CHAPTER LXVIII
ARNALD OF VILLANOVA
Recent research into his life—His twofold importance—Narrative of his life—In theological difficulties—Events of 1305—The close of his life—Arnald and the Inquisition—His works—Attitude to natural science—Magic excluded from medicine—Disapprobation of Sorcerers—The devices of sorcerers—Counter-magic against them—Arnald’s works and the Inquisition again—Incantations—Cures of old-wives—Ligatures and suspensions—Marvelous virtues in nature—Occult virtue defined—Due to the stars—Astrological medicine—Bleeding and the moon—Bernard Gordon’s personal experience—Operative astrology or magic—Seals or images—Experimental method—Further foibles of Arnald’s medicine—The affair of Bernard Délicieux.
Recent research into his life.
Arnald of Villanova has been rather unusually fortunate among medieval men of learning in the accurate research which within the last fifty years scholars have made into the sources for the facts of his career. Before that time all sorts of assertions and dates were current concerning his life, although even then those who took the pains to turn back to Astruc,[2668] could find in his work a tolerably correct account of Arnald’s biography. But now we have a much fuller treatment of his life and works by Hauréau in the Histoire Littéraire de la France,[2669] while the researches of Menéndez Pelayo[2670] in the Vatican library and the crown archives of Aragon have brought to light new documents of importance. Subsequently Chabás has discovered an old and authentic copy of Arnald’s last will and testament in the cathedral archives of Valencia.[2671] Further materials bearing upon his career appeared in Finke’s Acta Aragonensia,[2672] and have been written up by Diepgen in a monograph on Arnald’s political and theological activity after 1299.[2673]
His twofold importance.
Arnald’s personality and career have long attracted attention, not only because of his prominence as a practicing physician and writer on medicine and alchemy, and because of his close relations with several kings and popes. He also is noted for his connection with ecclesiastical history, his relations with the Spiritual Franciscans and the theologians of Paris, and for his criticisms of existing conditions in the church of his time,—criticisms which he combined with Joachimite ideas of a speedy end of the world and coming of Antichrist. These points long ago caused his inclusion in Matthias Illyricus Flacius’s Catalogue of Witnesses to the Truth who before our time attacked the primacy of the Roman pontiffs and the various superstitions, errors, and impious frauds of Popery,[2674] and more recently in Menéndez Pelayo’s Historia de los heterodoxos españoles. And it is true that Arnald composed a violent diatribe against the regular clergy of his day and also a Sword of Truth against the Thomists.[2675]
Narrative of his life.
Arnald was a Catalan, although Pope Clement V speaks of him as “a clerk of Valencia.” Arnald writes of his youth as a time of hardship and of himself as “a country practitioner” without literary culture. Yet he came to shine at courts and to defy synods of learned doctors of theology. He also mentions his early education in a Dominican convent and his study of medicine at Naples under John Calamida. During his entire life he seems to have been continually moving about, and his works speak of observations and operations in many towns of Spain, Italy, and France. Some of his treatises were written in Valencia, others in Barcelona, others in Naples, or in Gascony, Piedmont, Bologna, Rome, and even Africa. He was often called abroad to render medical services to popes and other potentates and was frequently employed in foreign diplomacy by the kings of Aragon and Sicily. By 1285 he had won a sufficient reputation as a physician to be called from Barcelona to attend Peter III of Aragon in his last illness. Peter gave him a castle in Tarragona. After that Arnald seems to have taught at Montpellier which was then under the jurisdiction of Aragon. Three later bulls of Clement V in 1309 making regulations for the medical faculty at Montpellier mention Arnald of Villanova as one of the persons by whom the pope has been advised in the matter, and speak of him as having “once long ruled” in that university.[2676] Astruc tells us that in the eighteenth century the house where he had lived was still shown in Montpellier, ornamented with sculptured figures which were interpreted as magic symbols.[2677]
In theological difficulties.
In 1292 Arnald composed a treatise on the significance of the holy name, Tetragrammaton, both in Hebrew and Latin, and on the declaration of the mystery of the Trinity. This and later essays of his in the field of religion were not well received by most theologians, who would have preferred that he confine his efforts to medicine. In 1299 Arnald was sent to Paris with a message from James II of Aragon to Philip the Fair. Here he was arrested by the inquisition, but was bailed out the next day, Nogaret being among those who stood security. Presently he was brought to trial before the bishop and the theological faculty of Paris for a work predicting the coming of Antichrist about the middle of the fourteenth century upon the basis of passages in Daniel and the Erythrean sibyl, and his book was ordered to be burned.[2678] Arnald protested to the king of France and later to a crowd of distinguished people at the bishop’s palace and appealed to Pope Boniface VIII. Finally he was allowed to leave France and in November, 1301, is found at Genoa.
