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Title: Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. 1 (of 2)

Editor: Charles Singer

Author of introduction, etc.: Sir William Osler

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STUDIES
IN THE

HISTORY AND METHOD
OF SCIENCE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY

HUMPHREY MILFORD
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY

WIESBADEN CODEX B, fo. 1 r

Plate I. HILDEGARD RECEIVING THE LIGHT
F R O M H E AV E N

STUDIES
IN THE

HISTORY AND METHOD
OF SCIENCE

EDITED BY

CHARLES SINGER

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1917

PRINTED IN ENGLAND
AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

INTRODUCTION
The record of men and of movements, History teaches us the growth and development
of ideas. Our civilization is the final expression of the two great master-​thoughts of the
race. Seeking an explanation of the pressing phenomena of life, man has peopled the
world with spiritual beings to whom he has assigned benign or malign influences, to be
invoked or propitiated. To the great ‘uncharted region’ (Gilbert Murray) with its
mysteries, his religions offer a guide; and through ‘a belief in spiritual beings’ (Tylor’s
definition of religion) he has built an altar of righteousness in his heart. The birth of the
other dominant idea, long delayed, is comparatively recent. ‘The discovery of things as
they really are’ (Plato) by a study of nature was the great gift of the Greeks. Knowledge,
scientia, knowledge of things we see, patiently acquired by searching out the secrets of
nature, is the basis of our material civilization. The true and lawful goal of the sciences,
seen dimly and so expressed by Bacon, is the acquisition of new powers by new
discoveries—that goal has been reached. Niagara has been harnessed, and man’s
dominion has extended from earth and sea to the air. The progress of physics and of
chemistry has revolutionized man’s ways and works, while the new biology has
changed his mental outlook.
The greater part of this progress has taken place within the memory of those living, and
the mass of scientific work has accumulated at such a rate that specialism has become
inevitable. While this has the obvious advantage resulting from a division of labour,
there is the penalty of a narrowed horizon, and groups of men work side by side whose
language is unintelligible to each other.
Here is where the historian comes in, with two definite objects, teaching the method by
which the knowledge has been gained, the evolution of the subject, and correlating the
innumerable subdivisions in a philosophy at once, in Plato’s words, a science in itself as
well as of other sciences. For example, the student of physics may know Crookes’s
tubes and their relation to Röntgen, but he cannot have a true conception of the atomic
theory without a knowledge of Democritus; and the exponent of Madame Curie and of
Sir J. J. Thomson will find his happiest illustrations from the writings of Lucretius. It is
unfortunate that the progress of science makes useless the very works that made
progress possible; and the student is too apt to think that because useless now they have
never been of value.
The need of a comprehensive study of the methods of science is now widely
recognized, and to recognize this need important Journals have been started, notably
Isis, published by our Belgian colleague George Sarton, interrupted, temporarily we

hope, by the war; and Scientia, an International Review of Scientific Synthesis
published by our Italian Allies. The numerous good histories of science issued within
the past few years bear witness to a real demand for a wider knowledge of the methods
by which the present status has been reached. Among works from which the student
may get a proper outlook on the whole question may be mentioned Dannemann’s Die
Naturwissenschaften in ihrer Entwicklung und in ihrem Zusammenhang, Bd. IV; De la
Méthode dans les Sciences , edited by Félix Thomas (Paris: Alcan); Marvin’s Living
Past , 3rd ed. (Clarendon Press, 1917); and Libby’s Introduction to the History of
Science (Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1917).
This volume of Essays is the outcome of a quiet movement on the part of a few Oxford
students to stimulate a study of the history of science. Shortly after his appointment to
the Philip Walker Studentship, Dr. Charles Singer (of Magdalen College) obtained leave
from Bodley’s Librarian and the Curators to have a bay in the Radcliffe Camera set
apart for research work in the history of science and a safe installed to hold
manuscripts; and (with Mrs. Singer) offered £100 a year for five years to provide the
necessary fittings, and special books not already in the Library. The works relating to
the subject have been collected in the room, the objects of which are:
First, to place at the disposal of the general student a collection that will enable him to
acquire a knowledge of the development of science and scientific conceptions.
Secondly, to assist the special student in research: (a) by placing him in relationship
with investigations already undertaken; (b) by collecting information on the sources and
accessibility of his material; and (c) by providing him with facilities to work up his
material.
In spite of the absence of Dr. Singer on military duty for the greater part of the time, the
work has been carried on with conspicuous success, to use the words of Bodley’s
Librarian. Ten special students have used the room. Professor Ramsay Wright has made
a study of an interesting Persian medical manuscript. Professor William Libby, of
Pittsburg, during the session of 1915–16, used the room in the preparation of his
admirable History of Science just issued. Dr. E. T. Withington, the well-​known medical
historian, is making a special study of the old Greek writers for the new edition of
Liddell and Scott’s Dictionary. Miss Mildred Westland has helped Dr. Singer with the
Italian medical manuscripts. Mr. Reuben Levy has worked at the Arabic medical
manuscripts of Moses Maimonides. Mrs. Jenkinson is engaged on a study of early
medicine and magic. Dr. J. L. E. Dreyer, the distinguished historian of Astronomy, has
used the room in connexion with the preparation of the Opera Omnia of Tycho Brahe.
Miss Joan Evans is engaged upon a research on mediaeval lapidaries. Mrs. Singer has
begun a study of the English medical manuscripts, with a view to a complete catalogue.
How important this is may be judged from the first instalment of her work dealing with

the plague manuscripts in the British Museum. With rare enthusiasm and energy Dr.
Singer has himself done a great deal of valuable work, and has proved an intellectual
ferment working far beyond the confines of Oxford. I have myself found the science
history room of the greatest convenience, and it is most helpful to have easy access on
the shelves to a large collection of works on the subject. Had the war not interfered, we
had hoped to start a Journal of the History and Method of Science and to organize a
summer school for special students—hopes we may perhaps see realized in happier
days.
Meanwhile, this volume of essays (most of which were in course of preparation when
war was declared) is issued as a ballon d’essai.
WILLIAM OSLER.

CONTENTS
page

CHARLES SINGER
The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard (1098–
1180) 1

J. W. JENKINSON
Vitalism 59

CHARLES SINGER
A Study in Early Renaissance Anatomy, with a new text: The
ANOTHOMIA of Hieronymo Manfredi, transcribed and
translated by A. Mildred Westland 79

RAYMOND CRAWFURD
The Blessing of Cramp-Rings; a Chapter in the History of the
Treatment of Epilepsy 165

E. T. WITHINGTON
Dr. John Weyer and the Witch Mania 189

REUBEN LEVY
The ‘Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum’, attributed to
Maimonides 225

