LXX. PETER OF ABANO…

LXX. PETER OF ABANO

Plan of this chapter--Birth and family--Travels abroad--At Paris--His Latin version of Abraham Aben Ezra--Conversation with Marco Polo--Translations from the Greek--Did he teach at Bologna?--Return to Padua--Three works of astronomy and astrology--Publications in the year 1310--Undated and spurious works--Closing years of his life--Relations with the church--Great reputation--Not a miracle in a rude age--But completed the work of his period--No mere compiler--The Conciliator his masterpiece--Its method--Specimens of its questions--Was Peter the founder of Averroism at Padua?--Reputation for magic--Summary of occult science in the Conciliator--Definition of astronomy and astrology--Nature controlled by the stars--Astrology a science--And not magic--Occult virtues from the stars--Astrological medicine--The stars and length of life--Nativities--Revolution of the eighth sphere--Conjunctions--The astrological interpretation of history--Chronology--Astrological images--The stars and invocations, incantations, and fascination--Stars and spirits--Were Peter’s views heretical?--Fascination--Incantations--Number mysticism--Poisoning and magic--The treatise De venenis--Specific form or valence--An allusion to alchemy--Mineral, vegetable, and animal poisons--How poison takes effect--Safeguards against poison--The Bezoar--Physiognomy--Astrology in his other works--Attitude to “magic”--Magic books ascribed to him--Geomancy--Conclusion.

Appendix I. Previous accounts of Peter of Abano.

Original sources--Michael Savonarola--Secondary accounts since 1500.

Appendix II. A Bibliography of Peter Abano’s writings.

Arrangement--Translation of Abraham Aben Ezra, 1293--The Physiognomy, 1295--Problems of Alexander of Aphrodisias--Translations of Galen--The Conciliator, 1303--On the astrolabe--On the motion of the eighth sphere, 1310--The Lucidator, 1310--Commentary on the Problems of Aristotle, 1310--On poisons, 1316(?)--Addition to Mesuë--Dioscorides--Pseudo-Hippocrates--Geomancy--Prophecies-- Heptameron, or Elements of magic--Elucidarium necromanticum--Annulorum experimenta--Circulus philosophicus.

Appendix III. Peter of Abano, Abraham Aben Ezra, and Henry Bate.

French translation from the Hebrew--Peter’s Latin version--Additional treatises in Peter’s version--A Latin translation by Henry Bate--Other writings of Henry Bate--Other works by Abraham.

Appendix IV. Was Peter called to Treviso in 1314?

Appendix V. Peter’s salary at Padua.

Amount exaggerated--Why was it so far in arrears?

Appendix VI. When did Peter die?

Appendix VII. Was the De venenis addressed to Pope John XXII?

Survey of the editions and MSS--Inference from a citation of Avenzoar--Popes and poisons.

Appendix VIII. Peter and the Inquisition.

His own statement in the Conciliator--His professions of orthodoxy--Does his will show fear of the Inquisition?--Gloria’s inference--Did Peter’s sons inherit his property?--If so, how?--Burning of Peter’s bones for heresy--The account of Michael Savonarola--Scardeone’s account--Naudé’s statement.

“... he reconciled conflicts, a wonderful warrior!” --Tomasini (1630) p. 22.

[Sidenote: Plan of this chapter]

Peter of Abano, or Peter of Padua, as he was often called from the larger city near his birthplace where he did much of his teaching, was one of the most influential men of learning during the last years of the thirteenth and the opening years of the fourteenth century. Of his writings in medicine, philosophy, and astronomy many are extant, and most of these in printed editions. Yet he has never been adequately or accurately treated in English. In our language there have merely been brief notices of or incidental references to him in histories of science and medicine, or of the inquisition and of rationalism in Europe, or in general encyclopedias. Such passages and parallel ones in foreign languages[2757] often give dates of Peter’s life or death incorrectly, or do injustice to his opinions from an insufficient or very indirect knowledge of his works, or represent him as a victim of the Inquisition and an example of the hostility of the medieval church to science to an extent which the sources do not justify. There are, however, in European languages, especially Italian, some secondary studies of importance concerning Peter. It is upon these and a direct examination of his works that the present chapter will be based. To avoid prolixity of text and footnotes, details of bibliography[2758] and a number of problems concerning his life which require to be discussed at some length have been transferred to appendices at the close of the chapter. In the present text, since most of Peter’s works can be dated rather exactly and since they were among the chief events of his life, we may combine biography and bibliography in large measure. We shall then treat somewhat, although by no means adequately, of his place in the history of science, and finally of his propensities toward astrology and other varieties of magic.

[Sidenote: Birth and family.]

Peter’s own statements in his chief work, the Conciliator,[2759] show that he wrote it in the year 1303, after having worked it over in class-room lectures and discussions for ten years previously, and that he was fifty-three years of age at that time. In other words, he was born in 1250. On one point of his biography more precise and scientific detail is forthcoming than is customary in the lives of the great men of the past, for he confides exactly how long a time elapsed before his birth, nine months and fourteen days, as he had learned by astrological scrutiny and from his “most careful mother.”[2760] In his will Peter gives his father’s name as Constantius of Abano,[2761] and he was probably the notary of that name whose tombstone inscription has been preserved.[2762] Scardeone stated that Peter had one son named Benvenuto,[2763] whose name also appears in a list of inhabitants of Padua in 1320[2764] and who took part in a street fight there in 1325.[2765] Gloria was the first to call attention to two other sons, named Pietro and Zuffredo, whose names appear together with their brother’s in deeds of sale and of inheritance of November 19, 1318, and February 2, 1321. Gloria was of the opinion that these sons were illegitimate, and Peter’s failure to make them his heirs in his will may perhaps be so interpreted, but they are not called natural sons in the documents.

[Sidenote: Travels abroad.]

At some time of unknown date Peter was in Sardinia, where he says he saw a case of poisoning from “Pharaoh’s fig,”[2766] and at Constantinople, where he discovered a volume of the Problems of Aristotle, which he translated into Latin for the first time. It was probably there too that he saw a Greek version of Dioscorides arranged alphabetically--his own edition of Dioscorides follows another text, the medieval Latin version--and secured the works of Galen and other treatises which Michael Savonarola[2767] says that he translated from Greek into Latin. Peter is also said to have visited Spain, England, and Scotland, but I have found no proof of this, although allusions to such visits may possibly occur somewhere in his voluminous works.

[Sidenote: At Paris.]

A number of years of Peter’s life were spent at the University of Paris, where Michael Savonarola states that he was regarded as a second Aristotle and called “the great Lombard.” There he wrote his work on Physiognomy (liber compilationis phisonomie) which he dedicated to Bordelone Bonacossi who was captain-general of Mantua from 1292 to 1299. In the version which has reached us and which is dated 1295 Peter alludes to an earlier draft which had gone astray and had failed to reach its destination in Italy.

[Sidenote: His Latin version of Abraham Aben Ezra.]

In 1293 Peter found astrological writings of the Jew, Abraham Aben Ezra, who had flourished at Toledo in the twelfth century, defectively translated from Hebrew into French,[2768] and therefore published a Latin revision of his own, apparently also adding treatises which had not been included in the previous translation.[2769] This raises the question whether Peter was acquainted with Hebrew and Arabic,[2770] or whether he may have used a Greek version of Abraham’s treatises in correcting the French one. At any rate Peter’s Latin version of Abraham’s astrological works had a widespread influence, as it was retranslated into various European vernaculars and apparently even back again into Arabic.[2771]

[Sidenote: Conversation with Marco Polo.]

Peter talked with the famous oriental traveler, Marco Polo, at some time between the latter’s return to Venice in 1295 and the completion of the Conciliator, in which he cites Marco’s statements to him concerning tropical countries near the equator.[2772]

[Sidenote: Translations from the Greek.]

A translation of the Problems of Alexander medicus is ascribed to Peter in the list of his works in a fifteenth century manuscript.[2773] This can hardly refer to Alexander of Tralles. Perhaps what is meant is a translation of the Problems of Alexander of Aphrodisias, of which I know only one manuscript where it is dated 1302. Savonarola, however, states that Peter translated the Aphorisms of Alexander and also the Rhetoric of Aristotle, but the latter translation does not seem to be extant. Some at least of Peter’s translations of Galen’s works would appear to have been executed before 1303, since they are referred to by him in the Conciliator. Also two of them are found in manuscripts dated as early as 1304 and 1305, the latter containing Peter’s completion of the translation of Galen’s Therapeutic Method begun by Burgundio of Pisa.

[Sidenote: Did he teach at Bologna?]

This last manuscript was written at Bologna in 1305 and is about the only evidence we have to support the old tradition, which was already questioned by Mazzuchelli, that Peter taught at Bologna.[2774]

[Sidenote: Return to Padua.]

Savonarola seems correct in stating that Peter completed the Conciliator and began the composition of his Commentary on the Problems of Aristotle at Paris, and the Explicit of the latter work likewise states that Peter wrote part of it in Paris and finished it at Padua in 1310. He left Paris therefore at some time after 1303 and returned to Padua at some time before 1310. Apparently he might have been in Bologna in 1305 but in 1307 he is listed as a member of a gild in Padua.[2775] Grabmann in his recent researches concerning the thirteenth century translations of Aristotle has called attention to a translation of the History of Animals made from the Greek in 1260 and of which Peter of Abano purchased a copy in 1309 from Francesco of Mantua for the price of seven Venetian soldi.[2776]

[Sidenote: Three works of astronomy and astrology.]

In the Conciliator Peter refers a number of times to three works of his in the fields of astronomy and astrology, namely, a treatise on the astrolabe, another on the motion of the eighth sphere, and a work entitled Lucidator, of which the preface and a few chapters are extant and which perhaps was never finished, since such allusions to the work in the Conciliator as I have noted are to these few chapters, while from the nature of these same allusions to the Lucidator and from its own preface one would expect it to be of somewhat the same length as the bulky Conciliator, since it was to discuss disputed points in the fields of astronomy and astrology in the same way that the Conciliator discussed them in the field of medicine.

[Sidenote: Publications in the year 1310.]

But we now encounter the seeming difficulty that, while both the Lucidator and work on the motion of the eighth sphere are cited in the Conciliator, which was finished in 1303, they both mention 1310 as the date of their composition. A further indication that the Lucidator was published after the Conciliator is that in its preface Peter states that its method and arrangement will be similar to those of the Conciliator, which is also cited later in the text itself.[2777] Apparently, therefore, Peter had written first drafts of the two astronomical works before he finished the Conciliator in 1303, but did not complete or publish them until 1310. In that same year, as we have seen, he completed his Commentary on the Problems of Aristotle.

[Sidenote: Undated and spurious works.]

No definite date can be assigned for some of Peter’s works, namely, his continuation of the Grabadin of the Arabian physician, Yuhanna ibn Masawaih, to whose second book on remedies appropriate to diseases of particular parts of the body he added a discussion of remedies for complaints of the heart and digestive organs, and his edition of the medieval Latin version of the Materia medica of Dioscorides, of which we have treated in an earlier chapter.[2778] Peter is also credited with a Latin edition of the little tract on astrological medicine, or prognostication of diseases according to the motion of the moon in the signs; but a Latin translation of the same work is also attributed to William of Moerbeke who lived a little earlier. Some other medical treatises that have been ascribed to Peter, like the Questions on Fevers, listed in Mazzuchelli’s bibliography, are really portions of the Conciliator. Works of geomancy and magic attributed to Peter and probably spurious will be described more fully later in connection with those subjects.

[Sidenote: Closing years of his life.]

It has been stated by more than one author that Peter went to Treviso to teach medicine in 1314, but it is doubtful if he even received a definite call from that city, although it had his name under consideration.[2779] His salary at Padua has repeatedly been stated at the high figure of five hundred pounds or lire a month but this amount really represents his annual stipend.[2780] He must, however, have been fairly well-to-do--we have hints that his practice was lucrative--for in 1315 when he made his will he had not been paid any salary for three or four years, and yet had considerable property. Peter was dead before the close of 1318,[2781] but the apparent attribution of his work on poisons to Pope John XXII[2782] makes it seem that he lived beyond August, 1316. One manuscript of that treatise speaks of Peter as acting dean of Montpellier at that time, but this is unlikely.[2783]

[Sidenote: Relations with the church.]

We have dubious stories and more reliable data to show both that Peter had intimate and friendly relations with popes, whom he seems to have served in a medical capacity and from whom he received patronage and protection, and on the other hand that he was in difficulties with the Inquisition.[2784] Besides the fact that his work on poisons was certainly written for some pope, if not for John XXII, we have the tale that he was physician to Pope Honorius IV (1285-1287) and charged him one hundred florins a day.[2785] On the other hand, we have the assertion of Thomas of Strasburg, Prior-General of the Augustinian Friars from 1345 to 1357 that he was present in Padua when the bones of Peter of Abano were burned for his heretical errors, and the statements of still later writers, which are perhaps after all merely unwarrantable inferences from Thomas’s assertion and from Peter’s own words in his will and the Conciliator, that Peter died while under trial a second time by the Inquisition, which had once before instituted proceedings against him unsuccessfully. But these matters require a longer discussion than seems advisable now and so will be treated of more fully in Appendix VIII to this chapter.

[Sidenote: Great reputation.]

The promptness with which Peter’s works appeared in book form after the invention of printing and the number of times that the Conciliator and some others were reprinted attest his long continued reputation and popularity as a medical authority and man of broad general learning. Regiomontanus, the renowned mathematician of the fifteenth century, when lecturing on Alfraganus at Padua, delivered a public panegyric upon Peter of Abano.[2786] It was perhaps to be expected that Michael Savonarola, grandfather of the famous friar who tried to reform Florence and himself a physician and medical writer of some note, should belaud Peter in his work on the great citizens of Padua in the past, which he wrote about 1445; and that these eulogies should be repeated in such books as Scardeone’s On the Antiquity of the City of Padua, Naudé’s Apology for Great Men who have been falsely suspected of Magic, Tomasini’s Eulogies of Illustrious Men adorned with pictures, and Duchastel’s Lives of Illustrious Physicians. But Peter’s reputation at the close of the middle ages is also attested in a criticism of some of his views by Symphorien Champier which was written in 1514 and is found appended to the 1526 edition of the Conciliator. Champier’s object is to correct Abano’s errors, that is to say, those passages in the Conciliator where he regards Peter’s views as bordering too closely upon magic or of too extreme an astrological character for a Christian. But he admits Peter’s great medical reputation, stating that the most learned physicians praise the medical and philosophical views of the Conciliator and that Peter is believed to have surpassed all other Christian physicians in his study of medicine and advancement of truth. But, as Horace says, even Homer nods; hence Champier will correct Peter in a few points in order to enable lovers of Peter’s doctrines to get the benefit of them without falling into his occasional errors.

[Sidenote: Not a miracle in a rude age.]

The writers of the Renaissance and of early modern times became so enthusiastic over Peter of Abano, and at the same time so failed to appreciate the character and accomplishments of medieval learning in general, that they were wont to depict him as a miracle of learning in a rude age--just as more recent scholars have over-estimated Roger Bacon’s superiority to his time--and to regard the physician of Padua, like the author of the Divine Comedy, as a precursor of their own period rather than as a final representative and product of a rich earlier period of culture. Thus Scardeone in the sixteenth century spoke of him as the first medical translator from Greek into Latin since Roman days, forgetting earlier medieval translators of Greek medicine like Burgundio of Pisa and William of Moerbeke. And in the seventeenth century Tomasini called Peter “a man most illustrious, in genius, doctrine, and merits, in a rude and unhappy age,” while Naudé declared him “a man who appeared as a prodigy and a miracle in his age.” This depreciation of the times in which Peter had lived became accentuated, as in the similar case of Roger Bacon, by the report that he had been persecuted by the medieval church.

[Sidenote: But completed the work of his period.]

As a matter of fact, as Dante really closed the medieval period of the flourishing of vernacular literature and the age of romance, so Peter of Abano came in a sense at the close of a period or movement in the history of science. He thus not unnaturally occupied himself especially in supplementing, correcting, and reconciling the work of his predecessors. Some works that had been unsatisfactorily translated, he retranslated. Such important works of Aristotle, Galen, and others as he could find that had not yet been translated, he translated from Greek into Latin. He filled in the missing portion of the medical work of Yuhanna ibn Masawaih. And in his Conciliator, a tome of enormous bulk, he endeavored to reconcile and harmonize the conflicting opinions of the medical men and philosophers who had gone before him.

[Sidenote: No mere compiler.]

Pico della Mirandola at the close of the fifteenth century made a trenchant criticism of Peter’s erudition, when he characterized him as “a man fitted by nature to collect rather than to digest.” But this judgment was also too severe, for Peter was no mere compiler, but something of an experimental astronomer as well as a painstaking and critical translator, voluminous commentator upon Aristotle, and great medical authority. In the Conciliator he makes several references to his personal astronomical observations and to other treatises which he has composed upon astronomical topics and which are at least in part extant. He did not hesitate to correct the astronomical calculations of Ptolemy, and appreciated the margin of error in astronomical observations caused by variations in the construction of instruments as well as in their employment by the human observer.[2787] His Lucidator, we have seen, was intended to parallel in the field of astronomy and astrology the achievement of the Conciliator in that of medicine; but the portion completed or extant is not a great addition to Peter’s science, since it covers about the same ground already discussed in portions of the Conciliator and more especially in the treatise on the motion of the eighth sphere.

[Sidenote: The Conciliator his masterpiece.]

The Conciliator therefore remains his chief work and the one for which he is most famous, his masterpiece and most influential writing. Like the Opus Maius of Roger Bacon, it to a large extent covers his views as expressed elsewhere and is representative of his philosophy and learning as a whole. It is in many ways a valuable historical document, providing a good example of scholastic method, a broad picture of the state of medieval medicine, and much incidental illustration of the more general knowledge of Peter’s times, as when he alludes to the overland travelers and to the ocean voyages of the thirteenth century. He learned from Marco Polo that there was human life in the Antipodes, he cites a letter of John of Monte Corvino from India “in the coasts where lies the body of the Apostle Thomas,” he alludes to the attempt of two Genoese galleys to reach India by sea “almost thirty years ago”[2788]--two centuries before Vasco da Gama and Columbus. The Conciliator does not, however, quite cover the entire field of medieval science. The subjects of “geometry and perspective,” for instance, Peter rather avoids, explaining, “The arguments taken from the books of geometricians and students of perspective, such as Euclid, Alhazen, and others, and marked out by letters of the alphabet, I omit because most of those for whom I am writing are unfamiliar with that sort of thing.”[2789]

[Sidenote: Its method.]

The Conciliator is made up of over two hundred questions or “Differences” which Peter and his associates have been investigating publicly for the past ten years. Each problem is stated and any doubtful terminology is explained; the utterances of past authorities anent the question are reviewed; the true solution is then reached and the reasons for it given; fourth and finally, hostile objections are answered. This rigid scheme of argumentation does not, however, prevent Peter from indulging in a deal of rather rambling digression. This makes a very long volume, especially as supplementary questions or corollaries are added to some of the two hundred odd Differentiae. Also it is, like most works in scholastic form, hard and tiresome reading, as one has to keep in mind all the authorities and objections which Peter has cited and raised until he finally gets around to answering them. Many of the questions concern purely medical matters and admit little debate between philosophers and physicians. The first ten, however, deal with general questions such as whether medicine is a science, whether a doctor ought to be a logician, whether the human body is amenable to medicine, and whether the physician can help the sick by a knowledge of astronomy. Nearly a hundred distinctions are then concerned with medical theory concerning the elements, the physical constitution, generation, the members of the human body, fevers, and kindred questions. The last odd hundred distinctions deal with matters of medical practice and personal hygiene.

[Sidenote: Specimens of its questions.]

The mere list of these questions is interesting and illuminating, and a few of them may be reproduced here to show the kind of questions then debated by doctors--some of them are identical with the questions put by Petrus Hispanus in his Commentary on the Diets of Isaac--and to illustrate the broader scientific and philosophical interests of Peter’s volume and time.

11. Is the number of the elements four or otherwise?

14. Has air weight in its own sphere?

23. Is the brain of hot or moist complexion?

28. Is manhood hotter than childhood or youth?

30. Does blood alone nourish?

42. Is the flesh or the heart the organ of touch?[2790]

52. Does the marrow nourish the bones?

57. Is vital virtue something different from natural and animal virtue?

66. Is spring temperate?

67. Is life possible below the equator?

69. Is the white of an egg hot and the yolk cold?

70. (Supplement). Is wine good for children?

72. Is there a mean between health and sickness?

77. Is pain felt?

79. Is a small head a better sign than a large one?

80. Are the arteries dilated when the heart is and constricted also when it is?

81. Is there attraction exercised when the arteries dilate and a loosening when they are constricted?

83. Is musical consonance found in the pulse?

101. Can a worm be generated in the belly?

103. (Supplement). Is death more likely to occur by day or night?

110. (Supplement). Are eggs beneficial in fevers?

114. Does the air alter us more than food or drink does?

115. Is life shortened more in autumn than other seasons?

118. (Supplement). Should one take exercise before or after meals?

119. Should heavy food be taken before light?

120. Should one eat once, twice, or several times a day?

121. Should dinner be at noon or night?[2791]

122. Should one drink on top of fruit?

123. Should one sleep on the right or left side?

135. Does confidence of the patient in the doctor assist the cure?

153. Is every cure by contrary?

154. Should treatment begin with strong or weak medicine?

157. Does sleep help the cure?

171. Is cold water good in fevers?

182. (Supplement). Can fever coincide with apoplexy?

183. Is paralysis of the right side harder to cure than that of the left?

193. Can consumption be cured?

194. Does milk agree with consumptives?

204. Is a narcotic good for colic?

206. Is blood-letting from the left hand a proper treatment for gout in the right foot?

[Sidenote: Was Peter the founder of Averroism at Padua?]

Peter has often been called a disciple of Averroes and the founder of Averroism in Italy at Padua,[2792] but I have noticed little in his works to substantiate this. Renan admits that Peter knew neither the Colliget nor the medical works of Averroes, while the doctrine of religious change according to astrological conjunctions which he takes as a sign of Averroism[2793] in Peter came of course from much earlier Arabian astrologers. Indeed, it would seem that most of the points of view which are loosely designated by the word “Averroism” had been common enough among earlier Arabic writers and had even in considerable measure been taken from other sources than Averroes himself by the Latin world. Only if we accept the very dubious and loose assertion of Renan that “medicine, Arabism, Averroism, astrology, incredulity, became almost synonymous terms,”[2794] can we connect Peter of Abano with Averroism and even then we have the obstacles that Peter often makes profession of Christian faith and that Steinschneider asserts that he made no translations from the Arabic.[2795] And if astrological medicine be Averroistic, Peter was certainly not the first Averroist in Italy.

[Sidenote: Reputation for magic.]