Arnald submitted to Boniface VIII a slightly modified version of his work on Antichrist, accompanied by a tone of pious self-abnegation and considerable shrewd flattery of the pope as “Christ on earth” and “God of gods.” The theologians of Paris, however, had sent a portion of the original text to the pope with the result that Boniface kept Arnald in prison for a time and forced him to abjure his work in secret consistory, but finally said that Arnald had erred only in not submitting the work to him in the first place. After Arnald had treated Boniface successfully for the stone, that pontiff’s estimation of him greatly improved, and he received favorably a new work which predicted the history of the Mediterranean world for the next century until the coming of Antichrist, bewailed the worldliness of the clergy, but upheld the papal power, to which, of course, Arnald looked to further the ecclesiastical reforms which he had at heart. Boniface also presented Arnald with a castle at Anagni, but the sun proved too hot there for Arnald’s head. Early in 1302 he left the papal curia, in April he received permission from King James II to dispose of his property in Valencia. His writings on Antichrist and against certain of the clergy continued, and in February, 1304, he was at Marseilles complaining before the bishop of some Dominicans who had attacked his treatises. He then addressed himself to the new pope, Benedict XI, at Perugia, but was not well received, and complained that the pope had judged and punished him before hearing him. But Benedict’s brief pontificate was soon over and Clement V showed himself more gracious.[2679]
Events of 1305.
Meanwhile in April, 1305, Arnald returned to Barcelona where he found James II sick abed and very glad to see him and to entrust himself to his medical care rather than that of Ermengard Blasius (or Blasii)[2680] who had hitherto attended James. About this time Arnald seems to have interpreted a dream for James, but that monarch later repudiated Arnald’s account of the affair and they were estranged for a time.[2681] Arnald’s will, drawn up on July 20, 1305, by a public notary of Barcelona, informs us concerning his library, other property, generosity to the poor, and reveals the fact that he had a wife and children.
The close of his life.
Arnald, however, still had several years of life before him. A declaration has been preserved which he made in 1306 concerning the observance of certain statutes at the University of Montpellier.[2682] James II employed him in 1306-1307, and he corresponded with Clement V and Philip IV. In 1308-1309 he interpreted a dream for Frederick of Sicily and with him concocted a scheme for a crusade and reform of the church, in pursuance whereof he went to Rome, Barcelona, and Avignon, and carried letters back and forth between James and Frederick.[2683] Arnald had been with Clement V at Bordeaux and seems to have been with him again at Avignon in 1309, but he does not appear to have been the pope’s official physician,[2684] although very probably he rendered him some medical service. About this time he also seems to have written several treatises in medicine and alchemy, including his Preservation of Youth, for King Robert at Naples. Raymond Lull speaks of meeting him there and acknowledges his debt to his friend Arnald for one of his “Experiments.” A letter of December 6, 1311, from Escarrer at Naples to King James shows that Arnald died in the closing months of that year.[2685] In 1312 we find Clement V advertising by public letter for a medical treatise by Arnald intended for his perusal but which the death of the author had prevented from reaching its destination.
Arnald and the Inquisition.
Already during Arnald’s lifetime in 1305 the inquisitor of Valencia forbade the possession or reading of his books, a decree against which King James protested. Five years after Arnald’s death the inquisitor and provost of the church at Tarragona declared some statements in Arnald’s writings heretical, and Diepgen thinks that we have lost a number of his religious writings in Catalan in consequence;[2686] but this sentence appears to have no more lessened his medical influence than his trial at Paris had prevented his having intimate relations with the popes.
His works.
One indication of Arnald’s long continued influence in the learned world is that some seven so-called complete editions of his works were printed in the course of the sixteenth century.[2687] Besides this, some of his writings were published separately or appeared in miscellaneous collections, and some were translated into the vernacular languages. Some, however, still remain in manuscript form. The majority of his writings are medical, such as the Mirror of Medical Introductions, Breviary of Practice, Rule of Health, General Rules for the Cure of Disease, Commentary on the Regimen Salernitanum, Collection of Antidotes, and special treatises on the stone, gout, and epilepsy. But besides the works of alchemy ascribed to him there are other treatises on themes of especial interest to us, the Disapprobation of Sorcerers (Libellus de improbatione maleficiorum), Remedies against Sorcery, Judgments of Infirmities by the Motion of the Planets, and the treatise on Seals or astrological images. Although Arnald interpreted dreams for kings, the treatise on interpretation of dreams which is printed with his works is in the manuscripts either anonymous or ascribed to William of Aragon. Some of these other works too are perhaps not by him, but similar themes are occasionally touched upon in his more purely medical works. In the printed editions of his works is found a Latin translation of the treatise of Costa ben Luca On physical ligatures, which we have already discussed, and it is not unlikely that some of the aforesaid works are translations from the Arabic and not original compositions by Arnald. Some of his medical writings seem little more than repetitions of Galen, whose works he cites a great deal.
His attitude to natural science.