SCHILLER, F. C. S.
Scientific Discovery and Logical Proof 235

INDEX 291

LIST OF PLATES
plate facing page
I. Hildegard receiving the Light from Heaven
(Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 1 r) Frontispiece
II. The Three Scripts of the Wiesbaden Codex B (fo.
17 r, col. b; fo. 32 v, col. b; fo. 205 r, col. b) 4
III. Title-page of the Heidelberg Codex of the Scivias 5
IV. The Universe (from the Heidelberg Codex of the
Scivias) 12
V. (a) Opening lines of the Copenhagen MS. of the
Causae et Curae. (b) Opening lines of the Lucca
MS. of the Liber divinorum operum simplicis
hominis 13
VI. Nous pervaded by the Godhead and controlling Hyle
(Lucca MS., fo. 1 v) 20
VII. Nous pervaded by the Godhead embracing the
Macrocosm with the Microcosm (Lucca MS.,
fo. 9 r) 21
VIII. The Macrocosm, the Microcosm, and the Winds
(Lucca MS., fo. 27 v) 28
IX. Celestial Influences on Men, Animals, and Plants
(Lucca MS., fo. 371) 28
X. A Crucifix in the Uffizi Gallery; about the middle of
the thirteenth century 30
XI. The Structure of the Mundane Sphere (Lucca MS.,
fo. 86 v) 32
XII. (a) Man’s Fall and the Disturbance of the Elemental
Harmony (Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 4 r). (b) The
New Heaven and the New Earth (Wiesbaden
Codex B, fo. 224 v) 33
XIII. The Last Judgement and Fate of the Elements
(Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 224 r) 36
XIV. Diagram of the Relation of Human and Cosmic
Phenomena: ninth century (Bibliothèque
Nationale MS. lat. 5543, fo. 136 r) 37

XV. An Eleventh-century French Melothesia
(Bibliothèque Nationale MS. lat. 7028, fo.
154 r) 40
XVI. A Melothesia of about 1400 (from Bibliothèque Between 40
Nationale MS. lat. 11229, fo. 45 v) and 41
XVII. Facsimile from the Symbolum Apostolicorum, a
German Block Book of the first half of the
Fifteenth Century(Heidelberg University Between 40
Library) and 41
XVIII. An Anatomical Diagram of about 1298 (Bodleian
MS.Ashmole 399, fo. 18 r) 41
XIX. Birth. The Arrival and Trials of the Soul (Wiesbaden
Codex B, fo. 22 r) 44
XX. Death. The Departure and Fate of the Soul
(Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 25 r) 45
XXI. The Fall of the Angels (Wiesbaden Codex B, fo.
123 r) 46
XXII. The Days of Creation and the Fall of Man
(Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 41 v) 48
XXIII. The Vision of the Trinity (Wiesbaden Codex B, fo.
471) 50
XXIV. (a) Sedens Lucidus (Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 213 v).
(b) Zelus Dei (Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 153 r) 52
XXV. The Heavenly City (Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 30 r) 54
XXVI. John Wilfred Jenkinson 57
XXVII. Mundinus (?) lecturing on Anatomy (from the 1493
edition of ‘Ketham’) 78
XXVIII. (a) Four Diagrams, to illustrate the Anatomy of Henri
de Mondeville (Bibliothèque Nationale MS. fr.
2030, written in 1314). (b) A Dissection Scene,
circa 1298 (Bodleian MS. Ashmole 399, fo.
34 r) 79
XXIX. A Post-Mortem Examination: late fourteenth century
to illustrate Guy de Chauliac (Montpellier,
Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Médecine MS. fr.
184, fo. 14 r) 80

XXX. (a) A Demonstration of Surface Markings: second
half of fifteenth century (Vatican MS. Hispanice
4804, fo. 8 r). (b) A Demonstration of the Bones
to illustrate Guy de Chauliac: first half of
fifteenth century (Bristol Reference Library
MS., fo. 25 r) 81
XXXI. Anatomical Sketches from the MS. of Guy de
Vigevano of 1345 at Chantilly 84
XXXII. Anatomical Sketches from the MS. of Guy de
Vigevano of 1345 at Chantilly 85
XXXIII. The Five-Figure Series: Veins, &c., Arteries, Nerves,
Bones, Muscles (Bodleian MS. Ashmole 399,
fos. 18 r–22 r): about 1298 92
XXXIV. Demonstrations of Anatomy: second half of fifteenth
century (Dresden Galen MS.) 93
XXXV. A View of the Internal Organs: Leonardo da Vinci
(from a drawing in the Library, Windsor Castle) 96
XXXVI. Two Persons dissecting, traditionally said to
represent Michelangelo and Antonio della Torre
(from a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford, attributed to Bartolomeo Manfredi
(1574?–1602)) 97
XXXVII. Portrait of Giovanni Bentivoglio II, from his tomb in
the Church of S. Giacomo Maggiore at Bologna 102
XXXVIII. (a) Roger Bacon’s Diagram of the Eye: thirteenth
century (British Museum MS. Roy. 7 F. viii, fo.
50 v). (b) Leonardo da Vinci’s Diagram of the
Heart: early sixteenth century (from a drawing
in Windsor Castle) 103
XXXIX. Miracles at the Tomb of Edward the Confessor, from
Norman-French thirteenth-century MS.
(University Library, Cambridge, MS. Ee. iii. 59) 166
XL. Queen Mary Tudor blessing Cramp-Rings (from
Queen Mary’s Illuminated MS. Manual, in the
Library of the Roman Catholic Cathedral at
Westminster) 178
XLI. Facsimile of the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis
Morborum, attributed to Maimonides (Bodleian
MS., Marsh 379) 225

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

SCIENTIFIC VIEWS AND VISIONS OF SAINT HILDEGARD
figure page
1. The Hildegard Country 3
2. Hildegard’s First Scheme of the Universe (slightly simplified from
the Wiesbaden Codex B, fo. 14 r) 9
3. Hildegard’s Second Scheme of the Universe (reconstructed from
her measurements) 29
4. Dante’s Scheme of the Universe (slightly modified from
Michelangelo Caetani, duca di Sermoneta, La materia della
Divina Commedia di Dante Allighieri dichiarata in VI tavole) 31
5. Diagram of the Zones (from Herrade de Landsberg, Hortus
deliciarum) 40
6, 7. Melothesiae (from R. Fludd, Historia utriusque cosmi, 1619) 41
8. The Microcosm (from R. Fludd, Philosophia sacra seu astrologia 42
cosmica, 1628)
9. Diagram illustrating the relationship of the Planets to the Brain
(from Herrade de Landsberg, Hortus deliciarum) 48
A STUDY IN EARLY RENAISSANCE ANATOMY
1. The first printed picture of Dissection (from the French translation
of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 1482) 80
2. Dissection Scene in the open air (Title-page of Mellerstadt’s
edition of the Anatomy of Mondino, 1493) 82
3. Dissection Scene (from the 1495 edition of ‘Ketham’) 83
4. The first picture of Dissection in an English-printed book (from
the English translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, printed
by Wynkyn de Worde, 1495) 85
5. A Lecture on Anatomy (from the 1535 edition of Berengar of
Carpi’s Commentary on Mondino) 85
6. Diagrams of the Internal Organs (after Bodleian MS. Ashmole
399, of about 1298) 88
7. A Female Figure laid open to show the Womb and other Organs
(from the 1493 edition of ‘Ketham’) 91
8. The Abdominal Muscles (from Berengar of Carpi’s Commentary
on Mondino, 1521) 96
9. The first printed Map of England (from the 1472(?) Bologna
Ptolemy, edited by Manfredi and others) 100
10. Facsimile of the last page of Manfredi’s Prognosticon ad annum
1479 102
11. Diagram showing the ten Layers of the Head, the Cerebral 112
Ventricles and Cranial Nerves, and the Relation of the Nerves

