The Linacre Quarterly

Volume 36 | Number 3 Article 17

August 1969 The hP ysician Who Became of Rome Hardy A. Kemp

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Recommended Citation Kemp, Hardy A. (1969) "The hP ysician Who Became Pope of Rome," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 36 : No. 3 , Article 17. Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol36/iss3/17 5:-32 A. M. -- Hospital T, ne The silent flashes of rigid white, stilted starched, stubborn aprons And nylon symphonies in scurries of soft speeded-breath nurses; Exhausted, sweat-marked, haggard internes desperately draped in smocks, -- ,. :. '· ... ~ ·;. :J. :: ··::.t: Once hardened to white marble stiffness, - _/ .... .:·. :.}··: Wrinkled, blood sprinkled, and crushed by the night's harsh hours of wear; The crumpled, fluid stained, light blue slacks of Obstetrics' delivery room ..'- '.1:' • .' ;;. ' ~ .' . ··,

And the scapel creased, prim green trousers of the Operating room • I' ' ' Protrude as pilings supporting tornado tossed, cyclone cursed beacons ·.r· In the irascible ocean of life~ these apostles of modem possess the hand won knowledge of ce1. tries, But are slaves of the mechanism, Hanging and humming on the wall above ihe desk in the Emergency Ward, Ttie Physician Who Became Pope of Rome , ;·.·. • ' That projects its movements into each treatment room. Their eyes plead with the hands of the clock to give them minutes, Precious minutes, valuable minutes to work - to sweat - to pant - Hardy A. Kemp, M. D. ~ . . . . To fight and fight and fight and work. ' ;

But defzant Death collects its toll from man for having lived. .~· - • •' ....~ ... : ',t :_-.

The somber garb of sacerdotal black absorbs the whispered words .~ .. ... Of consolation, that bounce around and in and out the ears On the twentieth of September, churchman, Cardinal Ottoboni Fieschi, ' ':,~ ''.:• '·~-I Of shocked, staring, stunned, death-robbed parents; 1276, the Cardinal Bishop of who was later to become Pope Adrian ~ ·~ ~: .~.· ~ And the clock spits seconds into eternity. Tusculum, Petrus Hispanus, was V...... •• e:1ec1tea Pope of Rome. . .,_ ;_. Against the rhythmic hum of the huge red hand, that chops its ~y Chl,lrch history shows that Canon Around the face of the twenty-four hour clock, - - For this office he chose the name by Petrus served the Cardinal as personal Cradled in the alcove of the Labor Room, - heisknown today, John XXI. In physician on his journeys as Papal The mother's cry in pains of birth announces the entrance own time he was better know as Delegate, thus no great imagination is Of a helpless, strengthless, seven pound, six ounce mass ..,."",.,H-' Hispanus, Physicus, a Portugese necessary to surmise that through Of spreckled-pink, slippery, stripent, soul-stained, innocent flesh IEihvs.ici··,m, one indeed of high ecclesias­ these services the physician-priest Into this weary, fighting, pushing, striving, warring, brawling, feuding, preferment, and the only one of became archiater (chief-physician) to Wrangling world. medical profession to occupy the Pope Gregory X. ' . f ,;...... · ·, ~. . of Peter. •. 5:32A.M. in the hospital corridors with pox-lighted windows. .:·.. .~.-.. Shortly thereafter, Petrus Hispanus, ~ Death ~lks its patrol, a snatching, silent, sneaking, thieving sentry, . ,. The immediate origins of his priest­ Physicus, became of And tosses a mocking, sneering, scornful, sarcastic laugh to Life. . ' are somewhat obscure. There is, (1273), and in the same year Cardinal ' .... . Bishop of Tusculum. 5:32 A. M. Hospital Time - a night's rest is gone. r, a clear record of his first ... . ._ The day begins anew for a weary brain in a tired body to visit the sick, app~oin-tmt~nt to a Church Office: that .:·... ·.. :. Comfort the so"owing, to prepare the dying, to give them Christ, Canon of Leon. It was there, it These were momentous times in a •.. ~ · ; ' The Saviour of their souls. that he attracted the favor­ momentous century, one indeed which ', , .. , The chosen one of God's Anointed continues the endless guest attention of a strongly influential some regard as one of the most im­ For that lonely, saddened, wandering soul, portant in the Christian Era . It was a To sneak through Heaven's unlocked back door, time when immensely powerful forces Forever opened by dropping blood in the blackest hours of the Church and the State were On Calvary's slope. beginning to exert pressures that Death can claim the body, would shape the centuries to come. It I ' • 4 But his consolation is to know that Hell is cheated of a soul. Dr: Kemp, a 1926 graduate of the was a time of great auguries and .. ;,. ,J • • Louis University Medical School portents, and one in which some Father John M. Sllillvey --~4~S in Shawnee Mission , Kansas. prescience must have guided the : . Pottsville, Penna. ·.. · .... ·

