Encyclopaedias In General

The role of encyclopaedias

Of the various types of reference works—who’s whos, dictionaries,
atlases, gazetteers, directories, and so forth—the encyclopaedia is the
only one that can be termed self-contained. Each of the others conveys
some information concerning every item it deals with; only the
encyclopaedia attempts to provide coverage over the whole range of
knowledge, and only the encyclopaedia attempts to offer
a comprehensive summary of what is known of each topic considered.
To this end it employs many features that can help in its task,
including pictures, maps, diagrams, charts, and statistical tables. It
also frequently incorporates other types of reference works. Several
modern encyclopaedias, from the time of Abraham Rees’s New
Cyclopædia (1802–20) and the Encyclopédie méthodique (1782–
1832; “Systematic Encyclopaedia”) onward, have included a
world atlas and a gazetteer, and language dictionaries have been
an intermittent feature of encyclopaedias for most of their history.

Most modern encyclopaedias since the Universal-Lexicon (1732–50)

of the Leipzig bookseller Johann Heinrich Zedler have
included biographical material concerning living persons, though the
first edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1768–71) had no
biographical material at all. In their treatment of this kind of
information, however, they differ from the form of reference work that
limits itself to the provision of salient facts without comment.
Similarly, with dictionary material, some encyclopaedias provided
foreign-language equivalents as well.

An English lexicographer, H.W. Fowler, wrote in the preface to the

first edition (1911) of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current
English that a dictionary is concerned with the uses of words and
phrases and with giving information about the things for which they

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stand only so far as current use of the words depends upon knowledge
of those things. The emphasis in an encyclopaedia is much more on
the nature of the things for which the words and phrases stand. Thus,
the encyclopaedic dictionary, whose history extends as far back as the
10th- or 11th-century Suidas, forms a convenient bridge between the
dictionary and the encyclopaedia, in that it combines the essential
features of both, embellishing them where necessary with pictures or
diagrams, at the same time that it reduces most entries to a few lines
that can provide a brief but accurate introduction to the subject.

Interrelations

An encyclopaedia does not come into being by itself. Each new work
builds on the experience and contents of its predecessors. In many
cases the debt is acknowledged: the German publisher Friedrich
Arnold Brockhaus bought the bankrupt encyclopaedia of Gotthelf
Renatus Löbel in 1808 and converted it into his
famous Konversationslexikon (see Brockhaus Enzyklopädie), though
Jesuits adapted Antoine Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel without
acknowledgment in their Dictionnaire de Trévoux (1704). Classical
writers made many references to their predecessors’ efforts and often
incorporated whole passages from other encyclopaedias. Of all the
many examples, the Cyclopaedia (1728) of the English
encyclopaedist Ephraim Chambers has been outstanding in its
influence, for Diderot’s and Rees’s encyclopaedias would have been
very different if Chambers had not demonstrated what a modern
encyclopaedia could be. In turn, the publication of Encyclopædia
Britannica was stimulated by the issue of the French Encyclopédie.
Almost every subsequent move in encyclopaedia making is thus
directly traceable to Chambers’s pioneer work.

Readership

Encyclopaedia makers have usually envisaged the particular public

they addressed. Cassiodorus wrote for the “instruction of simple and

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unpolished brothers”; the Roman statesman Cato wrote for the
guidance of his son; Gregor Reisch, prior of the Carthusian monastery
of Freiburg, addressed himself to “Ingenuous Youth”; the Franciscan
encyclopaedist Bartholomaeus Anglicus wrote for “ordinary” people;
the German professor Johann Christoph Wagenseil wrote for children;
and Herrad of Landsberg, abbess of Hohenburg, wrote for her
nuns. Encyclopædia Britannica was designed for the use of the
curious and intelligent layman. The editor of The Columbia
Encyclopedia in 1935 tried to provide a work that was compact
enough and written simply enough to serve as a guide to the “young
Abraham Lincoln.” The Jesuit Michael Pexenfelder made his intended
audience clear enough by writing his Apparatus Eruditionis (1670;
“Apparatus of Learning”) in the form of a series of conversations
between teacher and pupil. St. Isidore addressed himself not only to
the needs of his former pupils in the episcopal school but also to the
needs of all the priests and monks for whom he was responsible. At the
same time, he hoped to provide the newly converted population of
Spain with a national culture that would enable it to hold its own in
the Byzantine world.