Along with his reputation among the learned as a medical authority Peter acquired a popular reputation as a magician and nigromancer. This reputation had become established by the middle of the fifteenth century, when Michael Savonarola tells us that Peter’s great knowledge of astronomy enabled him to make such predictions that men thought he employed magic, and that the present tradition among his fellow townsmen is that Abano was most skilled in the magic art. Of Peter’s astrological skill Savonarola tells the story that, noting the approach of an unusually favorable constellation, he advised the immediate building of a new Padua in order to make her the queen of all cities. Similarly Scardeone ascribed to Peter the idea of the numerous astrological pictures illustrating the influence of the planets and signs upon terrestrial life with which the ceiling of the Palazzo della Ragione at Padua is adorned.[2796] A different story and on the whole perhaps the most incredible one is told by Benvenuto of Imola,[2797] perhaps seventy years after Peter’s death. About to die, Peter said that his life had been especially devoted to three noble sciences, of which one, philosophy, made him subtle; the second, medicine, made him rich; and the third, astrology, made him a liar.

But to return to Peter’s reputation as a magician. Savonarola, whom we were quoting and who evidently has a favorable opinion of magic, continues, “Moreover, this helps to round out his teaching, nor is it contrary to his other sciences, but makes the man the more illustrious.” Naudé,[2798] on the contrary, endeavored to exculpate Peter from the charge of magic and regarded “the common opinion of almost all authors” that he “was the greatest magician of his age and learned the seven liberal arts from seven familiar spirits whom he held captive in a crystal,” as a legend developed from Peter’s astrological predictions and from his own statements concerning incantations in the 156th Differentia of the Conciliator. As for the story of seven familiar spirits, already before Naudé Giovan Francesco Pico[2799] had noted the incongruity between the universal reputation of Peter of Abano as a magician and the doctrine attributed to him that there are no demons. Among the authors whom Naudé had in mind was doubtless the learned Bodin who in the sixteenth century declared that Peter of Abano was proved to have been easily the chief of Italy’s magicians. Naudé admitted that Peter had left treatises in physiognomy, geomancy, and chiromancy, but held that he had then abandoned “the idle curiosity of his youth to devote himself wholly to philosophy, medicine, and astrology.”[2800] We have already stated that Champier’s criticisms of Peter’s teachings largely related to astrology and magic. Let us now turn to Peter’s own works and see what his attitude in regard to such matters really was.

[Sidenote: Summary of occult science in the Conciliator.]

In the Conciliator, as in most of his writings, Peter manifests a marked weakness for astrology and an extensive familiarity with that art. His penchant displays itself in the very prologue where he mentions “the power of genesis in the stars” (vim geneseos sydeream) in stating that most men are slaves not only in body but also in the nature of their minds. Peter also occasionally displays a credulous interest in dreams, fascination, incantations, and other varieties of magic. The sections of the Conciliator in which he has most to say of such matters are as follows. In the ninth Difference, “Whether human nature is weakened from what it was of old?” he appeals to astronomy and astrology for support of his views and digresses to speak of his own astronomical researches and publications and of the influence of the stars. The tenth Differentia, “Whether a doctor to-day can help the sick by his knowledge of astronomy?” discusses at considerable length the arguments against the art of astrology and argues in favor of astrological medicine. Question one hundred and thirteen, “Whether natural death can be retarded by any benefit?” involves further astrological discussion. In Difference one hundred and fifty-six the efficacy of incantations in medicine is considered. We shall have occasion, however, to cite many other Differentiae than these four.

[Sidenote: Definition of astronomy and astrology.]

By Peter’s time the words “astronomy” and “astrology” were beginning to be used in about their present meaning. He is at pains to explain that their derivation from the similar Greek words, nomos and logos, does not justify this distinction. But he accepts the division of the science of the heavens into two parts, one descriptive and dealing with the measurement and motion of the stars, the other judicial and studying their effects. This latter is subdivided as usual into the branches of revolutions, nativities, interrogations, and elections, which last includes the science of images. Conjunctions go with revolutions.

[Sidenote: Nature controlled by the stars.]

In the tenth Differentia of the Conciliator Peter lists and replies to a number of arguments against the art of astrology, such as that the distances involved are too great, the number of stars too numerous, their influences too diverse and conflicting, the instant of nativity too minute, to admit of accurate calculation and prediction. These objections remind us of those raised by Sextus Empiricus. Against such objections Peter adduces not only arguments of his own, but the opinions of philosophers, astrologers, and physicians. All wise men agree, he says, that aside from God, the celestial bodies are the first causes of happenings in this world. Aristotle and the Commentator,[2801] indeed, hold that God does not act directly upon our lower world, and that all operations here are through mediums and instruments; but the true Christian Faith contends that the Creator can, if He will, affect His creatures “immediately and without motion and alteration.”[2802] Of the general law, however, that the natural world is universally controlled by the heavenly bodies there can be no doubt in Peter’s opinion. In another chapter[2803] he cites in favor of this view the assertion of Hermes, Enoch, or Mercury that each sand of the sea has its star influencing it, and that of the Centiloquium ascribed to Ptolemy that the face of this world is subject to the face of the heavens.

[Sidenote: Astrology a science.]

The only question is, how far are we able to follow the workings of this general law in individual cases? The perfect astrologer would require a thorough acquaintance with all the infinite detail of nature and the powers of mind and body. Often therefore astrologers can only approximately and not precisely predict what the stars signify. But the science of astrology should not be abused because certain men who call themselves astrologers or physicians but are really diviners and liars err in their judgments. But astrology proper is neither deceitful nor idle, and the astrologer “speaks the truth in most cases and very rarely fails of correct prognostication except in certain particulars.”[2804] Peter’s confidence in astrology despite the complexity of the problems involved reminds one a little of the confidence of the political or social scientist of the present in his methods compared to those of the mere politician or indiscriminate philanthropist.

[Sidenote: And not magic.]

Again in the first Differentia of the Lucidator Peter argues the question whether astronomy or astrology is a science and meets various arguments raised against the study of the stars.[2805] He holds that, while difficult and laborious, it is noble and honorable, a beautiful discipline adapted to the loftiest intellects, an entirely lawful and licit science. Like Michael Scot, Peter lists and defines various other arts of divination and magic in order to show that the science of the stars is in no way superstitious, as some of them are, and that it neither conjures spirits nor employs exorcisms and suffumigations, as do some arts of divination which try to justify themselves by claiming a connection with the highly reputable science of the stars. Like Guido Bonatti, Peter characterizes as “hypocrites” those who under pretense of defending God’s prerogatives attack judicial astrology as derogating from divine majesty and involving necessity and compulsion. Those who detest such a science should rather be detested themselves, he says, together with those vulgar deceivers and charlatans whom they mistake for astrologers.

[Sidenote: Occult virtues from the stars.]

Indeed, if the perfect astrologer should know nature and man thoroughly, it is also true in Peter’s opinion that astrology helps one to solve the problems of natural science. “We see,” he writes,[2806] “that precious stones and medicines have marvelous and occult virtues which cannot come from the qualities and natures of the elements (constituting them), since nothing acts beyond its species and every agent produces an effect in matter commensurate with itself.” It is useless to try to argue a priori from the qualities of the constituent elements what these occult properties of particular objects will be; they can be investigated only by experience. And it seems evident to Peter that they can be accounted for only as products of the influence of the stars. Indeed, the same species of plant, grown under a different quarter of the heavens, may acquire new virtues. All inferior objects, he affirms in another chapter,[2807] are filled by the action of those superior bodies with demoniac functions and virtues, so that Aristotle in De coelo et mundo says that some of the ancients held that all these objects are full of gods. An indeed suggestive passage from Aristotle, and more so than Peter of Abano or the Stagirite himself realized, tracing back the conception of occult virtue to its origin in fetishism and animism, whence too the gods sprang!

[Sidenote: Astrological medicine.]

Peter was convinced that a knowledge of astronomy and astrology was not only valuable but necessary in the practice of medicine. “Those who pursue medicine as they should and who industriously study the writings of their predecessors, these grant that this science of astronomy is not only useful but absolutely essential to medicine.”[2808] Peter cites Hippocrates and Haly in his support and advises the medical practitioner to look up the nativity of the patient, or, if this is impracticable, to address an interrogation on the case to an astrologer. By astronomy one can also foretell changes in the weather and regulate the treatment of the case accordingly. Diet and drink, purgatives and drugs, should all be administered with due regard to the constellations. Two Differentiae[2809] of the Conciliator discuss at length the theme of critical days and their relation to the phases of the moon, which planet, as Peter more than once explains, is assumed to represent the influence of all the others, while to it is especially delegated the control of generation and corruption. The doctor should therefore keep his eye especially upon the moon, a point further emphasized in the pseudo-Hippocratic treatise of astrological medicine which Peter is said to have translated. In still another chapter of the Conciliator[2810] the question at issue is whether blood-letting is preferable in the first or some other quarter of the moon. Surgeons, too, should not operate when the stars are unpropitious and should note the apportionment of the members of the human body among the signs of the zodiac. When the patient’s symptoms are ambiguous, the perplexed doctor may bridge the gap in his medical prognostication by recourse to astrology. This will tend to increase his reputation with his patients who will marvel at his power of prognostication. While thus discussing his tenth question, whether a doctor should know astronomy, Peter adds that astrology is useful in metaphysics as well as in medicine, giving as an example the fact that Aristotle appeals to astrologers at one point of his Metaphysics.

[Sidenote: The stars and length of life.]

Peter more than once touches upon the influence of the stars upon the length of human life: in Difference 9, for example, where he is inquiring whether men lived longer in ancient times than in his own day; in Difference 21, where the point at issue is whether a temperate “complexion” is more conducive to longevity, and where he indulges in considerable detail about the control of the planets over the process of generation; and in Difference 113, where the question is whether there is any way of putting off natural death. According to the astrologers, one hundred and twenty years--the length of a greater solar year--was the natural term of life, a considerable reduction from the age of the patriarchs of the Old Testament, but much longer than most men lived in Peter’s time. He thinks that the people of India live longer because their climate is subject to Saturn. In Difference 26 Peter divides the life of man into seven ages under the seven planets.

[Sidenote: Nativities.]

It is clear from many passages in the Conciliator that Peter believes that much of a man’s life and character can be inferred from his horoscope. The geniture of a prince may involve the slaughter of vast multitudes in war, although their own horoscopes may not have definitely indicated this fate for them but only a certain inclination in that direction.[2811] Peter devotes considerable space and pains to the process of generation and the problem of measuring the time of nativity. He gives physiological explanations why twins, even before birth, are not under the same astrological influence and approvingly quotes the lines of Lucan:[2812]

Stant gemini fratres fecundae gloria matris Quos eadem variis genuerunt viscera fatis.

[Sidenote: Revolution of the eighth sphere.]

In connection with the subdivision of judicial astrology known as revolutions Peter was especially interested in the motion of the eighth sphere of the fixed stars, concerning which we have seen he wrote a distinct treatise[2813] and of which he treats in both the Lucidator[2814] and Conciliator.[2815] Ptolemy had reckoned that the sphere of the fixed stars moved one degree in a hundred years and that consequently the eighth sphere made a complete revolution every 36,000 years. Albategni’s estimate was 23,760 years for a complete revolution or a motion of one degree in the course of sixty-six years. Peter’s own calculation was that one degree was accomplished in seventy years. He regarded this as a matter of great importance because of the vast changes which he believed the revolution of the eighth sphere brought about. Its influence could even change dry land into sea, as the story of the lost island of Atlantis showed. Peter mentions the doctrine of the magnus annus, held by “certain Stoics and Pythagoreans” that history would repeat itself as soon as the eighth sphere had accomplished a complete revolution. His own favorite theory, set forth three times in the aforesaid three works, was that when the heads of the equinoctial and tropical signs of the mobile zodiac come directly under the heads of the same signs of the immobile zodiac in the heaven of the fixed stars, then virtue from the First Cause passes in a more perfect manner through the mediate causes or heavens and men live longer and are stronger. For some five hundred years before and after the period of exact coincidence a golden age occurs, men of genius appear in large numbers, and the world tends to unite under one government. Such a period in Peter’s opinion was that of classical antiquity, when there were great rulers like Darius, Alexander, and Julius Caesar; great minds like Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics and Peripatetics, Euclid, Abrachys, Ptolemy, Galen, Cicero, and Vergil; and when both the Roman law and the Christian religion were promulgated. But then gradually, as the discrepancy between the mobile and immobile signs increases, all is changed to the contrary, human nature deteriorates, the span of life is shortened, monarchy is corrupted, faith and law are made light of, the people are oppressed, and true sages are rare indeed.

[Sidenote: Conjunctions.]

In a number of places in the Conciliator Peter discusses the subject of the effects of conjunctions of the planets. He states[2816] that very rarely at long intervals of time, when a greatest conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter occurs in the beginning of the sign of the ram, a well-balanced type of constitution[2817] is produced, but never more than a single specimen at one time. Such a man becomes “a prophet, introducing a new law or religion, and teaching sages and men.” Such a man, according to Isaac Amaraan, Avicenna, and Algazetes, is midway between angels and sages, and some say that Moses and Christ were such men. Peter also hints at a coincidence between the length of time that astrology teaches that such a perfectly proportioned physical constitution will last and the duration of Christ’s life. Champier included this passage in his list of Peter’s errors. Champier further attacked the astrological doctrine of great conjunctions and censured Peter for connecting Noah’s flood and the advent of Mohammed with them. In another passage[2818] concerning this same conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the first degree of Aries[2819] Peter asserted that it not only altered the strength of human nature and affected the length of life but produced new kingdoms and religions, as in the case of the respective advents of Moses, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Christ, and Mohammed.

[Sidenote: The astrological interpretation of history.]

This astrological interpretation of history Peter carries out in further detail. As he had divided man’s life into seven ages, so he distributed periods of history among the seven planets. Each presides in turn over human affairs for a period of 354 years and four lunar months, a term analogous to the number of days in the lunar year. When Mars governed the world, the flood occurred because of a greatest conjunction of the planets in the sign Pisces. Under the Moon’s supremacy happened the dispersion of tongues, overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, and escape of the children of Israel from Egypt. Peter also alludes to the less significant minor conjunctions which happen every twenty years, to the moderate ones which take place every 240 or 260 years, and to the effects following eclipses. A solar eclipse seventy years ago, he says, was followed by sterility of the soil, movements of phantasms and of good demons and bad demons, intercourse of incubi and succubi, a weakening of human nature and increase of avarice and cupidity.

[Sidenote: Chronology.]

The chronology of some of Peter’s astrological periods of history has been sharply criticized. Thus Lea remarks, “Even worse was his Averrhoistic indifference to religion manifested in the statement that the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the head of Aries, which occurs every 960 years, causes change in the monarchies and religions of the world as appears in the advent of Moses, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Christ, and Mahomet--a speculation whose infidelity was even worse than its chronology.”[2820] The printed editions of the Conciliator which I have consulted also give the time as 960 years, but it would seem as if the figure must have been wrongly copied in or from the manuscripts, since in the Lucidator,[2821] which I have examined in manuscript, Peter shows acquaintance with different systems of chronology, stating, for example, that Ptolemy and Galen flourished under Antoninus Pius in the year 886 of the era of Nebuchadnezzar or in 141 A. D. Peter therefore would appear to have known perfectly well that no such period as 960 years had elapsed between the time of Nebuchadnezzar and Christ, to say nothing of Alexander and Christ. In another passage of the Conciliator,[2822] moreover, Peter explains that conjunctions may precede by many years the events which they signify and produce but which are long in the making. Thus the conjunction for the flood preceded it by 287 years and the conjunction connected with Mohammed came fifty years before him, as Albumasar and Alchabitius state. In his treatise on the eighth sphere Peter stated that his theory of its motion and influence holds good independently of the question whether the world is eternal, as all the philosophers except Plato held, or had a beginning and when that beginning was. He gives, however, a list of various estimates of the number of years since creation, such as Bede’s estimate of 5259; Abraham Judaeus’ of 5071; the Septuagint, 7270; Josephus, 5262; and so on up to the enormous figure of 1,474,346,290 years given by the Indians and Persians.[2823]

[Sidenote: Astrological images.]

Peter believed not only that astrologers could predict the future with considerable assurance of success, but also that they could influence the future to suit themselves and perhaps change threatening misfortune into good fortune by applying to earthly objects the occult virtue of the heavenly bodies. The way to capture and store up such celestial influence is by means of images made by human art with due reference to the constellations. Of such astrological images Peter speaks frequently in the Conciliator.[2824] Physicians are advised to construct such images at the proper time when “the vivifying and health-exciting celestial light” will flow freely into them, as is illustrated by the astronomical images of Ptolemy, Thebith ben Chorat, and others. The figure of a scorpion made as the moon is leaving the sign of the scorpion cures that reptile’s bite.[2825] Human life can be prolonged by such images which add to the influx of astral force received at birth.[2826] On the other hand, Peter elsewhere states the theory that the impulse to construct an image was received at birth from the stars,[2827] and so does not really alter their influence. He usually, however, speaks as if the employment of images was a matter of choice. They are more often made by night than by day, so that the rays of the sun may not obscure and dissolve those of the other heavenly bodies.[2828] The astronomers of India employ allegorical images.[2829] Peter himself “has tested to remove pain in the intestines the figure of a lion impressed on gold when the sun was in mid-sky, with the heart of a lion, when Jupiter or Venus was in aspect and the evil unfortunate stars were declining.” He bound this amulet “on the bare flesh with a string made of sea calf’s hide and a clasp from the bone of a male whale.”[2830] What could be more magical? In another passage Peter notes that theologians attribute the efficacy of such images to demons, but he sets aside this suggestion as not in accord with his present method, which apparently takes into account only natural and not spiritual forces, although he suggests that the celestial light and force may be regarded as the instruments of intelligences.[2831] In the Lucidator Peter makes much the same distinction between astronomical and necromantic images as Albertus Magnus had made in the Speculum astronomiae. Notes by Peter on astrological images are contained in the Astrolabium planum, published in 1488.[2832]

[Sidenote: The stars and invocations, incantations, and fascination.]

Peter refers twice in the Conciliator[2833] to his success with an invocation to God to acquire knowledge, when the head of the dragon and Jupiter were together in mid-sky and the moon was approaching them. He also cites Albumasar in Sadam for a similar practice by “the kings of the Greeks,” when they wished to ask God for anything. Elsewhere[2834] he states that the defenders of fascination and incantations aver that their potency consists in the virtue which the soul of the operator receives from the stars, just as an image receives their motion and light. The horoscope of the person uttering the invocation is a factor of some importance, but not the preponderating influence.[2835] Not a few of the Magi invoke Jupiter, Saturn, or another heavenly body by the name of the intelligence which guides it.[2836]

[Sidenote: Stars and spirits.]

This last passage and one or two others already cited show that Peter was inclined to associate spirits and intelligences with the heavenly bodies. Once he describes a celestial body as “perpetual and incorruptible, leading through all eternity a life most sufficient unto itself, nor ever growing old.” In the same chapter[2837] he tells us that when Aristotle wished to investigate the number of Intelligences, he betook himself to two famous astrologers and according to the number of spheres as stated by them calculated the number of Intelligences. In the preceding chapter[2838] he had repeated from Averroes the following association of seven intelligences or angels with the planets: Saturn and Cassiel, Jupiter and Sachiel, Mars and Samael, the Sun and Michael, Venus and Anael, Mercury and Raphael, the Moon and Gabriel.

[Sidenote: Were Peter’s views heretical?]

This passage and Peter’s invocation are a dangerously close approach to astrological necromancy. Enough so perhaps to justify the reproach which Champier repeated from some “recent authority” that Peter borrowed a great deal from Picatrix, “a very idle book full of superstitious prayers to planets and evil spirits.” Champier, however, cited no specific passages to substantiate this charge, and I doubt if it can be shown that the Conciliator either cites or makes unacknowledged quotation from Picatrix. It will also be observed that Peter does not assert that the stars themselves are spirits or intelligences or gods, and that both Aquinas and Albert were inclined to agree that angels or heavenly intelligences moved the stars. That Peter’s views were objectionable to some persons, however, is indicated by the closing passage of this ninth Differentia, in which he has associated seven spirits with the planets, the rise of prophets and new religions with great conjunctions, and activity of demons with solar eclipses. Some malicious persons have long troubled him, he says, but his utterances in nothing derogate from divine wisdom but rather confirm it, and at last an apostolic mandate has snatched him and his truth from the hands of his detractors. In other words, the pope has protected him. Peter’s astrology sometimes seems to show scant regard for human free will, but he recognized it as an essential Christian doctrine.[2839]

[Sidenote: Fascination.]

Peter alludes several times[2840] to the subject of fascination in connection with images and incantations. It seems evident that he is here trying to account among other things for hypnotic power. In the Lucidator he defines maleficium, the usual word for sorcery, as a sort of fascination, “taking possession of one’s powers so that one loses self-control,” and “impeding sexual intercourse.”[2841] In opposing the theory that vision is by extramission of rays Peter explains the deadly glance of the basilisk as due to corrupting vapor and not to visual rays, and fascination as caused by some more occult force than the evil eye in a literal sense.[2842] And when arguing that the confidence of the patient in the doctor is a factor in the cure Peter emphasizes the power of a strong will impressed in an occult fashion.[2843] Some men, it is true, like the followers of Asclepius, deny any virtue of the mind and regard their fellow-men as swayed like beasts by the passions of the senses, deeming wisdom, sobriety and continence a jest, calling human affection and altruism into question, and further despising dreams, divinations, prudent counsels and the whole subject of astrology. But Peter believes in the power of one mind over another or over matter. Such a mind can cure the sick or even cast a man into a well or cause a camel to enter a Turkish bath (caldarium). It is also one of the causes of prophetic power. The believers in fascination and incantations say that such marvelous virtues of the mind are derived from the stars. But Christians regard prophetic power as directly inspired by God, an opinion which seems ridiculous to the Peripatetics.

[Sidenote: Incantations.]

In much the same way Peter discusses incantations.[2844] He lists several definitions of an incantation, such as that ascribed to Socrates, “words deceiving human minds,” or “an utterance put forth with astounding influence in aid of an enchanted person who is especially confiding,” or “an utterance at discretion of meaningless words, which since it has to do with the strange and occult is esteemed the more by the person enchanted and so helps him the more.” An incantation may be either spoken, or written and bound on the body. The enchanter should be astute, credulous, and strong-willed; the person enchanted should be eager, hopeful, and disposed in every way to forward the success of the operation. Incantations are especially effective in sleep or in the case of women and simple folk who have the more faith in them. Peter tells an amusing anecdote of a noble who taught a poor old woman to repeat as an incantation the sentence, “Two and three make five and so do three and two.” He thought her a witch, however, and when a fish bone stuck fast in his throat, sent for her to remove it. When he found that she really knew no magic except the absurd incantation which he had himself taught her, he laughed so heartily that the bone was dislodged and he was thus cured by his own incantation after all.