168 Linacre QuarterlY , 1969 169 ,. , .~. · .. ' I I •. , . nature, and that Medicine ' not Yet in its. time the Liber was an Pope John XXI, like all strong men, •, -~ -. ~ . Conclave of Cardinals in their choice _,''·· ···· of a successor to Innocent V. then sharply separated from th other t guide. Guy de Chauliac had his enemies and their expressions . ··.. branches of higher learning Con­ • ref(:rred to it in his Chirurgics, Arnold of natred were false and malicious in ~> .~: ~ ..;" l ~ p in Villanova included some of its By all precedent, the election of sequently it -was not a great the extreme. It will be readily under­ . '.'· ... ~·i· 1276 should have gone to the able and either direction · to pass frc one dies in the Brevarium, and inter­ stood, then, that his death on May 14, _;J :: •': ~.t. .. ;ed is .. .. ."·/.-: distinguished Cardinal John discipline into another. Such ir· ngly enough there are records in 1277, which was caused by an un­ . ... the story of the Physician-Pope . to show that explained cave-in of a private study Gajetanus Orsini. It is said, however, ~·. ·, ., : .-. ••·JMtcneJangelo copied its prescriptions where he was working at the time, was ,.: ' .~ I • . ·, that the Conclave feared to offend the . , ~ areer his own use. seized upon as clear proof of his • I ' sinister Charles of Anjou by electing The record of his medical ... ' an Italian. Worse still, they were loath begins with a professorship of · ysick "folly," his hatred of , his 1a. As Various commentators believe that allegiance with the "powers of to strengthen Charles' grasp on the at the budding University of S ·~ · . : Papacy by the election of another a teacher, and incidentally as a Thesarus and the Liber were the darkness", and a fitting end for a ician- of ·persons other than Petrus desecrator of the Papal Chair. .•. ' . cardinal of his choice, for certainly the . commentary on our modern pr. . ' decedent Innocent V. (Born Peter of teachers, he must also ha' had l ll~fliSl'Janus. Some have suggested that , ;·, , • ' Tarantaise) had been a willing tool of practice privileges since the: is a father, for one, was the author. .~ dical majority of opinion is to the King .Charles and thus a detriment to record of a stipend for his t Nonetheless, he died in munitus the and a threat to the services to the community. Ir. dent- rary. Indeed, Baptista Platina in sacramentis ecclesiasticus, and he is freedom of Italy. Should they have ally, also, it was at the reque of a "Lives of the " {London, the only one of the popes to be 685) has this to say · specifically of dared the ill favor of Charles by surgeon colleague there that 'etros pointed out to Dante in Paradise. "E Physicus wrote his first medicD JOOk, John XXI., "He wrote many Pietro lspano," says Bonaventura, "Lo electing Orsini just at that time, the . ·-' .. •,. rgical in his life, especially certain •' good Cardinal Deacon would un­ "A Dietetic Treatment of ~ qual giu luce in dodici libelli. " .•· .:·•, 1 ...... ",. Patients." Later on his writing came of Physick; for he was counted a doubt~<:fiy have suffered the deadly ~ ·~ . ~·.. } . ... aood Physician." The En- cruelties that brought the ·reign of to include annotations on the Vv ·ks of 1 a t:vc11nn~dia and Monsignor Mann's Ottoboni Fieschi (Adrian V) to an Avicenna, Isaac Judaeus, ~ alen, "Lives of the Popes" are similarly ., ,. _. unhappy and untimely close. The Hippocrates, and other medh. : ref- REFERENCES llllequivocal. choice called for a quality of states­ erences of the time. l ·, manship worthy of the moment, and j tten Petrus Hispanus Physicus deserves thus the Conclave chose a man from The most important of the Guthrie, Douglas. "A History ofMedicine", this credit for having been years neutral , Cardinal Bishop contributions to medicine h J. P. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, Petrus Hispanus, Physician; albeit, physician-pope are, "A Pharrr :;ope a .of his tiine in the rejection of London, 1946,p. 115. both haste and pressure affected their for the Poor" (Thesarus PauJ ·rum) ns and evil spirits as the cause of IU JSea.se. He did believe, however, that Mann, R. Rev. Mnsgr., Horace, K. "Lives of deliberations. and "A Book of Eye Diseases" Liber body is under the influence of the the Popes of the Middle Ages", Herder, de Oculi}. St. Louis, 1932, 16: 31-56. The Physician-Pope was the son of a and· that this influence could The Ihesarus, which is dedic. ed to interpreted through astrological Riesman, D. "A Physician in the Papal physician, one Julianus, who sent him ., Pope Gregory X, is a collect m of Chair", Ann. Med. History, 5: 291, 1923. to study with the famous Faculty of ... at the prescriptions for every diseas then .... ' where in due time Petrus was made known. Written before the in'. ntion of printing, it was copied innun Magister of Medicine. Earlier he had ~ rable .... •. . . . ~· ~ ·. been a fellow-pupil of , times to satisfy its popular d( ·nand. . , ...... , and together they must have sat at the Those who have reviewed the :arlier feet of William Shyreswood, the great copies have remarked that the manY copyists who passed it along mu' I have English logician, whom Bacon ranked i ·. , .; :. . ~ . above Albertus Magnus, the dominant added their own favorite recipe since ... , scholastic of the time. in its later forms it is a bewil i ering conglomeration of all of the n:edical ... . As for this plan of studies, it will be notions of the Middle Ages. (: t was recalled that the university programs first printed . in 14 76 and 14 6 at of the Middle Ages were catholic, in Antwerp and again in 1497 .) . ...

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