to the Senses (from M. Hundt, Antropologium, 1501)
12. The Layers of the Head (from the Anatomia of Johannes
Dryander, 1537) 112
13. Diagram showing the Ventricles of the Brain (from Illustrissimi
philosophi et theologi domini Alberti magni compendiosum
insigne ac perutile opus Philosophiae naturalis, 1496) 114
14. Diagram of the Senses, the Humours, the Cerebral Ventricles, and
the Intellectual Faculties. To illustrate Roger Bacon, De
Scientia Perspectiva, (British Museum MS. Sloane 2156, fo.
11 r) 116
15. Diagram illustrating the general ideas on Anatomy current at the
Renaissance (from K. Peyligk. Philosophiae naturalis
compendium, 1489) 116
16. Diagrams of the Cerebral Ventricles viewed from above and from
the side (from K. Peyligk, Philosophiae naturalis
compendium, 1489) 117
17. The Localization of Cerebral Functions (from the 1493 edition of
‘Ketham’) 117
18. Diagram of the Ventricles and the Senses, with their relation to the
intellectual processes, according to the doctrine of the
Renaissance anatomists (from G. Reisch, Margarita
philosophiae, 1503) 117
19. The Anatomy of the Eye (from G. Reisch, Margarita
philosophiae, 1503) 120
20. The Anatomy of the Eye (from Vesalius, De humani corporis
fabrica, 1543) 121
21. The Heart (from the Roncioni MS., Pisa 99) 127
22. Diagram showing the two Lateral Ventricles and the ‘Central’
Ventricle, (from Johannes Adelphus, Mundini de omnibus
humani corporis interioribus menbris Anathomia, 1513) 128
23. The Heart (from Hans von Gersdorff, Feldt- und Stattbüch
bewerter Wundartznei, 1556) 129
DR. JOHN WEYER AND THE WITCH MANIA
Portrait of Dr. John Weyer at the age of 60, 1576 189

THE SCIENTIFIC VIEWS AND VISIONS OF
SAINT HILDEGARD (1098–1180)
By Charles Singer
page
I. Introduction 1
II. Life and Works 2
III. Bibliographical Note 6
IV. The Spurious Scientific Works of
Hildegard 12
V. Sources of Hildegard’s Scientific
Knowledge 15
VI. The Structure of the Material Universe 22
VII. Macrocosm and Microcosm 30
VIII. Anatomy and Physiology 43
IX. Birth and Death and the Nature of the
Soul 49
X. The Visions and their Pathological Basis 51

I. Introduction

In attempting to interpret the views of Hildegard on scientific subjects, certain special
difficulties present themselves. First is the confusion arising from the writings to which
her name has been erroneously attached. To obtain a true view of the scope of her work,
it is necessary to discuss the authenticity of some of the material before us. A second
difficulty is due to the receptivity of her mind, so that views and theories that she
accepts in her earlier works become modified, altered, and developed in her later
writings. A third difficulty, perhaps less real than the others, is the visionary and
involved form in which her thoughts are cast.
But a fourth and more vital difficulty is the attitude that she adopts towards phenomena
in general. To her mind there is no distinction between physical events, moral truths,
and spiritual experiences. This view, which our children share with their mediaeval
ancestors, was developed but not transformed by the virile power of her intellect. Her
fusion of internal and external universe links Hildegard indeed to a whole series of
mediaeval visionaries, culminating with Dante. In Hildegard, as in her fellow mystics,

we find that ideas on Nature and Man, the Moral World and the Material Universe, the
Spheres, the Winds, and the Humours, Birth and Death, and even on the Soul, the
Resurrection of the Dead, and the Nature of God, are not only interdependent, but
closely interwoven. Nowadays we are well accustomed to separate our ideas into
categories, scientific, ethical, theological, philosophical, and so forth, and we even
esteem it a virtue to retain and restrain our thoughts within limits that we deliberately
set for them. To Hildegard such classification would have been impossible and probably
incomprehensible. Nor do such terms as parallelism or allegory adequately cover her
view of the relation of the material and spiritual. In her mind they are really interfused,
or rather they have not yet been separated.
Therefore, although in the following pages an attempt is made to estimate her scientific
views, yet the writer is conscious that such a method must needs interpret her thought in
a partial manner. Hildegard, indeed, presents to us scientific thought as an
undifferentiated factor, and an attempt is here made to separate it by the artificial but
not unscientific process of dissection from the organic matrix in which it is embedded.
The extensive literature that has risen around the life and works of Hildegard has come
from the hands of writers who have shown no interest in natural knowledge, while those
who have occupied themselves with the history of science have, on their side, largely
neglected the period to which Hildegard belongs, allured by the richer harvest of the
full scholastic age which followed. This essay is an attempt to fill in a small part of the
lacuna.

II. Life and Works

Hildegard of Bingen was born in 1098, of noble parentage, at Böckelheim, on the river
Nahe, near Sponheim. Destined from an early age to a religious life, she passed nearly
all her days within the walls of Benedictine houses. She was educated and commenced
her career in the isolated convent of Disibodenberg, at the junction of the Nahe and the
Glan, where she rose to be abbess. In 1147 she and some of her nuns migrated to a new
convent on the Rupertsberg, a finely placed site, where the smoky railway junction of
Bingerbrück now mars the landscape. Between the little settlement and the important
mediaeval town of Bingen flowed the river Nahe, spanned by a bridge to which still
clung the name of the pagan Drusus (see Fig. 1). At this spot, a place of ancient
memories, secluded and yet linked to the world, our abbess passed the main portion of
her life, and here she closed her eyes in the eighty-​second year of her age on September
17, 1180.

Fig. 1. T H E H I L D E G A R D C O U N T RY

Hildegard was a woman of extraordinarily active and independent mind. She was not
only gifted with a thoroughly efficient intellect, but was possessed of great energy and
considerable literary power, and her writings cover a wide range, betraying the most
varied activities and remarkable imaginative faculty. The best known, and in a literary
sense the most valuable of her works, are the books of visions. She was before all things
an ecstatic, and both her Scivias (1141–50) and her Liber divinorum operum simplicis
hominis (1163–70) contain passages of real power and beauty. Less valuable, perhaps,
is her third long mystical work (the second in point of time), the Liber vitae meritorum
(1158–62). She is credited with the authorship of an interesting mystery-​play and of a
collection of musical compositions, while her life of St. Disibode, the Irish missionary
(594–674) to whom her part of the Rhineland owes its Christianity, and her account of
St. Rupert, a local saint commemorated in the name ‘Rupertsberg’, both bear witness
alike to her narrative powers, her capacity for systematic arrangement, and her
historical interests. Her extensive correspondence demonstrates the influence that she
wielded in her own day and country, while her Quaestionum solutiones triginta octo,
her Explanatio regulae sancti Benedicti, and her Explanatio symboli sancti Athanasii ad
congregationem sororum suorum give us glimpses of her activities as head of a
religious house.

Her biographer, the monk Theodoric, records that she also busied herself with the
treatment of the sick, and credits her with miraculous powers of healing.1 Some of the
cited instances of this faculty, as the curing of a love-​sick maid,2 are, however, but
manifestations of personal ascendancy over weaker minds; notwithstanding her
undoubted acquaintance with the science of her day, and the claims made for her as a
pioneer of the hospital system, there is no serious evidence that her treatment extended
beyond exorcism and prayer.
For her time and circumstance Hildegard had seen a fair amount of the world. Living on
the Rhine, the highway of Western Germany, she was well placed for observing the
traffic and activities of men. She had journeyed at least as far north as Cologne, and had
traversed the eastern tributary of the great river to Frankfort on the Main and to
Rothenburg on Taube.3 Her own country, the basin of the Nahe and the Glan, she knew
intimately. She was, moreover, in constant communication with Mayence, the seat of
the archbishopric in which Bingen was situated, and there has survived an extensive
correspondence with the ecclesiastics of Cologne, Speyer, Hildesheim, Trèves,
Bamberg, Prague, Nürnberg, Utrecht, and numerous other towns of Germany, the Low
Countries, and Central Europe.