In one of his medical works Arnald states that the proverbs of Solomon show that what learned men have revealed in the world of nature can be adapted by convenient metaphor to moral instruction. But from this one should not jump to the conclusion that he thought that the chief use of natural science was to point a moral. On the contrary in almost the next sentence we find him affirming that “all true knowledge arises from the senses” and that the education of youth should begin with this sense knowledge, “graciously and efficiently demonstrated.” Thus Arnald would assign to natural science a leading place in education. As the mind went over this material, he thinks that it would reach many abstract conclusions, and could gradually attain “to the knowledge of insensible and occult and arduous and subtle things, as is illustrated by the whole course of theology and by the whole course of medicine.”[2688]
Magic excluded from medicine.
There are passages in Arnald’s works where, like Pliny, Galen, and other writers since them, he professes to exclude everything savoring of magic and superstition from his medicine. For instance, in his chapter on Those things whose use is permitted in the cure of epilepsy, a disease into whose treatment we have seen that magic is especially liable to enter, he would “repel the ignominious” enchanters, conjurers, and invokers of spirits, diviners and augurs, from the field of medicine as a godless crew who are servants of the devil. He cites the church fathers to show that all pagan divination is by demon aid. In the same chapter he disapproves of any use of “characters and superstitions” in medicine, and even forbids the use of the sign of the cross or Lord’s Prayer in collecting medicinal simples.[2689]
Disapprobation of Sorcerers.
In his Libellus de improbatione maleficiorum[2690] Arnald questions the power of sorcerers or necromancers to invoke demons and compel them to give responses or to work wonders. By adopting a very similar argumentation to that of the early fathers he arrives at the familiar theological conclusion that men are purposely misled in these arts of sorcery and necromancy by the demons who have invented the fiction of an art and a procedure to cover their own iniquitous ends. Arnald is not concerned to emphasize this conclusion especially, however; his object is rather simply to show that demons cannot naturally be compelled by man to obey him. He argues that the human mind, which is joined to a body, is of inferior grade to separate or incorporeal substances and so cannot command them. He also holds that demons who are spiritual beings cannot be coerced by human use of natural objects such as gems or even by human use of the influence of the stars. He denies that demons are distributed in any particular quarters of the heavens, or that they are subject to man at any particular hours of the day. He denies that spirits can be coerced by the light of the celestial bodies, asking, if this is so, why they are invoked at night and in darkness rather than at midday. He admits that it is the opinion of many that a spirit can be coerced by the special virtue of Saturn or of Jupiter or some other star; but he questions whether man can master this special virtue of a planet, “since no terrestrial substance naturally governs a star, although some philosophers have said that the human soul sometimes commands the nature of the elements.” He also raises the familiar objection that the invokers of spirits are usually inferior to other men in virtue and intelligence, whereas those who lead pure and rational lives should by rights be the ones to control the influence of the stars, if any men can. Arnald further denies that artificial figures and characters or words uttered by man can overpower demons, since these artificial products derive such virtues as they have from things of inferior nature or the stars or the human artificer, and he has already insisted that none of these can coerce spirits. He justly observes that to contend that necromancers can control the demons through superior demons is “stupidly said” and begs the question. He therefore concludes that God alone can control the evil spirits and that He would delegate His power, if at all, only to saintly men and not to such wicked sinners as the invokers of demons are. The Histoire Littéraire de la France, in its brief account of this treatise, says, “It goes without saying that Arnald does not think all sorceries purely imaginary; however, it should be stated that he tries to demonstrate that demons are less at the beck and call of sorcerers than is commonly thought, and that many so-called instances of sorcery are merely pathological cases.” This last has reference to the close of the treatise where Arnald makes the commonplace medieval observation that persons suffering from melancholy are to be humored in their delusions.
The devices of sorcerers.
That Arnald did not regard all sorceries as purely imaginary is further indicated by the long list of remedies against them collected in his Remedia contra maleficia. All but one or two of the suggestions made by Petrus Hispanus in the chapter on counteracting witchcraft and dispelling demons in the Thesaurus pauperum are found again in Arnald’s treatise. He also adds others and prefaces his list of cures by a description of the devices employed by sorcerers to impede conjugal relations. The sorcerer usually secretes in the mattress or pillow of the nuptial bed such objects as the two halves of an acorn, granulated beans, written characters, the filth of a bat, or the testicles of a live cock. Arnald recommends that such articles be searched for and removed, or preferably taken to a priest; or that the couple sleep in another bed or house.
Counter-magic against them.
In the case of the divided acorn he more explicitly recognizes the validity of the sorcerer’s sympathetic magic by prescribing an equally magical counter-ceremony. The husband and wife are each to take one-half of the nut and place the two halves together, and, after an interval of six days, eat them. Apparently Arnald believes that humans can be bewitched by use of natural substances and written characters, although in the other treatise he denied that demons could be so invoked. But now he goes farther and lists natural antidotes and preventives against demons as well as sorcery. Thus keeping the heart of a vulture or certain herbs in the house is said to cause demons to flee, although we have heard him deny that demons can be attracted by natural substances. Less surprising is the use of the sign of the cross, of holy water, masses, and the writing of the Tetragrammaton and other names. Interesting rites for the protection of newly married couples against witchcraft of unknown origin are suffumigations of the nuptial chamber with the gall of a certain fish, or the leaves and fruit of a bramble bush, or the pulverized tooth of a dead man.[2691]
Arnald’s works and the Inquisition again.