All this sounds rather sceptical on Peter’s part, and he also recalls Galen’s detestation of certain medical authors who wrote down superstitious words and fables such as old-wives and witches are wont to repeat and stupid gypsies who utter fascinations. “For they conjured and sprinkled and suffumigated medicines as if divine, when they plucked the herbs from the soil or when they suspended them about the neck or elsewhere like a phylactery, all which is false and stupid and offensive to the art of medicine.” But while Peter joins in condemnation of such superstitious medicine, he yet believes in the efficacy of incantations and represents their opponents as incredulous and materialistic persons who will accept only action by gross material contact. He admits that there is no property in the incantation itself nor in its sound when uttered to explain its marvelous effects. We must look rather to the virtue of the mind of the person repeating the charm, to faith on the part of the person to be benefited, and to divine, angelic, demonic, or sidereal assistance. At any rate experience demonstrates the validity of incantations and spoken words, as in the case of the Eucharist, or of the divine names employed in the notory art, or the restoration to life of a dead man which was performed in Peter’s presence by magic words which the enchanter uttered in the ear of the corpse. Peter goes on to speak of the movement of the holy wafer or Psalter or sieve towards a thief who enters a church. Other wonders wrought by incantations which he lists are the ability to endure torture without giving signs of pain or to walk over sharp swords and hot coals without injury, to lift another man or raise a great weight with a single finger, to stupefy snakes and tame wild horses, cause insomnia, reveal the future, painlessly extract arrows that are so deeply embedded in the bone that they could not be pulled out. Paroxysms of epilepsy may be quieted by pronouncing the names of the three Magi in the patient’s ear. Peter also repeats the cure for epilepsy found in so many medieval authors and involving religious ceremonial and repetition of a verse from the Bible. Anent Peter’s allusion to the employment of divine names in the notory art, we may note that a work on that subject is listed among evil books in his Lucidator.[2845]

[Sidenote: Number mysticism.]

The superstitious esteem for certain numbers which prevailed both in ancient and medieval times does not pass unnoticed in the Conciliator. Arguing the question whether the child born in the eighth month will live,[2846] Peter discusses the subject of perfect and imperfect numbers for three columns, stating that this is the doctrine of Pythagoras and of arithmeticians in general. In a later chapter,[2847] however, he declares that natural phenomena cannot be proved by arithmetical numbers since they are not caused by them, and alludes to Aristotle’s strictures upon Pythagoras.

[Sidenote: Poisoning and magic.]

Poisoning and magic were often scarcely distinguished in antiquity. The Greek word φάρμακον and the Latin veneficium or veneficus might have reference either to poisoning or sorcery, either to a poisoner or enchanter. Plato states in his Laws[2848] that there are two kinds of poison employed by men which cannot be clearly distinguished, although one variety injures the body “according to natural law,” while the other “persuades overbold men that they can work injury by sorceries and incantations.” The Latin poet Lucan centuries later drew a sharper distinction when he declared, “The mind which is enchanted perishes without foul trace of poisoned draught,” and this dictum we have found embodied in more than one medieval definition and description of magic. However, all magic is not enchantment; the poisoner and magician worked in the same secret and sinister style, sought similar injurious ends, and availed themselves of the same powerful occult virtues in natural objects. Poisoning and bewitching seemed very similar processes, especially at a time when men believed in the existence of poisons which could act at a distance or after a long interval of time. In one passage of the Conciliator[2849] Peter uses the word veneficus rather in the sense of an enchanter or magician than a poisoner, when he says that, if you wish to injure another person or to make him love you, the venefici direct you to gaze fixedly at him at the same time uttering a certain incantation. But let us now turn to the treatise De venenis, in which Peter has much more to say on the subject of poisons.

[Sidenote: The treatise De venenis.]

It will be recalled that Peter’s treatise on poisons was written for the pope. The topics considered in its six main chapters are: the classification of poisons, how they act upon the body, how to guard against them, the effects and cures of a long list of particular poisons, and finally the problem of a panacea or bezoar against all poisons. Peter classifies poisons according as they come from animals, vegetables, or minerals, and as they take effect internally or externally. Those which take effect internally are usually administered in food or drink, or swallowed without admixture. But one may be poisoned externally not only by contact, as in the case of snake-bite, but through the sense of sight, as when the glance of the basilisk kills, and through the sense of hearing, as when the regulus[2850] kills bird or beast by its hiss. In fact, poisoning may be through any one of the five senses. Some snake-bites Peter classifies under the sense of taste rather than touch. Other serpents emit a poisonous odor, or kill a person who touches them only with the tip of a long lance. The hands and arms of fishermen become paralyzed when they take hold of nets in which a certain fish has become entangled. These last are perhaps exaggerated accounts based upon electrical shock.

[Sidenote: Specific form or valence.]

Poisons may also be classified according to the form of their species (forma specifica). Some prove fatal owing to the excessive preponderance of one quality, being excessively hot or cold or moist or dry. Others are deadly because their entire composition, the very form of their species, is fatal. Peter then gives an interesting definition of this “specific form.” “It is nothing else than the value or valence (meritum) which any object composed of the four elements acquires from the proportions of those elements existing in this compound and from the influence of the fixed stars which regard the species of inferior compounds.” Through the light of the stars streaming down in straight lines pyramids of astral force concentrate upon terrestrial objects,--the same doctrine of stellar rays, emanation, and multiplication of species that we have met already in Alkindi, Grosseteste, and Roger Bacon. Peter adds that this specific form of any compound is not easy to discover except as human experience gradually reveals it empirically, “because we do not know and we never shall know the quantities and the weights of the elements in the compounds.” That is to say, Peter sees the desirability but despairs of the possibility of any such discovery as that of atomic weights and valences, and consequently of a true science of chemistry. His despair is not surprising in view of the fact that medieval men were still trying to conduct their scientific researches upon the outworn Greek hypothesis of only four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, all of which are really compounds and indeed in the middle ages were not supposed to be ever found in their pure state. Desperation like Peter’s was needed before science could be induced to take a fresh start, and, like Arnald of Villanova, he is to be given credit for an approach to the chemical conception of valence.

[Sidenote: An allusion to alchemy.]

With the subject of alchemy, it may be remarked in passing, Peter appears to have had little to do, and not even any spurious treatises on the subject are extant under his name, as they are in the cases of Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova, and Raymond Lull. Colle,[2851] however, noted a passage in the Conciliator[2852] where Peter speaks of two friends of his who had told him that they had succeeded “by the art of decoction” in making silver which was true to every examination but from which they had not profited much openly.

[Sidenote: Mineral, vegetable, and animal poisons.]

In his second chapter Peter discusses various mineral, vegetable, and animal poisons under the caption, “Of each poison in particular” (De unoquoque veneno in speciali). Quicksilver made by the art of alchemy he declares a more deadly poison than natural mercury. He is either an early advocate of inoculation and homeopathy, or else is guilty of silly reasoning based upon sympathetic magic, when he states that the magnet taken internally produces melancholy and lunacy and that doctors employ it with other medicines to cure melancholy. Incidentally he mentions two kinds of magnet, one which attracts iron toward the north pole, another which draws human flesh toward the south pole. Vegetable poisons may be the juices of herbs, the fruit of trees, or seeds. Some animals have poison in their brains; some, in their tails; some, in the blood; some, in the saliva and spittle; some, in the gall; and some, in their entire bodies.

[Sidenote: How poison takes effect.]

The question, how poison takes effect upon the human body, occasions Peter considerable difficulty, since he is unwilling to admit either that the heart naturally attracts poison or that poison runs naturally to the heart. Avicenna says that a man with a hot heart offers the best resistance to poison, but Peter adds that much depends upon the human soul and the constellations. He notes that the action of poison is very similar to that of medicine and thinks that the art of medicine was suggested by the action of poisons. Incidentally he repeats from his authorities statements that there are trees whose shade is poisonous to sleep in or to bathe beneath, and that a man was killed by the vapor from wood cut near the caverns of serpents which was used as fuel in heating his bath. He also repeats the tale of Socrates and the dragon.[2853]

[Sidenote: Safeguards against poison.]

The fourth chapter is concerned with safeguards against poison, which often take the form of amulets and charms and are, if anything, even closer akin to magic than the poisons themselves. There are the horns of a serpent which sweat at the advent of certain poisons but not of others. There is the gem that ceases to gleam in the presence of poison. There is the stone which Alexander wore in his belt until a jealous snake stole it while he was bathing in the Euphrates. There is the following image recommended in the book of the Persian kings--possibly the Kiranides. Engrave the gem Ematites with a kneeling man girded by a serpent whose head he holds in his right hand and tail in the left.[2854] Set this stone in a gold ring and under the gem place a dried root of serpentaria. Either Peter or the author of the book of the Persian kings affirms that he wears such a ring and has been preserved from poisoning by it. An emerald is another good safeguard against poison. Peter perhaps has a confused recollection of a story told by Albertus Magnus[2855] when he adds that it has been proved that a toad’s eyes will crack if it gazes at an emerald. There are seven herbs, namely: Ipericon, “which Achilles is said to have found in the Trojan army by the oracle of Apollo,” Vincetoxicum, Enula, Rafanus, Diptamus, Aristologia, and Lactucella, which will cure any poison. This virtue is not due to the elements composing them but to the force of the seven planets. Peter’s antidotes are not all occult or talismanic. He also prescribes the more commonplace methods of a drink of butter and hot water to provoke vomiting, the use of a syringe to clear the intestines, the application of a relay of hot fowls to the wound, or the sucking of it “by the mouth of some slave or servant”--sclavi vel servi, an interesting bit of etymological evidence of the medieval transition from the Latin servus to the modern word “slave,” and for the derivation of the latter from the Slavs who were sold in southern and western Europe. Peter also mentions the famous terra sigillata which, he says, causes vomiting if there is any poison in the stomach. Kings and princes in the west[2856] take it with their meals as a safeguard, and it is called terra sigillata because stamped with the king’s seal. Now, however, the seals are no longer trustworthy and Peter cautions the pope against what may be offered him as terra sigillata.[2857] Over seventy brief chapters are next devoted to enumeration of the effects produced by as many poisons and how to remedy them. The poisons include the blood of a rubicund, choleric man, the bite of a fasting man, the gall of a leopard, and the salamander. Among the remedies are duck’s fat and pulverized mouse dung. The remedies operate against the poison either by “breaking its sharpness,” or “resolving its substance,” or “expelling it,” or “corrupting it and utterly taking away its virtue.”

[Sidenote: The bezoar.]

Finally Peter comes to the discussion of “bezoartic virtues” which free from death by occult and divine virtue rather than by their natural composition. Under this head he proposes to deal with two difficult questions: first, whether theriac is a bezoar (i. e., antidote or panacea) and medicine for every poison; second, whether there is any poison which can be set to act at a given time, so that the victim will die from it then and not before. In those copies of the De venenis which I have seen the discussion of this second question is never reached. Perhaps it was intended only for the pope’s ear and not published. As for the former question, some believe in a bezoar or stone that frees from all poisons without medical assistance. Edward I of England, when wounded by the Sultan’s poisoned sword, is said to have been cured by such a stone which “the general preceptor of the Temple gave him, and I have seen one like it.” It is red, purulent, light as a sponge, and fragile as gypsum. But Peter inclines to believe that each poison has its own antidote which is the best cure for it. Like Galen, however, he extols that “divine and noble” artificial compound, theriac, a mixture of all the single medicines which break or dissolve or expel poisons. It may, he thinks, deservedly be called Bezoar, since it is good against all poisons, although for any particular poison there may be a superior particular remedy. After Peter’s treatise has apparently ended with the words, Deo gratias, there is added a note from the Pandects concerning the stone Begaar or Bezoar, asserting its reality and superiority to any simple antidote or any of the compound theriacs.[2858]

[Sidenote: Physiognomy.]

Peter’s treatise on physiognomy mentions Philemon, Aristotle, Palemon, and Loxius as the founders of the art, and Rasis, Zacharias, and Avicenna as Arabian authorities. Peter proposes to combine their separate contributions to the subject “into one lucid and perfect doctrine.” The first draft intended for the captain-general of Mantua has got into “the hands of some rascal who scorns to communicate it to me or others.” At the sollicitation of his friends and lest invidious detractors envying another’s work gain glory from it, Peter has written another draft which he flatters himself is longer and better. “So praise be,” he piously ejaculates, “to God, the better producer of everything, who from that evil has created this good and best!” Peter’s treatise differs from other Physiognomies mainly in its emphasis upon astrology, to which its third book is largely devoted. He gives the influence of each sign and planet upon the physique and character of the person born under it, and discusses in considerable detail the process of generation, the influence of heredity as well as of the stars, and the effect upon the babe of any strong imagination, especially on the part of the mother, during the period of generation.

[Sidenote: Astrology in his other works.]

Peter’s penchant for astrology is further evidenced by his Latin version of the various astrological treatises of Abraham Aben Ezra, and his translation of the brief treatise attributed to Hippocrates on the prognostication of diseases according to the moon. Peter or some previous translator or editor opens it by saying that while reading the works of Hippocrates he found this book, “small but of great utility and very essential to all physicians. Whoever is well acquainted with it can pronounce health, death, or life in every infirmity.” Peter brings in astrology even in his commentary on the Problems of Aristotle. When Aristotle mentions an astronomer or astrologer in a derogatory manner in the same breath with a juggler or mime or pipe-player or rhetorician, Peter is at pains to explain that in Aristotle’s time the science of judicial astrology had not yet attained its present perfection.

[Sidenote: Attitude to “magic.”]

In those of his works which are certainly genuine Peter seldom uses the word “magic” and never, I think, speaks of it approvingly, although Michael Savonarola could see no reason why he should not do so. Despite his reputation for magic, the longest discussion of such arts in his admittedly genuine works occurs in the Lucidator,[2859] where, after the manner of Michael Scot and Albert in the Speculum astronomiae, he is chiefly concerned to distinguish astrology favorably from these other forms of divination and magic. With occasionally some additional detail he mainly repeats the old account of the origin of magic with Zoroaster or Cham, the son of Noah, and with Hermes or Enoch or Mercurius; and the old classification of the occult arts found in Isidore and Hugo of St. Victor.

[Sidenote: Magic books ascribed to him.]

Naudé states, on the authority of Castellan, that when Peter was burned in effigy after his death, the reading was forbidden of three superstitious and abominable books which he had composed, entitled respectively, Heptameron, Elucidarium Necromanticum, and Liber experimentorum mirabilium de annulis secundum 28 mansiones lunae (Book of marvelous experiments with rings according to the twenty-eight mansions of the moon).[2860] Naudé adds, however, that Trithemius and Symphorien Champier could find no books on magic by Peter of Abano.[2861] Such treatises, however, exist both in print and in manuscripts, which last are mainly of late date, and will be found listed in Appendix II. Prophecies ascribed to “the most reverend nigromancer, Peter of Abano,” were printed in Bologna in Italian about 1495 and occur also in Latin in a Vatican manuscript. The printed Heptameron or Elements of Magic consists entirely of specific directions how to invoke demons, and if genuine, might account for Champier’s charge that Peter borrowed from Picatrix. The reader is instructed in the construction of the magic circle, in the names of the angels, and concerning benedictions, fumigations, exorcisms, prayers to God, visions, apparitions, and conjurations for each day of the week. The work seems quite certainly spurious.

[Sidenote: Geomancy.]

It is more probable that Peter may have written a geomancy in view of his devotion to astrology and Naudé’s statement that he had left treatises in “physiognomy, geomancy, and chiromancy.” At any rate a geomancy exists under his name in several printed editions and manuscripts. In the Conciliator he asserted that the future and what was absent could be predicted by means of characters “as geomancy teaches.”[2862] In the Lucidator he concisely described the method of geomancy, and admitted that its figures were produced under the influence of the constellations and that not infrequently its judgments were verified, but he regarded it as a very difficult science of prediction and one requiring long experience and practice, although many persons tried their hand at it because it looked easy.[2863]

[Sidenote: Conclusion.]

Such was the attitude of the learned and influential Peter of Abano at the close of the thirteenth and opening of the fourteenth century toward the subjects which we are investigating. We may well agree with Tomasini that he combined medicine and philosophy, astrology and natural magic, in the closest union. He amassed a great deal of the lore of the past, Greek, Arabic, and the writings of his Latin predecessors. Indeed, when he repeats what earlier Latin writers in the thirteenth century had said, just as they had repeated what the Arabs said, we rather begin to weary of the subjects under discussion and to feel that medieval Latin learning is growing stagnant or stereotyped. Pico della Mirandola spoke of Peter not only as “a man fitted by nature to collect rather than to digest,” but also as one “whom alas the less learned are wont to admire most when he lies most.” In other words, Peter’s failings continued general for some time. The Latin epitaph which Tomasini in the seventeenth century drew up to accompany the portrait of Peter in his book on illustrious men, although containing one or two erroneous statements which we have already corrected, sums up rather well the salient points of both Peter’s learning and occult science. It may be translated thus:

“From a rural locality, of auspicious cognomen, a man most illustrious in genius, doctrine, and merits, in a rude and unhappy age became the most fortunate and learned physician. Now too he shines with rays eternal, investigator of all natural forces. He gave the secrets of the Greek tongue to the Latin idiom by his power of assiduous practice and constant reading. Employing the virtues of herbs and stones, the sure aspects of the sky, stated hours and moments, by the crowd he was reputed to fascinate men. He opened the arcana of the art medical; he reconciled conflicts, a wonderful warrior! The name of Conciliator he won by uniting medicine and philosophy, astrology and natural magic, in the closest bond. Born for study, he died studying. A. D. 1316, aged 66.”[2864]

FOOTNOTES:

[2757] As distinguished a scholar as Steinschneider (1905), pp. 58-9, for example, gives the date of his birth as 1253 or 1246.

[2758] Appendix I, “Previous Accounts of Peter of Abano,” describes the sources and secondary accounts. Appendix II, “A Bibliography of Peter of Abano’s Writings,” lists the editions and MSS of his works used in this chapter and some others.

[2759] Preface and Diff. 9.

[2760] Diff. 49.

[2761] Verci (1787) VII, Documenti, p. 116.

[2762] Salomoni, Inscriptiones Urbis Patavinae, p. 323; Scardeone (1560), p. 202; Mazzuchelli (1741), pp. v-vi; Colle (1825) III, 128.

[2763] (1560), p. 202, “Huic unicus fuit filius Beneventus nomine.”

[2764] Gloria (1884), p. 587.

[2765] Chronicon Patavinum, anno 1325, in Muratori, Antiquitates (1778), XII, 252.

[2766] De venenis, cap. 47.

[2767] In Muratori, Scriptores, XXIV, 1135-8. Savonarola’s account of Peter is so brief that it does not seem necessary to cite it further by page.

[2768] HL XXI, 500-3.

[2769] The problem of Peter’s and other translations of Abraham is discussed more fully in Appendix III.

[2770] Steinschneider (1905), pp. 58-9, asserted that Peter did not translate Abraham either from Arabic or Hebrew. Peter himself uses the verb “ordinavi” rather than “transtuli” of his version; see his Tractatus de motu octave spere, II, 3, in Canon. Misc. 190, “Unde abraam evenere cuius libros in linguam ordinavi latinam.”

[2771] Steinschneider (1880), p. 126. He further states that what seems to be a partially divergent Spanish translation of some works of Abraham (Rodriguez de Castro, Bibl. Españ. I, 25-6) was “again translated into Latin by the Spaniard Louis of Angulo (Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., I, 83, now Cod. Paris 734)”. But BN 734 contains only a “Liber ordinis pontificalis per Gulielmum Durantum.” What is probably meant is BN 7321, fols. 87-116, “Explicit tractatus de nativitatibus abrahe avenzre translata de ydyomate cathalano in latinum a lodovico de angulo hyspano in civitate lugdunensi anno Christi 1448.”

[2772] Conciliator, Diff. 67.

[2773] Canon. Misc. 46, fol. 30v. “Item transtulit problemata Alexandri medici dria. gnta” (differentiae quinquaginta).

[2774] Mazzuchelli (1741), p. xi. He was not, however, aware that in a 1555 edition of the De venenis a prefatory note states that Peter taught at Bologna.

[2775] Gloria (1888), II. 10.

[2776] Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mittelalters (1916), p. 247, citing Zassari, Cesena MSS (1887), p. 316, Cod. Plut. IV-n-4, S. XIII.

[2777] BN 2598, fol. 102r.

[2778] See above, chapter 26. I. 610.

[2779] See Appendix IV for a fuller discussion of this matter.

[2780] See Appendix V.

[2781] See Appendix VI for further discussion of the date of his death.

[2782] See Appendix VII. John XXII was elected August 7, 1316.

[2783] Bibl. Naz. Turin H-II-16, 15th century, fol. 115v, “... temporis decano studii montispessulani....” The records of the University of Montpellier are unfortunately not well preserved for this period.

[2784] See Appendix VIII, “Peter and the Inquisition.”

[2785] The sum has become 400 ducats in Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, Paris, 1842, I, 135, and Pouchet (1853), pp. 532-3. Colle (1823), p. 17, questioned the story on the ground that Peter at the age of thirty-five or thirty-seven would be too young to charge such a fee, and for the better reason that the chronicler Filippo Villani tells the same tale of a Florentine physician. A prefatory note to the 1555 edition of the De venenis states that when Peter taught at Bologna--which he probably did not do--he would not visit a patient outside of that town for less than fifty florins, so great was his reputation. Honorius IV therefore at first promised him a fee of one hundred florins but gave him one thousand when he recovered his health as a result of Peter’s ministrations.

[2786] Naudé (1625), p. 382.

[2787] See his treatise on the motion of the eighth sphere, Distinctio II, cap. 3, in Canon. Misc. 190, fol. 80r.

[2788] Diff. 67.

[2789] Diff. 64.

[2790] In Diff. 1 Peter had held that “the regulative power of the body resides in the brain,” and in Diff. 18 that “the brain is the seat of sensation and motion”:--“Virtus corporis regitiva habitaculum habet in cerebro” and “Cerebrum est fundamentum sensuum et motuum,” cited by Colle (1825) III, 144-5, in a list of what he considered Peter’s notable contributions to natural science.

[2791] An prandium cena debeat esse maius?

[2792] This can perhaps be traced back to a passage in Tiraboschi (1775) V, 147, “Il primo, ch’io sappia, a commentare tra gl’Italiani le opere di Averroe, e a farne uso scrivendo, fu Pietro d’Abano che nel suo Conciliatore assai spesso lo vien citando or sotto il vero suo nome or sotto quello per eccellenza adattatogli di Comentatore.” Renan (see note 2) has already pointed out that Peter was not the first Italian to cite Averroes.

[2793] E. Renan. Averroès et L’Averroïsme, fifth edition, pp. 326-7. Yet Renan admits that Averroes was then regarded as an opponent of astrology. We shall see, however, that Peter cites Averroes for the association of seven spirits with the planets, a point not noted by Renan.

[2794] Ibid., p. 327.

[2795] Steinschneider (1905), pp. 58-9.