Folio 17 r col. b Folio 32 v col. b Folio 205 r col. b

Plate II. THE THREE SCRIPTS OF THE WIESBADEN CODEX B

Hildegard’s journeys, undertaken with the object of stimulating spiritual revival, were
of the nature of religious progresses, but, like those of her contemporary, Bernard of
Clairvaux, they were in fact largely directed against the heretical and most cruelly
persecuted Cathari, an Albigensian sect widely spread in the Rhine country of the
twelfth century, whom Hildegard regarded as ‘worse than the Jews’.4 In justice to her

memory it is to be recalled that she herself was ever against the shedding of blood, and
had her less ferocious views prevailed, some more substantial relic than the groans and
tears of this people had reached our time, while the annals of the Church had been
spared the defilement of an inexpiable stain.

Plate III. T I T L E PA G E O F T H E H E I D E L B E R G
CODEX
OF THE SCIVIAS

Hildegard’s correspondence with St. Bernard, then preaching his crusade, with four
popes, Eugenius III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and Alexander III, and with the emperors
Conrad and Frederic Barbarossa, brings her into the current of general European
history, while she comes into some slight contact with the story of our own country by

her hortatory letters to Henry II and to his consort Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis
VII.5
To complete a sketch of her literary activities, mention should perhaps be made of a
secret script and language, the lingua ignota, attributed to her. It is a transparent and to
modern eyes a foolishly empty device that hardly merits the dignity of the term
‘mystical’. It has, however, exercised the ingenuity of several writers, and has been
honoured by analysis at the hands of Wilhelm Grimm.6
Ample material exists for a full biography of Hildegard, and a number of accounts of
her have appeared in the vulgar tongue. Nearly all are marred by a lack of critical
judgement that makes their perusal a weary task, and indeed it would need considerable
skill to interest a detached reader in the minutiae of monastic disputes that undoubtedly
absorbed a considerable part of her activities. Perhaps the best life of her is the earliest;
it is certainly neither the least critical nor the most credulous, and is by her
contemporaries, the monks Godefrid and Theodoric.7
The title of ‘saint’ is usually given to Hildegard, but she was not in fact canonized.
Attempts towards that end were made under Gregory IX (1237), Innocent IV (1243),
and John XXII (1317). Miraculous cures and other works of wonder were claimed for
her, but either they were insufficiently miraculous or insufficiently attested.8 Those who
have impartially traced her life in her documents will agree with the verdict of the
Church. Hers was a fiery, a prophetic, in many ways a singularly noble spirit, but she
was not a saint in any intelligible sense of the word.

III. Bibliographical Note

There is no complete edition of the works of Hildegard. For the majority of readers the
most convenient collection will doubtless be vol. 197 of Migne, Patrologia Latina. This
can be supplemented from Cardinal J. B. Pitra’s well-​edited Analecta sacra, the eighth
volume of which contains certain otherwise inaccessible works of Hildegard,9 and is the
only available edition of the Liber vitae meritorum per simplicem hominem a vivente
luce, revelatorum.
Manuscripts of the writings of our abbess are numerous and are widely scattered over
Europe. Four of them are of special importance for our purpose, and are here briefly
described.
(A) is a vast parchment of 480 folios in the Nassauische Landesbibliothek at
Wiesbaden. This much-​thumbed volume, still bearing the chain that once tethered it to
some monastic desk, is written in a thirteenth-​century script. There is evidence that it
was prepared in the neighbourhood of Hildegard’s convent, if not in that convent itself.

It is interesting as a collection of those works that the immediate local tradition
attributed to her, and is thus useful as a standard of genuineness.10 Reference will be
made to it in the following pages as the Wiesbaden Codex A. Its contents are as follows:
1. Liber Scivias.
2. Liber vitae meritorum.
3. Liber divinorum operum.
4. Ad praelatos moguntienses.
5. Vita sanctae Hildegardis. By Godefrid and Theodoric.
6. Liber epistolarum et orationum. This collection contains 292 items, and
includes the Explanatio symboli Athanasii, the Exposition of the Rule of
St. Benedict, and the Lives of St. Disibode and St. Rupert.
7. Expositiones evangeliorum.
8. Ignota lingua and Ignotae litterae.
9. Litterae villarenses.
10. Symphonia harmoniae celestum revelationum.
(B) is also at Wiesbaden, and will be cited here as the Wiesbaden Codex B. It contains
the Scivias only, and is a truly noble volume of 235 folios, beautifully illuminated, in
excellent preservation, and of the highest value for the history of mediaeval art. It has
been thoroughly investigated by the late Dom Louis Baillet,11 who concluded that it was
written in or near Bingen between the dates 1160 and 1180. Its miniatures help greatly
in the interpretation of the visions, illustrating them often in the minutest and most
unexpected details. In view of the great difficulty of visualizing much of her narrative,
these miniatures afford to our mind strong evidence that the MS. was supervised by the
prophetess herself, or was at least prepared under her immediate tradition. This view is
confirmed by comparing the miniatures with those of the somewhat similar but inferior
Heidelberg MS. (C).
Both the miniatures and the script of the Wiesbaden Codex B are the work of several
hands. There are three distinct handwritings discernible (Plate ii). The earliest is
attributed by Baillet in his careful work to the twelfth century, while the later writing is
in thirteenth-​century hands.12 It thus appears to us that while Hildegard herself probably
supervised the earlier stages of the preparation of this volume, its completion took place
subsequent to her death. This view is sustained by the fact that some of the later
miniatures are far less successful than the earlier figures in aiding the interpretation of
her text.

The two Wiesbaden MSS. appear to have remained at the convent on the Rupertsberg
opposite Bingen until the seventeenth century. They were studied there by Trithemius in
the fifteenth century, and one of them at least was seen by the Mayence Commission of
1489. Later they were noted by the theologians Osiander (1527) and Wicelius (Weitzel,
1554), and by the antiquary Nicolaus Serarius (1604). In 1632, during the Thirty Years’
War, the Rupertsberg buildings were destroyed, the MSS. being removed to a place of
safety in the neighbouring settlement at Eibingen, where they were again recorded in
1660 by the Jesuits Papenbroch and Henschen.13 At some unknown date they were
transferred to Wiesbaden, where they were examined in 1814 by Goethe,14 and a few
years later by Wilhelm Grimm,15 and where they have since remained.

Fig. 2. HILDEGARD’S FIRST SCHEME OF THE
UNIVERSE
Slightly simplified from the Wiesbaden Codex B, folio 14 r.