The Histoire Littéraire de la France, remarking that this treatise by Arnald was forbidden later by the Spanish Inquisition, adds, “No one will hold that decision against them” (On ne leur reprochera pas cette décision). But one wonders if the Inquisition also condemned the Thesaurus pauperum of Pope John XXI, which we have seen contained many of the same remedies against witchcraft. Only another proof that censors never know what is in the books that they condemn! But perhaps the medieval or papal inquisition would not have made such a slip. Certainly the Spanish Inquisition had grown very captious, if, as the Histoire Littéraire says, it also forbade Arnald’s treatise on astrological medicine and some alchemistic works ascribed to him.
Incantations.
Arnald’s attitude in the matter of incantations is as inconsistent as his position regarding the effect of natural substances on spirits. In one passage of his Breviarium[2692] he condemns the incantations employed in cases of childbirth by the old-wives of Salerno. Taking three grains of pepper, the enchantress would say over each a Lord’s prayer, substituting for the words, “Deliver us from evil,” the request, “Deliver this woman from the pangs of childbirth.” Then she would administer the grains one after another in wine or water so that they should not touch the patient’s teeth, and finally she would repeat thrice in the patient’s ear this incantation, accompanied each time by a Paternoster,
Bizomie lamion lamium azerai vachina deus deus sabaoth,
Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini, osanna in excelsis.
Arnald declares that such diabolical practices should be shunned by all the faithful. Yet in the same treatise[2693] he tells of an almost identical procedure by which a priest cured him of over a hundred warts within ten days. The priest touched the warts, made the sign of the cross, turned to a parietary and kneeling repeated the Lord’s prayer, substituting for the words, “Deliver us from evil,” the request, “Deliver Master Arnald from the wens and warts on his hands.” After which, instead of the three peppercorns he plucked the tips of three of the stalks of the parietary, at the same time repeating three Paternosters, and placed those three tips in the ground in a damp and secluded spot. “And,” concludes Arnald, “when they began to wither, my warts began to disappear.” It is true that the couplet of jargon, which perhaps Arnald regarded as alone diabolical, is omitted and that a priest rather than a witch performed the rite, but the Lord’s prayer is still used as an incantation and the ceremony with the stalks is a clear case of magic transfer of disease and of sympathetic magic. In a third passage of the same treatise[2694] Arnald suggests the following “good prayer” against quinsy, “Lord Jesus Christ, truly our God, by the power of thy name Jesus and by the prayer of thy servant Blasius,[2695] deign to free A. thy servant.” The popularity of The Breviary of Practice from head to soles of feet, in which these passages occur is indicated by the fact that it had been printed three times during the later fifteenth century before any complete edition of Arnald’s works had been published.[2696]
Cures of old-wives.
Arnald does not always speak ill of the cures of the old-wives. At Rome he saw a poor woman cure quinsy sore-throat with a plaster of her own,[2697] and at Montpellier a good wife cured by some secret method a man who was threatened with death by a continuous hemorrhage.[2698]
Ligatures and suspensions.
It was not inappropriate that Arnald should have translated the treatise of Costa ben Luca on Incantations, Adjurations, and Suspension from the Neck, or that at least that treatise should appear among his works, in view of the specimens of prayers and formulae which we have just given and of the more numerous instances of ligatures and suspensions in his works which we shall next illustrate. In his De parte operativa he says that there are plants, stones, and parts of animals which, if suspended about the neck or bound about the body or sewn into the clothing, produce impotency, a belief which his Remedia contra maleficia have already illustrated. In his treatise on wines he states that coral suspended from the neck so that it touches the abdomen prevents disturbances of the stomach. In his work on epilepsy[2699] among other suspensions he mentions some which he has tried with boys, the wood of certain trees bound with silver. Kings are taught to suspend an emerald about their children’s necks as soon as they are born as a protection against epilepsy, or the gem may be worn in a ring as an amulet against that disease. “Socrates recites this marvelous experience,” of the two stones found in swallows’ gizzards and how one may be worn in skin as an amulet. In his Treatment for Gout Arnald tells how “some experimenters” bind a frog’s legs on the patient’s feet, right foot on right, and left on left; while “another philosopher and experimenter” binds on the stone magnet, and still others use the talon of an eagle or the foot of a tortoise.
Marvelous virtues in nature.