[2796] The paintings do not seem to have been executed until about 1400.

[2797] Muratori, Antiquitates Italicae, III, 374-5.

[2798] Naudé (1625), pp. 381-91.

[2799] De rerum praenotione, VII, 7, cited by Mazzuchelli (1741), p. xxvii.

[2800] Naudé (1625), pp. 380-1.

[2801] If this means Averroes, it will be noted that Peter does not sustain him against the Christian Faith.

[2802] This passage is from Diff. 135.

[2803] Diff. 101.

[2804] Diff. 113.

[2805] BN 2598, fols. 99-107.

[2806] Diff. 60.

[2807] Diff. 101.

[2808] Diff. 10; see also Diff. 113.

[2809] 104 and 105.

[2810] Diff. 168.

[2811] Diff. 64.

[2812] Diff. 23.

[2813] Canon. Misc. 190, fols. 78r-83r.

[2814] Diff. 2, BN 2598, fol. 109v.

[2815] Diff. 9 and 18.

[2816] Diff. 18.

[2817] “Complexio temperata.”

[2818] Diff. 9.

[2819] Peter thus is the precursor of recent writers in preferring a conjunction in Aries to one in Pisces as the sign of the Messiah: see chapter 20, I, 473.

[2820] H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, III, 440.

[2821] Diff. 2, BN 2598, fol. 109r.

[2822] Diff. 113.

[2823] Canon. Misc. 190, fol. 83r. Some of the figures may very likely have been miscopied by the writer of the MS.

[2824] See Diff. 9, 10, 16, 64, 101, 113.

[2825] Diff. 10.

[2826] Diff. 113.

[2827] Diff. 64.

[2828] Idem.

[2829] Diff. 9.

[2830] Diff. 10.

[2831] Diff. 64.

[2832] Firmicus Maternus, ed. Kroll et Skutsch, II (1913), p. xxxii.

[2833] Diff. 113 and 156.

[2834] Diff. 135.

[2835] Diff. 64 and 156.

[2836] Diff. 9 and 156.

[2837] Diff. 10.

[2838] Diff. 9.

[2839] De motu octave spere, IV, 2, in Canon. Misc. 190, fol. 83r, “ut veritas fidei credere nos compellit cum agens liberius potentiam habeat super materiam omnifariam.”

[2840] Conciliator, Diff. 64, 113, 135.

[2841] BN 2598, fol. 101v, “fascinatio animalis occupans vires ut sui compos esse non valeat, actum venereum impediens.” It is hard to say if animalis should be translated “animal” or “of the soul.”

[2842] Conciliator, Diff. 64.

[2843] Ibid., Diff. 135, “confidentia est intentio vehementer apprehensioni occulte impressa.”

[2844] Ibid., Diff. 156.

[2845] BN 2598, fol. 101r, “ars dicta notaria fortunati.”

[2846] Diff. 49.

[2847] Diff. 105.

[2848] Book XI, p. 933 (Stephanus).

[2849] Diff. 64.

[2850] A serpent of Nubia of the thickness of two fists, with a sharp-pointed head and of green color.

[2851] Colle (1824) III, 146.

[2852] Diff. 178. “Et iam testificati sunt mihi duo amicorum fideles argentum arte decoctionis fecisse verum omni examine non tamen valde lucrari aperte.”

[2853] See above pp. 262-3.

[2854] For a similar image mentioned by Arnald of Villanova see above, p. 858.

[2855] See above p. 546.

[2856] “De partibus occidentalibus”; this may be a slip of the copyist, or a careless retention by Peter of the wording of some Arabic writer.

[2857] Addit. 37079, fol. 106r, “Nunc autem periit fides sigillorum. Nota bene. Quoniam tam illegalis quam allegans ad vos sigillata portatur.”

[2858] J. G. Frazer (1911) I, 305, gives some instances from Mongolia of use of “bezoar stones as instruments of rain” combined with incantations. Here “bezoar” is used in the sense of a stone found in the stomach or intestines of an animal.

[2859] Diff. 1.

[2860] Naudé (1625), p. 381.

[2861] Ibid., p. 390.

[2862] Diff. 156.

[2863] Diff. 1.

[2864] Tomasini (1630), p. 22.

APPENDIX I

PREVIOUS ACCOUNTS OF PETER OF ABANO

[Sidenote: Original sources.]

As is usually the case with past authors and scholars, Peter of Abano’s own works[2865] are the best source concerning the events of his life as well as his learning and superstition. Another important document is his will, published by Verci, whose History of the Trevisan Mark includes some other documents bearing upon Peter’s career.[2866] Other contemporary source-material connected with Peter or members of his family has been noted by Gloria in his collection of material concerning the University of Padua,[2867] or by even more recent investigators. Less valuable are the inscriptions, chiefly sepulchral or eulogistic, which older writers reported but whose dates are late or uncertain. In a MS of the fifteenth century[2868] a page between two of Peter’s treatises is devoted to a “Catalogue of writings which Peter of Abano partly composed himself, partly translated from the Greek.” The list has not, I think, been noted by previous writers on Peter of Abano, but adds little to our knowledge of his compositions. What the sources for Peter’s life are, however, appears in more detail in the appendices which follow and in the notes to the text.

[Sidenote: Michael Savonarola.]

What we have to consider further at present are the previous secondary accounts of Peter which may be reckoned as of some importance. The first occurs in the work on great citizens of Padua composed about the middle of the fifteenth century[2869] by Michael Savonarola, the noted physician and medical writer and grandfather of the Florentine reformer, Girolamo Savonarola. Michael at least appreciated Peter’s learning and shared in many respects his point of view, and, while he makes some assertions which we must regard as extremely exaggerated, if not entirely legendary, seems to have had access to documents which we no longer possess as well as to local tradition. He states that he treasures in his possession the original manuscript of the Conciliator in Peter’s own handwriting; and he mentions having read with great pleasure an abundance of letters by which the people of Padua had recalled Peter from Paris to their midst. Savonarola’s account, however, is brief.[2870]

[Sidenote: Secondary accounts since 1500.]

Scardeone, who wrote in the sixteenth century On the Antiquity of the City of Padua,[2871] can scarcely be regarded as so good an authority as Savonarola, but he makes new assertions concerning Peter’s life and his account has been much followed by modern writers. In the early seventeenth century Naudé included Peter in his defense of great men who had been charged with magic,[2872] but incorrectly gave the date of his death as 1305, while Tomasini gave 1316 as the date and included a portrait of Peter in his Eulogies of Illustrious Men adorned with pictures.[2873] I have not seen the account of Peter in Duchastel’s Lives of Illustrious Physicians,[2874] published at Antwerp in 1618, nor Goulin’s A Historical and Critical Notice on the Life of Abano,[2875] printed in 1715; but have used an article with a similar title which Count Gian-Maria Mazzuchelli[2876] published in 1741 and which included a bibliography of Peter’s works. Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian Literature,[2877] corrected and supplemented Mazzuchelli on a number of points and in general displayed a sounder judgment than previous writers, although he still retained some of their errors. A further step in the study of Peter of Abano was taken by Colle who published a monograph concerning him in 1823,[2878] which he reprinted in 1825 with some variations in his Scientific and Literary History of the University of Padua.[2879] A monograph by Ronzoni in 1878[2880] does not seem to have made any new contributions, but in 1884 Gloria adduced new source-material in his Monuments of the University of Padua,[2881] and pointed out errors in Colle’s account. Sante Ferrari discussed Peter’s contributions to biology in a pamphlet published in 1900,[2882] when it was stated that he would soon issue a volume upon Peter, which has been supplemented in 1918 by a further study. Meanwhile in 1912 B. Nardi discussed “The theory of the soul and the generation of forms according to Peter of Abano,”[2883] and in 1916 Antonio Favaro wrote on “Pietro d’Abano ed suo ‘Lucidator astrologiae’.”[2884]

FOOTNOTES:

[2865] An account of the editions and MSS of them will be found in Appendix II.

[2866] G. B. Verci, Storia della Marchia Trevigiana e Veronese, Venice, 1786-1791, in Tome VII (not VIII, as it is usually incorrectly cited).

[2867] Andrea Gloria, Monumenti della Università di Padova (1222-1318), Presentata il 29 dicembre 1884, Memorie del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, vol. XXII, pp. 583-9. This publication, however, is rather an account from the monuments than the monuments themselves, of which Gloria printed only a limited number of copies and which I have not seen.

[2868] Canon. Misc. 46, fol. 30v.

[2869] Muratori estimated that Savonarola completed the Libellus de magnificis ornamentis regiae civitatis Paduae soon after 1445.

[2870] It is contained in Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XXIV, 1135-8.

[2871] Bernardino Scardeone, De antiquitate urbis Patavii et claris civibus Patavinis libri tres ... eiusdem appendix de sepulchris insignibus exterorum Patavii iacentium, Venice, Volgrisi, 1558. I have used the edition of Basel, 1560, where the account of Peter occurs at pp. 260-2. It is also printed in Graevius, Thesaurus antiquitatum et historiarum Italiae, 1725, Tom. VI, Pars. 3.

[2872] Gabriel Naudé, Apologie pour tous les grands personages qui ont esté faussement soupçonnez de Magie, Paris, 1625, pp. 380-91.

[2873] Jac. Phil. Tomasini, Illustrium virorum elogia iconibus exornata, Padua, 1630, p. 20.

[2874] Duchastel, Vitae illustrium medicorum qui toto orbe ad haec usque tempora floruerunt, Anvers, 1618. I presume this is the “Castellan” whom Naudé cites.

[2875] Goulin, Notice historique et critique sur la vie d’Abano, in Mémoires littéraires et critiques pour servir à l’histoire de la médecine, Paris, 1715, p. 15.

[2876] Mazzuchelli, Notizie storiche e critiche intorno alla vita di Pietro d’Abano, in Raccolta d’opuscoli scientifici e fisiologici, vol. XXIII, Venice, 1741.

[2877] Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Modena, 1772-1795, vol. V (1775), pp. 152-9.

[2878] Francesco Maria Colle, Notizie sulla vita e sulle opere di Pietro d’Abano, in Opuscoli Filologici, Padua, 1823, pp. 7-36.

[2879] Colle, Storia Scientifico-Letteraria dello Studio di Padova, Padua, 1824, four vols., III (1825), 128-55.

[2880] Ronzoni, Della vita e delle opere di Pietro d’Abano, Rome, 1878, in Atti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, serie terza, Memorie della classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, II (1878), 526-50.

[2881] See above, p. 914, note 3.

[2882] Sante Ferrari, Contribuzioni alla storia della biologia; Pietro d’Abano, Genoa, Ciminago, 1900, 23 pp.

[2883] B. Nardi, La teoria dell’ anima e la generazione delle forme secondo Pietro d’Abano, in Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, IV (1912), 723-37.

[2884] Atti del R. Istituto Veneto, LXXV, 515-27.

APPENDIX II

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PETER OF ABANO’S WRITINGS

[Sidenote: Arrangement.]

The following order will be observed in this list of Peter’s works. First those to which an exact or probable date can be assigned will be taken up in chronological order. Next will be listed those which are undated but undoubtedly genuine. Last will be mentioned those of dubious or spurious authorship. As Peter’s translations of the astrological treatises of Abraham Aben Ezra are closely connected with those of Henry Bate, and as Abraham and Bate are names of considerable importance in the history of astrological literature, a separate appendix following this one will be devoted to them and Peter’s relations to their work. The following lists of MSS for Peter’s various works can probably be greatly added to, but the present bibliography is fuller than any preceding one.

[Sidenote: Translation of Abraham Aben Ezra, 1293.]

Aside from Latin editions of single works (such as the De nativitatibus, Ratdolt, 1485, Cologne, 1537, which is not Peter’s original Latin version anyway; and the De luminaribus et criticis diebus, 1508, 1544; de criticis diebus, 1496, 1550) the only inclusive edition seems to be:

Abrahe Avenaris Judei ... in re judiciali opera, ab excellentissimo Philosopho Petro de Abano post accuratam castigationem in Latinum traducta, Ex officina Petri Liechtenstein, Venetiis, 1507. For further account of this edition and the MSS see Appendix III.

[Sidenote: The Physiognomy, 1295.]

Incipit liber compilationis phisonomie a Petro padubanensi in civitate Parisiensi.... Viro fulgenti domino Bardeloni de bocosis mantue honorandissimo capitaneo generali Petrus padubanensis parisius philosophie minimus alumnorum grata agere cum salute. Ed. Padua, 1474.

Decisiones Physionomiae ... a Blondo medico ... compertae inque lucem productae. Venice, 1548.

The earliest MS that I have seen is

BN 16089, 13-14th century, fols. 98r-113, “Incipit liber compilationis physonomie a magistro petro de padua in civitate parisiensi.... Nobilitate generis urbanitatum titulis viro fulgenti domino bardelloni mantue honorabilissimo capitaneo generali de bona coxis petrus de padua parisius philosofie minimus alumpnorum grata agere cum salute.”

Practically the same is

BN 2598, fols. 87r-98r, “Explicit liber compilationis physonomie per petrum de padua anno domini millesimo ducentesimo nonagesimo quinto.”

Other MSS, all of the 15th century, are:

BM Addit. 37079, fols. 3r-81v. Here the captain-general’s name is spelled “Bardeloni ... de Bonaconsis” and the Explicit gives the precise date, May 23, 1295.

BL Canon. Misc. 46, fols. 1-30, “Liber Physionomiae clarissimi viri Petri de Appono Patavini ab eo in civitate Parisiensi aeditus.”

CLM 637, fols. 12-66.

Vienna 5307, fols. 23-32.

The work is listed in the catalogue of the MSS of Amplonius at Erfurt, written in 1412, “Math. 29, Egregius liber Petri Paduani de phisionomia,” but seems to have disappeared from that collection since then.

[Sidenote: Problems of Alexander of Aphrodisias.]

Escorial f-I-11, 14th century (here we first have the Problems of Aristotle, or perhaps Peter’s commentary on them “secundum speciem compilationis” and “secundum novam translationem,” then), fols. 31-42, “Incipiunt problemata alexandri affrodiseos translata p. M. petrum Aponensem padue de greco in latinum. Archo. tr. unico ... / ... aut diversa inferiorum et superiorum molle figuratione. Explicit liber problematum alexandrii affrodiseos translatus per petrum padubanensem padue de greco in latinum MCCC secundo XV die decembris et sunt omnia problemata numero 197.” On the other hand, the list of Peter’s works contained in Canon. Misc. 46, speaks of these Problems as having “differentiae quinquaginta.”

[Sidenote: Translations of Galen.]

CLM 5, written in 1304 A. D., fol. 181, Galeni de optima corporis nostri compositione et bona habitudine translatus per Petrum medicum Paduanum.

S. Marco XIV, 6, written at Bologna in 1305 A. D., fols. 68-106, contains Peter’s completion of the translation of the Therapeutic Method, begun by Burgundio of Pisa.

Vienna 2294, 14th century, fols. 1-82v, De ingenio sanitatis quod deficiebat de translatione Burgundionis (usque ad libri xiv, c. 12) complete translatum per P. de Albano de Padua.

In the list of his works in Canon. Misc. 46 Peter is credited with the translation of six of Galen’s treatises, namely: de cholera nigra, de utilitate particularium, de optima compositione, de tabe, liber creticorum, and a sixth title which I did not clearly make out, “Item transtulit librum eiusdem de re fa (or sa, perhaps sanitate) de verbo ad verbum non sicut ille abreviatur.” This last translation was in 18 chapters.

[Sidenote: The Conciliator, 1303.]

Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et precipue medicorum. Printed eight times before 1500 and several times thereafter. Most editions are to be found in the British Museum, but it does not have the first edition of 1471, Venetiis apud Octavianum Scotum, although it possesses the Venetian editions of 1521 and 1526, which are omitted from the bibliographies of Mazzuchelli and Colle. I have chiefly used, at the John Crerar Library, Chicago, the edition of 1526, and at the British Museum the very rare second edition, Mantua, 1472. The editions of 1476, 1483, 1490, and 1496 are also found in America (CFCB).

Quaestiones de febribus, pp. 217-40, in a collection of various authors on fevers printed in 1576, are simply nine Differentiae from the Conciliator.

Not many MSS appear to have survived; some are:

BN 6961, 1384 A. D., conciliator discordiarum medicinalium.

BN 6962, 15th century.

Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, 10871, early 16th century, Petri de Abano, Conciliator de medicinis, “Ad melius intelligendum.”

Medic. 54, “Egregie questiones Petri Paduani consiliatoris,” in the 1412 A. D. catalogue of Amplonius, seems no longer in that collection.

Harleian 3747, 15th century, fol. 233, Petri de Ebano de balneis, is probably an extract from the Conciliator.

Vienna 5289, 15th century, fol. 15r, Cura epidimiae, “Recipe radices pedis corvini ... / ... adiustionem prohibitum,” ascribed to Peter and immediately followed by his De venenis, is perhaps also an extract from the Conciliator.

[Sidenote: On the astrolabe.]

It appears to have been printed twice but I have not seen either edition:

Astrolabium planum in tabulis ascendens continens qualibet hora atque minuto aequationes domorum coeli significationes imaginum moram nati in utero matris cum quodam tractatus nativitatum necnon horas inaequales pro quolibet climate mundi, Venice, 1488; and 1502 (Luc’ Antonio de Giunta).

Perhaps it is the same as the following work ascribed to Peter in a MS at Munich which I have been unable to inspect:

CLM 22048, 15th century, 176 fols., De signis celestibus eorumque significatione et potestate, cum multis tabulis astronomicis.

Kroll and Skutsch, in their edition of Julius Firmicus Maternus, II (1913), xxviii, list what appears to be another edition of the same year, 1488, at Augsburg, and which they say was reprinted in 1494 and often thereafter.

Opus Astrolabii plani in tabulis: a Iohanne Angeli artium liberalium magistro a nouo elaboratum; explicit feliciter. Erhardi ratdolt Augustensis viri solertis: eximia industria: et mira imprimendi arte: qua nuper veneciis: nunc Auguste vindelicorum excellet nominatissimus. Vigesimoseptimo kalendas Novembris. M. CCCC. LXXXVIII. Laus deo.

This edition, Kroll and Skutsch state, contained portions of the Mathesis of Firmicus, and some notes which Peter of Abano had added to the astrological images (Kroll et Skutsch, II, xxxii). Whether these brief notes are Peter’s sole connection with the Astrolabium planum, they do not make clear.

[Sidenote: On the motion of the eighth sphere, 1310.]

I have seen it stated somewhere that it forms a part of the preceding work. I have read the treatise in the first of the following MSS:

Canon. Misc. 190, 1445 A. D., fols. 78r-83v, Tractatus motus octave spere.

Cod. Vatic. Palat. Lat. 1377, 14-15th century, fols. 1r-5r, “Incipit tractatus quem composuit magister Petrus Paduanus in motu octave spere et sequitur capitulum primum prohemiale in operis causa et ipsius intentione. Quoniam iuxta Ptholomeum rerum quippe causas ... / ... inde causa existit prefati. Explicit tractatus motus octave spere ordinatus a magistro Petro Paduanensi anno gratiae 1310.”

Vienna 5498, 15th century, fols. 60r-70v, “Libellus in motu octave sphere.”

[Sidenote: The Lucidator, 1310.]

The fuller title, “Lucidator dubitabilium astronomie,” is used by Peter himself in citing the work in the Prohemium to his treatise on the motion of the eighth sphere.

BN 2598, following the Physonomia, fols. 99r-125v, “Quoniam astrologyce considerationis ambiguitates....” At fol. 125v the copyist, Petrus Collensis, whom Duhem characterizes as “scribe aussi maladroit qu’ignorant latiniste,” adds his name and a table of contents comprising ten questions. But the last four of these do not seem to be discussed in the text, of which the last three pages contain rather the beginning of the treatise on the motion of the eighth sphere. Therefore we have only the preface and first six Differentiae of the Lucidator. No copy of the Lucidator was known before Duhem, Études sur Léonard de Vinci, 1906-1909, I, 50-51, called attention to this MS.

[Sidenote: Commentary on the Problems of Aristotle, 1310.]

Expositio in librum problematum Aristotelis, Mantua 1475; Padua, 1482, 1501, 1520. The editio princeps of 1475 is not in the British Museum, although it has the other three editions, but copies of it exist in America (CFCB). The 1482 edition is said to have really been printed at Venice by Herbort. I have consulted the edition of 1482 in this country at the Columbia University Library. The Incipit in the 1482 edition reads, “Expositio praeclarissimi atque eximii artium ac medicinae doctoris Petri de Ebano Patavini in librum Problematum Aristotelis feliciter incipit.”

But the Explicit is given imperfectly in this 1482 edition and may better be repeated after a Venetian MS, S. Marco XII, 84, 14th century, fols. 1-139, “Explicit expositio succincta compilationis problematum Aristotelis quam Petrus edidit Padubanensis et a nullo prius interpretante; incepta quidem Parisius et laudabiliter Paduae terminata anno legis Christianorum millesimo trecentesimo decimo cum laude Dei altissimi cuius nomen sit benedictum per saecula, amen.” The Explicit as given in the first edition similarly stated that Peter composed the work partly in Paris and finished it in Padua in 1310. The Venetian MS just mentioned omits the text of Aristotle and gives only Peter’s commentary.

BN 6540. An illuminated MS with a picture at the beginning of a smooth-shaven man in gown and hood which is possibly meant for Peter. This MS would presumably be the autograph, were the MSS Catalogue right in dating it in 1310 A. D.; but I think that the date when the Explicit states that the work was completed has been incorrectly assumed to be the time when the MS was written. There seems to be nothing about the MS to indicate that it was written as early as 1310.

BN 6541, 14th century.

BN 6541A, 15th century.

BN 6542, 1385 A. D., per m. de Jenduno (i.e. Jean de Jandun) elucidata et declarata.

BN 6543, 14th century.

Arsenal 723, 15th century, 286 fols. This also begins with the prologue of Jean de Jandun who lectured on the work at Paris from a copy of Peter’s Commentary given him by the famous Marsiglio of Padua.

Mazarine 3520, 14th century. According to the MSS Catalogue, the prologue differs from that in the 1519 (1520?) edition, but the text is the same except that it stops in the midst of the 28th problem under Particula X.

Digby 77, 14th century, fols. 57-82, Summa Problematum Aristotelis “secundum Petrum Paduanensem.”

BM Addit. 21978, 1477 A. D. Two other translations of Aristotle’s Problems accompany Peter’s work in this MS.

Peterhouse 79, 14th century, “Expl. prior exposicio huius libri per petrum padubanensem incepta parisius et finita padue cum gaudio magno, deo sit honor.”

[Sidenote: On poisons, 1316 (?).]

Tractatus de venenis (also in the MSS, “Pollex de venenis” or “Pollex venenorum”), Mantua 1472 (or 1473?); Padua, 1473; also in 1484, 1490, 1495, 1515, 1555, and, with the Conciliator, in 1476, 1496, 1499, and 1521. CFCB also lists separate editions of 1475, 1487, 1498, and 1500.

