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]
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]
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.
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.
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.
Closing years of his life.