As these ligatures and suspensions suggest, Arnald was a believer in marvelous virtues in stones, plants, animals, and human beings, and he discusses the general subject of occult virtue at some length. He accepts the notion that the magnet cannot attract iron in the presence of adamant.[2700] A way to discover whether an epileptic has been cured is to make him inhale smoke from burning horn of goat or pulverized agate; if not perfectly cured, he will straightway fall in a fit.[2701] Fumigation of a villa or manor with a cow’s left horn keeps away locusts.[2702] Arnald enlarges upon the great virtue of wine in which a heated gold plate has been extinguished four or five times. Some persons merely hold a gold-piece in the mouth while drinking wine, but Arnald deems it wiser to reduce the gold to potable form, although he admits that there may be some efficacy in the other method, since merely holding silver in the mouth quenches thirst and holding coral in the mouth comforts the stomach.[2703]
Occult virtue defined.
In the eighteenth chapter of his Mirror of Introductions to Medicine Arnald defines occult virtue or proprietas, as he also calls it. Briefly it is a property which is not immediately perceptible to the senses as are heat and cold, color, odor, and taste, and also one for which reason cannot account and whose existence cannot be learned by reasoned experiment but only by chance discovery. This is because such occult virtue depends on two things: the mixture of the elements in the object possessing it and its “specific form.” But the ratio of components in compounds “varies infinitely” and cannot be learned by reason, and the same is true of their “specific forms.” Nor can they be discovered by rational experiment which requires some objective to aim at. Therefore the only way to discover the occult virtue of an object is to happen upon its manifestation by chance. Again in his Repetitio super Canon ‘Vita Brevis’[2704] Arnald declares that “properties” cannot be learned by reason but only by experience or revelation.
Due to the stars.
Such occult virtue, or at least the “specific form” upon which it partly depends, is ascribed by Arnald as usual to the influence of the stars. It is owing, for example, to “the specific influence of the heavens” that gold is “something arcane, most perfect in its equable temperament, composed of a marvelous proportion of the virtues of the elements, and which has not its like among compounds.”[2705] The gold made by alchemists may resemble it in color and substance but not in this occult virtue. Arnald, indeed, holds what Aquinas and others denied, that different individuals of the same species may be endowed by the stars with diverse properties.[2706] This is in his opinion the explanation why one sapphire will harm and another cleanse the human eye. “It leaps into the eye and is received in its bosom without injury and comes out loaded with foreign matter.”
Astrological medicine.
From the occult virtue of terrestrial objects we are thus led as usual to the superior influence of the stars, which occupies a prominent, or better, fundamental place in Arnald’s works. He affirms that “since it is evident that God, the supreme artificer and begetter, has committed the government of nature to the motions of the stars, their influence upon the human body is no slight one.”[2707] Or he cites Galen as saying that philosophers assert that all things on earth are formed and fulfilled by the course and working of the heavenly bodies.[2708] The hour of collecting medicines is often very important[2709] and the physician should also know how the air about us is altered by the stars.[2710] Astrological medicine is also found in Arnald’s treatise on preserving youth and retarding age,[2711] and in his Judgments of Infirmities by the Motion of the Planets, where he also associates the members of the human body with the signs of the zodiac. This he does for the seven planets in his treatise on epilepsy.[2712]
Bleeding and the moon.
Arnald alludes a number of times to the practice of bleeding according to the phases of the moon. In his Regulation of Health he discusses how the age of the moon and its location, conjunctions, and aspects must be taken into account.[2713] In his General Rules for the Cure of Disease[2714] he says that the influence of the moon should be regarded by physicians in their pharmacy as well as their blood-letting, as anyone who operates long and intelligently will find by experience. Astrological authors prove it, but medical authors generally remain silent on this point. Arnald finds support, however, in Galen’s Critical Days and other works, and in the more recent works of Gilbert of England, who cautions to observe the moon in bleeding and advises against blood-letting in dog-days or on Egyptian days. Arnald would also include cauterization, other surgical operations, and the administration of drugs, and there is much observance of dog-days in his Treatise against the stone. On the other hand, Arnald rejects as false and worthless the statement in the Regimen Salernitanum that the months of April, May, and September are lunar and that in them are the days on which bleeding is prohibited.
Bernard Gordon’s personal experience.
Bernard Gordon, a medical contemporary of Arnald, notes in his Phlebotomy, written in 1307, that wise astronomers agree that bleeding should not be practiced when the moon is in Gemini, because at that time the vein will not give blood or it will open again or the patient will die. He goes on to narrate, however, that once having made all preparations to bleed himself, it suddenly occurred to him that the moon was then in Gemini. He persisted with the operation, however, which would seem to indicate that he did not really believe that it would prove disastrous; and he records that as a matter of fact that particular bleeding did him more good than any other one he ever underwent. Yet as the Histoire Littéraire notes,[2715] he reproduced the opinion of the astronomers without comment in his Prognostications. Which suggests that clergy who practiced in private arts of divination which they condemned in their writings were not the only ones whose preaching and practice might be divergent; Bernard defies astrological medicine successfully in personal practice but he continues to preach it in his writings. But to return to Arnald.
Operative astrology or magic.