(C) This MS. is at the University Library at Heidelberg. It also contains only the
Scivias, and it is the only known illuminated MS. of that work except the Wiesbaden
Codex B. The Heidelberg MS. was prepared with great care in the early thirteenth
century, only a little later than its fellow, but its figures afford little aid in the
interpretation of the text. Thus, for instance, the Heidelberg diagram of the universe
(Plate iv) is of a fairly conventional type which quite fails to illustrate the difficult
description. The obscurities of the text are, however, at once explained by a figure in the
Wiesbaden Codex B (Fig. 2): we thus obtain further indirect evidence of the personal
influence of Hildegard in the preparation of that MS. The representation of Hildegard in
the Heidelberg MS. (Plate iii) shows no resemblance to those in the Wiesbaden Codex B
(Plate i) or in the Lucca MS. (Plates vi to ix), which will now be described.
(D) is an illustrated codex of the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis at the
Municipal Library at Lucca. It contains ten beautiful miniatures, some of which are here
reproduced (Plates vi to ix and xi), as they are of special value for the interpretation of
Hildegard’s theories on the relation of macrocosm and microcosm.
This Lucca MS. was described and its text printed in 1761 by Giovanni Domenico
Mansi,16 a careful scholar, who was himself sometime Archbishop of Lucca. Mansi
concluded that it was written at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth
century. On palaeographical grounds a slightly later date would nowadays probably be
preferred (Plate v b).
The work consists of ten visions, each illustrated by a figure. The date, character, and
meaning of these miniatures raise special problems to which only very superficial
reference can here be made. Unfortunately but little work has been done on early Italian
schools of miniaturists, and it is not a subject on which any exact knowledge can yet be
said to exist.17
Of these ten miniatures we may dismiss the last five in a few words. The sixth to the
tenth visions are of purely theological interest, and the miniatures illustrating them are
by a different hand to the rest. They are all relatively crude products, which appear to us
to resemble other Italian work of the period at which the MS. was written. We shall
concentrate our attention on the first five miniatures.
The first three miniatures of the Lucca MS. (Plates vi to viii) may be attributed to the
same hand on the following grounds:
1. All have a very similar inset figure of the prophetess below the main picture.
2. The character of the principal figure of the first miniature (Plate vi) is almost
identical with the curious universe-​embracing double-​headed figure of the second
miniature (Plate vii).

3. The features and draughtsmanship of the central figure of the second miniature (Plate
vii) are identical with those of the third (Plate viii).

4. The beasts’ heads arranged round the second miniature (Plate vii) are exactly
reproduced in the third miniature (Plate viii).
Now although these three miniatures are in some respects unique, they contain elements
enabling us to date them with an approach to accuracy. These elements are to be found
especially in the central figure of the second and third miniatures (Plates vii and viii).
About the middle of the thirteenth century, as Venturi has shown,18 there was a well-​
marked change in Northern Italy in the traditional representation of the form on the
Cross. This change was followed with almost slavish accuracy, and the new form is
well represented by a painting in the Uffizi Gallery (Plate x). It is this figure of Christ
which is reproduced by our miniaturist. The central figure of Plates vii and viii
resembles that of the Uffizi crucifix, for instance, in the general pose of the body, in the
position of the legs and of the arms, in the treatment of the abdominal musculature, in
the method of outlining the muscles of the legs and of the arms, and in a minute and
very constant detail by which the outline of the left side is continued with the fold of the
groin, thus giving an impression of the left thigh being advanced on the right.
Furthermore, the somewhat Byzantine cast of countenance of the figure can be closely
paralleled from Northern Italian work of the same period. We therefore regard these
first three miniatures of the Lucca MS. as dating from about the middle of the thirteenth
century.
The remaining two miniatures (Plates ix and xi) offer special difficulties. Plate xi
(illustrating the fifth vision) presents us with no complete human figures, except the
small and probably copied inset of the prophetess below the miniature. The faces bear
some resemblance to those of the last five miniatures; the wings, on the other hand, to
those of the first miniature (Plate vi). It is perhaps possible that this miniature was the
work of an early thirteenth-​century artist, and that the wings and some other details
were added by a later hand. The abnormal orientation, east to the left and south above,
suggests that we have here to do with some special influence.
The most anomalous of all is, however, the beautiful fourth miniature (Plate ix). This
picture has a general feeling of the early Renaissance, though it is hard to find in it any
definite humanistic element. The nude female figure in the upper left quadrant is
especially striking. No parallel to it is to be found in the thirteenth-​century Italian
miniatures that have so far been reproduced, and it appears to us difficult to date the
miniature anterior to the fourteenth century at the very earliest. It is, in any event, by a
different hand to the others. The rashes on the patients in the two upper and the right

lower quadrants are perhaps an attempt to render the fatal ‘God’s tokens’ of those waves
of pestilence that devastated the Italian peninsula in the fourteenth century.
Whatever the date of these miniatures, however, they reproduce the meaning of the text
of the Liber divinorum operum with a convincing certainty and sureness of touch. This
work is the most difficult of all Hildegard’s mystical writings. Without the clues
provided by the miniatures, many passages in it are wholly incomprehensible. It appears
to us therefore by no means improbable that the traditional interpretation of Hildegard’s
works, thus preserved to our time by these miniatures and by them alone, may have had
its origin from the mouth of the prophetess herself, perhaps through another set of
miniatures that has disappeared or has not yet come to light.19

IV. The Spurious Scientific Works of Hildegard

The scientific views of Hildegard are embedded in a theological setting, and are mainly
encountered in the Scivias and the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis. To a less
extent they appear occasionally in her Epistolae and in the Liber vitae meritorum.

From the HEIDELBERG CODEX OF THE SCIVIAS

Plate IV. THE UNIVERSE

Two works of non-theological tone and definitely scientific character have been printed
in her name. One of these was recently edited under the title Beatae Hildegardis causae
et curae.20 A single MS. only of this work is known to exist, and is now deposited in the
Royal Library of Copenhagen.21 It is an ill-​written document of the thirteenth century,
and the original work probably dates from this period. It has none of the characteristics
of the acknowledged work of Hildegard, and indeed the only link with her name is the
title, which is written in a hand different from that of the text (Plate v a). Nothing could
be more unlike the ecstatic but well-​ordered and systematic work of the prophetess of
Bingen than the prosy disorder of the Causae et curae. Linguistically, also, it differs
entirely from the typical writings of Hildegard, for it is full of Germanisms, which
never interrupt the eloquence of her authentic works. Again, Hildegard’s tendency to

theoretical speculation, as for instance on the nature of the elements or on the form of
the Universe, finds no place in the scrappy paragraphs of this apocryphal compilation.

Plate V a. O P E N I N G L I N E S O F Plate V b. O P E N I N G L I N E S O F T H E L U C C A
THE COPENHAGEN MS. OF MS. OF THE LIBER DIVINORUM OPERUM
THE SIMPLICIS HOMINIS
CAUSAE ET CURAE

A second work, of somewhat similar character, is entitled Subtilitatum diversarumque
creaturarum libri novem. This is clearly a compilation, and numerous passages in it can
be traced to such sources as Pliny, Walafrid Strabus, Marbod, Macer, the Physiologus,
Isidore Hispalensis, Constantine the African, and the Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, only
the last three of which exerted a traceable influence on the genuine works of our
authoress. Nevertheless this Liber subtilitatum was early printed as Hildegard’s work,
along with a treatise attributed with as little justification to another woman writer,
Trotula, one of the ladies of Salerno, whose name was also a household word in the
Middle Ages, and was freely attached to medical writings with which she had little or
nothing to do.22 It is true that Hildegard’s contemporary biographer, the monk
Theodoric, assures us that she had written De natura hominis et elementorum,
diversarumque creaturarum,23 but there is nothing to suggest that the Liber subtilitatum
is intended thereby.
The modern scholars Daremberg and Reuss have edited the Liber subtilitatum as
Hildegard’s composition,24 and the work attracted the attention of Virchow,25 but
notwithstanding the authority of these names, the objections which apply to the
genuineness of the Causae et curae are also valid here:
(a) The Liber subtilitatum is not included in the Wiesbaden Codex A.

