It is more probable that Peter may have written a geomancy in view of his devotion to astrology and Naudé’s statement that he had left treatises in “physiognomy, geomancy, and chiromancy.” At any rate a geomancy exists under his name in several printed editions and manuscripts. In the Conciliator he asserted that the future and what was absent could be predicted by means of characters “as geomancy teaches.”[2862] In the Lucidator he concisely described the method of geomancy, and admitted that its figures were produced under the influence of the constellations and that not infrequently its judgments were verified, but he regarded it as a very difficult science of prediction and one requiring long experience and practice, although many persons tried their hand at it because it looked easy.[2863]
Such was the attitude of the learned and influential Peter of Abano at the close of the thirteenth and opening of the fourteenth century toward the subjects which we are investigating. We may well agree with Tomasini that he combined medicine and philosophy, astrology and natural magic, in the closest union. He amassed a great deal of the lore of the past, Greek, Arabic, and the writings of his Latin predecessors. Indeed, when he repeats what earlier Latin writers in the thirteenth century had said, just as they had repeated what the Arabs said, we rather begin to weary of the subjects under discussion and to feel that medieval Latin learning is growing stagnant or stereotyped. Pico della Mirandola spoke of Peter not only as “a man fitted by nature to collect rather than to digest,” but also as one “whom alas the less learned are wont to admire most when he lies most.” In other words, Peter’s failings continued general for some time. The Latin epitaph which Tomasini in the seventeenth century drew up to accompany the portrait of Peter in his book on illustrious men, although containing one or two erroneous statements which we have already corrected, sums up rather well the salient points of both Peter’s learning and occult science. It may be translated thus:
“From a rural locality, of auspicious cognomen, a man most illustrious in genius, doctrine, and merits, in a rude and unhappy age became the most fortunate and learned physician. Now too he shines with rays eternal, investigator of all natural forces. He gave the secrets of the Greek tongue to the Latin idiom by his power of assiduous practice and constant reading. Employing the virtues of herbs and stones, the sure aspects of the sky, stated hours and moments, by the crowd he was reputed to fascinate men. He opened the arcana of the art medical; he reconciled conflicts, a wonderful warrior! The name of Conciliator he won by uniting medicine and philosophy, astrology and natural magic, in the closest bond. Born for study, he died studying. A. D. 1316, aged 66.”[2864]
[2757] As distinguished a scholar as Steinschneider (1905), pp. 58-9, for example, gives the date of his birth as 1253 or 1246.
[2758] Appendix I, “Previous Accounts of Peter of Abano,” describes the sources and secondary accounts. Appendix II, “A Bibliography of Peter of Abano’s Writings,” lists the editions and MSS of his works used in this chapter and some others.
[2759] Preface and Diff. 9.
[2760] Diff. 49.
[2761] Verci (1787) VII, Documenti, p. 116.
[2762] Salomoni, Inscriptiones Urbis Patavinae, p. 323; Scardeone (1560), p. 202; Mazzuchelli (1741), pp. v-vi; Colle (1825) III, 128.
[2763] (1560), p. 202, “Huic unicus fuit filius Beneventus nomine.”
[2764] Gloria (1884), p. 587.
[2765] Chronicon Patavinum, anno 1325, in Muratori, Antiquitates (1778), XII, 252.
[2766] De venenis, cap. 47.
[2767] In Muratori, Scriptores, XXIV, 1135-8. Savonarola’s account of Peter is so brief that it does not seem necessary to cite it further by page.
[2768] HL XXI, 500-3.
[2769] The problem of Peter’s and other translations of Abraham is discussed more fully in Appendix III.
[2770] Steinschneider (1905), pp. 58-9, asserted that Peter did not translate Abraham either from Arabic or Hebrew. Peter himself uses the verb “ordinavi” rather than “transtuli” of his version; see his Tractatus de motu octave spere, II, 3, in Canon. Misc. 190, “Unde abraam evenere cuius libros in linguam ordinavi latinam.”