Amplon. Q. 222, mid. 14th century, fols. 227-37.

CLM 77, 1386 A. D., fols. 142-5.

CLM 184, 1439-1444 A. D., fol. 272-.

CLM 257, 15th century, fol. 111-.

Berlin 909, 15th century, fol. 107-.

Vienna 2358, fols. 150-7; 4751, fols. 218-37; 5289, fols. 16r-19v; 5398, fols. 197-204; all of 15th century.

BM Addit. 37079, 15th century, fols. 83r-131v.

Canon. Misc. 46, fol. 31-; 455, fols. 176-83; both 15th century.

Bodleian 484 (Bernard 2063, #26), fols. 206-26.

Vendôme 243, 18 Jan. 1441, fols. 176-83.

Arsenal 873, 15th century, fol. 97-.

BN nouv. acq. 1789, moyen format, fols. 99-110.

Library of Dukes of Burgundy, 8554, 15th century.

Bibl. Naz. Turin H-II-16, 15th century, fol. 115v.

Naples XII-G-78, 15th century, in Italian.

Vicenza 328, in Italian.

Volterra 1, 16th century.

Florence, Nelli 243, 16th century; 374, 18th century.

Riccard. 1177, 15th century, fols. 7-13.

[Sidenote: Addition to Mesue.]

Petri Apponi in librum J. Mesue (Yuhanna ibn Masawaih) additio, fols. 100r-129 in the 1471 edition of Yuhanna ibn Masawaih, fols. 111-21 in the 1495 edition. Also printed in 1485, 1491, 1497, 1513, 1523, 1531, 1541, 1551, 1602, 1623.

S. Marco XIV, 42, 14th century, fols. 194-222.

CLM 8, completus Paduae ann. 1464, fols. 120-38, Additiones libri Mesuae ut communiter traditur Francisci pede montium, immo Conciliatoris. In the 1495 edition additions by Francis of Piedmont follow those of Peter of Abano.

CLM 13, fol. 223-; 81, 14-15th century; 25061, 15th century, fols. 337-8.

Sloane 3124, 15th century, fols. 276-323.

[Sidenote: Dioscorides.]

Dioscorides, De materia medica, Colle, 1478. “Explicit dyascorides quem petrus paduanensis legendo corexit et exponendo que utiliora sunt in lucem deduxit.”

Dioscorides digestus alphabetico ordine additis annotatiunculis brevibus et tractatu de aquarum natura, Lugduni, 1512. This is said to be a reproduction of the 1478 edition.

BN 6820, 14th century, fols. 1-72r, words the Explicit a little differently from the edition of 1478: “Explicit dyascorides quem petrus paduanensis legendo correxit et exponendo que occultiora in lucem deduxit.”

There are said to be a number of MSS of this medieval enlarged Latin Dioscorides, which indeed Wellman (“Dioskurides” in PW) calls “the most widely-disseminated handbook of pharmacy, which dominated the whole later middle ages,” but Peter’s edition of it is not well distinguished from preceding ones. Wellmann, for example, says nothing of Peter’s commentary and corrections.

[Sidenote: Pseudo-Hippocrates.]

Libellus de medicorum astrologia a Petro de Abbano in latinum traductus, Venice, Ratdolt, 1485 (in “Opusculum repertorii pronosticon in mutationes aeris”). Many copies in America (CFCB).

Tractatulus Hypocratis medicorum optimi De aspectibus planetarum versus Lunam (a Petro de abbano in latinum traductus), Leipzig, 1505.

Printed with Magninus, Regimen Sanitatis, 1500, 1517, 1524.

Printed in 1585 and 1626 by Z. T. Bovio.

Also found with the works of Hippocrates and Galen in various editions and in the 1497 edition of Rasis.

MSS are also numerous, but catalogues usually do not state whether William of Moerbeke or Peter of Abano is the translator. It is ascribed to the former, however, in

BN 7337, pp. 78-84, Liber hyppocratis de prognosticationibus egritudinum secundum motum lune traductus a domino fratre Guglielmo de Morbercha archiepiscopo Corintino ordinis predicatorum.

Vienna 5498, 15th century, fols. 53-59, our treatise precedes that of Peter on the motion of the eighth sphere.

Vienna 5275, 16th century, fol. 195, Pseudo-Hippocrates, Fragmentum libri de medicorum astrologia a Petro de Abano in latinum sermonem traducti.

Sloane 780, 15th century, fols. 55v-58v, “De iudiciis a lune observatione formandis de sanitate vita et morte infirmiorum,” is the Peter of Abano version, opening, “Cum legerem libros hypocratis medicorum optimi inveni hunc parvum sed magne utilitatis librum....”

Sloane 636, 15th century, fols. 98v-102v, has the Incipit of William of Moerbeke’s translation (Quetif and Echard, 1719, I, 390), “Sapientissimus ypocras omnium medicorum peritissimus ait, Inscius medicus est qui astronomiam ignorat....” This is also the Incipit of Digby 29, 15th century, fols. 167-72.

The recently revised catalogue of the Royal MSS notes that a third version, which apparently is neither by William of Moerbeke nor Peter, is found in

Royal 12-C-XVIII, 14th century, fols. 33v-36r, which opens, “Dixit ypocras qui fuit medicus et magister optimus et medicus non est qui astronomiam ignorat”;

Sloane 3171, fols. 104v-116, which opens, “Dixit ypocras medicorum optimus cuiusmodi medicus est qui astrononiam ignorat”;

Sloane 3282, fols. 89v-90, which opens, “Dixit ypocras qui fuit medicus et magister optimus cuiusmodi medicus est qui non astronomiam nossit”;

Cotton Appendix VI, fols. 5r-8r, which opens, “Dixit ypocras qui fuit medicus et magister optimus cuiusmodi medicus est qui astronomiam ignorat.”

Digby 28, early 14th century, fols. 81v-85, which opens, “Dixit Ypo. non est medicus qui astronomiam non novit,” is perhaps the same version; at any rate Coxe says that it differs from Digby 29, William of Moerbeke’s translation.

[Sidenote: Geomancy.]

Geomantia, in Latin according to Mazzuchelli, Venice, 1549 and 1586. I have not seen either.

Geomantia di Pietro d’Abano nuovamente tradotta di Latino in volgare per il Tricasso Mantuano, Venice, 1542.

Novamente dall’ eccell. M. S. Musio da Capoa ricorsa, 2 pts., Vinegia, 1546-1550. Another edition, Venice, 1550.

Comincia la Geomantia di P. d’Abano tradotta di Lattina lingua, Venice, 1556.

CLM 392, 15th century, fol. 69-.

CLM 489, 16th century, fols. 222-33, “Desideravi verum et certum Iudicium dare secundum gloriosam et venerabilem scientiam Geomantiae ... / ... Explicit liber Petri de Abano. P.”

Sandaniele del Friuli 240, 15th century, “Incipit modum iudicandi questiones geomantie sive modum magistri Petri. Considerantibus (?) verum et certum ... / ... veluti nocturna. Explicit liber Geomantiae. Deo gratias Amen.”

[Sidenote: Prophecies.]

Questa sie la profetia composta per el reverendissimo negromante piero dabano ... Bologna, 1495.

Vatican 5356, fol. 28, Variae prophetiae Magistri Petri Patavini de Abano.

[Sidenote: Heptameron, or Elements of magic.]

Kiesewetter, Der Occultismus des Alterthums, mentions a Latin edition, Venice, 1496, which I have neither seen nor found mentioned elsewhere.

It was printed together with the Occult Philosophy of Henry Cornelius Agrippa in Latin at Paris, 1565, and in 1600 and 1655 in English translation.

Also in J. Scheible, Kleiner Wunder-Schauplatz, Theil 10, 1855.

In French as Les Oeuvres Magiques de Henri-Corneille Agrippa, par Pierre d’Aban (Heptameron ou les élémens magiques de Pierre Aban, Philosophe, Disciple de Henri-Corneille Agrippa), Liège, 1788.

Sloane 3850, 17th century, fols. 13v-23.

CLM 24936, 17th century, pp. 94-131, Petri de Abano doctoris urbis Pataviae Magia.

Vienna 11294, 17th century, fols. 41r-74v.

BN 17870, 18th century.

[Sidenote: Elucidarium necromanticum.]

Vatican, Regina Sueviae 2014, according to Mazzuchelli (1741) p. liii, who, like Naudé, lists this as a separate treatise different from the Heptameron.

[Sidenote: Annulorum experimenta.]

BN 7337, 15th century, pp. 131-8, “Peritissimi artium ac medicine doctoris in omnibusque scientiis excellentissimi magistri Petri de abbano annulorum experimenta feliciter incipiunt. Primo et principaliter in hac arte considerandum est quod 28 sunt mansiones lune.” This seems to be the work described by Naudé as “Liber experimentorum mirabilium de annulis secundum 28 mansiones Lunae.”

[Sidenote: Circulus philosophicus.]

CLM 17711, 17th century, fols. 284-307, is perhaps identical with one of the three preceding works.

APPENDIX III

PETER OF ABANO, ABRAHAM ABEN EZRA, AND HENRY BATE

[Sidenote: French translation from the Hebrew.]

The French translation from the Hebrew of astrological treatises by Abraham Aben Ezra is preserved in BN, fonds de Sorbonne, 1825. I have not seen the MS but infer from the description in HL XXI, 500-3 that it includes only five of Abraham’s treatises, The Beginning of Wisdom, Nativities, Revolutions, Elections, and Interrogations. At the close of The Beginning of Wisdom we are told that it was written down by Obers de Montdidier from the dictation of Hagins the Jew in the house of Sire Henri Bate at Malines and finished December 22, 1273.

[Sidenote: Peter of Abano’s Latin version.]

One MS of Peter of Abano’s version, BN supplem. lat. 151, is partially described in HL 21, 501. Others which I have examined are BN 7336, BN 7438, Canon. Misc. 190. I have seen various other MSS noted in catalogues and elsewhere, but such notices seldom seem to give a full and accurate list of the treatises. They were printed in 1507 by Peter Liechtenstein as noted in Appendix II. All copies which I have seen contain at the close of the first treatise, the Liber Introductorius or Beginning of Wisdom, the passage, of which HL 21, 501 has already quoted the Latin, stating that when Peter of Abano the Paduan found this work “in Gallic idiom, through the unskilfulness of the translator from the Hebrew defective in many ways, corrupt, and sometimes poorly arranged and failing to make sense, as far as he could he brought it back in the Latin tongue to Abraham’s original meaning.” The date is then given as 1293. Peter is also usually named as the translator at the beginning or end of the other treatises.

[Sidenote: Additional treatises in Peter’s version.]

In the Latin versions of Abraham’s astrological treatises besides the five named by the Histoire Littéraire are found the Liber rationum,[2885] the Liber luminarium et de cognitione diei cretici,[2886] and Tractatus particulares, which are really three treatises, namely: (1) “Incipit alius tractatus particulare. Incipit tractatus de partibus horarum in interrogationibus”;[2887] (2) “Tractatus in tredecim manieribus planetarum”;[2888] and (3) “Tractatus de significationibus planetarum in duodecim domibus Abrahe.”[2889] The De consuetudinibus in judiciis astrorum et est centiloquium Bethen, which occurs in the midst of Abraham’s treatises in the MSS, is probably not by him and is placed last in the 1507 edition. The Tractatus particulares are not included by Steinschneider in his list of Abraham’s astrological writings.[2890]

[Sidenote: A Latin translation by Henry Bate.]

While in general the Latin translation of Abraham’s astrological treatises is ascribed to Peter, in all the editions and manuscripts that I have seen,[2891] one of them, entitled De mundo vel seculo and dealing with conjunctions and revolutions, is ascribed to Henry Bate, the same under whose patronage the French translations were made.[2892] It would therefore seem that Peter found Henry Bate’s own Latin translation of 1281 more satisfactory than the French translation made at Bate’s house in 1273,[2893] and did not attempt to revise it. In some manuscripts Bate is also credited with a Latin translation of The Beginning of Wisdom or Liber introductorius, made in 1292.[2894]

[Sidenote: Other writings of Henry Bate.]

This Henry Bate was called by Pico della Mirandola “a disciple of Albertus Magnus.”[2895] In 1274 at Malines and in fulfilment of a promise made to William of Moerbeke, the noted translator of the Dominican Order and at that time papal chaplain and penitentiary, when they were together in Lyons, Bate composed a treatise on the astrolabe.[2896] Later Bate also wrote an account of his own horoscope and destiny.[2897] It gives the year of his birth as 1244. He was a canon, doctor of theology, and university professor; and seems to have spent his life mainly at Malines, Liège, and Paris. He also wrote on errors in the Alfonsine astronomical tables.[2898] Another unpublished work of his is entitled Speculum divinorum et quorundam naturalium.[2899]

[Sidenote: Other works by Abraham.]

There were also Latin versions of other astronomical and astrological works by Abraham than those translated by Bate or Peter.[2900] One cannot, however, be sure that “Abraham Judaeus” always refers to Abraham Avenezra, as there was a translator or translators of the thirteenth century by that name. Simon Cordo of Genoa was assisted in his Latin translation of the medical works of Serapion by an Abraham Judaeus of Tortosa;[2901] and Alfonso X of Castile employed a Jew named Abraham in astronomical translation from Arabic into Spanish.[2902] An Abraham Iudeus of Barcelona translated Haly on Elections from Arabic into Latin,[2903] and was perhaps the same as Abraham Bar Chasdai, a rabbi of Barcelona who translated the supposititious Aristotelian work De pomo from Arabic into Hebrew, after which Manfred, the illegitimate son of Emperor Frederick II, translated it or had it translated from Hebrew into Latin.

FOOTNOTES:

[2885] Incipit liber de rationibus habrabe avenerze quem transtulit petrus paduanus.... Explicit translatio libri de rationibus per petrum paduanum.

[2886] Explicit liber luminarium Abrabe Avenare quem Petrus de Padua Lombardus ordinavit quam melius potuit in planum ydioma latinum, qui liber potest de cognitione cause crisis intitulari. It was printed separately by Ratdolt, Venice, 1482.

[2887] This Titulus is wanting in the printed edition (1507), fol. lxxxv recto, but is found in BN 7336, fol. 109r and 7438. fol. 168v.

[2888] Or “Incipit liber significationum septem planetarum et earum generibus vel maneriebus.”

[2889] At its close “Finis quorundam tractatuum particularium Abrahe Avenare quos Petrus Paduanus ordinavit in latinum.”

[2890] In his article “Abraham Ibn Ezra” in Abhandl. z. Gesch. d. Math. Wiss. III, 2 (1880), p. 127, Steinschneider devoted only the four closing pages of this long article to Abraham’s astronomy and astrology, promising a future article on that subject, but I do not know if it ever appeared.

[2891] According to the recent catalogue of the Royal MSS, “Elecciones Abraham” in Royal 12-C-XVIII, 14th century, fols. 26-30, is “not the same translation as that (by Pietro of Abano) printed, Venice, 1507,” and this seems to be the case, although by a coincidence the opening and closing words are the same, “Sapientes legis” and “dixerunt antiqui.”

[2892] “Explicit liber de mundo vel seculo completus die lune hore post festum beati luce hora diei quasi 10, anno domini 1281, inceptus in leodio, perfectus in machilinia, translatus a magistro Henrico bate de hebreo in latinum”:--ed. of 1507, fol. lxxxv recto; BN 7336, fol. 1O9r; Canon. Misc. 190, fol. 69; Digby 114, fol. 175; Vienna 4146, fol. 264. CU Emmanuel 70, 15th century, fols. 137v-44, however, gives the date as 1292, “Expl. lib. de mundo et seculo completus die Jovis post fest. S. barnabe Ap. sub ascendente scorpionis a. d. 1292 in perside (?) translatus autem a mag. Henr. dicto bate de machelia de hebreo in latinum.” Sloane 312, 15th century, fols. 7Ov-97.

[2893] Apparently in the eight intervening years Bate had learned enough Hebrew to translate Abraham himself.

[2894] Cod. Lips. un. 1466, fols. 1-24; Berlin 963, 15th century, fols. 152-63; Vatic. Palat. Lat. 1377, 14th century, fols. 21r-37v, “Translatus est hic liber a magistro Henrico de Malinis dicto Bate cantore Leodiensis, et est hec translatio perfecta in urbe veteri a. d. 1292”; Wolfenbüttel 2816, anno 1461, fols. 84-111, “Abraham avenezre initium sapientiae.... Translatus est a magistro Henrico de Malynis dicto Bate, cantore Leodiensi. Perfecta est hec translatio in Urbe Veteri anno Domini 1292.” In this last MS follows a De fortitudine planetarum, said to have been translated “in the old city by master Henry of Malines, called Bate,” but the date is given as 1272. I have been unable to examine any of these MSS to see if the translation is really the same as that usually ascribed to Peter of Abano, but Björnbo (Abhandl. z. Gesch. d. Math. Wiss., XXVI, 1911, p. 135) gives that impression.

[2895] Adversus astrologos, IX, 3.

[2896] Digby, 48, 15th century, fols. 143v-152r. “Magistratus composicio astrolabi hanrici bate ... quod vobis promissum est cum apud vos essem Lugduniensis.... Expletum est hoc opusculum ab Hanrico Bate in villa Machliniensi Luna coniuncta Jovi in domo septima ascendente luna a. d. MCCLXXIIII quinto idus Octobris ad peticionem fratris Vuilhelmi de Morbeca, ordinis Predicatorum, domini pape penitenciarii et capellani”; also printed by Erhard Ratdolt, Venice, 1485, with a De natiuitatibus ascribed to Abraham Judaeus (printed again, Cologne, 1537) which is quite different from the treatise on Revolutions and Nativities translated by Abano.

[2897] Contained in BN 7324, Nativitas magistri Henrici Mechlinensis cum quibusdam revolutionibus, and described in HL 26, 561-2.

[2898] HL 26, 558-61 and Wolfenbüttel 2816, anno 1461, fols. 9-12, “Tractatus in quo ostenditur defectus tabularum Alfonsi, compositus a magistro Henrico Bate de Machlinia A. D. 1347” (sic).

[2899] Library of Dukes of Burgundy 7500, 15th century, or, as it is entitled in two St. Omer MSS (Maurice de Wolf, “Henri de Bate de Malines” in Bulletins de l’Académie Royale Belgique, Classe des lettres, 1909), “Speculum divinarum humanarumque rerum.”

[2900] BN 7377A, No. 4 and BN 9335, 14th century, fols. 126v-135, liber augmenti et diminutionis qui vocatur numeratio divinationis secundum Indos. BN 16648, 13th century, fols. 106-46, liber qui dicitur abrahismus.... “Dixit habraham iudeus, cognitum est corpus solare....”

[2901] See the printed editions, Liber Serapionis aggregatus in medicinis simplicibus, 1479; liber Servitoris liber xxviii, 1471; etc.

[2902] Canon. Misc. 45, 15th century, 56 fols. “Abulhaze Abnelaiitan liber de mundo et coelo, de notibus planetarum, etc., in partes duas distinctus per Abraham Hebraeum jubente Alphonso Hispaniae rege de Arabico in Hispanum, postea ab anonymo quodam in Latinum versus cum figuris praeviis capitulorum elencho et Alphonso epistola.” Arundel 377, 13th century, fols. 56v-68, Magistri Habrahe de tabulis planetarum.

[2903] Sloane 312, 15th century, fols. 252-5, 215-51. The same MS contains two works by Abraham Avenezra with whom Scott, in his Index of the Sloane MSS has identified--probably incorrectly--this Abraham the translator.

APPENDIX IV

WAS PETER CALLED TO TREVISO IN 1314?

It was stated by Bonifazio in his History of Treviso,[2904] and repeated by Mazzuchelli[2905] and Tiraboschi,[2906] that on August 7, 1314, the Trevisans, wishing to establish a university, brought Peter to their city, where he taught and practiced medicine for a year. Colle[2907] agreed that he received a call but doubted if he accepted it because his will, drawn up in 1315, makes it appear that he is still in the employ of Padua. But it is not quite certain that he even received a call, if we judge from the extant original documents,[2908] a decree issued by the government of Treviso on August 9, 1314, and letters of the 15th and 16th of that month. The decree indeed aims at the institution of professorial chairs in the two laws and medicine (phisica) at Treviso, namely, Ordinary Lecturers in Civil and Canon Law, and Extraordinary Lecturers in Civil Law and Medicine. Under each of these four heads it lists three names, and that of “Master Peter of Abano” heads those in medicine. But the decree further states that “the doctors named below” are to be balloted upon, and apparently by lot,[2909] and thus arranged in order of first, second, and third choice. The position is then to be offered to the first one chosen; if he refuses, to the second; and so on. It is also stated that the incumbents “are to lecture and teach through three years continuously after their arrival,” not for one year. The normal salary is set at four hundred petty pounds annually, although the Council of Three Hundred are left some liberty in increasing or diminishing this amount. Moreover, we have a letter of August sixteenth notifying Peter of Suzara of his final appointment after he had indicated that he would accept the election. Similar letters were sent to five others of the twelve men named in the decree, and the name of Peter of Abano is not found among the five, the professor named in medicine being Henzelerius or Hengelerius. Either therefore Peter of Abano had not been elected or had refused to accept the appointment.

FOOTNOTES:

[2904] Bonifazio, Storia di Trevigi, 1591, P. 354.

[2905] Mazzuchelli (1741), p. xxii.

[2906] Tiraboschi (1775) V, 51 and 156.

[2907] Colle (1825) III, 133.

[2908] Verci (1787) VII, Documenti, pp. 39-40, 43-4, 46-7 (from Raccolta Scotti, IV, 376, 342, 388).

[2909] “... quod infrascripti Doctores per sortem eligantur ... quod illi qui scripti sunt inferius ad lecturam ordinariam per se sortiri debeant unus contra alium ad buffolos et ballotas.... Et simili forma observetur et debeat observari in scriptis ad extraordinariam lecturam....”

APPENDIX V

PETER’S SALARY AT PADUA

[Sidenote: Amount exaggerated.]

The amount of salary offered at Treviso was worth mentioning because the statement has been made over and over again that Peter in his will of 1315 bequeathed to the town government of Padua fifteen hundred lire or pounds that were due him for his past three months’ salary. From this it was inferred that his annual stipend was either six thousand pounds, or four thousand if reckoned on the basis of an academic year of eight months. This seemed to show that he was the highest paid professor of his own, not to mention our, age. On turning, however, to the will as printed by Verci[2910] we discover that the fifteen hundred pounds represent three years of back pay, and that Peter further bequeaths to the commune of Padua five hundred pounds of small denarii due on his salary, presumably for the current year.[2911]

[Sidenote: Why was it so far in arrears?]

