MEDICINE and RELIGION C.
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OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS EDITORS R. R. DAVIES R. J. W. EVANS P. LANGFORD H. C. G. MATTHEW H. M. MAYR-HARTING A. J. NICHOLLS SIR KEITH THOMAS MEDICINE AND RELIGION c.1300 The Case of Arnau de Vilanova JOSEPH ZIEGLER CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD 1998 Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX26DP Oxford New Y ork Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New Y ork © Joseph Ziegler 1998 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First published 1998 All rights reserved. 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Bath, Somerset PREFACE This book is a revised version of a D.Phil. thesis, which was submitted in 1994 to the Faculty of Modern History, Oxford University, but whose origins lie further back in time. A brief history of its evolution will explain its present form and illuminate the odd, unexpected ways in which ideas develop. Aware of my particular interest in scholastic culture, it was the late Amos Funkenstein who in 1989 first suggested that I concentrate my research on academic heresy and more specifically on Masters’ trials. ‘Academic condemnations c.1280–c.1350’ was the research topic which brought me to Oxford in 1990. I wanted to examine the procedure of the condemnations, to uncover the characteristics and intellectual profiles common to the condemned masters, and to analyse the impact of the con- demnations on scholastic culture. Soon after plunging into extensive read- ing on the various cases of university masters whose ideas were sup- pressed, I realized that the topic I had chosen was far too ambitious if it were to be completed within three to four years. I had to narrow it down, despite the disappointment which such a change would cause: for this meant abandoning my attempt to engage the general phenomenon of con- demnation. Four of the fifteen cases of condemned university masters who were on my list (Arnau de Vilanova, Pietro d’Abano, Cecco d’Ascoli and Marsilio da Padova) had a medical background—a fact which drew my attention. This sub-group introduced an intriguing question: what role, if at all, did their medical background play when they produced ideas inimical to Christian orthodoxy? Was there around 1300 a direct relation- ship between medicine and academic heresy? Or, more generally, what was the relationship between medicine and religion at that time? It is widely accepted that there are parallels between medicine and religion today. Hospitals to some degree are the churches of modernity. Medical vocabulary is, like the liturgy, exclusive, invocatory, monopolis- tic, and often incomprehensible to the lay audience. Hospitals are now those places where individuals from all classes and walks of life gather together, united by fear of death and hope of salvation. Not for nothing did Philip Larkin in ‘The Building’ paint a hospital in specifically hier- atic tones, calling the patients ‘congregations’.1 The blind, sheep-like 1 P. Larkin, Collected Poems, ed. A. Thwaite (London and Boston, 1990), 191Ð3. vi Preface trust which people are enjoined to have for their doctors is precisely the same as that which they were once enjoined to have for their priests. The patients buy their cure/ salvation through an act of confession in which they tell a story about their symptoms to their doctor: similarly, telling one’s sins to one’s priest was necessary for expiation.2 In many respects medicine has assumed religion’s traditional role as the guardian of human morals. The priest and the physician thus share grounds, tools, tech- niques, and clients. Again, Philip Larkin says it much better in ‘Days’: What are the days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields.3 How exactly did medicine and religion coexist in the traditional soci- ety of late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Europe, dominated by Christian values yet undergoing dramatic intellectual changes? I chose to follow up this topic by looking at the first of the four masters men- tioned above, Arnau de Vilanova, and by putting his work within a wider context. The results of this research will unfold in the following pages. This is by no means a definitive study. It leaves unanswered questions; it invites differing interpretations; it demands more proofs and further examples. But I hope it will stimulate others to improve upon it and to increase and refine our understanding of this aspect of medieval culture. Personal names provided an irritating problem. In the end, I decided to use the English form for popes, kings, saints, and Classical sources. For all the rest I usually kept the Catalan name for the Catalan, the French for the Frenchmen, the Italian for the Italians, and so forth. I am sure that many inconsistencies remain, but I found no better solution. Biblical cita- tions are rendered into English according to the King James Version. In case of a discrepancy between the reference from the Vulgate and that of 2 S. Poole, ‘Whoa! I gotta pumper’, TLS, Feb. 2 (1996), 18. 3 Larkin, Collected Poems, 67. Preface vii the translation I indicate both and put the latter in square brackets. The translation of Ecclesiasticus 38 is the Anchor Bible translation (vol. 39) which I occasionally modified to regain the literal meaning of the text. I am very conscious of the extent to which this book has been made possible by the help and advice of others. My chief academic debt is to Jean Dunbabin and Richard Smith, my supervisors. Their constructive suggestions, intellectual stimulation, care, and encouragement were invaluable. Jean Dunbabin even courageously undertook to lead me through the production of this book. I am immensely grateful to her. Other people read and amended drafts of this work. I have been encour- aged, helped, taught, and corrected by them. I would like to thank Luis García-Ballester and Michael McVaugh, who have made my first encounter with medieval medicine an exciting experience, and whose friendship I cherish as much as I do their intellectual insight. Peter Biller and Alexander Murray, who examined my thesis, enriched me tremen- dously. This revised version of it is largely a reflection of their penetrat- ing remarks and critique. David D’Avray was very helpful on the preach- ing literature, and the thoughtful comments of Maurice Keen were high- ly productive. Lesley Smith was always there to give crucial advice. Many others answered my questions and added their own imprint on my work, from my teachers at the Department of History in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to my Catalan tutor in Oxford, Silvia Coll- Vinent. I am grateful to them all. Two conferences (‘Medicine as Cultural System’, Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, 1993, organized by the Van Leer Foundation, and ‘The First International Workshop on Arnau de Vilanova’, Barcelona, 1994, organized by J. Perarnau and L. García- Ballester) substantially contributed to the formation and clarification of my thoughts. I met with kind assistance in the Bodleian Library and in particular I am grateful to Martin Kauffmann and the staff of Duke Humphrey’s Library. I would like to thank Humaira Erfan Ahmed for getting the book ready for press. The research for this book would not have been possible without the financial and logistic support of the University of Oxford, the Faculty of Modern History, Merton and Green Colleges, the Wellcome Trust, and in particular its Oxford Unit, the Lothian Fund, the Anglo-Jewish Association, and Yad Hanadiv Foundation. The University of Haifa—my present home—was extreme- ly helpful in the later stages of the work. I am grateful to them all. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude and admiration to all members of my family, whose manifold support renders this book theirs too. CONTENTS List of Abbreviations x 1 Introduction 1 2 The Language of the Physicians who Produce Spiritual Texts 46 3 Medicine as a Vehicle for Religious Speculation 114 4 Medicine for the Preachers 176 5 Medicine and Religion: Between Competition and Cooperation 214 6 Conclusions 268 Appendix I. Medical Analogies in Giovanni da San Gimignano, Summa de exemplis et rerum similitudinibus locuplentissima (Antwerp, 1583) 277 Appendix II. Medical Analogies in Pierre Bersuire, Reductorium morale super totam bibliam (Venice, 1583) 294 Appendix III. A Sermon for Students of Medicine by Humbert de Romans 314 Bibliography 316 Index 335 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AFH Archivum Franciscanum Historicum AFP Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum AST Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia Astesana Astesano di Asti, Summa de casibus (Strasbourg, 1474) ATCA Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics ATIEAV Actes de la I Trobada Internacional d’Estudis sobre Arnau de Vilanova, ed.