[2771] Steinschneider (1880), p. 126. He further states that what seems to be a partially divergent Spanish translation of some works of Abraham (Rodriguez de Castro, Bibl. Españ. I, 25-6) was “again translated into Latin by the Spaniard Louis of Angulo (Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., I, 83, now Cod. Paris 734)”. But BN 734 contains only a “Liber ordinis pontificalis per Gulielmum Durantum.” What is probably meant is BN 7321, fols. 87-116, “Explicit tractatus de nativitatibus abrahe avenzre translata de ydyomate cathalano in latinum a lodovico de angulo hyspano in civitate lugdunensi anno Christi 1448.”
[2772] Conciliator, Diff. 67.
[2773] Canon. Misc. 46, fol. 30v. “Item transtulit problemata Alexandri medici dria. gnta” (differentiae quinquaginta).
[2774] Mazzuchelli (1741), p. xi. He was not, however, aware that in a 1555 edition of the De venenis a prefatory note states that Peter taught at Bologna.
[2775] Gloria (1888), II. 10.
[2776] Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mittelalters (1916), p. 247, citing Zassari, Cesena MSS (1887), p. 316, Cod. Plut. IV-n-4, S. XIII.
[2777] BN 2598, fol. 102r.
[2778] See above, chapter 26. I. 610.
[2779] See Appendix IV for a fuller discussion of this matter.
[2780] See Appendix V.
[2781] See Appendix VI for further discussion of the date of his death.
[2782] See Appendix VII. John XXII was elected August 7, 1316.
[2783] Bibl. Naz. Turin H-II-16, 15th century, fol. 115v, “... temporis decano studii montispessulani....” The records of the University of Montpellier are unfortunately not well preserved for this period.
[2784] See Appendix VIII, “Peter and the Inquisition.”
[2785] The sum has become 400 ducats in Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, Paris, 1842, I, 135, and Pouchet (1853), pp. 532-3. Colle (1823), p. 17, questioned the story on the ground that Peter at the age of thirty-five or thirty-seven would be too young to charge such a fee, and for the better reason that the chronicler Filippo Villani tells the same tale of a Florentine physician. A prefatory note to the 1555 edition of the De venenis states that when Peter taught at Bologna—which he probably did not do—he would not visit a patient outside of that town for less than fifty florins, so great was his reputation. Honorius IV therefore at first promised him a fee of one hundred florins but gave him one thousand when he recovered his health as a result of Peter’s ministrations.
[2786] Naudé (1625), p. 382.
[2787] See his treatise on the motion of the eighth sphere, Distinctio II, cap. 3, in Canon. Misc. 190, fol. 80r.
[2788] Diff. 67.
[2789] Diff. 64.
[2790] In Diff. 1 Peter had held that “the regulative power of the body resides in the brain,” and in Diff. 18 that “the brain is the seat of sensation and motion”:—“Virtus corporis regitiva habitaculum habet in cerebro” and “Cerebrum est fundamentum sensuum et motuum,” cited by Colle (1825) III, 144-5, in a list of what he considered Peter’s notable contributions to natural science.
[2791] An prandium cena debeat esse maius?
[2792] This can perhaps be traced back to a passage in Tiraboschi (1775) V, 147, “Il primo, ch’io sappia, a commentare tra gl’Italiani le opere di Averroe, e a farne uso scrivendo, fu Pietro d’Abano che nel suo Conciliatore assai spesso lo vien citando or sotto il vero suo nome or sotto quello per eccellenza adattatogli di Comentatore.” Renan (see note 2) has already pointed out that Peter was not the first Italian to cite Averroes.
[2793] E. Renan. Averroès et L’Averroïsme, fifth edition, pp. 326-7. Yet Renan admits that Averroes was then regarded as an opponent of astrology. We shall see, however, that Peter cites Averroes for the association of seven spirits with the planets, a point not noted by Renan.
[2794] Ibid., p. 327.
[2795] Steinschneider (1905), pp. 58-9.
[2796] The paintings do not seem to have been executed until about 1400.
[2797] Muratori, Antiquitates Italicae, III, 374-5.
[2798] Naudé (1625), pp. 381-91.
