In the first part of this paper, some examples are given of the ambivalent attitudes that some medical writers have shown towards popular beliefs. In the second part, the focus is on their testimonies of the ordinary people' s distrust in medical or surgical practitioners in general. In the third part, the focus is on their strategies for preserving individual fama and the writings of cautelae. This paper relies on the writings of four practioners from the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth: one surgeon, Henri de Mondeville, and three physicians, Arnold of Villanova, Bernard de Gordon and Alberto de Zancariis.

The aim of this article is to show the intertwining of translations from Arabic with translations from Greek in Southern Italy and Sicily from the end of the eleventh century to the fourteenth. In the first part it deals with the translations made by Constantine the African at Monte Cassino and at the same period of time by translators from Greek, with the court of Frederick II and of Manfred of Sicily, with the contributions of Jewish translators at the end of the thirteenth century. In the second part, the focus is on the translations of two major Arabic works by Farag. ben Salem at the Angevin court of Charles I: Rasis' Continens and Ibn G. azlah's Tacuinum corporum cum ipsorum curis morborum. Concerning the latter, an important manuscript (BnF 15362) which was possessed by Peter of Limoges is mentioned: it preserves a kind of commentary ( Suppositiones et additiones magistri Dudonis) whose author, Dudo, was the physician of Saint Louis and Philip III. It preserves also one of the oldest copy of Tacuinum sanitatis. In the third part, the translations from Greek, particularly by Niccolo da Reggio, are connected with the return to hellenism during the reign of Robert, illustrated especially by an alchemical work, called The Anonymous of Zuretti: written in Greek, it uses Latin sources, including translations from Greek into Latin.

If medieval manuscripts show abundantly in their paintings physicians examining their patient's urine, it was not the only bedside gesture that these practitioners made, all the more so since it was often executed in absentia. Unfortunately, the sources describing other gestures are scarce. This paper relies on three testimonies emanating from university masters who were also court physicians: Michele Savonarola's Practica maior, written between 1440-1446; Iohannes Leporis' Instructio secundum communia instrumenta practice maxime experta (Paris, before 1418); the reports written in the last years of the fourteenth century by a German student when he assisted to the collegial consultations conducted by some famous Parisian masters. From these testimonies, it appears that physicians made some bedside gestures with solemnity while examining the patient. As for the cure, it seems likely that the gestures that they prescribed and perhaps supervised, which were more the matter for mecanici, were delegated to other kinds of protagonists, whose condition was not specified. The patients themselves played their part, as precisely described in the physicians' writings.

It is well known that Roger Bacon was convinced that perspectiva was necessary in order to attain with certitude the literal as well as the spiritual meaning of the Holy Scripture. Despite this claim, the examples of this use he gives in his Perspectiva are disappointing, because of their vagueness or their elementary level of optical knowledge. After having recalled Roger Bacon's claim, this article analyses Bonaventure's Collationes in Hexaemeron, Peter John of Olivi's biblical exegesis and Nicolas of Lyra's Postillae, in search of an eventual resort to perspectiva. In conclusion, it is argued that the example shown in Robert Grosseteste's Hexaemeron, in which optics plays a fundamental role, seems to remain exceptional. One of the reasons was perhaps the link between perspectiva and the philosophy of cognition, which could lead to problematical discussions from a theological point of view.

Contrarily to the most traditional historiographical view, the break between what are called respectively the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has not been so radical as it is often claimed and printing introduced at the end of the fifteenth century gave a new diffusion to medieval Latin translations from Arabic. The first part of this paper provides a selective survey of the translations which were printed at the very beginning, in incunabula, pointing out to the main features which had motivated these editions. In the second part, are given examples of printings during the sixteenth century, the years 1520-1530 marking a significant change in the choices and editing methods.In the short and conclusive third part, it is alluded to the transmission of Islamic science through works written originally in Latin during the Middle Ages, which continued to be printed over years.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of different kinds of scientific miscellanea, from the most factitious to the most well-organized according to specific criteria.Examples quoted with summary descriptions:Latin 15104 (factitious collection of previous factitious collections, Saint-Victor Library)Latin 7378A (different parts related to the teaching of quadrivium at a high level in Paris, fourteenth century)Latin 14389 and 14390 (canonical medical collections, Ars medicinae and Ars commentata) - Latin 6865 (a collection of Galen's works)Latin 9335 (a collection of Gerard of Cremona's translations)Latin 7432 and 7321A (astrological collections, with luxurious paintings)Latin 7437 (an astrological collection for a practitioner)Latin 6988A (a chaotic medical vade-mecum, Montpellier 15th-16thc.)Latin 10260, 2598, 7344 (collections containing Roger Bacon's Perspectiva)

Previous articleNext article No AccessAntiquityJohn C. Lamoreaux (Editor and Translator). Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq on His Galen Translations: A Parallel English–Arabic Text. (Eastern Christian Texts.) xxxiii + 207 pp., apps., bibl., index. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2016. $49.54 (cloth). ISBN 9780842529341.Danielle JacquartDanielle Jacquart Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 110, Number 1March 2019 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/702452 Views: 60Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 2019 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2019, Isis 110, no.S1S1 (Jan 2020): 21–310.https://doi.org/10.1086/707594

This paper presents a thorough analysis of five commentaries on the passages of Avicenna's Canon dealing with the length of life and the necessity of death. Four authors of these commentaries were Italian: Antonio da Parma, Gentile da Foligno, Giacomo da Forli and Ugo Benzi. The fifth one was a Parisian master, Jacques Despars. Through their discussions, they had to face such problematic concepts as humidum radicale or mors naturalis. Apart from natural philosophy and medicine, some of them resort to astrology. But Jacques Despars is the only one to tackle the question of divine providence in this context, which Avicenna himself had raised.