This puts an entirely different aspect upon the matter. It not only shows that Peter’s stipend was scarcely a tithe of what had been supposed, although a good salary for the times, as a comparison with that offered at Treviso and with the amounts of the other legacies made by Peter in his will indicates. It also raises the question, why was the payment of Peter’s salary some four years in arrears? And why does Peter make a distinction between five hundred pounds for which he holds papers (Bulletas) from the town officials and the fifteen hundred pounds due him for the previous three years and for which he apparently has nothing to show. Is there some question as to his claim for salary for those three years or even as to his having been in the Commune’s employ? Probably the simplest explanation is that after failing to receive his salary for these years Peter took the precaution to get a definite statement concerning it for the fourth. This might also serve to explain why Treviso had hopes of getting him away from Padua in 1314, and why he stayed on in 1315. The years just preceding 1315 seem to have been a troublous time for the city of Padua, which incurred a heavy sentence from the emperor Henry VII, and had wars with Vicenza and Can Grande, not to mention civil strife such as that of April, 1314, when another Peter--Judex de Altichino--was slain with his sons in the public square by the people, their goods confiscated, and the family banished to the fourth generation.[2912]

There seems to be no quarrel between Peter and the Commune of Padua, for he goes on in his will to entrust himself, his children, and his property to its tutelage and defense, besides leaving the Commune the two thousand pounds in question. Also as Peter makes his will in Padua, where most of his legatees live, where he still has his residence, and where he intends to be buried, it appears that in May, 1315, he still is in the employ of that city and has been for years past. So he has not yet gone to Treviso or elsewhere. Nor is his bequeathing the two thousand pounds arrears to the city a sure indication that he does not intend to teach there any more, either because he expects to die soon, or to accept a position in another university, or to cease teaching entirely because of old age. These arrears are an asset and he has to dispose of them somehow in making his will; he evidently has continued to teach when one and two years’ pay was owing him, and he may continue to do so now when three or four years’ salary is in arrears. However, it must be said that he shows no hope of ever recovering these arrears, nor is there any evidence that he ever did.

FOOTNOTES:

[2910] Which Colle, although he wrote after the publication of Verci’s work, did not take the trouble to do. Gloria was apparently the first to note that the time was three years and not three months.

[2911] Verci (1787) VII, Documenti, 117-8. “Item reliquit Communi Padue libras quingentas denariorum parvorum quas habere debebat a dicto Communi Padue pro suo debito salario de quo habebat Bulletas dominorum Potestatis Ancianorum et Gastaldionum Communis Padue supradicti. Item reliquit eidem Communi Padue libras mille et quingentas quas habere debebat a dicto Communi Padue pro suo salario de tribus annis retroactis.”

[2912] Chronicon Patavinum ab 1174-1390 in Muratori, Antiquitates (1741) IV, 1156-7 (covering the years 1311-1315).

APPENDIX VI

WHEN DID PETER DIE?

The date of Peter’s death may be placed between May 25, 1315, when he made his will, and November 19, 1318, when the record of a legal transaction in which his sons were concerned appears to speak of him as dead.[2913] It has usually been assumed that he died in 1315 or 1316 and these dates are given in epitaphs,[2914] which, however, were composed long afterwards and cannot be accepted as sure proof. Peter’s making his will has been taken as a sign that he was at death’s door and died almost immediately afterward, but this inference does not seem necessarily to follow either from the will proper or from the accompanying confession of faith which he made on the day preceding. Arnald of Villanova, it will be recalled, made his will in 1305 but lived on until 1311. Peter concludes his confession of faith by affirming that such has been his belief in the past, is now, “and will be to the very end of his life.”[2915] Unless we assume that this last clause is added simply as a matter of form or as a safeguard against the possibility of the Inquisition’s making the charge that immediately after his confession Peter became a heretic or relapsed into his previous heresy--unless we make such an assumption, which may be entirely unwarranted--the natural conclusion is that Peter did not expect to die immediately.

The language of the will itself points in the same direction. Peter, “a provident and discreet man,” contemplating the unstable condition of human nature and noting that “those things which have the appearance of lasting for a long time” nevertheless “tend visibly toward their end,” has decided to meet such perils half-way and happily anticipate the last day of life by a will made when in full possession of his senses and intellectual faculties.[2916] No mention is made of his being in ill health, unlike another will of the same period quoted in the same volume of Verci, in which the testator speaks of himself as “of sound mind, although afflicted body, not wishing to depart this world intestate.”[2917]

Other indications that Peter not only did not die immediately after making his will, but continued to teach and write, are the fairly strong evidence and probability that the pope to whom his treatise on poisons is addressed is John XXII, who was not elected until August 7, 1316; and the dubious assertion in a fifteenth century manuscript that Peter was acting dean of Montpellier at that time. We might also add that a prefatory note in the 1555 edition of the De venenis states that he lived to be almost an octogenarian.

FOOTNOTES:

[2913] Gloria (1884), p. 587, note 6, “Mill. trec. decimo octavo ind. prima die decimo nono mens. Nov. cora, d. B. (Bernardo) Dei gratia venerab. abbate monast. S. Marie de Pratalea--Benvenutus q. fil. mag. Petri fisici olim ser Constancii de Abano pro se--et vice Petri et Zifredi suorum fratrum q. eiusd. d. Petri et suorum heredum--vendidit.”

[2914] Mazzuchelli (1741), pp. xxxv-xxxvi; Gloria (1884), p. 586; Tomasini (1630), p. 22.

[2915] Verci (1787) VII, Documenti, 119, “et in hac credulitate fuit, est, et erit usque ad extremum vite exitum.”

[2916] Verci (1787) VII, Documenti, 116. “Providus et discretus vir Magister Petrus filius qu. domini Constancii de Abano de contrata Sancte Lucie de Padua, Artis Medicine Philosophie et Astrologie professor, attendens et considerans quod instabilis sit humane nature status et condicio et quod ea que verisimiliter diu duratura habere videntur essentiam tendunt visibiliter ad non esse. Ideoque tantis periculis occurrere cupiens et dispositione Testamentaria vite diem extremum feliciter et salubriter prevenire sana integra et plena mentis sensus et intellectus cognitione ut quieti corporis et anime sue provideat et saluti tale de suis bonis per nuncupationem suam condidit Testamentum sic dicens....”

[2917] Verci (1787) VII, 77, “... sane mentis, tamen de corpore gravatus, nolens de hoc mundo decedere intestatus.”

APPENDIX VII

WAS THE DE VENENIS ADDRESSED TO POPE JOHN XXII (1316-1334)?

[Sidenote: Survey of the editions and MSS]

In some nine printed editions which I have examined the pope addressed is denoted simply by the letter “N”; and most of the MSS do not specify the pope by name, or if they do, it is not so stated in the catalogues. Giacosa[2918] says that the treatise is dedicated in some MSS to Pope Honorius IV, but he does not specify them, and I do not know of any such. Where the pope is named, he is either John without enumeration,[2919] or John XXII.[2920] It is perhaps worth noting that there never was any John XX, and that John XXI is sometimes called John XX, and John XXII is called John XXI, but that the converse is impossible. In view of this uncertainty in the enumeration, it would also not be surprising to find either John XXI or XXII named without enumeration. Scardeone[2921] in the sixteenth century asserted that the De venenis was dedicated to John XXII, although this conflicts with his statement that Peter died in 1315. Mazzuchelli[2922] spoke of an Italian translation in which the pope is called Giacomo. There never was a pope so styled, but both Honorius IV and John XXII (called John XXI by Mazzuchelli owing to the error above noted) bore the name Giacomo before they assumed their pontifical designations. Another cogent reason for dismissing John XXI (1276-1277) from consideration is that Peter at the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven would neither have adopted the authoritative tone that he employs in the De venenis in addressing a pope who had himself, as Petrus Hispanus, been a medical writer of note, nor have failed to advert to that pope’s own medical works.

[Sidenote: Inference from a citation of Avenzoar.]

In the De venenis[2923] Peter cites the Latin translation of a treatise by Avenzoar (ʿAbd al Malik ibn Zuhr ibn ʿAbd al Malik, Abu Marwan) concerning the power of a powdered emerald as an antidote against poison. In the printed editions Avenzoar’s work is referred to as that translated for Pope Boniface.[2924] If we could only rely upon this as Peter’s original wording, it would mean that he was himself addressing some pope later than Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and so would support the other evidence that the De venenis was addressed to John XXII. But in at least one manuscript of the De venenis the work of Avenzoar is said to have been translated “for the Roman people.”[2925] Moreover, the Latin translation of Avenzoar in question is extant and in the printed version[2926] we read at the close that it was translated at Venice, August 21, 1281, from Hebrew into Latin by a master of medicine from Padua[2927] with the aid of a Jew named Jacob. The work would thus seem to have been translated long before Boniface became pope. In a Paris manuscript,[2928] however, the translator gives his name as John of Capua, a baptized Jew, of whom we know as a translator of other works from Hebrew into Latin,[2929] and addresses his present translation to the archbishop of Braga in Portugal,[2930] whom Hartwig believed to be Martin de Oliviera who held that office from 1292 to 1313. Now this John of Capua also translated the work on Diets of Maimonides, at the suggestion of William of Brescia who was Pope Boniface VIII’s physician, and Hartwig believes that he met the archbishop of Braga at Rome. But more than this, in a Vienna manuscript the translation of Avenzoar is addressed to Pope Boniface VIII himself.[2931] Apparently therefore there is justification for Peter of Abano’s speaking of the work as translated for Boniface VIII. And whether it was or not, in any case it was translated at too late a date for Peter to have cited it in his De venenis, had that treatise been addressed to Pope John XXI who died in 1277. So if we admit that the De venenis was addressed to a Pope John, it must have been addressed to John XXII who became pope on August 7, 1316.

[Sidenote: Popes and poisons.]

Returning for a moment to Boniface VIII, it may be remarked that he was presumably the pope who, as Peter himself states in the Conciliator, had protected him from certain persecutors. That there was nothing strange in addressing a work on poisons to a pope of that time is shown by the fact that Ermengard Blasius (or Blasii)[2932] of Montpellier, physician of Philip the Fair of France, translated the work of Moses Maimonides on poisons for Clement V, the predecessor of John XXII, in 1307.[2933] But there is no evidence so far as I know to indicate that Peter of Abano addressed his work on poisons to Clement V, although chronologically it is possible.

FOOTNOTES:

[2918] P. Giacosa, Magistri Salernitani nondum editi, 1901, p. 495.

[2919] Addit. 37079, 15th century, fols. 83r-131v, “Pollex incipit de venenis editus a petro de abano peritissimo pad. Sanctissimo ac Reverendissimo in Christo domino Domino Johanni divi providentia pape et summo pontifici.” Some later hand, presumably Protestant, has drawn a line through the words pape and summo.

Amplon. Q. 222, mid 14th century, fols. 227-37, “Reverendissimo in Christo patri Iohanni divina providentia summo pontifici.”

Riccard. 1177, 15th century, fols. 7-13, is said to be written at the request of Pope John.

[2920] Bibl. Naz. Turin H-II-16, 15th century, fols. 111-115v, “Incipit tractatus de venenis et eorum medicinis appropriatis transmissis summo pontifici Joh. XXII.” “Explicit tractatus de venenis et eorum medicinis appropriatis qui pollox (sic) venenorum appellatur. Compillatus ab egregio artium et medicine doctore petro de ebano et temporis decano studii montisspessulani directus sanctissimo in Xo patri et domino domino Johanni divina providentia pape XXII. Deo gratias amen.” I take this description of the MS from Giacosa (1901), p. 495. The MS was somewhat damaged in the fire of 1904 and in the description of it in the catalogue of MSS which survived the fire, published in the same year, Abano’s treatise is not mentioned: “Marsilia Sancta Sophia Receptae super prima quarti Avicennae De febribus; et alia.”

Canon. Misc. 46, 15th century, fols. 31-47r, described by Coxe as, “Eiusdem Petri libellus de venenis ad Johannem Papam XXII,” but the pope’s name does not appear in the MS itself.

[2921] Scardeone (1560), p. 201.

[2922] Mazzuchelli (1741), p. xlii.

[2923] In the fourth chapter or fifth, if, as in most printed editions, the preface is reckoned as chapter one.

[2924] “Et ego quandoque sum expertus et avenzoar hec invenit ut in libro translato Papae Bonifacio scriptum est.” Once in an edition of 1555 the pope’s name appears in full, but more often is abbreviated to “pape Bon.,” as in the 1521 edition, or “pape Bo.” as in the earliest editions.

[2925] Addit. 37079, 15th century, fol. 102r, “et avenzoar hec invenit ut in libro populo romano.” It is easy to see, however, how the Latin abbreviations for Papa Bonifacius and populus Romanus might be confused by a copyist. Unfortunately I have not been able to trace this point further in other MSS.

[2926] Liber Theizir Dahalmodana Vahaltadabir, II, i, 5 (Venice, 1553), for the passage cited on the emerald. There are also editions before 1500.

[2927] Can this be meant for Petrus Paduanus himself?

[2928] BN 6948, fols. 1-102: see the extracts made from its preface and Explicit by Delisle at the request of Otto Hartwig, in the latter’s Die Uebersetzungsliteratur Unteritaliens in der normannisch-staufischen Epoche, in Centralblatt f. Bibliothekwesen, III (1886), pp. 188-9.

[2929] Ibid., p. 187.

[2930] It is somewhat of a coincidence that Petrus Hispanus was archbishop of Braga before he became Pope John XXI.

[2931] Hartwig (1886), p. 188, “sanctissimi patris domine pape B. VIII.”

[2932] See Chapter 68, p. 845, note 2.

[2933] Peterhouse 101, 13-14th century, No. III, fol. 6r, “Expl. lib. Rabynoisis cordubensis translatus barthinone a mag. hermengaldo blasii in honorem reverentissimi summi pontificis Clementis quinto (sic) anno ab incarnacione verbi 1307.”

APPENDIX VIII

PETER AND THE INQUISITION

[Sidenote: His own statement in the Conciliator.]

The relations of Peter of Abano with the church and the Inquisition and the question whether he was accused, tried, or condemned for heresy, magic, or astrology, are matters which have seldom been either carefully investigated or correctly stated, although allusions are often made to these points as if they were definitely settled. We shall inquire here what real evidence there is. In the Conciliator, written in 1303, occurs a germane statement by Peter himself at the close of a chapter in which he has discussed the determination of periods in history and the rise of new prophets and religions by the courses of the stars, and the connection of seven angelic intelligences with the seven planets. After this somewhat bold indulgence in astrology Peter concludes, “So much then has been said as can be comprehended by reason concerning this according to the skill of the world’s scholars, in no way derogating from divine wisdom in what has been written but rather confirming it in all points since it alone is truth and life. In this matter, however, some mischief-makers, unwilling or rather unable to hear, for a long time have freely vexed me, from whose hands at last the said Truth has laudably snatched me and mine, with the intervention too of an apostolic mandate.”[2934] Before 1303, therefore, Peter’s astrology had aroused considerable opposition, perhaps at Paris, which however was checked at least for the time being by papal protection, and to which Peter does not so far as I know allude again in his subsequent works.

[Sidenote: His professions of orthodoxy.]

In many passages of his works, however, Peter recognizes that the Peripatetic philosophy and Christian dogma do not agree, and, while stating the philosophical position, gives his adhesion to the orthodox Faith.[2935] In the preface to the Conciliator he states that the work is divided into three parts in honor of the Trinity. In the Addition to Mesuë he argues that trust in God is of avail in the art of medicine. Pious phralses such as Si deo placet and Deo gratias occur with fair frequency in his works. Finally, in his will of 1315, or rather in a statement made the day before the will was drawn up, he makes profession of firm faith in the Trinity, Creed, and articles of faith, and declares that he believes “in all respects just as Holy Mother Church believes and teaches,” and that he has always so believed and will until his last breath. “And if it should be found that he has ever said anything contrary to the Faith, he said it not because he believed it, but probably for purposes of disputation.”[2936]

[Sidenote: Does his will show fear of the Inquisition?]

There is perhaps no sufficient reason for doubting the sincerity and spontaneity of these professions of faith, but the question arises whether Peter did not make this confession of faith in order to demonstrate that he was no heretic and so secure the validity of the will which he made on the day following. This would be a prudent step on his part if he had any fear of future action by the Inquisition, since the property of a heretic who was condemned to life imprisonment or to the stake was subject to confiscation. Moreover, the number of judgments of confiscation against deceased persons was “relatively high.”[2937] We now turn to the will itself to inquire if there is anything in it to suggest fear of the Inquisition on Peter’s part. The most, if not the only, extraordinary feature of the will is the attitude shown by Peter toward his sons. We have seen that three survived him and were concerned in legal transactions in 1318 and 1321. There is, however, only one or at most two mentions[2938] of them in the will. After a list of legacies for various purposes and to various persons, including his nephews and grandnieces, and the bequest of two thousand pounds of back salary to the Commune of Padua, the will continues, “Also he has commended himself, his sons, and his property to the Commune and men of the city of Padua as if it were the tutelage and infallible defense of their own sons and property.” Then he names the executors of his will (suos fideicommissarios) and as his heirs Jacobum qu. domini Marsilii de Carrara de Padua and Conradum qu. domini Bonzanelli da Viguntia, whom he describes as “trustworthy men and of eminent virtue and repute.” Jacobus became captain-general of Padua in 1318.

[Sidenote: Gloria’s inference.]

From these passages Gloria concludes that Peter entrusts his body, his children, and his property to the Commune of Padua in order to save them from the Inquisition,--his body from being burned after his death, his property from being confiscated; and that he names “two rich and powerful citizens” as his heirs in order to enlist their aid and with the secret understanding that they shall later transmit the residue of his property, after his other legacies are paid, to his children. It should, however, be realized that the confiscation of the property of a heretic was absolute. “Forfeiture occurred ipso facto as soon as the crime of heresy was committed, the heretic could convey no legal title and any assignments which he might have made were void, no matter through how many hands the property might have passed.”[2939] Whether, therefore, Peter’s sons received their inheritance directly or indirectly, it could be taken from them, if he were condemned as a heretic either before or after his death. On the other hand, there is this to be said in favor of Gloria’s interpretation of the will. If Peter’s property were confiscated as that of a heretic, it would naturally be confiscated by the Commune of Padua, the same secular power to whom he would be handed over for execution in case he were condemned to the stake. By making a generous legacy to the city, by appealing to it for protection of himself and children, and by naming leading citizens as his heirs, Peter may have hoped to enlist public opinion on his side, to prevent any Paduan from accusing him of heresy to the Inquisition or supporting such a charge, or, in case the Inquisition does condemn him and the city government of Padua does confiscate his property, to induce the Commune at least to provide for his children. And certainly the sentence in which Peter entrusts himself, his children, and his goods to the infallible defense of the Commune of Padua does not sound as if he meant to disinherit his sons in favor of other heirs.

[Sidenote: Did Peter’s sons inherit his property?]

The next question is: what evidence is there to show that the sons ever received their father’s property, if this was his intention? Gloria holds that Peter’s sons are called his heirs in documents recording legal transactions of 1318 and 1321, that consequently he meant them to be his real heirs when he drew up his will in 1315, and that the nominal heirs, true to their trust, have duly turned over the estate after the funeral expenses and other legacies have been met. If this last assumption is true and if Peter’s sons are in 1318 openly called his heirs, whereas in 1315 he did not dare to call them his heirs, it would appear probable either that there has been in the interval a trial for heresy and that Peter has been acquitted, or that there has been no trial and is not likely to be one. But I am not so sure that the documents mentioned describe Peter’s sons as his heirs.[2940]

[Sidenote: If so, how?]

If, however, they are openly called his heirs in 1318, or if, whether called his heirs or not, they are in possession of his property after his death, there are other possible explanations of this than that the heirs named in his will of 1315 have voluntarily turned over the estate to them. Either the will may have been set aside for other reasons--it will be noted that at its close Peter states, “if it is not valid by the law of testaments, let it have force and hold by the law of codicils or any other law by which it may the better and more efficaciously have force and hold good.”[2941] Or the will may have been annulled by the sons, angry at being disinherited, having themselves informed against their father as a heretic. For note the one exception to the law that the confiscation of the property of a heretic is absolute even at the expense of his innocent widow and children. “Frederick II and Innocent IV both decreed that children could inherit their father’s property, if they denounced him for heresy.”[2942] But this sensational possibility[2943] seems to be excluded by another bit of evidence which Gloria did not note but which supports his interpretation of the will. In 1325 Marsilius de Carrara, nephew of the Jacobus named as one of Peter of Abano’s heirs and almost as prominent as his uncle in the town politics, was knocked off his horse and trodden under foot in a street fight in Padua, and was in danger of his life, but was helped to his feet by “Benvenutus of Abano, son of master Peter, and others of his men.”[2944] Thus whatever disposition was made of Peter’s property, his nominal heirs and his sons seem to have remained on good terms.

[Sidenote: Burning of Peter’s bones for heresy.]

If Peter’s children were provided for, there is evidence that the men of Padua were not equally successful in protecting his corpse from the Inquisition. Thomas of Strasburg, Prior-General of the Augustinian Friars from 1345 to 1357, in his Commentary on the Sentences[2945] calls Peter a heretic, although he admits that he was a most capable physician. Thomas affirms that Peter denied the miracles by which Christ and the saints raised the dead, arguing that men who were afflicted by a certain disease often fell into a trance for three complete revolutions of the sky. And when asked if Lazarus was not in the tomb four days, he would say that it was only for three full days since the first and fourth days were incomplete. Thomas does not affirm that Peter ventured to deny the resurrection of Christ Himself, but concludes his allusion to Peter by saying, “But in this his iniquity he was deceived and received the reward of his error. For I was present when in the city of Padua his bones were burned for these and his other errors.” The inference which has been drawn from this brief statement is that at some time after Peter’s death his bones were disinterred and burned. This much may perhaps be accepted as the fact, since Thomas asserts he was an eye-witness, but such gossipy reminiscence as this by medieval monks and friars, especially when heretics or saints are the theme, is notoriously unreliable, as Salimbene and the astounding yarns in Thomas of Cantimpré’s work on bees show in the thirteenth century. At any rate Thomas of Strasburg gives no hint that the “other errors” of Peter of Abano were connected with magic or astrology. Indeed Thomas displays a considerable faith in astrology himself in other passages of this work we have cited.[2946] He asserts that the sky itself has a real action on inferior objects except for free will. Upon it the stars cannot act directly but they may affect it indirectly owing to the radical union in us of sense appetite and intellectual appetite.

[Sidenote: The account of Michael Savonarola.]

A century later Michael Savonarola supplements with further detail the general impression of trouble between Peter and at least a certain party in the church which we obtained from Abano’s own statement and from Thomas of Strasburg, and suggests that Peter’s inclination toward magic, or at least reputation for magic, led the Dominican inquisitor to denounce him as a heretic at Paris and try to bring him to prison and the flames. “But he was held in so great veneration by royal majesty and the entire university that means were not supplied the inquisitor to take him.” Savonarola goes on to say that, when Peter learned of this, he induced the king and university to call a council of doctors of Holy Scripture, whom he convinced by forty-five arguments that not he but the Dominicans were heretics. “And after sentence had been so given,” continues Savonarola, “if the story is to be believed, it was brought about that the Dominicans were driven from Paris as heretics and exiles and were unable to reside there for thirty-two years.”[2947] But of course we do not believe any such story, which is mentioned nowhere else, and therefore Savonarola’s entire account has to be suspiciously regarded as “a story.”

