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.
[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.”