What are other ancient encyclopaedic texts like Pliny's "Naturalis Historia" were available to medieval people?
Upvote:1
Yes. Depends which period of the Middle Ages you are talking about. And it depends on what you mean by "available". Let's take it to mean available in Latin translations (from Greek, possibly via Arabic or Syriac), widely enough distributed that people in universities or monasteries might well have had access to copies. Authors to consider: Dioscorides De Materia Medica, Aristotle's biological works De Animalibus and Parva Naturalia (both taught in medieval universities) and works attributed to Aristotle, but probably not Theoprastus until the mid 15th century. Galen and Hippocrates. The easiest place to get authoritative recent surveys is the Cambridge History of Science volume on Medieval science.
(All of this dictated by a historian of biology working from memory, humoring me.)
Upvote:3
There were some medical texts, like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medical_textbooks#Pre-modern_texts
Of some of these, they traveled to Europe.
If you are asking, it was not until the Renaissance that Europe rediscovered Greeks and Roman texts, so no, Aristotle and most of the Greek Works was not widely available to Europe in the middle ages.
And of course, there were no Historians as we knew today in Medieval Europe, only chroniclers. People read chronicles, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_chronicles
And probably what you are looking for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_encyclopedias_by_date
Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, introduced the division in seven liberal arts
Cassiodorus' Institutiones (full title: Institutiones Divinarum et Saecularium Litterarum), AD 560; first Christian encyclopedia
St. Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, AD 636; Christian encyclopedia, most influential encyclopedia of the early Middle Ages
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