Arnald believes that a human operator can accomplish great things by availing himself of the influences of the stars, an idea which he develops especially in the treatise entitled, De parte operativa. In the first place, there is the negative consideration that the force which pours forth unceasingly from the stars is not absorbed unless bodies are in a condition to receive it, and that they may be put into such a favorable condition by art as well as by nature. More positively, everything produced by art or nature receives from the sky some property of acting upon other bodies or of being acted upon by them. So any man who knows the influences of the stars and how to prepare objects to receive them, can produce great and marvelous changes in inferior things. Arnald thinks that “the juggleries of the magicians and the illusions of the enchanters” and the operations of sorcerers and those who fascinate, have efficacy in no other way, except of course as demons may lend their aid. In other words, astrology is the basis of magic.
Seals or images.
Arnald speaks particularly of gems to which either Nature, the marvel-worker, or some erudite artist has given efficacious powers by engraving them with images in accordance with the constellations.[2716] In his medical works he states that a lion on a lead seal prevents one from feeling pain in an operation for the stone,[2717] and that an image of a man holding a dead serpent in his right hand and its tail in his left hand is an antidote for poison.[2718] That Arnald also employed such methods in actual medical practice is shown from the fact that Pope Boniface VIII set great store by a seal in the form of a lion which Arnald had prepared for him when he was suffering from the stone.[2719] Arnald’s separate treatise on seals gives detailed directions for engraving one for each sign of the zodiac. The following example is typical of the others and also further illustrates Arnald’s propensity to pious incantations: “In the name of the living Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, take the purest gold and melt it as the sun enters Aries. Later form a round seal from it and say while so doing, ‘Arise, Jesus, light of the world, thou who art in truth the lamb that taketh away the sins of the world and enlighteneth our darkness.’ And repeat the Psalm, Domine dominus noster. After doing this much, put the seal away, and later, when the moon is in Cancer or Leo and while the sun is in Aries, engrave on one side the figure of a ram and on the circumference arahel tribus juda v et vii, and elsewhere on the circumference let these sacred words be engraved, ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,’ and in the center, ‘Alpha and Omega and Saint Peter.’” These instructions are perhaps some relic of gnosticism. Arnald then states the virtues and powers of the seal: “Moreover, this precious seal works against all demons and capital enemies and against witchcraft, and is efficacious in winning gain and favor, and aids in all dangers and financial difficulties (vectigalibus), and against thunderbolts and storms and inundations, and against the force of the winds and the pestilences of the air. Its bearer is honored and feared in all his affairs. No harm can befall the building or occupants of the house where it is. It benefits demoniacs, those suffering from inflammation of the brain, maniacs, quinsy sore throat, and all diseases of the head and eyes, and those in which rheum descends from the head. And in general I say that it wards off all evils and confers goods; and let its bearer abstain as far as possible from impurity and luxury and other mortal sins, and let him wear it on his head with reverence and honor.”
Experimental method.
Arnald’s pages have supplied some evidence of the continued vogue of that “experimental knowledge” and “experimental science” of which Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon and others of the early thirteenth century wrote. In a passage not yet noted[2720] Arnald recognizes the difficulty of medical experimentation and, like Petrus Hispanus and John of St. Amand, makes some suggestions as to how it should be conducted. They are, however, not novel. We have also heard him speak of experimenters, of a “philosopher and experimenter,” of “the long experience of any intelligent operator”, and of “rational experiment” which “always presupposes a determined object.” We have also heard him admit that the occult virtues of natural objects can be hit upon only by chance experiment or by some sort of revelation. And since these last two channels are as open to the common people as to the learned, it is possible that knowledge of occult virtues should be attained sooner by uneducated men than by others.[2721] This is not necessarily the case, however, and in a third treatise he speaks of a truth having been verified by experience until it has come to the notice of illiterate men and women. This truth is that the weakened powers of age can to some extent be restored, and as a proof of this assertion Arnald presently adduces the invention of eye-glasses,[2722] which are likewise mentioned by his contemporary, Bernard Gordon.[2723] We also have observed in Arnald the usual inclination to base marvels upon experience, as in “the marvelous and elect experiment” of Socrates or the cure of gout by binding on frog’s legs.
Further foibles of Arnald’s medicine.
In conclusion some foibles of Arnald’s medicine may be noted which do not exactly fall under any of the preceding heads. In the treatment of mania in the Breviarium he advises as a last resort that the skin be cut in the form of a cross and the skull perforated so that the noxious vapors may escape from the brain.[2724] In another place he warns against washing the head too often, “since thereby many have lost their sight before their time.”[2725] He advises to lave the eyes not with cold but with tepid water, and recommends as especially beneficial to the eyes washing with one’s own urine when one rises from bed in the morning, or with one’s own saliva. Throughout this same work he repeatedly recommends the most awful concoctions as remedies, but perhaps the climax in the way of a series of complicated recipes occurs in his Treatise against the Stone,[2726] a disease for which he had treated the pope. In his collection of antidotes[2727] we again run across the Potion of St. Paul and the opiates supposed to have been discovered by the emperor Hadrian and the prophet Esdras.
The affair of Bernard Délicieux.