[2799] De rerum praenotione, VII, 7, cited by Mazzuchelli (1741), p. xxvii.
[2800] Naudé (1625), pp. 380-1.
[2801] If this means Averroes, it will be noted that Peter does not sustain him against the Christian Faith.
[2802] This passage is from Diff. 135.
[2803] Diff. 101.
[2804] Diff. 113.
[2805] BN 2598, fols. 99-107.
[2806] Diff. 60.
[2807] Diff. 101.
[2808] Diff. 10; see also Diff. 113.
[2809] 104 and 105.
[2810] Diff. 168.
[2811] Diff. 64.
[2812] Diff. 23.
[2813] Canon. Misc. 190, fols. 78r-83r.
[2814] Diff. 2, BN 2598, fol. 109v.
[2815] Diff. 9 and 18.
[2816] Diff. 18.
[2817] “Complexio temperata.”
[2818] Diff. 9.
[2819] Peter thus is the precursor of recent writers in preferring a conjunction in Aries to one in Pisces as the sign of the Messiah: see chapter 20, I, 473.
[2820] H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, III, 440.
[2821] Diff. 2, BN 2598, fol. 109r.
[2822] Diff. 113.
[2823] Canon. Misc. 190, fol. 83r. Some of the figures may very likely have been miscopied by the writer of the MS.
[2824] See Diff. 9, 10, 16, 64, 101, 113.
[2825] Diff. 10.
[2826] Diff. 113.
[2827] Diff. 64.
[2828] Idem.
[2829] Diff. 9.
[2830] Diff. 10.
[2831] Diff. 64.
[2832] Firmicus Maternus, ed. Kroll et Skutsch, II (1913), p. xxxii.
[2833] Diff. 113 and 156.
[2834] Diff. 135.
[2835] Diff. 64 and 156.
[2836] Diff. 9 and 156.
[2837] Diff. 10.
[2838] Diff. 9.
[2839] De motu octave spere, IV, 2, in Canon. Misc. 190, fol. 83r, “ut veritas fidei credere nos compellit cum agens liberius potentiam habeat super materiam omnifariam.”
[2840] Conciliator, Diff. 64, 113, 135.
[2841] BN 2598, fol. 101v, “fascinatio animalis occupans vires ut sui compos esse non valeat, actum venereum impediens.” It is hard to say if animalis should be translated “animal” or “of the soul.”
[2842] Conciliator, Diff. 64.
[2843] Ibid., Diff. 135, “confidentia est intentio vehementer apprehensioni occulte impressa.”
[2844] Ibid., Diff. 156.
[2845] BN 2598, fol. 101r, “ars dicta notaria fortunati.”
[2846] Diff. 49.
[2847] Diff. 105.
[2848] Book XI, p. 933 (Stephanus).
[2849] Diff. 64.
[2850] A serpent of Nubia of the thickness of two fists, with a sharp-pointed head and of green color.
[2851] Colle (1824) III, 146.
[2852] Diff. 178. “Et iam testificati sunt mihi duo amicorum fideles argentum arte decoctionis fecisse verum omni examine non tamen valde lucrari aperte.”
[2853] See above pp. 262-3.
[2854] For a similar image mentioned by Arnald of Villanova see above, p. 858.
[2855] See above p. 546.
[2856] “De partibus occidentalibus”; this may be a slip of the copyist, or a careless retention by Peter of the wording of some Arabic writer.
[2857] Addit. 37079, fol. 106r, “Nunc autem periit fides sigillorum. Nota bene. Quoniam tam illegalis quam allegans ad vos sigillata portatur.”
[2858] J. G. Frazer (1911) I, 305, gives some instances from Mongolia of use of “bezoar stones as instruments of rain” combined with incantations. Here “bezoar” is used in the sense of a stone found in the stomach or intestines of an animal.
[2859] Diff. 1.
[2860] Naudé (1625), p. 381.
[2861] Ibid., p. 390.
[2862] Diff. 156.
[2863] Diff. 1.
[2864] Tomasini (1630), p. 22.