(b) The phrase De natura hominis et elementorum diversarumque creaturarum, used by
Theodoric as a description and by Reuss as a title,26 would lead one to expect great
emphasis on the nature of the elements and their entry into the human frame. Such
emphasis is not, in fact, discoverable in the Liber subtilitatum, which, moreover, does
not treat of human anatomy or physiology.
(c) On the other hand, the genuine Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis does lay
stress on these points. This is possibly therefore the work to which Theodoric refers,
and to it his description certainly applies well.
(d) As in the Causae et curae, there are linguistic difficulties that prevent us attributing
the Liber subtilitatum to Hildegard. Such, for instance, is the number of Germanisms as
well as the marked difference from the style and method of her acknowledged work.
(e) There are statements in the Liber subtilitatum that can scarcely be attributed to our
authoress. Having largely explored the Rhine basin, and corresponding constantly with
writers beyond the Alps, how could she possibly derive all rivers, Rhine and Danube,
Meuse and Moselle, Nahe and Glan, from the same lake (of Constance) as does the
author of the Liber subtilitatum?27
(f) Furthermore, although that spurious work has a chapter De elementis, it reveals none
of Hildegard’s most peculiar and definite views as to their nature, origin, and fate,28 nor
does it refer to the sphericity of the earth, to the vascular system of man, to the humours
and their relation to the winds and the elements, or to a dozen other points on which, as
we shall see, Hildegard had views of her own.
Before leaving the subject of Hildegard’s apocryphal works, brief reference may be
made to the Speculum futurorum temporum, a spurious production to which her name is
often attached. It exists in innumerable MSS., and has been frequently edited and
translated. It is the work of Gebeno, prior of Eberbach, who wrote it in 1220, claiming
that he extracted it from Hildegard’s writings. Another work erroneously attributed to
Hildegard is entitled Revelatio de fratribus quatuor mendicantium ordinum, and is
directed against the four mendicant orders—Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and
Augustinians. It also has been printed, but is wholly spurious, and was probably
composed towards the latter part of the thirteenth century.

V. Sources of Hildegard’s Scientific Knowledge

In the works of Hildegard we are dealing with the products of a peculiarly original
intellect, and her imaginative power and mystical tendency make an exhaustive search
into the origin of her ideas by no means an easy task. With her theological standpoint,
as such, we are not here concerned, and unfortunately she does not herself refer to any

of her sources other than the Biblical books; to have cited profane writers would indeed
have involved the abandonment of her claim that her knowledge was derived by
immediate inspiration from on high. Nevertheless it is possible to form some idea, on
internal evidence, of the origin of many of her scientific conceptions.
The most striking point concerning the sources of Hildegard is negative. There is no
German linguistic element distinguishable in her writings, and they show little or no
trace of native German folk-lore.29 It is true that Trithemius of Sponheim (1462–1516),
who is often a very inaccurate chronicler, tells us that Hildegard ‘composed works in
German as well as in Latin, although she had neither learned nor used the latter tongue
except for simple psalmody’.30 But with the testimony before us of the writings
themselves and of her skilful use of Latin, the statement of Trithemius and even the
hints of Hildegard31 may be safely discounted and set down to the wish to magnify the
element of inspiration.32 So far from her having been illiterate, we shall show that the
structure and details of her works betray a considerable degree of learning and much
painstaking study of the works of others. Thus, for instance, she skilfully manipulates
the Hippocratic doctrines of miasma and the humours, and elaborates a theory of the
interrelation of the two which, though developed on a plan of her own, is yet clearly
borrowed in its broad outline from such a writer as Isidore of Seville. Again, as we shall
see, some of her ideas on anatomy seem to have been derived from Constantine the
African, who belonged to the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino.33
Hildegard lived at rather too early a date to drink from the broad stream of new
knowledge that was soon to flow into Europe through Paris from its reservoir in
Moslem Spain. Such drops from that source as may have reached her must have trickled
in either from the earlier Italian translators or from the Jews who had settled in the
Upper Rhineland, for it is very unlikely that she was influenced by the earlier twelfth-​
century translations of Averroes, Avicenna, Avicebron, and Avempace, that passed into
France from the Jews of Marseilles, Montpellier, and Andalusia.34 Her intellectual field
was thus far more patristic than would have been the case had her life-​course been even
a quarter of a century later.
Her science is primarily of the usual degenerate Greek type, disintegrated fragments of
Aristotle and Galen coloured and altered by the customary mediaeval attempts to bring
theory into line with scriptural phraseology, though a high degree of independence is
obtained by the visionary form in which her views are set. She exhibits, like all
mediaeval writers on science, the Aristotelian theory of the elements, but her statement
of the doctrine is illuminated by flashes of her own thoughts and is coloured by
suggestions from St. Augustine, Isidore Hispalensis, Bernard Sylvestris of Tours, and
perhaps from writings attributed to Boethius.

The translator Gerard of Cremona (1114–87) was her contemporary, and his labours
made available for western readers a number of scientific works which had previously
circulated only among Arabic-​speaking peoples.35 Several of these works, notably
Ptolemy’s Almagest, Messahalah’s De Orbe, and the Aristotelian De Caelo et Mundo,
contain material on the form of the universe and on the nature of the elements, and
some of them probably reached the Rhineland in time to be used by Hildegard. The
Almagest, however, was not translated until 1175, and was thus inaccessible to
Hildegard.36 Moreover, as she never uses an Arabic medical term, it is reasonably
certain that she did not consult Gerard’s translation of Avicenna, which is crowded with
Arabisms.
On the other hand, the influence of the Salernitan school may be discerned in several of
her scientific ideas. The Regimen Sanitatis of Salerno, written about 1101, was rapidly
diffused throughout Europe, and must have reached the Rhineland at least a generation
before the Liber Divinorum Operum was composed. This cycle of verses may well have
reinforced some of her microcosmic ideas,37 and suggested also her views on the
generation of man,38 on the effects of wind on health,39 and on the influence of the
stars.40
On the subject of the form of the earth Hildegard expressed herself definitely as a
spherist,41 a point of view more widely accepted in the earlier Middle Ages than is
perhaps generally supposed. She considers in the usual mediaeval fashion that this
globe is surrounded by celestial spheres that influence terrestrial events.42 But while she
claims that human affairs, and especially human diseases, are controlled, under God, by
the heavenly cosmos, she yet commits herself to none of that more detailed astrological
doctrine that was developing in her time, and came to efflorescence in the following
centuries. In this respect she follows the earlier and somewhat more scientific spirit of
such writers as Messahalah, rather than the wilder theories of her own age. The
shortness and simplicity of Messahalah’s tract on the sphere made it very popular. It
was probably one of the earliest to be translated into Latin; and its contents would
account for the change which, as we shall see, came over Hildegard’s scientific views in
her later years.
The general conception of the universe as a series of concentric elemental spheres had
certainly penetrated to Western Europe centuries before Hildegard’s time. Nevertheless
the prophetess presents it to her audience as a new and striking revelation. We may thus
suppose that translations of Messahalah, or of whatever other work she drew upon for
the purpose, did not reach the Upper Rhineland, or rather did not become accepted by
the circles in which Hildegard moved, until about the decade 1141–50, during which
she was occupied in the composition of her Scivias.