The trial of Bernard Délicieux[2728] before the inquisition should perhaps be mentioned at this point as a connecting link between Arnald of Villanova of whom we have just treated and Raymond Lull to whom the next chapter will be devoted, especially as the tendency of this affair would appear to be to bring both of them into disrepute with the inquisition and under suspicion of magic. Thus two citizens of Albi testified that on the eve of Benedict XI’s death Bernard Délicieux or Delitiosi sent a leather chest wrapped in waxed cloth to Arnald of Villanova at the papal court, the imputation being that Arnald helped Bernard to poison the pope. Furthermore, Bernard was found to have in his possession a book of nigromancy which he said Raymond Lull, a Catalan of Majorca, had given to him at Rome. No doubt this evidence against Raymond and Arnald is very flimsy; Bernard himself was freed of the charge of poisoning;[2729] still, it may have done them some harm.
[2668] Jean Astruc, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la Faculté de Médecine de Montpellier, Paris, 1767. A much cited book, but seemingly rare in this country.
[2669] HL 28, 26-104, with corrections and additions based on Menéndez Pelayo’s researches at pp. 487-90.
[2670] Menéndez Pelayo, Arnaldo de Villanova médico Catalán del siglo XIII, Madrid, 1879; and Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, Madrid, 1880, I, 449-87, 720-81.
[2671] Roque Chabás, in Boletín de la real Academia de la Historia. vol. 28, p. 87. I have not seen this, but have used Leopold Delisle, Testaments d’Arnaud de Villeneuve et de Raimond Lulle, 20 juillet 1305 et 26 avril 1313. Extrait du Journal des Savants, June, 1896.
[2672] H. Finke, Acta Aragonensia, vol. II (1291-1327), 1908.
[2673] P. Diepgen, Arnald von Villanova als Politiker und Laientheologe, 1909, in Abhandl. z. Mittl. u. Neuer. Gesch., Heft 9. Diepgen proposed to treat later of Arnald’s medicine and investigate the genuineness of several works ascribed to him.
[2674] Catalogus testium veritatis qui ante nostram aetatem Pontificum Romanorum Primatui Variisque Papismi superstitionibus erroribus ac impiis fraudibus reclamarunt. Nova hac Editione emendatior, etc., 1608.
[2675] Vatican MS 3824, Confessio ... de spurcitiis pseudo-religiosorum. Eulogium de notitia verorum et pseudo-apostolorum. Gladius veritatis adversus thomistas. And other anti-clerical or theological treatises.
[2676] The bulls are printed by M. Fournier, Les Statuts et Privilèges des Universités Françaises. II (1891), 21-3.
[2677] Astruc (1767), p. 153
[2678] Diepgen (1909), 17-21. Denifle et Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, II, 86-90, give Arnald’s letter notifying James II of Aragon of his detention at Paris, and his appeal to the pope, both dated in October, 1300.
[2679] In this paragraph I have followed Diepgen (1909), pp. 23-36, 44-46.
[2680] Noted as a translator; see Translatio Canticorum Avicennae cum commentario Averrois ex arabico in latinum, Venetiis, 1492. This work was executed in 1283 according to Peterhouse 101, 13-14th century, II. In 1307 he translated the treatise on poisons of Moses Maimonides for Clement V at Barcelona; see Peterhouse 101, III, and Corpus Christi 125, fols. 1r-13v. Before that in 1302 he had translated at Montpellier another medical work of Maimonides, De asinate; see Gonville and Caius 178, 14-15th century, fols. 130-65.
Steinschneider (1905), p. 6, speaks of “Armengab (oder Armengaud, nicht Armengand) Blasii, in Montpellier, Arzt Philipps des Schönen, gest. 1314 übs. aus dem Hebr.” But Fabricius speaks of Armegandus or Ermengardus Blasii, and the aforesaid MSS give such forms as “dymengandus blasii,” “a mag. hermengaldo blasii,” “a mag. Armengando blazini,” “a mag. Armegando blasii de monte pessulano magistro in medicina.”
[2681] Diepgen (1909), 83-88.
[2682] Listed but not printed by Fournier, Les Statuts et Privilèges des Universités Françaises, II (1891).
[2683] Diepgen (1909), 48-82.
[2684] One of the above-mentioned papal bulls of 1309 speaks of “our cherished sons, masters William of Brixia and John of Alesto, our physicians and chaplains, and also of Master Arnald of Villanova, physician”; while the other two bulls speak of “our cherished sons, Arnald of Villanova and John of Alesto, our physician and chaplain.” Thus William and John, rather than Arnald, seem to be the pope’s private physicians.
[2685] Diepgen (1909), p. 94.
[2686] Ibid., p. 99.
[2687] They will be found listed in HL 28, 50-51. I have used the edition published at Lyons, in 1532.