Savonarola proceeds to say, however, that then the case was appealed to Rome and that by intervention of the pope peace was at last made between Peter and the Dominicans; and that in his testament, “which is held in great veneration by many Paduans,” Peter left his body to be interred among the Dominicans as a sign to God and the world how he had kept the peace with them. As a matter of fact, however, it is in the church of St. Anthony the Confessor belonging to the Friars Minor or Franciscans of Padua that Peter’s will directs he shall be buried, while two Franciscans and no Dominicans are listed among the witnesses to his confession of faith. Again therefore we find Savonarola’s account unreliable. He concludes, “But the Dominican Inquisitor, full of venom and breaking the truce to which he had sworn--an action the more detestable in a clergyman, in the silence of the night opened the sepulcher, burned the body, and gave the ashes to the wind. O unspeakable crime!”

[Sidenote: Scardeone’s account.]

As we recede further from Peter of Abano’s own time to Scardeone in the sixteenth century, more specific details concerning his life accumulate. Scardeone perverts Savonarola’s statement that Peter’s astrological predictions won him a reputation as a magician and that this got him into trouble with the Dominicans at Paris, into the assertion that Peter’s devotion to mathematical disciplines at Paris caused him on his return to Padua to be suspected of magic. He adds that a rival physician, Peter of Reggio, jealous of Abano’s science and fame, reported him to the Inquisition as a heretic and necromancer. That the Inquisition twice instituted proceedings against him: in 1306, when three illustrious men, whom Scardeone mentions by name,[2948] were his patrons and, since nothing was proved against him at the trial, he was freed from this calumny; and again in 1315, when he died during the trial--Scardeone, however, says nothing to suggest that this was due to application of torture--and was buried in the church of St. Anthony. The Inquisition, however, went on to condemn him upon the basis of his writings, but meanwhile either his friends or his housekeeper Marietta had removed and hidden his body, which the inquisitors had to be content to burn in effigy. “This,” coolly continues Scardeone, “is why Thomas of Strasburg wrote that he saw the bones of Peter of Abano burned in the square of Padua.” Thus Scardeone not merely makes new assertions based upon no one knows what, but contradicts statements of Savonarola who was nearer to the events and Thomas of Strasburg who claims to be an eye-witness. It is on Scardeone’s account, nevertheless, that most modern allusions to Peter of Abano and his fate are based.

[Sidenote: Naudé’s statement.]

It is hardly worth while to pursue the matter further in later writers except perhaps to note an inscription upon a statue of Peter of Abano in Padua which Naudé mentions in 1625.[2949] “Petrus Aponus of Padua, most learned in philosophy and medicine, and on that account winner of the name of Conciliator; in astrology indeed so skilled that he incurred suspicion of magic, and, falsely accused of heresy, was acquitted.” Thus only one trial is mentioned and that resulting in an acquittal.

FOOTNOTES:

[2934] Conciliator, Diff. 9.

[2935] See, for instance, Conciliator, Diffs. 9, 13, 64, 135, 156.

[2936] Verci (1787) VII, Documenti, 118-9.

[2937] CE, “Inquisition.”

[2938] The doubtful passage is, “Item reliquit domine Marie quondam Bartolomei a Sancto Gregorio de contrata Sancte Lucie de Padua libras centum parvorum et pro quolibet anno libras vigintiquinque parvorum pro suo labore dispensandi domum et pueros suos dum vixerit.”

The question is, does Peter leave Maria one hundred petty pounds outright and an annuity of twenty-five pounds “for her labor in managing the house and her children as long as she lives,” or “for (i.e., in return for) her labor in managing the house and his children as long as she lives”?

The words “dum vixerit” must mean “as long as she lives,” because they are similarly used in the next sentence of another recipient of an annuity. Could they mean, “while he (i.e., Peter) lived,” there would be less difficulty in translating “pueros suos” as “his children.”

Later legend (Scardeone, 1560, p. 201) stated that Peter had a housekeeper named Marietta who saved his corpse from the Inquisition by hiding it for a time. It is also possible that Maria was Peter’s mistress as well as housekeeper, and that the “pueros suos” were “their children.”

[2939] H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, I, 520.

[2940] Again it is a question of the translation of a reflexive pronoun.

In the passage, “Benvenutus q. fil. mag. Petri fisici olim ser Constancii de Abano pro se et vice Petri et Zifredi suorum fratrum q. eiusd. d. Petri et suorum heredum vendidit” (Gloria, p. 587), does “suorum heredum” mean Peter’s heirs or, like “suorum fratrum,” Benvenuto’s heirs?

The other document of 1321, “... in villa Abani coheret a mane Benvenutus q. magistri Petri de Abano cum Petro et Zufredo fratribus suis,” shows that they have just inherited some property in Abano together, but scarcely from their father who has been dead at least three years according to the other document.

[2941] Verci, VII, Documenti, p. 118, “et si non posset valere iure testamenti valeat et teneat iure codicillorum vel quocumque alio iure quo melius et efficacius valere et tenere possit.”

[2942] E. Vacandard, The Inquisition, 1908, p. 246.

[2943] It is also barely possible that Peter, in drawing up his will, had planned to have his sons denounce him in order to inherit.

[2944] Chronicon Patavinum, anno 1325, in Muratori, Antiquitates (1778) XII, 252.

It is worth noting that the Chronicle is silent as to any heresy trial or punishment of “master Peter.”

[2945] Thomae ab Argentina, Commentaria in IIII libros sententiarum, Genuae, 1585, Book IV, Distinctio 37 and 38, Article 4, which in this edition is vol. II, fol. 171r. This passage has been incorrectly cited by Colle and others, so that I had difficulty in finding it, especially since it is buried under the heading, “De impedimento praecedentis conjugii.”

[2946] Liber II, Dist. 14, Quaestio I and Artic. III.

[2947] Perhaps Savonarola uses the word “Dominicans” here merely in the sense of inquisitors.

[2948] One of them, Jacopo Alvarotto, was one of the witnesses to Peter’s profession of faith in 1315 and one of the executors named in his will.

[2949] Apologie, pp. 386-7. Eighty-two statues of “illustrious Paduans and university men” still adorn the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II (formerly the Prato della Valle) at Padua.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

LXXI. CECCO D’ASCOLI

Reasons for his celebrity--An astrologer burned by the Inquisition--Works by Cecco to be considered here--Other sources--The sentence by the Inquisition--Villani’s account--The later manuscripts--Astrology for cities--The fate of individuals--Influence of stars and signs--How mind and soul are affected--The stars and dreams--Astrological images--Did Cecco deny human free will?--Founders of new religions said to be born of incubi and succubi at astrological periods--Birth of Christ and darkness during His passion were both miraculous--Christian qualification of Albumasar--Cecco’s astrology not the most extreme--Charge that he taught astrological necromancy--His attitude toward magic--His frequent citation of books of magic and necromancy--Necromancy employs evil spirits--Cecco unduly curious rather than heretical in this regard--Was his death due to personal enemies?--His execution of little significance.

[Sidenote: Reasons for his celebrity.]

The name of Cecco d’Ascoli has perhaps received more attention and is better known than the writings and actual achievements of its owner deserve. If so, this is mainly for two reasons; first, that his poem l’Acerba has been associated with the study of Dante; second, that he was condemned by the Inquisition and burned at the stake in Florence in 1327. Doubtless Cecco should receive some attention in the histories both of literature and science as one who was both an Italian poet and a Latin teacher and writer of astronomy and astrology. But his works and personality would perhaps have been long since forgotten but for the fact that his learned poem, l’Acerba, was taken to be an invidious parody of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and that both it and his astrological work in Latin were ordered to be burned at the same time with himself, while all persons retaining copies of them were to be excommunicated. Recently, it is true, it has been held that Cecco imitated Dante out of admiration for him and not from any desire to cast aspersion upon the Divine Comedy,[2950] but in any case their names have long been coupled. As for the condemnation by the Inquisition, its chief effect seems to have been to raise a rather ordinary astrologer to the position of a martyr for science and a reproach to the medieval church. Many apologies for and eulogies of Cecco have been penned through the centuries since, while a few writers have tried to justify the action of the Inquisition, to discredit Cecco, and to question his scientific reputation.[2951] Certainly the condemnation by the Inquisition seems to have advertised rather than repressed his writings, since not only has the poem l’Acerba survived but also two works on astrology. Of these three the two that the Inquisition probably meant to forbid were both in print before 1500 and the Protestant Revolt. The third, which the Inquisitors seem to have overlooked, was also neglected by publishers until the present century.

[Sidenote: An astrologer burned by the Inquisition.]

Hitherto in our survey of medieval learning, more particularly of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we have found little or no evidence in support of the old view, or rather assumption, that every medieval scientist was persecuted by the church. Signs of a theological party hostile to the growing interest in natural science we have seen, but much more evidence of this growing interest itself, and that too among bishops, friars, Franciscan as well as Dominican, and even popes. We have seen that the scientific attitude of William of Conches prevailed in the long run, that it is very doubtful if Roger Bacon was in any sense persecuted by the church for devotion to natural science, and that Peter of Abano did not have to die in order to escape the Inquisition but that it had to wait until after his death before it could do him any harm. But now in Cecco d’Ascoli we come at last, and it is not until the fourteenth century, to a well authenticated case of an astrologer of some learning being put to death through the agency of the Inquisition. This makes his writings the more important for us to note, although we do not find their contents such as to entitle him to any high rank as a natural scientist.

[Sidenote: Works by Cecco to be considered here.]

It is hard to see any reason for the condemnation of l’Acerba by the Inquisition except that it was written by Cecco. Its superstition is so slight as not to call for notice here, nor is its natural science more remarkable than that of other vernacular poems such as the Romance of the Rose. Our discussion will center about his two extant Latin works which are in the form of commentaries upon the Sphere of Sacrobosco[2952] and the Principia of Alcabitius.[2953] Both seem to be in the form of class-room lectures and were presumably delivered by Cecco at Bologna. As we shall see, it is reasonably certain that the Latin work condemned by the Inquisition was the commentary on the Sphere and not that on Alcabitius, although why the latter should be overlooked when the innocuous l’Acerba was condemned is difficult to explain except by the usual ignorance and stupidity of censors and persecutors. It is unlikely that either of the Latin works has been altered from Cecco’s original either by himself or others in order to render it less objectionable from the theological point of view, after the Inquisition had condemned his book on astrology in toto. It would be more likely if anything to be touched up in the other direction. In any case these two works are what we have from Cecco’s pen to show what were the views of an astrologer condemned by the Inquisition.

[Sidenote: Other sources.]

We have, it is true, some documentary evidence other than Cecco’s own works to show what his views were and why he was condemned by the Inquisition, but it is not very satisfactory. Boffito, who in recent times has made the most specialized study of Cecco d’Ascoli and his works, editing the commentary on Alcabitius hitherto unprinted and investigating the problem, “Why was the astrologer Cecco d’Ascoli condemned to be burned?”[2954] accepts outside of Cecco’s own writings only two sources as at all original and reliable, namely, the account in Giovanni Villani’s contemporary chronicle[2955] and a Latin manuscript in the Riccardian library at Florence[2956] which contains a summary of the inquisitorial sentence against Cecco. This manuscript is on paper and I should say is certainly not earlier than the fifteenth century. Boffito views with suspicion the longer sentence in Italian which was reproduced by Cantù[2957] and made use of in Lea’s History of the Inquisition,[2958] since it is not found earlier than in a manuscript of the seventeenth century.

[Sidenote: The sentence by the Inquisition.]

According to the Riccardian manuscript Cecco’s astrology was the reason, or at least the pretext, for his condemnation, but it does not make clear just what was found objectionable in his astrological teaching. It brings out further, however, that he was not put to death for a first offense but was burned at Florence as a relapsed heretic on the ground that he had violated the terms of a previous sentence imposed upon him by the inquisitor at Bologna. In 1324 the Bolognese inquisitor had found Cecco guilty of improper utterances concerning the Catholic Faith and had imposed upon him a penance of fifteen days of confession, daily recital of thirty Paternosters and as many Ave Marias, occasional fasting for a year, and the hearing every Sabbath of a sermon by the friars. He furthermore took from Cecco “all his astrological books, great and small,” forbade him ever again to teach astrology at Bologna or elsewhere, publicly or privately, deprived him indefinitely of his professorial chair and doctor’s degree, and fined him seventy pounds Bolognese. Taken altogether, this sentence, while it did not condemn Cecco to death, would seem to have deprived him rather effectually of future means of livelihood. Three years later the inquisitor at Florence received the account of the foregoing process against Cecco at Bologna, summoned him before himself, pronounced him a heretic, and handed him over to the secular arm to be burned at the stake. This part of the sentence was duly executed by the ducal Vicarius, Lord Jacob of Brescia. It was further decreed that Cecco’s astrological book in Latin and his poem l’Acerba in Italian should be burned and that all persons retaining copies of them should be excommunicated.

[Sidenote: Villani’s account.]

Villani adds a number of further details. He states that it was the Commentary on the Sphere which had caused Cecco’s condemnation at Bologna, that he had been forbidden to make further use of it, and that at Florence it was charged that he had violated this prohibition. But Cecco denied this and attributed his arrest at Florence to the hostility of a Friar Minor who was both bishop of Aversa and chancellor to Charles of Calabria, who was at that time duke of Florence and whose astrologer Cecco seems to have become after leaving Bologna. In this new position, Villani says, Cecco had made many true predictions of political events, but although a great astrologer he was a vain man and of worldly life. The friar-bishop-chancellor regarded Cecco’s presence at Florence as court astrologer as an abomination. Villani, however, like Cecco himself, does not appear to regard his practicing astrology at Florence as necessarily a violation of the decree of the inquisitor at Bologna; but if the Riccardian manuscript correctly reproduces the Bologna sentence, Cecco would certainly seem to have violated it. Villani volunteers more information than the Riccardian manuscript as to the respects in which Cecco’s teaching or practice of astrology was found objectionable. He makes the general assertion, which is too vague to be of much value, that Cecco was too bold in exercising his science in things prohibited and untrue, “since the influence of the stars does not constrain of necessity” nor against human free will and divine prescience. Villani, indeed, perhaps added this qualification, after having stated that Cecco made many true political predictions, in order to save himself from possible censure. But he more specifically states that Cecco ascribed the force of necessity to the stars; that in his treatise on the Sphere he asserted that there were evil spirits generated in the sky who could be coerced by incantations under certain constellations to perform many marvels; and that he taught that Christ came to earth in accordance with the will of God and with the principles of astrology, and ought from his nativity to live with His disciples come poltrone and to die the death that He did, while Antichrist would come according to the courses of the planets in rich raiment and power. Cecco also, Villani vaguely adds, taught “many other idle things and contrary to the Faith.”

[Sidenote: The later manuscripts.]

The later manuscripts incorporate these charges of Villani in the inquisitorial sentence against Cecco, using suspiciously similar wording in the passage concerning Christ and Antichrist, and charging that Cecco has taught his work on the Sphere in the schools contrary to his promise and oath. These manuscripts further assert that Cecco has confessed to teaching publicly that men born under certain constellations must necessarily be rich or poor or decapitated, that God would not change the course of nature, and that in the fourth and eighth sections[2959] of his Commentary on the Sphere he said that under certain constellations happy divine men would be born like Moses, Hermes, Merlin, and Simon Magus. Like Villani the later manuscripts mention Cecco’s political predictions at Florence and state that he had prophesied concerning “the Bavarian.”[2960] They also mention the stress laid by Cecco upon the importance of the constellations that cities are founded under. Such of the statements of these late manuscripts[2961] concerning Cecco’s astrological teachings as are not found in Villani will be found to rest upon certain passages in his own works or upon a misapprehension of them.[2962] They also mention his Commentary on Alcabitius, whereas the older form of the sentence condemns only one Latin book on astrology by him. Another suspicious circumstance about the longer form of inquisitorial sentence preserved in these late manuscripts is that the Inquisition is represented as itself condemning Cecco to death[2963] instead of handing him over to the secular arm.

[Sidenote: Astrology for cities.]

Let us next turn to Cecco’s two commentaries in Latin and see what foundation there is in them for the astrological teachings ascribed to him by Villani and the longer form of inquisitorial sentence preserved only in very late and suspiciously worded manuscripts. It is true that Cecco emphasizes the control exercised by the stars over the fate of cities. The laying of the first stone of a city is a moment as influential over all its future history as is the date of conception in the case of an individual. Romans and Tuscans are so corrupt because of the ascendancy of Venus over them, the Lombards are scientific through the influence of Mercury.[2964] If cities are to endure, they should be built under the fixed signs.[2965] It is best for a man to live in a city with the same guiding star as his own planet.[2966]

[Sidenote: The fate of individuals.]

In the notes which I took on the astrological statements in Cecco’s commentaries there seems to be no single direct assertion that under certain constellations men must necessarily be rich or poor or decapitated. Cecco does tell his students, however, “You ought to know another thing, that when Jupiter is in the signs of Mars, forsooth Aries or Scorpion, the person born will be bound with the girdle of poverty, infamous, and injured by the powerful.”[2967] The word “decapitated” perhaps is reminiscent of an anecdote which Cecco tells in discussing the fulfilment of dreams and their dependence on the constellations. A certain malefactor went to a meadow with his associates with a scythe to cut down grass and saw beetles rolling up dung in the road. This reminded him of a dream which he had had the night before that these beetles would decapitate him, and he started in to kill them. But as he struck at them with the handle of the scythe, the blade which was over his own neck cut off his head. “And the moon was in Taurus in conjunction with the fixed star which is called Aldebaran; such is the story told me by my master whom may God pardon.”[2968] This conjunction, however, would seem to have been that prevailing when the malefactor had his dream and not the constellation under which he was born. Cecco in another passage, however, not only cites Zael to the effect that a horoscope when Mars is lord of the ascendant and in a favorable angle of the sky bestows power and dignity along with impiety and the greatest cruelty, and, unless he is regarded by some favorable planet, will cause the possessor of the horoscope to lose his power soon; but Cecco also adduces the recent tyrant of Ascoli, John Venibene, as a specific example who ruled for three years very cruelly and then was expelled and died abroad.[2969] In the case, on the other hand, of a constellation under which are born lords of the whole earth, such as emperors, kings, and princes, Cecco warns that the sons born to peasants in this constellation will not become kings but simply leaders among men of their class, “since the intractability of the material weakens the celestial force” and “the vices and virtues of the parents are transmitted to their heirs.”[2970] Elsewhere he states that certain planets called superior are especially appropriated to kings, nobles, and magistrates, while the inferior planets signify concerning the populace.[2971]

[Sidenote: Influence of stars and signs.]

Cecco grants that the celestial bodies are inanimate but holds that by virtue of their substances and the mediation of the intelligences moving them they “have properties in different parts of the sky in which they are said to rejoice and sadden effectively in us, that is, by disposing us to good and to evil.”[2972] Cecco believes that each herb has its appropriate planet and sign, and that doctors should be careful to note the positions of planets in administering herbs.[2973] The parts of the human body and regions of the globe he also parcels out among the signs.[2974] In connection with the common topic of the influence of the stars upon the formation of the child in the womb he makes the less common observation that sometimes the influence of the stars is too strong, as is seen in the case of infants who talk when only two months old or have marvelous discretion beyond their years--or rather, months--and die young.[2975]

[Sidenote: How mind and soul are affected]

The heavens influence the human mind as well as body, therefore. The stars alter the elements, through these our bodies, and through these our souls.[2976] Certain signs of the zodiac are called human or rational “because they dispose man to reason” and “he will possess eloquence mingled with reason.” A person who is born under one of the vicious and tortuous signs, namely, the ram, crab, bull, scorpion, and goat, will have a tortuous and vicious disposition, plotting evil and detracting from others, such a person as the physician Gualfridinus, by which name, as Boffito has already suggested, Dino del Garbo, the noted medical writer of Florence, is probably indicated. When the moon is in one of the common signs, Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, or Pisces, persons who make advances to you are liable to prove fraudulent; marriages contracted then are liable to be dissolved; if one escapes from prison, it will be only to be retaken; but if one is accused of some crime, he will soon be acquitted; and so on. In some signs secrets will be kept, in others immediately revealed. When the moon is in the first facies of Scorpion, all news reports are false.[2977] The influence of the stars explains the puzzling fact, concerning which his fellow-townsmen of Ascoli have often questioned Cecco, why a man will choose a silly girl of low birth as his wife rather than another who is more beautiful, noble, and intelligent. The answer is that when the stars of two persons come into certain positions relative to each other, love which cannot be dissolved except by death results, regardless of beauty and social rank.[2978]

[Sidenote: The stars and dreams.]

Cecco also ascribes the prophetic quality of dreams to astrological influence, which permits the union of the soul of the dreamer with the superior intelligences or spirits of the sky. Such revelation is, however, impressed upon the soul of the dreamer “under some similitude or figure.” Dreams come true when the moon is in the fixed signs, Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio; when the moon is in the common signs, dreams are partly true and partly false. The length of time to elapse before the dream is fulfilled can also often be determined. Cecco says that “minds ill-constituted and false and homicidal do not have true dreams because they are indisposed to receive the action of the intelligences.” Robbers and homicides may, however, have true dreams prophetic of their own deaths as in the tale of the malefactor, the beetles, and the scythe already recounted, and in the case of a native of Ascoli whom Cecco knew personally and “who was named Angelus and consequently was a devil.” Dreaming when the moon was in Leo that he would be hanged in Roman territory, he became so frightened that he turned friar, but after two years was dismissed from the Order, went to Viterbo, robbed a man, and was there hanged for it.[2979]

[Sidenote: Astrological images.]

Cecco alludes to astrological images twice in his commentary on the De principiis of Alcabitius. To illustrate how images work which are made as love charms, or to gain honor, and the like, he states that if an image for purposes of love is made in the hour of Venus when that planet is in Pisces or in Taurus, as the tin is poured out it acquires under the moulding influence of that constellation the due proportion of the elements essential to produce the desired property.[2980] Later Cecco tells us of an image which Vergil made at Naples to drive away flies. When the second facies of Aquarius is in the ascendant an image of a fly should be engraved on the stone in a ring.[2981] In his Commentary on the Sphere Cecco even goes so far as to tell how to construct an astronomical image which will enable one to receive responses from demons.[2982]

[Sidenote: Did Cecco deny human free will?]