There is another cosmic theory, the advent of which to her country, or at least to her
circle, can be approximately dated from her work. Hildegard exhibits in a pronounced
but peculiar and original form the doctrine of the macrocosm and microcosm. Hardly
distinguishable in the Scivias (1141–50), it appears definitely in the Liber Vitae
Meritorum (1158–62),43 in which work, however, it takes no very prominent place, and
is largely overlaid and concealed by other lines of thought. But in the Liber Divinorum
Operum (1163–70) this belief is the main theme. The book is indeed an elaborate
attempt to demonstrate a similarity and relationship between the nature of the Godhead,
the constitution of the universe, and the structure of man, and it thus forms a valuable
compendium of the science of the day viewed from the standpoint of this theory.
From whence did she derive the theory of macrocosm and microcosm? In outline its
elements were easily accessible to her in Isidore’s De Rerum Natura as well as in the
Salernitan poems. But the work of Bernard Sylvestris of Tours, De mundi universitate
sive megacosmus et microcosmus,44 corresponds so closely both in form, in spirit, and
sometimes even in phraseology, to the Liber Divinorum Operum that it appears to us
certain that Hildegard must have had access to it also. Bernard’s work can be dated
between the years 1145–53 from his reference to the papacy of Eugenius III. This
would correspond well with the appearance of his doctrines in the Liber Vitae
Meritorum (1158–62) and their full development in the Liber Divinorum Operum
(1163–70).
Another contemporary writer with whom Hildegard presents points of contact is Hugh
of St. Victor (1095–1141).45 In his writings the doctrine of the relation of macrocosm
and microcosm is more veiled than with Bernard Sylvestris. Nevertheless, his symbolic
universe is on the lines of Hildegard’s belief, and the plan of his De arca Noe mystica
presents many parallels both to the Scivias and to the Liber Divinorum Operum. If these
do not owe anything directly to Hugh, they are at least products of the same mystical
movement as were his works.
We may also recall that at Hildegard’s date very complex cabalistic systems involving
the doctrine of macrocosm and microcosm were being elaborated by the Jews, and that
she lived in a district where Rabbinic mysticism specially flourished.46 Benjamin of
Tudela, who visited Bingen during Hildegard’s lifetime, tells us that he found there a
congregation of his people. Since we know, moreover, that she was familiar with the
Jews,47 it is possible that she may have derived some of the very complex macrocosmic
conceptions with which her last work is crowded from local Jewish students.
The Alsatian Herrade de Landsberg (died 1195), a contemporary of Hildegard,
developed the microcosm theory along lines similar to those of our abbess, and it is

probable that the theory, in the form in which these writers present it, reached the Upper
Rhineland somewhere about the middle or latter half of the twelfth century.

From the LUCCA MS. fo. 1 v

Plate VI. N O U S P E R VA D E D B Y T H E
GODHEAD AND CONTROLLING
HYLE

Apart from the Biblical books, the work which made the deepest impression on
Hildegard was probably Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, which seems to form the
background of a large part of the Scivias. The books of Ezekiel and of Daniel, the
Gospel of Nicodemus, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Apocalypse, all contain a lurid
type of vision which her own spiritual experiences would enable her to utilize, and

which fit in well with her microcosmic doctrines. Ideas on the harmony and disharmony
of the elements she may have picked up from such works as the Wisdom of Solomon
and the Pauline writings, though it is obvious that Isidore of Seville and the Regimen
Sanitatis Salerni were also drawn upon by her.

From the LUCCA MS. fo. 9 r

Plate VII. N O U S P E R VA D E D B Y T H E G O D H E A D
EMBRACING THE MACROCOSM WITH THE
MICROCOSM

Her figure of the Church in the Scivias reminds us irresistibly of Boethius’ vision of the
gracious feminine form of Philosophy. Again, the visions of the punishments of Hell
which Hildegard recounts in the Liber Vitae Meritorum48 bear resemblance to the work

of her contemporary Benedictine, the monk Alberic the younger of Monte Cassino, to
whom Dante also became indebted.49
Hildegard repeatedly assures us that most of her knowledge was revealed to her in
waking visions. Some of these we shall seek to show had a pathological basis, probably
of a migrainous character, and she was a sufferer from a condition that would nowadays
probably be classified as hystero-​epilepsy. Too much stress, however, can easily be laid
on the ecstatic presentment of her scientific views. Visions, it must be remembered,
were ‘the fashion’ at the period, and were a common literary device. Her contemporary
Benedictine sister, Elizabeth of Schönau, as well as numerous successors, as for
example Gertrude of Robersdorf, adopted the same mechanism. The use of the vision
for this purpose remained popular for centuries, and we may say of these writers, as
Ampère says of Dante, that ‘the visions gave not the genius nor the poetic inspiration,
but the form merely in which they were realized’.
The contemporaries of Hildegard who provide the closest analogy to her are Elizabeth
of Schönau (died 1165), whose visions are recounted in her life by Eckbertus;50 and
Herrade de Landsberg, Abbess of Hohenburg in Alsace, the priceless MS. of whose
Hortus Deliciarum was destroyed by the Germans in the siege of Strasbourg in 1870.51
With Elizabeth of Schönau, who lived in her neighbourhood, Hildegard was in frequent
correspondence. With Herrade she had, so far as is known, no direct communication;
but the two were contemporary, lived not very far apart, and under similar political and
cultural conditions. Elizabeth’s visions present some striking analogies to those of
Hildegard, while the figures of Herrade, of which copies have fortunately survived,
often suggest the illustrations of the Wiesbaden or of the Lucca MSS.

VI. The Structure of the Material Universe

To the student of the history of science, Hildegard’s beliefs as to the nature and
structure of the universe are among the most interesting that she has to impart. Her
earlier theories are in some respects unique among mediaeval writers, and we possess in
the Wiesbaden Codex B a diagram enabling us to interpret her views with a definiteness
and certainty that would otherwise be impossible.
Hildegard’s universe is geocentric, and consists of a spherical earth,52 around which are
arranged a number of concentric shells or zones. The inner zones are spherical, the
outer oval, and the outermost of all egg-​shaped, with one end prolonged and more
pointed than the other Fig. (2). The concentric structure is a commonplace of mediaeval
science, and is encountered, for instance, in the works of Bede, Isidore, Alexander of
Neckam, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Dante. To all these writers, however, the
universe is spherical. The egg-​shape is peculiar to Hildegard. Many of the