Contributors

In sympathy with many of their various ends, many scholars have

contributed to encyclopaedias. Not all their contributions are known,
because until the mid- to late 20th century it was not the custom to
sign articles. It is known, however, that the English encyclopaedist
John Harris enlisted the help of such scientists as John Ray and Sir
Isaac Newton for his Lexicon Technicum (1704) and that Rees’s New
Cyclopædia (1802–20) included articles on music by the English
organist and music historian Charles Burney and on botany by the
English botanist Sir J.E. Smith. Illustrious Frenchmen such
as Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, Montesquieu, and Georges
Boulanger contributed to the Encyclopédie; Thomas Macaulay, T.E.
Lawrence, and more than 100 recipients of Nobel Prizes—
including Albert Einstein and Marie Curie—to the Britannica; the
Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster and the Danish physicist Hans

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Christian Ørsted to The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia (1808–30); the
English astronomer Sir William Herschel and the English
mathematician and mechanical genius Charles Babbage to
the Metropolitana; the Russian Communist leader Lenin to
the Granat encyclopaedia; and the dictator Benito Mussolini to
the Enciclopedia italiana.

Language

The language of Western encyclopaedias was almost

exclusively Latin up to the time of the first printed works. As with
most scholarly writings, the use of Latin was advantageous because it
made works available internationally on a wide scale and thus
promoted unlimited sharing of information. On the other hand, it
made the contents of encyclopaedias inaccessible to the great majority
of people. Consequently, there was from the early days on a movement
to translate the more important encyclopaedias into
various vernaculars. Honorius Inclusus’s Imago mundi (c. 1122;
“Image of the World”) was rendered into French, Italian, and
Spanish; Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (1220–
40; “On the Characteristics of Things”) into English; the Dominican
friar Thomas de Cantimpré’s De natura rerum (c. 1228–44; “On the
Nature of Things”) into Flemish and German; and Vincent of
Beauvais’s Speculum majus (“The Greater Mirror”) into French,
Spanish, German, Dutch, and Catalan. In later years the more
successful encyclopaedias were translated from one vernacular into
another. Moréri’s encyclopaedia, Le Grand Dictionnaire historique,
was translated into both English and German. The
German Brockhaus appeared in a Russian translation (1890–1907),
and the French Petit Larousse had several foreign-language editions.
Nevertheless, an encyclopaedia, however successful in its own country,
may find acceptance in another country far from easy.

The contemporary world

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Encyclopaedias have often reflected fairly accurately the civilization in
which they appeared; that this was deliberate is shown by the
frequency with which the earlier compilers included such words
as speculum (“mirror”), imago (“image”), and so forth in their titles.
Thus, as early as the 2nd century the Greek scholar Julius Pollux was
already defining current technical terms in his Onomastikon. In the
13th century Vincent of Beauvais quoted the ideas of both pagan and
Christian philosophers freely and without differentiation, for their
statements often agreed on questions of morals. In doing so, he
reflected the rapidly widening horizons of a period that saw the
founding of so many universities. Bartholomaeus Anglicus devoted a
considerable part of his work to psychology
and medicine. Theophilus (thought to be Roger of Helmarshausen, a
Benedictine monk) as early as the 12th century gave a clear and
practical account in his De diversis artibus (“On Diverse Arts”) of
contemporary processes used in painting, glassmaking and
decoration, metalworking, bone carving, and the working
of precious stones, even listing the necessary tools and conditions for
successful operations. Pierre Bayle, a French philosopher and critic,
showed in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697; “Historical
and Critical Dictionary”) how the scientific renaissance of the previous
40 years had revolutionized contemporary thought. To every detail he
applied a mercilessly scientific and inquiring mind that challenged the
assumptions and blind reverence for authority that had characterized
most of his predecessors.

