The Physician Who Became Pope

The Linacre Quarterly Volume 28 | Number 1 Article 4 February 1961 The hP ysician Who Became Pope William M. Crawford Follow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq Recommended Citation Crawford, William M. (1961) "The hP ysician Who Became Pope," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 28 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol28/iss1/4 :iUMMARY proper understanding and preci The foregoing comments repre ation of those fundament norms sent nothing more than a standard will make it possible to erceive synopsis of current theological the total significance of ti practi teaching on the question of ectopic cal conclusion expressed Direc- The Physician pregnancy. Emphasis has been tive 20: placed on the basic moral prin In extrauterine pregnancy tl affected part of the mother (e.g., ar. vary or ciples on which that teaching de fallopian tube) may be rem. ed, even Who Became Pope pends, in the hope that certain though the life of the fetus thus in misconceptions of our position may directly terminated, provided e opera· tion cannot be postponed with . notably thereby be corrected. Only a increasing the danger to the , ther. WILLIAM M. CRAWFORD, M.D. Fort Worth, Texas branches of philosophical learning, By MODERN standards, the transformation of a successful it was not abnormal for Petrus to practicing physician into a pope is pass from the logic of Aristotle almost unthinkable. Yet this is pre and the Arabian philosophers to cisely what happened in the thir medicine. teenth century when the renowned During the middle of the thir Petrus Hispanus exchanged his teenth century Petrus was a teach scalpel for the papal ring and keys er of medicine at Siena when the to become Pope John XXI. ambitious town was about to es tablish its own university. It was It must be remembered that the thirteenth century was a period of here that he wrote his first medical intellecual awakening that marked work, "A Dietetic Treatment of the beginnings 'of the Renaissance. Surgical Patients," at the request One of the characteristics of the of his colleague, a surgeon, John Mordentis of Faenza. period was its union of medicine and theology. pue chiefly to the Before his election to the pap fact that virtually all learning for acy. Petrus had become not only centuries had been in the hands a high church dignitary but a pop of the clergy. ular and famous practicing physi Petrus was born in Lisbon be cian. His name was a medical tween 1210 and 1220. Little is household word in the middle ages. known of his early life. He was the An Italian, Ottoboni Fleschi, 110n of a Lisbon physician, Juli Pope Adrian V, was the preceding anus. He first appeared as a stu pope. Adrian had suffered so much dent at the University of Paris. during his election at the conclave There, as a fellow student of supervised by Charles of Anjou Roger Bacon, he came under the that he lived only 38 days as pope in8uence of the great logician. and died at Viterbo, August 18, William Shyreswood. 1276. As medicine was not then sharp A new conclave was assembled ly separated f r o m the other at once. Because of the hot weath- 15 Ii LINACRE QUARTERLY Pl!BRUARY, 1961 er and ass& Jts from the excitable known. Beginning at ti top of Doctor Before the Actual World." John XXI, the only physician whc the head with a "cure fc the fa Viterbians, a compromise candi The prize consists of 5,000 Belgian ever sat in the chair of St. Peter lynge heare" and endinr ,vith "a date was hastily elected by the francs. in Rome. drinke agaynst the fistt cardinals. On September 20, 1276. !," this REFERENCE: the Cardinal Bishop of Tusculurr:, book had an enormous Jgue in At St. Paul's Basilica in Rome, R,esman, David: A Physici�n in the Petrus Hispanus, was elected Pope the middle ages. By bei: copied a frieze with medailion portraits of Papal Chair, Ann. Med. Hist., 5:291- John XXI. and recopied, before the scovery the popes contains a likeness of 300 (Winter) 1923. The choice logically should ha, e of printing in 1450, ever copyist gone to the great Cardinal Deacon added his own favorite resc rip John Cajetanus Orsini, but the tion until the work flnall became conclave did not wish to offend a mixture of medical treat ent and Reprinted with the kind perr:iission of the magical formulas of the est gro Texas State Journal of Medicine. Novem Charles of Anjou by electing an ber, 1958. Italian, so they picked a man from tesque sort. For example, '\gaynst the neutral country of Portugal. dronkennes - Give unto 'iat man However, John Cajetanus Orsini that is given to dronke 1es, the had not long to wait. He soon suc Leghtes of a shepe, anC: 1e shall ceeded the man whose election he feele no dronkennes. Gi ! unto a himself had brought about. As dronken man the ashes ,f burnt Nicholas III he followed Pope swallowes and he shal not be John a year later in 1277. dronke whyle he lyvet ' "For bledynge at the nose - ·1e joyce Pope John's reign, though pop of hogges dounge case ·nto the ular, was shortened by a strange nostrelles d o t h restr ne the accident. He was engaged in the bloud." "To provoke the Jures - study of the problem of the papacy A supposytory or pessai of cot when on May 14, 1277, the ceiling ton dypt in Tirbyntyne d h dense of his workroom crashed down up the matrice." on him. He died six days later. Pope John was buried at Viterbo The chapter "of the C .yke and in the Church of San Lorenzo. His the Payne called ilia ca Jassion" grave was forgotton until 1886. undoubtedly refers to ap 1 �ndicitis. when at the expense of the Portu guese ambassador and Pope Leo The above, though ve y crude. XIII a monument was erected to represents treatment bef re anat his memory. omy was given to us by Vesalius The greatest work of Petrus and the circulation of the blood by Hispanus was the popular "The Harvey. saurus Pauperum" (Treasury of At the present time, P0pe John Medicine for the Poor Man). This XXI has his name linked with an famous treatise was printed for the international prize for medical eth first time at Antwerp in 1476. The ics. The "John XXI International book probably was written at the Prize for Medical Ethics .. was in• court of Gregory X, to whom it stituted at Paris in 195 i by the was dedicated. Association of Portuguese Cath The "Thesaurus" is a collection olic Doctors. The competition of recipes for every disease then theme is "Responsibility of the 17 16 LINACRE QUARTERLY PBBRUARY, 1961 .

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