Returning to the charges made against Cecco’s astrological teaching by Villani and the later manuscripts, especially the assertion that he ascribed necessity to the stars, we have to note that, although many of the astrological teachings just listed may seem to ascribe something closely approaching to necessity to the stars, nevertheless Cecco expressly asserted that he believed in freedom of the will. Many of the statements from his commentaries which we have thus far presented are cited by him from Ptolemy, Hermes, Zaël and other astrological writers, and perhaps are not always to be taken as his own opinion, especially when he quotes Hermes as saying, “The heavens are the cause of moral virtues and of all.”[2983] At any rate he now informs his students that according to “our and the true Faith” the circle of the zodiac, “though it may be the cause of life, yet is not the cause of our will or intellect except as a tendency (nisi dispositive), and so I hold and truly believe, although other astrologers hold the contrary, saying that all things which are generated and corrupted and renovated in the inferior world of generation and corruption have efficient causes in the superior world which is ungenerated and incorruptible.... That argument I will overthrow in my glosses to the Centiloquium”[2984]--a work by Cecco which seems to have been lost or never completed.

[Sidenote: Founders of new religions said to be born of incubi and succubi at astrological periods.]

The charge that in his Commentary on the Sphere Cecco said that under certain constellations happy divine men would be born like Moses, Hermes, Merlin, and Simon Magus, and that Christ and Antichrist were alike under the rule of the stars, appears from the text of the Commentary as it has reached us to be an unjust one. Cecco, it is true, quotes Hipparchus in the book on hierarchies of spirits to the effect that in the coluri, or circles whose purpose according to Sacrobosco is to distinguish the solstice and equinox, there are incubi and succubi by whose virtue there are born in a major conjunction as if from the deity men who seem divine and who establish religions in the world and work miracles. Such a man was Merlin and such an one will be Antichrist who will be conceived by a virgin and work many miracles.[2985] Of Antichrist Cecco promises to say more at the close of his lecture and he there quotes a treatise by Zoroaster on quarter-revolutions of the eighth sphere. According to this Pseudo-Zoroaster, whenever the eighth sphere completes one quarter of a revolution, which happens once in twelve thousand years, there are born by the virtue of incubi and succubi men supported by divinity who introduce new religions and by whose death even the heaven is perturbed. At the end of twelve thousand years the Mosaic law was terminated thus by the Christian religion, and “ours would be terminated in this way by Antichrist.”[2986] But Cecco does not necessarily subscribe to these statements of Hipparchus and Zoroaster. Indeed he has already declared the art of the latter contrary to the Christian faith and he now continues, “Whence that beast Zoroaster and some following him say that Christ was born under the dominion of those quarter-revolutions from the virtue of incubi and succubi, of whom I have spoken to you above, but it seems horrible to me even to write such words.”[2987]

[Sidenote: Birth of Christ and darkness during His passion were both miraculous.]

Cecco goes on to affirm that “Christ our Lord” was the true son of God who came into the glorious Virgin and was not made by the nature of the celestial bodies. That He rather was the Maker of celestial natures many things show us. One is that the Magi, who were superior astrologers and acquainted with the secrets of universal nature, adored him as king and son of God, seeing this in the star which appeared to them with the figure of a crowned child beneath it.[2988] Cecco also argues that the period of darkness during Christ’s passion was a true miracle and not due to a natural eclipse, nor to the interposition of a comet called Milex, nor to the occult virtue of the stone heliotrope. The comet Milex is supposed to presage religious change and injury to kings and potentates, but Cecco argues that its interposition would not cut off the sun’s light and further that it is not found at the altitude necessary to interpose. The stone heliotrope is green with blood-colored drops, and when it is placed in a shell full of water in the rays of the sun, vapors arise from it which obscure the horizon in that city. Cecco does not dispute this occult virtue in the gem, which is commonly called “orfanella” and which renders a man invisible by affecting the eyes of others. But he argues that the eclipse during Christ’s passion was universal and not confined to the city of Jerusalem. Some say that an interposition of Venus and Mercury caused the darkness, but Cecco affirms that this would be astronomically impossible and in itself a miracle and subversion of natural order. Cecco, however, adds that while miraculous, the eclipse was also in a sense natural, since God is the First and Universal Cause and can alter the heavens which are a secondary universal cause.[2989]

[Sidenote: Christian qualification of Albumasar.]

Cecco also pretends that where Albumasar speaks of creatio as the work of the stars, he must really mean generatio, since the act of creation pertains to God alone, although generation is under the stars.[2990] As for Albumasar’s aphorism, “If anyone asks anything of God when the head of the dragon is in conjunction with Jupiter and the moon in mid-sky, his prayer will be fulfilled”--which Peter of Abano said he had tested twice with success; Cecco declares that it is not proper to interpret this as meaning that prayers to God will be infallibly answered in certain constellations, but that the word deus is to be taken here as indicating the king or other chief magistrate in the state.[2991] Thus Cecco seems at considerable pains to say nothing that might be offensive to the church, and he closes his Commentary on the Sphere with the statement that if in it or other writings of his aught is found to criticize, he will gladly submit it to the correction of the very holy Roman church. Possibly this remark and others like it represent a revision of his works undertaken after his first condemnation at Bologna. According to one of the late manuscripts,[2992] Cecco, when summoned before the Inquisition at Florence, claimed that his book had been corrected by the inquisitor of Lombardy. This defense was not allowed, however, and the terms of the sentence at Bologna would seem to preclude it. And since the sentence given at Florence absolutely forbade anyone to possess the book, there does not seem much reason why a revised rather than the original version should survive.

[Sidenote: Cecco’s astrology not the most extreme.]

On the whole, then, it would be surprising if Cecco’s condemnation were due merely or primarily to his astrological teachings. As Tiraboschi[2993] noted nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, he upholds human free will, though attributing to the stars a natural inclination to vice or virtue, and holding other superstitions common to the astrologers of his time. Tiraboschi also noted his submissive tone to the church and was unable to see in the Commentary on the Sphere the errors which had been charged to Cecco’s account. More than this, in a number of respects Cecco did not go as far as some of his predecessors or subsequent writers. Christ and Antichrist had been partially subjected to the stars by writers before him who do not seem to have been assailed by the Inquisition for their views, and Pierre d’Ailly, the great cardinal and reformer, went much farther in this direction than Cecco in the next century. Peter of Abano had held views concerning the influence of the constellations on the appearance of new religions and on prayers to God which Cecco rejects. But all in vain the concessions made to the Christian standpoint by Cecco at the expense of astrological doctrine; of him alone we know surely that he was condemned by the Inquisition, and he went to the stake.

[Sidenote: Charge that he taught astrological necromancy.]

We have not yet, however, discussed Villani’s charge that in his Commentary on the Sphere Cecco asserted that there were evil spirits generated in the sky who could be coerced by incantations under certain constellations to perform many marvels. Villani perhaps has reference to the passage in which Cecco gives astronomical directions to be followed by anyone who wishes to make an image by means of which he may receive responses from spirits.[2994] There is indeed a good deal of information concerning spirits in the heavens in Cecco’s commentary on Sacrobosco’s manual, and he shows a wide acquaintance with books of magic. We turn, therefore, from his astrology proper to his attitude to magic and to astrological necromancy.

[Sidenote: His attitude toward magic.]

Cecco’s attitude to magic so-called is the usual one of condemnation. He repeats that Zoroaster was “the first inventor of the magic art,” and gives a classification of the magic arts almost identical with that of Hugh of Saint Victor, but states that he derives it from the Liber de vinculo spiritus of Hipparchus, a book of necromancy. Cecco says that magic is “emphatically censured by holy mother church,”[2995] and he does not directly question or qualify this condemnation. He says nothing of a natural magic which is harmless. His chief concern with magic, as in the cases of Michael Scot and Peter of Abano, seems to be to distinguish astrology from it as a reputable science, and to hold that one can learn of the future better as well as more legitimately by astrology.

[Sidenote: His frequent citation of books of magic and necromancy.]

The fact, however, that the church disapproves of magic and “vituperates” it, does not restrain Cecco from frequent citation of books of magic, such as the Liber artis magicae of Apollonius,[2996] nor from retailing to his students much information concerning spirits in the sky and necromancy. Thus when Sacrobosco mentions the four points of the compass, Cecco is reminded of a statement in the Liber de ordine intelligentiarum of Hipparchus that certain princes of the demons “occupy the four parts beneath the sky. For expelled from heaven, they occupy the air and the four elements.”[2997] When Sacrobosco speaks of the zenith and poles in a purely astronomical way, Cecco again quotes Hipparchus as saying, “O wonderful zenith and godlike nature,”[2998] etc., after the manner of an invocation, and Solomon in the Liber de umbris idearum as exclaiming, “O arctic Manes! O antarctics propelled by divinity! Why do natures so great and noble seem to be enclosed in mineral species?” This last remark, Cecco explains, refers to the responses given by these spirits in metal mirrors.[2999] When Sacrobosco treats of climates, Cecco remarks that the word may be understood necromantically as well as astronomically. Zoroaster, the inventor of the magic art, uses the word in the necromantic sense when he says, “For those climates are to be marveled at, which with flesh of corpses and human blood give responses trustworthily.” “By this,” continues Cecco, “you should understand those four spirits of great virtue who stand in cruciatis locis, that is, in east, west, north, and south, whose names are Oriens, Amaymon, Paymon, and Egim,[3000] spirits who are of the major hierarchy and who have under them twenty-five legions of spirits each. Therefore because of their noble nature these seek sacrifice from human blood and likewise from the flesh of a dead man or cat.[3001] But this Zoroastrian art cannot be carried on without great peril, fastings, prayers, and all things which are contrary to our Faith.”[3002]

[Sidenote: Necromancy employs evil spirits.]

This last word of warning may seem a bit belated and perhaps somewhat perfunctory, but shows Cecco still consistent in recognizing that magic and necromancy are contrary to the Christian religion. In other passages he calls these spirits demons and diabolical,[3003] and affirms with Augustine that “spirits who are outside the order of grace” cannot truly transmute bodies, nor raise the dead, nor do any marvels and feats of magic except those which can be accounted for by the occult virtues of nature.[3004] And in speaking of a demon named Floron, who was mentioned by Solomon in the Book of the Shadows of Ideas, who was of the hierarchy of cherubim, who was confined in a steel mirror by a major invocation, who knew many secrets of nature, and who deceived King Manfred and others by ambiguous oracles in modern times,--Cecco concludes, “So beware of these demons because their ultimate intention is to deceive Christians to the discredit of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Cecco tells a story of a man of Ferrara who consulted this demon Floron as to hidden treasure and was told that he would find enough in a certain spot to last him for the rest of his life. He dug in the cavern indicated and uncovered only four ounces of gold, but as an avalanche crushed him immediately afterward, the oracle was fulfilled.[3005] Yet on the next page we find Cecco giving the instructions already mentioned for making an astronomical image in order to obtain responses from a spirit. And several pages further on he cites a response of this same Floron as to the time when demons are least liable to deceive one and when as a consequence it is best to consult them, and again as to the divinity of Christ, of whom this demon Floron said, “He took upon Him human flesh that all flesh through Him might be saved.”[3006]

[Sidenote: Cecco unduly curious rather than heretical in this regard.]

Thus, much of Cecco’s work seems less a commentary upon Sacrobosco’s text than a manual of astrological necromancy. His citations from the books of magic and necromancy well illustrate those relations between astronomy, magic, and necromancy to which we have before had allusions in the writings of Albertus Magnus and elsewhere. We remember the distinction drawn in the Speculum astronomiae between commendable works of astronomy and injurious works of necromancy, and we wonder if the cause of Cecco’s condemnation may not have been that instead of sticking to the field of astrology he made these dangerous excursions into the subject of necromancy. It might well be held that he was leading his students into temptation by the numerous references to demons, the magic art, and astrological necromancy in his Commentary on the Sphere. At the same time it must be remembered that such pillars of the Christian Faith and learning as William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus had read and cited books of magic and necromancy. Cecco’s passages concerning astrological necromancy are almost all quotations or citations from other authors. When he speaks in his own name it is usually to declare magic and necromancy contrary to Christianity and to censure the passages which he has just cited. Moreover, the notion of hierarchies of spirits, of their presence in sky and air and elements, of their power to work marvels,--all these were orthodox enough Christian doctrines. And Cecco does not, like William and Albert, hint at a natural variety of magic apart from demons which is not idolatrous and unchristian. Of indiscreet curiosity concerning such matters and undue mention of them he might be found guilty, but scarcely of any direct heresy so far as his extant written works are concerned.

[Sidenote: Was Cecco’s death due to personal enemies?]

If neither Cecco’s astrology nor his citation of books of magic and necromancy seems sufficiently extreme to account alone for his condemnation by the Inquisition, we may perhaps find the clue in the hypothesis of personal enemies, which has already been more than once advanced by writers on Cecco. That he would have made bitter personal enemies one can well imagine from the sharp personalities in which he indulges in his works. That such personalities were not unwelcome to the taste of that time, however, is indicated by Dante’s frequent allusions to the recent dead in his Inferno. Cecco with less discretion directed his gibes against the living. Thus he states that the head and tail of the dragon are the intersections of circles, and not stars forming the shape of a dragon in the sky “as a certain physician of ours of Ascoli (?) argued together with his mother who was as big a fool as himself.”[3007] We have already mentioned Cecco’s insulting words concerning the physician Gualfridinus, who seems the same as Dino del Garbo. Now while Villani tells us that Cecco attributed his arrest at Florence to the chancellor of the duke, in the very next chapter, in mentioning the death of Master Dino del Garbo, whom he calls a very celebrated physician and a man learned in natural science and philosophy, who wrote “several noble books” at the request of King Robert of Naples, Villani adds that Dino “was a great cause of Cecco’s death, attacking as erroneous the book from which he had lectured at Bologna; and many said that he did this through envy.”[3008] Padre Appiani, a Jesuit who wrote an apology for Cecco in the seventeenth century, attributed his persecution at Bologna to the son, Tommaso del Garbo, and that at Florence to Dino.[3009] Tiraboschi in the eighteenth century came to the conclusion that “envy had no small part in the condemnation of this unhappy astrologer, and that he would not have perished so wretchedly if he had not had powerful enemies who conspired to his ruin.”[3010] Nothing is said by Villani of Cecco’s having offended the duke of Florence, Charles of Calabria, and so forfeited his favor and protection, but this would seem likely, though of course it would account only for his second sentence at Florence.

[Sidenote: His execution of little significance.]

The condemnation of Cecco, therefore, may be a good example of the way in which the Inquisition could be manipulated for private ends, but it does not seem a sign of any general attack by the church and Inquisition on astrology or on learned men who showed an interest in occult science. The charges repeated, or invented, against Cecco by Villani and the late manuscripts are loose and exaggerated. Why Cecco d’Ascoli was burned at the stake is a problem that has puzzled more than one investigator, and none of the explanations offered is entirely satisfactory. It is, however, fairly evident that the process against Cecco was a failure as an attempt to check his teachings and simply advertised him and his writings. It came late in the medieval period and apparently was not soon repeated. Everything tends to indicate that his execution was an exceptional and sensational, but not especially significant event. The attitudes toward astrology of Thomas Aquinas, whom the church canonized, and of Albertus Magnus, who was beatified, are much more important and more characteristic of medieval ecclesiastical culture.

FOOTNOTES:

[2950] G. Castelli, La vita e le opere di Cecco d’Ascoli, 1892, chapter 12.

[2951] For an account of this literature see Castelli’s opening chapters.

The important contributions of G. Boffito will be mentioned presently. W. St. C. Baddeley, Cecco d’Ascoli, Poet, Astrologer, Physician, 1894, is a worthless popular essay.

[2952] Sphera Mundi cum tribus Commentis nuper editis videlicet Cicchi Esculani, Francisci Capuani de Manfredonia, Iacobi Fabri Stapulensis.... Impressum Venetiis per Simonem Papiensem dictum Bivilaquam, 1499. As the leaves are unnumbered in this edition, the following references will follow the foliation of the 1518 edition, sphera cum commentis, etc., which will be cited as Sphera.

BN 7337, 15th century, pp. 32-41, Caeci Aesculani super sphaeram, seems to contain only portions of Cecco’s commentary and to omit Sacrobosco’s text entirely.

[2953] Il Commento di Cecco d’Ascoli all’ Alcabizzo, edito a cura del P. G. Boffito, 1905. This will be referred to as Alcabizzo.

[2954] Studi e Documenti di Storia e Diritto, Publicazione periodice dell’ accademia di conferenza Storico-Giuridichi, Roma, XX (1899), 357-82, “Perchè fu condamnato al fuoco l’astrologo Cecco d’Ascoli?”

[2955] Muratori, Scriptores, tome 13, X, 39-40.

[2956] Riccard. 673 (M-I-25), fol. 111r-v, “De magistro Cecco de asculo quare combustus sit.”

[2957] Gli Eretici d’Italia, Turin, 1865, I, 151.

[2958] H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, III, 444.

Lea’s sources for his account of Cecco would seem somewhat dubious from his own description of them, since he says, “I owe many of the above details to a sketch of Cecco’s life in a Florentine MS which I judge from the handwriting to be of the seventeenth century and of which the anonymous author appears to be well informed; also to a MS copy of the elaborate sentence, much more full than the fragments given by Lami and Cantù.” Lea supplied no further means of identifying these MSS, but presumably he had reference to two of the following:

Poppi 199, 18th century folio, Vita e morte di Cecco d’Ascoli.

Panciatichiani 117, 18th century, p. 50--“Abiura di Cecco d’Ascoli e sua morte seguita in Firenze l’anno 1328, con altre notizie appartenenti alla sua vita.” Precede una nota sul padre Accursio Buonfantini Inquisitore, che esaminò e condannò Cecco d’Ascoli; pp. 51-9, Esame e condanna di Cecco d’Ascoli, “Al nome de Dio amen. Noi frate Accursio ... / ... Familiari e servitori dell’ Inquisizione e molte altre persone”; pp. 60-3, Memorie della vita e morte di Cecco d’Ascoli, “Nella città d’ascoli nella marca fu un artigiano assai commodo ... / ... che troppo dalla credenzia della vera fede si allontanano”; pp. 63-4, Altre notizie date dal Sig. A. M. Manni, “Maestro Cecco fu cittadino ascolano, filosofo et astrologo ... / ... delle Virtù delle Pietre, manoscritto del sig. Alessandro Cherubini.”

Palat. 895, 17th century, carte 15, Sentenzia contro a maestro Cecco di maestro Simone degli Stabili da Ascoli, data in Firenze l’anno di nostro Signore 1328, “Noi frate Accursio di Firenze, dell’ ordine de’ frati minori, per autorità appostolica Inquisitorre della eretica malignità della prouincia de Toscana ... / ... come in Firenze è pubblico è notorio per l’euidenza del fatto manifesto.”

Castelli, p. 42, says that the number of copies of the sentence and relation of the death of Cecco found in the libraries of Italy is incredible, but he mentions only two.

[2959] Cecco’s Commentary is not divided into such sections in the two editions and MS which I have seen.

[2960] “del Bavaro”; the illusion is presumably to the emperor, Louis of Bavaria.

[2961] Listed above, p. 951, note 5. Panciatich. 117 is very similar to Palat. 895, but the wording is not identical, and from fol. 56v on the former omits much of the diffuse moralizing of the latter on how wicked it is to pry into the future and to destroy faith in freedom of the will, the basis of all morality (see Palat. 895, fol. 9r-v).

[2962] Such as ascribing to Cecco views which he cites from other authors only to condemn immediately.

[2963] In Palat. 895, for instance, fol. 12v, “Deliberarono condannare alla morte il detto maestro Cecco”; fol. 13v, “lo condanniamo alla morte come merita.”

[2964] Sphera, fol. 11; BN 7337, p. 33. Cecco also uses the inhabitants of Ferrara and Bologna to illustrate his point. Each city or state, however, has a triple influence exerted on it by the stars, according to its climate, its province, and the moment of its building. See also fol. 14.

[2965] Alcabizzo, ed. Boffito (1905), pp. 31-2.

[2966] Ibid., 53-4.

[2967] Ibid., pp. 58-9.

[2968] Alcabizzo, p. 31.

[2969] Sphera, fol. 20; BN 7337, p. 37.

[2970] Alcabizzo, pp. 9-10.

[2971] Sphera, fol. 11.

[2972] Alcabizzo, p. 20.

[2973] Ibid., 23-4, 49-50.

[2974] Ibid., 50.

[2975] Ibid., p. 23.

[2976] Sphera, fol. 7, “... elementa alterant complexiones, complexionibus alteratis alterantur animae que in nobis sunt quia anime consequuntur corpora ut dicit philosophus in principio sue physionomie.”

[2977] Alcabizzo, pp. 32, 43, 46-8.

[2978] Alcabizzo, pp. 34 and 36.

[2979] Ibid., 29-31.

[2980] Alcabizzo, p. 26.

[2981] Ibid., p. 43.

[2982] Sphera, fol. 18.

[2983] Ibid., fol. 4; BN 7337, p. 32.

[2984] Ibid., fol. 12.

[2985] Sphera, fol. 14; BN 7337, p. 34.

[2986] Ibid., fols. 22-23; BN 7337, p. 39.

[2987] “Unde iste bestia zoroastes et aliqui eum sequentes dicunt quod Christus fuit ortus in dominio istarum quartarum ex virtute incuborum et succuborum de quibus supra dixi vobis quod horribile mihi videtur scribere ista verba.”

[2988] BN 7337, p. 39.

[2989] Sphera, fol. 23.

[2990] Alcabizzo, p. 49.

[2991] Alcabizzo, p. 17. In the Sphera, fol. 22 (BN 7337, p. 38), he had promised to treat of this matter in the commentary on Alcabitius’ De principiis.

[2992] Palat. 895, 17th century, fols. 10v-11r.

[2993] Tiraboschi (1775), V, 165.

[2994] Sphera, fol. 18.

[2995] Ibid., fol. 3, “a sancta matre ecclesia vituperabiliter improbata.”

[2996] Or Liber de angelica factura, (or perhaps factione) as it is called in BN 7337, p. 35.

[2997] Sphera, fol. 15; BN 7337, p. 34.

[2998] Sphera, fol. 20.

[2999] Sphera, fol. 17.

[3000] In BN 7337, p. 37, these names are spelled, “Orion, Agimon, pagimon, et egin.”

[3001] “vel gatti” in the printed text; “vel capti” in BN 7337.

[3002] Sphera, fol. 21.

[3003] Sphera, fols. 17 and 22.

[3004] Sphera, fol. 16.

[3005] Sphera, fol. 17; BN 7337, p. 35.

[3006] Sphera, fol. 22; BN 7337, p. 39.

[3007] Alcabizzo, p. 16, “sicut silogizabit quidam noster medicus exculanus cum matre sua fatua sicut ipse.” If the reading were “patre suo fatuus,” one might be tempted to try to see in it a reference to Dino del Garbo and his son, Tommaso del Garbo.

[3008] Villani, X, 40.

[3009] Cited by Castelli; I have not seen the work.

[3010] Tiraboschi (1775), V, 165.

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