At that point in history, much attention was being paid to practical

matters: the statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert himself directed the
French Académie des Sciences (1675) to produce a work that
eventually appeared as the Description et perfection des arts et
métiers (1761; “Description and Perfection of the Arts and Crafts”).
The German Meyer’s Grosses Konversations-Lexicon from the first
edition (1840–55) onward paid particular attention to scientific and
technical developments, and the Encyclopedia Americana, aided by
the Scientific American, strengthened its coverage in this area from
1911 onward. In its very first edition the Encyclopædia
Britannica included lengthy articles containing detailed instructions
on such topics as surgery, bookkeeping, and many aspects of farming.

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Similarly, The New Cyclopaedia, in the early 19th century,
incorporated articles on subjects such as candle making and coach
building.

The outstanding example of a completely contemporary encyclopaedia

was, of course, the Encyclopédie, in which Diderot, the mathematician
and philosopher Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, and their friends set out to
reject much of the heritage of the past in favour of the scientific
discoveries and the more advanced thought of their own age. Their
decision in this respect was both intellectually and commercially
successful. Since that time every edition of any good encyclopaedia has
the additional merit of being a valuable source for the thought and
attitudes of the people for whom it was published.

Encyclopaedias and politics

All great encyclopaedia makers have tried to be truthful and to present

a balanced picture of civilization as they knew it, although it is
probable that no encyclopaedia is totally unbiased. A great
encyclopaedia is inevitably a sign of national maturity and, as such, it
will often pay tribute to the ideals of its country and its times. The
first Hungarian encyclopaedia, János Apáczai Csere’s Magyar
encyclopaedia (1653–55), was mostly a summary of what was
available in foreign works, but the Révai nagy lexikona (1911–35;
“Révai’s Great Lexicon”) was a handsome tribute to Hungary’s
emergence as a country in its own right, just as the Enciklopedija
Jugoslavije (first published 1955–71) did full justice to the advances
made by Yugoslavia in the mid-20th century. The supreme example of
an encyclopaedia that set out to present the best possible image of its
people and the wealth and stature of their culture is undoubtedly
the Enciclopedia italiana (1929–36). Mussolini’s contribution of an
article on fascism indicates the extent to which the work might be
regarded as an ideological tool, but, in fact, most of its contents are
international and objective in approach. The various encyclopaedias of
the Soviet Union occupy many feet of shelf space, with the later
editions each devoting one complete volume to the Soviet Union in all
its aspects. Though successive editions of the Bolshaya Sovetskaya

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entsiklopediya (“Great Soviet Encyclopaedia”) were notable for the
obvious political factors that were responsible for the inclusion and
exclusion of entries for famous nationals according to the state of their
acceptance or condemnation by the existing regime, many critics felt
that the third edition (1970–78) was somewhat less ideological than
any of the others in this regard.

Diderot, the editor, and André-François Le Breton, the publisher,

faced such opposition from both church and state in their publication
of the Encyclopédie (1751–65) that many of the volumes were secretly
printed, and the last 10 were issued with a false imprint. In the early
part of the 19th century, Brockhaus was condemned by the Austrian
censor, and in 1950 its 11th edition was branded as reactionary by the
East German government. Nor was political censorship the only form
of oppression in the world of encyclopaedias. Antoine Furetière, on
issuing his prospectus (1675) for his Dictionnaire universel, found his
privilege to publish cancelled by the French government at the request
of the Académie Française, which accused him of plagiarizing its own
dictionary. The Leipzig book trade, fearing that publication of Johann
Heinrich Zedler’s huge Grosses vollständiges Universal-
Lexikon (1732–50; “Great Complete Universal Lexicon”) might put
them out of business, made such difficulties that Zedler thought it best
to issue his work in Halle.