[2688] Regule Generales Curationis Morborum, Doctrina VI. “Cum omnis vera cognitio a sensu oriatur et ab his quae sensibilia sunt habeat ortum, necessario ipsa sensibilia debent gratiose et efficaciter demonstrari iuvenibus et adiscentibus, cum tunc intellectus discurrens per ea abstrahit multa media et multas conclusiones. Unde per sensibilia venit intellectus ad cognitionem insensibilium et occultorum et arduorum et subtilium, ut declaratur per totum processum theologiae et per totum processum medicinae.”
[2689] De epilepsia, cap. 25. A similar passage in a work contemporary with Arnald, Bernard Gordon’s Tractatus de decem ingeniis curandorum morborum, pp. 228-9 of the Venice, 1496, edition, reads: “Tertio quod medicus operatur secundum artem seu per canones Galenis et Hippocratis et aliorum sapientium et in hoc condemnatur omnis ars auguriandi sicut est ars geomantica et suspendendi herbas ad collum et omnia emperica et forticinia et fassina et alia quam plurima quae non est bonum revelare propter abutentes qui conscientia neglecta utuntur magis et quibusdam ingeniis fatuis et cum omni sollertia pessima et mala lege et multa similia quae non sunt tunc narrabilia.... Et testor deum et nimirum quod numquam vidi hominem malitiosum in medicina qui diu duraret dies suos.”
[2690] Also rather inappropriately entitled in the MSS (BN 6971, fol. 65; 7337, fol. 110; 17847, fol. 53), Quaestio de possibilitate et veritate imaginum astronomicarum. The treatise is addressed to “Reverendissimo patri et non ficte bonitatis exemplo dei provisione presuli valentino....”
I have somewhat altered the order of Arnald’s arguments in order to make them more comprehensible and readable.
[2691] Of these the first two are not given in the Thesaurus pauperum.
[2692] Breviarium, III, 4.
[2693] Breviarium, II, 45.
[2694] Ibid., II, 1. Possibly this particular passage is a later gloss, as it is marked Additiones, but HL 28, 62-3, regards it as Arnald’s, and marvels that a man of his zeal for science and truth should believe in the efficacy of such procedure.
[2695] Presumably Ermengard Blasius, mentioned above, and his colleague at Montpellier.
[2696] Breviarium practicae a capite usque ad plantam pedis, cum capitulo generali de urinis et tractatu de omnibus febribus, peste, empiala et liparia, Milan, 1483; Venice, 1494 and 1497.
[2697] Compend. medic. pract. II, 1; cited HL 28, 43.
[2698] Breviarium, I, 38; cited HL 28, 34.
[2699] De epilepsia, caps. 24 and 4.
[2700] De parte operativa, fol. 127.
[2701] Breviarium, I, 22.
[2702] De venenis.
[2703] De vinis, fol. 263v.
[2704] Fol. 276.
[2705] De vinis, fol. 263v.
[2706] De parte operativa, fol. 127; Antidotarium, cap. 2.
[2707] De epilepsia, cap. 1.
[2708] Regulae generales curationis morborum, Doctrina iv.
[2709] Antidotarium, cap. 3.
[2710] Medicinalium Introductionum Speculum, cap. 13.
[2711] De conservanda iuventute et retardanda senectute.
[2712] De epilepsia, cap. 1.
[2713] De regimine sanitatis, cap. 37, fol. 78v.
[2714] Doctrina iv.
[2715] HL, 25, 330.
[2716] Antidotarium, cap. 3.
[2717] De parte operativa, fol. 127.
[2718] Antidotarium, cap. 3.
[2719] Diepgen (1909), p. 25.
[2720] Medic. Introd. Spec., cap. 20.
[2721] Repetitio super Canon ‘Vita Brevis’, fol. 276.
[2722] De conserv. iuvent. et retard. senectute, “Palam autem est quia obiectum politicum et diaffanum est aggregatum visus eius congregans disgregatum.”
[2723] Bernard’s mention of eye-glasses in his Lilium medicinae, Venice, 1496, Partic. III, cap. v, fol. 94, is both more incidental and more specific. At the close of his “ninth experiment” for the eyes, a formidable mixture, he says, “et est tantae virtutis quod decrepitum faceret legere litteras minutas sine ocularibus.” Magnifying lenses have of course been mentioned earlier by Grosseteste; see above p. 441.
Bernard Gordon also mentions “experimenters,” Lilium V, 12, fol. 159, “et dicunt experimentatores.”
[2724] Breviarium, I, 26.
[2725] Ibid., I, 13.
[2726] Tractatus contra calculum.
[2727] Antidotarium.
[2728] HL 29, 276; Lea, Hist. of Inquisition of Middle Ages (1888) III, 452; but especially B. Hauréau, Bernard Délicieux et l’Inquisition Albigeoise, Paris, 1877.
[2729] Diepgen (1909), pp. 36-7. The further articles by Diepgen on Arnald, alluded to above on p. 842, note 3, appeared in Arch. f. Gesch. d. Med., V., 397-9; VI (1913) 380-91; and in Arch. f. Kulturgesch., IX (1912) 385-403, “Arnoldus de Villanova de improbatione maleficiorum.”