of a regular order, it is difficult to explain the sources that place him at Merton College, Oxford, for an extensive period in the early fourteenth century.
Odington wrote treatises on alchemy, optics, arithmetic, and geometry, and a famous work on medieval music, De speculatione musice, in which he treated acoustics, the division of the monochord, musical notation, mensurable music, and rules for composition. His most important scientific study was his alchemical investigation lcocedron (from “icosahedron”).
As the title indicates, the I cocedron is divided into twenty chapters; and it follows the general Islamic alchemical-medical-pharmaceutical tradition of the period. The first fourteen chapters present standard alchemical information outlining the basic principles of the art, the methods of preparing the materials, techniques for perfecting the “medicine,” and steps to be followed in mixing the elements. In the concluding chapters Walter became more alchemically sophisticated, discussing in some detail metals, the intension and remission of qualities, and the four basic elements of alchemical composition—earth, air, fire, and water. Seeking to present a way of accurately describing alchemical change quantitatively, he assigned quantitative distinctions to each element. Fire is thus hot in the fourth degree and dry near the end of the third degree. Since each degree has sixty minutes, fire therefore has 240 minutes of calidity and 180 minutes of aridity. Through an elaborate procedure of combining the qualities, the secondary quality in a given element could be destroyed and the element reduced to its simplest form.
The most important feature of Walter’s alchemical work was his attempt to quantify qualitative intensities. Distinguishing between temperature and (quantity of) heat, he sought to interpret the relationships between qualitative intensities and quantitative amounts. He conceived of qualitative intensity as a magnitude. In the I cocedron he presented six rules for these relationships—one stated implicitly, four in tabular form, and one verbally. His verbal rule utilizes functions similar to those of Bradwardine in his famous “law of motion,” while its mathematical expression is similar to that used in the pharmaceutical tradition of al–Kindī by the scholars of Montpellier.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Original Works. There is no collective ed. of Walter’s works. The Icocedron is extant in the following MSS: British Museum, Add, MS 15549, fols. 4r – 20r; Cambridge University. Trinity College MS 1122, fols. 177r – 183r; Bodleian Library. Digby MS 119, fols. 142r – 147r; and Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel und Landesbibliothek. Handschrift 2° MS Chem. 8, fols. 240r – 253r. British Museum, Add. MS 15549 has been edited by Phillip Drennon Thomas as “David Ragor’s Transcription of Walter of Odington’s Icocedron,” in Wichita State University Studies, no. 76 (Aug. 1968). 3 – 24. The incipits and locations for Walter’s other scientific works are in Lynn Thorndike and Pearl Kibre, A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin (Cambridge, Mass., 1963). De speculatione musice has been edited in E. Coussemaker, Scriptorium de musica medü aevi, I (Paris, 1864).
II. Secondary Literature. For a brief biographical sketch, see Henry Davey, “Walter of Evesham or Walter of Odington,” in Dictionary of National Biography, XX. 702 – 703. Lynn Thorndike presents a cursory examination of Odington’s career and works in A History of Magic and Experimental Science, III (New York, 1960), 127 – 135. For an examination of his alchemical rules, see Donald Skabelund and Phillip Thomas. “Walter of Odington’s Mathematical Treatment of the Primary Qualities,” in Isis, 60 (1969), 331 – 350; and Phillip D. Thomas, “The Alchemical Thought of Walter of Odington,” in Actes du XIIe Congrès international d’histoire des sciences (Paris, 1968), 141 – 144.
Phillip Drennon Thomas