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the medical information contained in the commentaries on Peter Lombard's Sentences, thus renewing our views on the relationship between medicine and theology. Commentaries on the Bible (both on the Old and the New Testament) have been less investigated, perhaps because this kind of information is more scattered therein and may be found almost anywhere in the bulk of these exegetical works. Indeed, apart from the description of the creation of man and the accounts of miraculous healings, which provide the principal places where medical explanations could be inserted, there is a wide variety of occurrences that can only be detected by an exhaustive reading of these commentaries. In the present modest contribution, my intention is not to deal with all kinds of topics related to medicine nor tracking down metaphors, but to focus on traces of theories which may have disturbed religious minds. The notions of corporeal spirits (pneumata) and of the virtues or powers they were supposed to convey, as well as the function of the brain and the psychic faculties located in this organ, raised the question of the link between body and soul. More subtle discrepancies between medical theories and theological requirements may be detected: for instance, the physiological explanation of nutrition, which involved the transformation of food into bodily substance, seemed to some theologians incompatible with the dogma of the resurrection of the bodies at the Last Judgment and with the concept of veritas personae humanae. Since biblical exegesis did not necessarily imply dealing with these topics, their appearance in this framework, as discreet as it was, reveals a real concern. Each period has from this point of view its proper concerns, according to the level of medical teaching and its diffusion outside the circle of physicians and also according to the contemporary theological concerns. The thirteenth century, with the development of university teaching in both theology and medicine, offers a favourable context for tracking in biblical exegesis the traces of contemporary debates. But before entering this period, a flashback to the very beginnings of Latin Christian exegesis is required.

This paper explores how some medieval authors, from the thirteenth century onwards, dealt with the organization of the parts of the human body and the harmonious whole they formed. During the Renaissance, it is well known that anatomical knowledge, pictural or sculptural techniques and the tradition of physiognomy happened to join together in an innovative manner. Nevertheless, some trends prepared this convergence during the last centuries of the Middle Ages. Whereas words as fabrica or elegans were applied to the human body and its parts well before Andreas Vesalius, the junction between anatomy and physiognomy was made extensively by Albert the Great in his De animalibus. The concept of compositio was at the heart of the description of the harmonious whole formed by the different parts. If Albert the Great related closely this fabricating process to the powers of the soul, Pietro d'Abano in his Conciliator considered compositio, also named coequalitas, as the work of the complexion. The new translation, from the Greek, of Galen's De usu partium, available from 1317, gave a new status to the anatomical science. Its influence is particularly visible in Jacques Despars' commentary on Avicenna's Canon, written in the first half of the fifteenth century: the anatomical science is not only praised for the information it provides to physicians, but for its demonstration of the beauty of the human body and the organization of its parts. Contemporary to Jacques Despars - and to Leon Battista Alberti - Michele Savonarola, in his Speculum phisionomiae, alluded to simmetria corporis and to the measures of body parts used by painters, a topic that was more succinctly dealt with by Pietro d'Abano before him.

The fact that Greek science and philosophy have been, in many fields, the starting-point of Arabic achievements has led some historians to try isolating the "genuine" Greek and the "genuine" Arabic in medieval Latin works. In most cases, the purpose of such a vain endeavour is more ideological than scientific. Unlike their humanist successors during the Renaissance, medieval authors, as well as translators, never took this distinction seriously into account. When Gerard of Cremona translated from Arabic both Greek and Arabic works, he was looking for a wide body of knowledge of an universal value. Hybridization was at work in medieval scholarly background. For instance, some Greek works circulated together with an Arabic commentary, both being regarded as "authorities". It is nevertheless true that the translating process was more continuous from Greek than from Arabic. In this respect, it is difficult to evaluate the respective parts of geopolitical reasons, i.e. an uneasy access to Arabic manuscripts, and of a decrease in curiosity due to a lack of information coming from the East. Both have probably played their part.

Dès la fin du xi e siècle, des traductions du grec, mais surtout de l’arabe, contribuèrent à la refondation en Occident chrétien d’une science médicale. Leurs premiers lecteurs, qui n’étaient pas tous médecins, y trouvèrent une représentation de la nature de l’homme, dans ce qui la rendait semblable au monde inanimé comme dans sa spécificité. Diffusée avant les traductions de textes philosophiques, elle faisait une large place à l’interaction entre états du corps et passions de l’âme, sans postuler ouvertement un déterminisme psychologique, inacceptable en contexte chrétien.

At the end of the 11(th) century, translations of Greek and above all Arabic texts played an important role in the building of a new medical science in western christendom. Although the men reading these texts were not all physicians, they could find in them a representation of human nature showing both its specificities and its similarities with the inanimate world. This representation, which was circulating before philosophical texts were first translated, emphasized the links between the state of the body and the passions of the soul, without assuming a psychological determinism that would have been unacceptable in the Christian context.