A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2) / During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era

by Lynn Thorndike

The next year Peter met an untimely death from the fall of a ceiling, a catastrophe which according to the gossip of Ptolemy of Lucca occurred while he was engaged in a fit of complacent and self-admiring laughter and shortly after he had issued some fulminations against the monks, for whom he had little love. Ptolemy criticizes the pope as not dignified enough in speech and manner for his office, but concedes that he was easily approached and very kindly to all scholars and men of letters. Millot-Carpentier regarded him as “assuredly one of the most illustrious personages of the thirteenth century both as a philosopher and as a dialectician,” and as “a true scholar and worthy representative of the University of Paris, ... having all the faults of his time but endowed with a liberal spirit.”[1625] Millot-Carpentier also gives a list of ecclesiastical offices, honors, and dignities held by other physicians of the period in addition to the supreme honor of a papal election which Peter attained.

The Thesaurus pauperum.

Peter’s book, the Thesaurus pauperum, became perhaps the leading brief medical manual during the remainder of the middle ages, as the numerous extant manuscripts and many printed editions bear witness.[1626] It was translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and English. The work was intended to be a condensed compilation and its title, “The Treasure of the Poor,” indicates that it was written especially for the benefit of poor students and medical practitioners, who could not afford many books. It thus continues the type of book represented by Galen’s Euporista and by the compendiums of post-classical medicine, and is to be regarded, like Bartholomew of England’s “On the Properties of Things,” as an example of a medieval text-book and not as a specialized work.

Is it interpolated?

Stapper states in his Life of Pope John XXI[1627] that the text of the Thesaurus pauperum has suffered greatly from later interpolations, that every successive transcriber of the manuscript felt at liberty to add any further recipes of past authors that hit his fancy, and that thereby a great deal of superstitious nonsense for which the pope should not be held accountable was added to the original work. But on what authority or from what personal inspection of manuscripts Stapper makes this assertion is not clear. He lists, it is true, a number of manuscripts in continental libraries and a few at Oxford, but his citations of the Thesaurus pauperum are all from the Lyons edition of 1525. It is also true that he affirms that he has searched the manuscripts in vain for the sentence in the preface of the printed text in which it is stated that ligatures are not superstitious. But I have found the passage without much search in three manuscripts of one library.[1628] Possibly one reason why Stapper failed to find it is that the opening word of the sentence is not Litteras, which he gives presumably from the 1525 edition, and which would mean “characters” if it could mean anything in the context in question, but Ligaturas, as the 1497 edition correctly has it.[1629]

Essential character of the work fairly represented even by the printed version.

My own feeling is rather that the book, even in the printed editions of 1497 and 1578 which I had access to, is not more superstitious than one would expect a compilation of ancient, Arabic, and medieval medicine to be. The 1497 edition, it is true, confesses to a number of additions from a Peter of Tuscany (? de tusciano) and from Bernard Gordon; but it gives these additions separately at the close of various chapters. I have also inspected a number of manuscripts of the work at the British Museum, none of which Stapper mentions in his list, and which date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is not easy to compare these different copies or versions, since they vary greatly in headings and arrangement, so that the same statement may be found in different places in them. But there seem to be passages in the 1497 edition which are not in the manuscripts, and these in turn, as is usually the case, are not all alike in contents.[1630] But while there may be considerable interpolation, it does not seem to have essentially altered the original character of the book. The superstitious nonsense may have increased in amount but scarcely in degree. Much the same sort of remedies may be found in the earliest manuscript and latest printed text. To be on the safe side, however, in the ensuing account of the Thesaurus pauperum I shall follow the manuscripts rather than the printed text. I shall then add some account of other treatises which I have found ascribed to Peter in the manuscripts and of his printed Commentaries on Isaac’s Diets.

Devout tone of its preface.

The brief preface, which appears in most of the manuscripts that I have seen as well as in the printed editions, gives a good idea of the nature of the work. Its opening sentence reflects the religious spirit of the age and status of the author. “In the name of the holy and indissoluble Trinity, who created all things which are not God and who endowed individual objects with their particular virtues, from whom all wisdom is given to the wise and science to scientists, I approach a task beyond my powers trusting in the aid of the same, who works through us as instruments all good works.” In a second sentence, given differently in the manuscripts and printed texts, the author states the title of his work, Thesaurus pauperum. Later he adds that the attentive reader will find here easy and efficacious medicines for almost all infirmities, provided he has Him as helper who created medicine from earth. He also warns the physician, lest by his science he impugn God the giver of science, to take the utmost care not to reveal to anyone any medicines by which pregnancy may be prevented or abortions provoked. In most manuscripts that I have examined the preface presently concludes with the sentence, “Therefore in the name of Jesus Christ, the supreme physician, who heals at His will all our infirmities, since He is the head of the faithful, let us begin with diseases of the head and descend to the feet.”

Arrangement of the text.