VINCENT OF BEAUVAIS. - Dominican theologian and philosopher, b. ca. 1190, d. at Beauvais in 1264. Probably a religious in Paris (ca. 1220), he later resided in the convent of Beauvais, from which he took his name (Bellovacensis). He was on friendly terms (a contemporary calls him familiaris) with St. Louis, King of France, and taught in the Cistercian abbey of Royaumont, founded by that same King.
His principal work is the Speculum maius (Strasbourg 1473-76; of the other editions the best is the one edited by the Benedictines of Douai [4 vols., 1624] with an analytical index): a vast encyclopedia of all the knowledge of the time, in which some 2000 works by 450 authors are cited; divided into three parts: Speculum naturale (in 32 books), in which he treats of God and his attributes, of the Trinity and creation, angels, the material world, living beings, with special regard to man; Speculum doctrinale (in 17 books), in which the whole of scholastic science is set forth: philosophy, the liberal arts, profane sciences; Speculum historiale (in 31 books), in which the history of the world is recounted from the creation to 1254, with an "excursus" on the end of the world in 2376, on the reign of the Antichrist, on the Last Judgment. A fourth part, the Speculum morale, was added later, by an anonymous compiler, after 1310.
V. collected much material with a view to an Opus universale of political sciences for the King of France. But Queen Margaret begged him to suspend that work and to prepare a manual for the education of princes; V. consented and wrote (between 1248 and 1250) the De eruditione filiorum regalium (Basel 1481, ed. by A. Steiner, Cambridge-Massachusetts 1938). At the wish of the King of France and of the King of Navarre he then published (1260-1263) the De morali principis institutione, a work originally intended to form part of the great political encyclopedia. There is also attributed to him (after it had been published among the works of St. Thomas) a De eruditione principum, which is the work of William Peyraut. The method of the pedagogical works is similar to that of the Speculum: a collection of maxims and counsels drawn from Sacred Scripture and from Christian and pagan authors. Other works of V. are: Liber Gratiae (a treatise on the Incarnation and the Redemption); Liber laudum Virginis gloriosae: de vita scilicet et gestis B. Virginis; Liber de s. Johanne Evangelista (a sequel to the preceding); Consolatio super morte amici, dedicated to St. Louis on the occasion of the death of his firstborn Louis (all four published together at Basel 1481); De poenitentia: theological-ascetic treatise on the Sacrament and on the spirit of penance (Paris, Bibl. nat., Cat. 3214); Expositio orationis dominicae et salutationis B. Mariae (ibid., 1489).
The work of V., particularly the Speculum*, has value as a collection of texts that otherwise would have been lost, and as a historical source for events contemporary with him (for example, the founding of the various religious Orders). V., rather than an encyclopedist of the kind of St. Albert the Great or of Bacon, was a compiler without a personality of his own, concerned with gathering material to place at the disposal of others; admirable is his diligence in choosing and indicating the exact references of the authors cited and in summarizing their thought, which he arranges in order, showing that he had assimilated it; often he explains and clarifies obscure passages.