APPENDIX I
PREVIOUS ACCOUNTS OF PETER OF ABANO
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.
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]
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]
[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.