The reader’s needs

People look to encyclopaedias to give them an adequate introduction

to a topic that interests them. Many expect an encyclopaedia to omit
nothing and to include consideration of all controversial aspects of a
subject. Encyclopaedia makers of the past assumed that there was a
large public willing to read through an entire encyclopaedia if it was
not too large. In the 18th century, for example, there was a good
market for pocket-size compendia for the traveler, or for the courtier
to browse in as he waited for an audience. Thus, although most
encyclopaedias are multivolume works, there are many small works
ranging from the Didascalion (c. 1128; “Teaching”) of the Scholastic
philosopher and mystic theologian Hugh of Saint-Victor, through

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Gregor Reisch’s Margarita philosophica (1496; “The Philosophical
Pearl”) and the French writer Pons-Augustin Alletz’s Petite
Encyclopédie (1766), to C.T. Watkins’s Portable Cyclopædia (1817).
The last was issued by a remarkable publisher, Sir Richard Phillips,
who realized the great demand for pocket-size compendia and drove a
thriving trade in issuing a number of these; he is thought to have
written large sections of these himself.

Royalty and encyclopaedias

Most of the classic Chinese encyclopaedias owe their existence to the

patronage of emperors. In the West the Roman
scholar Pliny dedicated his Historia naturalis (“Natural History”) to
the emperor Titus, and Julius Pollux dedicated his Onomastikon to his
former pupil, the Roman emperor Commodus. The Byzantine
philosopher and politician Michael Psellus dedicated his De omnifaria
doctrina (“On All Sorts of Teaching”) to his former pupil the
emperor Michael VII Ducas, ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Gervase of Tilbury, an English ecclesiastic, compiled his Otia
imperialia (“Imperial Pastimes”) for the Holy Roman emperor Otto
IV, and Alfonso de la Torre prepared his Visiõ delectable for
Prince Carlos of Viana. St. Isidore dedicated his encyclopaedia to the
Visigothic king Sisebut, and the French king Louis
IX patronized Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum majus. Nor did
kings eschew the work of compiling encyclopaedias. The
emperor Constantine VII of the Eastern Roman Empire was
responsible for a series of encyclopaedias, and Alfonso X of Spain
organized the making of the Grande e general estoria (“Great and
General History”).

Contents and authority

The extent to which readers have been dependent on editorial

decisions concerning not only what to include but also what to exclude
has yet to be explored in detail. For example, Vincent of

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Beauvais rarely mentioned the pagan and Christian legends that were
so popular in his day. The anonymous compiler of the
scholarly Compendium philosophiae (c. 1316; “Compendium of
Philosophy”) was careful to omit the credulous tales that appeared in
contemporary bestiaries. For many centuries it was not considered
right to include biographies of men and women who were still alive.
And the early Romans, such as Cato, rejected much of Greek
theoretical knowledge, regarding it as a dangerous foreign influence
and believing with the Stoics that wisdom consisted in living according
to nature’s precepts.

Whatever the compiler did decide to include had a far-reaching

influence. Pliny’s vast Historia naturalis has survived intact because
for so many centuries it symbolized human knowledge, and even the
“old wives’ tales” it injudiciously included were unquestioningly
copied into many later encyclopaedias. The influence of St. Isidore’s
work can be traced in writings as late as the collection of travelers’
tales first published in French in the 1350s and attributed to Sir John
Mandeville and to the 14th-century Confessio amantis (“A Lover’s
Confession”) of the English poet John Gower. Honorius’s Imago
mundi is known to have influenced some of the
German medieval chronicles and the Norse saga of Olaf Tryggvason.
The main source of classics such as the Roman de la rose (“Romance
of the Rose”), the Alexander romances, Archbishop Giovanni da
Colonna’s Liber de viris illustribus (“Book Concerning Illustrious
Men”), and the recorded lives of the saints can be traced to
the Speculum majus. The direct and indirect influence of the critical
encyclopaedias of Bayle and Diderot is, of course, incalculable.

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