Mappaemundi of the Beatus and other types exhibit the surface of the habitable earth
itself as oval, and it was from such charts that Hildegard probably gained her
conception of an oval universe. In her method of orientation also she follows these
maps, placing the east at the top of the page where we are accustomed to place the
north.53
It is unfortunate that she does not deal with geography in the restricted sense, and so we
are not in full possession of her views on the antipodes, a subject of frequent derision to
patristic and of misconception to scholastic writers. She does, however, vaguely refer to
the inversion of seasons and climates in the opposite hemisphere,54 though she confuses
the issue by the adoption of a theory widespread in the Middle Ages and reproduced in
the Divina Commedia, that the antipodean surface of the earth is uninhabitable, since it
is either beneath the ocean or in the mouth of the Dragon55 (Plate xi, cp. Fig. 4). The
nature of the antipodean inversion of climates was clearly grasped by her contemporary,
Herrade de Landsberg (Fig. 5).
Hildegard’s views as to the internal structure of the terrestrial sphere are also somewhat
difficult to follow. Her obscure and confused doctrine of Purgatory and Hell has puzzled
other writers besides ourselves,56 nor need we consider it here, but she held that the
interior of the earth contained two vast spaces shaped like truncated cones, where
punishment was meted out and whence many evil things had issue.57 Her whole scheme
presents analogies as well as contrasts to that of her kindred spirit Dante.58 Hildegard,
however, who died before the thirteenth century had dawned, presents us with a scheme
far less definite and elaborated than that of her great successor, who had all the stores of
the golden age of scholasticism on which to draw.
In Hildegard’s first diagram of the universe, which is of the nature of an ‘optical
section’, the world, the sphaera elementorum of Johannes Sacro Bosco and other
mediaeval writers, is diagrammatically represented as compounded of earth, air, fire,
and water confusedly mixed in what her younger contemporary, Alexander of Neckam
(1157–1217), calls ‘a certain concordant discord of the elements’. In the illustrations to
the Wiesbaden Codex B the four elements have each a conventional method of
representation, which appears again and again in the different miniatures (Fig. 2 and
Plates xii and xiii).
Around this world with its four elements is spread the atmosphere, the aer lucidus or
alba pellis, diagrammatically represented, like the earth which it enwraps, as circular.
Through this alba pellis no creature of earth can penetrate. Beyond are ranged in order
four further shells or zones. Each zone contains one of the cardinal winds, and each
cardinal wind is accompanied by two accessory winds, represented in the traditional
fashion by the breath of supernatural beings.

Of the four outer zones the first is the aer aquosus, also round, from which blows the
east wind. In the outer part of the aer aquosus float the clouds, and according as they
contract or expand or are blown aside, the heavenly bodies above are revealed or
concealed.
Enwrapping the aer aquosus is the purus aether, the widest of all the zones. The long
axis of this, as of the remaining outer shells, is in the direction from east to west, thus
determining the path of movement of the heavenly bodies. Scattered through the purus
aether are the constellations of the fixed stars, and arranged along the long axis are the
moon and the two inner planets. From this zone blows the west wind. The position and
constitution of this purus aether is evidently the result of some misinterpretation of
Aristotelian writings.
The next zone, the umbrosa pellis or ignis niger, is a narrow dark shell, whence proceed
the more dramatic meteorological events. Here, following on the hints of the Wisdom of
Solomon (chap. v) and the Book of Job (chap. xxxviii), are situated the
diagrammatically portrayed treasuries of lightning and of hail. From here the
tempestuous north wind bursts forth. This ignis niger is clearly comparable to the dry
earthy exhalation that works of the Peripatetic school regard as given off by the outer
fiery zone. The presence of the ignis niger thus suggests some contact on the part of the
authoress with the teaching of the Meteorologica of Aristotle.59
The outermost layer of all is a mass of flames, the lucidus ignis. Here are the sun and
the three outer planets, and from here the south wind pours its scorching breath (Fig. 2).
The movements of the four outer zones around each other, carrying the heavenly bodies
with them, are attributed to the winds in each zone. The seasonal variations in the
movements of the heavenly bodies, along with the recurring seasons themselves, are
also determined by the prevalent winds, which, acting as the motive power upon the
various zones, form a celestial parallelogram of forces. In this way is ingeniously
explained also why in spring the days lengthen and in autumn they shorten until in
either case an equinox is reached (Fig. 2).
‘I looked and behold the east and the south wind with their collaterals, moving
the firmament by the power of their breath, caused it to revolve over the earth
from east to west; and in the same way the west and north winds and their
collaterals, receiving the impulse and projecting their blast, thrust it back again
from west to east. . . .
‘I saw also that as the days began to lengthen, the south wind and his
collaterals gradually raised the firmament in the southern zone upwards
towards the north, until the days ceased to grow longer. Then when the days
began to shorten, the north wind with his collaterals, shrinking from the

brightness of the sun, drove the firmament back gradually southward until by
reason of the lengthening days the south wind began yet again to raise it up’60
(Plates vii and viii).
Intimately bound up not only with her theory of the nature and structure of the universe
but also with her eschatological beliefs is Hildegard’s doctrine of the elements. Before
the fall of man these were arranged in a harmony,61 which was disturbed by that
catastrophe (Plate xii a),62 so that they have since remained in the state of mingled
confusion in which we always encounter them on the terrestrial globe. This mistio, to
use the mediaeval Aristotelian term, is symbolized by the irregular manner in which the
elements are represented in the central sphere of the diagram of the universe (Fig. 2).
Thus mingled they will remain until subjected to the melting-​pot of the Last Judgement
(Plate xiii),63 when they will emerge in a new and eternal harmony, no longer mixed as
matter, but separate and pure, parts of the new heaven and the new earth (Plate xii b).64
‘But the heavens and the earth, which are now, . . . are kept in store and
reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly
men. . . . But the day of the Lord will come . . . in the which the heavens
shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent
heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. . . .
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness’ (2 Peter iii. 7, 10, and 13).
So Hildegard, acting on a scriptural hint, is enabled to dematerialize her doctrine of the
after-​things.
But although since man’s fall the elements have lost their order and their harmony on
this terrestrial orb, yet is that harmony still in part preserved in the celestial spheres that
encircle and surround our globe; and water, air, earth, and fire have each their respective
representatives in the four concentric zones, the aer aquosus, the purus aether, the
umbrosa pellis, and the lucidus ignis (Fig. 2). These are the ‘superior elements’ which
still retain some at least of their individuality and primal purity. From each of their
spheres blows, as we have seen, one of the cardinal winds, and each wind partakes of
the elemental character of the zone whence it issues, and has a corresponding influence
on man’s body, since each of the four humours is specifically affected by the element to
which it corresponds.
‘Then I saw that by the diverse quality of the winds, and of the atmosphere as
they in turn sweep through it, the humours in man are agitated and altered. For
in each of the superior elements there is a breath of corresponding quality by
which, through the power of the winds, the corresponding element [below] is
forced to revolve in the atmosphere, and in no other way is it moved. And by

one of those winds, with the agency of sun, moon, and stars, the atmosphere
which tempers the world is breathed forth’65 (Plate vii).
This doctrine of the relation of the various winds to the four elements and through them
to the four humours is found in the De Rerum Natura of Isidore of Seville, and is
occasionally illustrated in European MSS. from the ninth century onward,66 but we meet
it set forth with special definiteness in the twelfth century in the translations from
Messahalah. It is encountered also in the work of Herrade de Landsberg. In and after the
thirteenth century it had become a commonplace.
The description we have given of the universe was in the main set forth by Hildegard in
her first work, the Scivias (1141–50).67 Subsequently she became dissatisfied with the
account she had given, and while not withdrawing it, she sought in the Liber Divinorum
Operum (1163–70) so to modify the original presentment as to bring it more into line
with accepted views. Thus she writes: ‘There appeared to me in vision a disk very like
that object which I saw twenty-​eight years ago of the form of an egg, in the third vision
of my book Scivias. In the outer part of the disk there was as it were the lucidus ignis,
and beneath it the circle of the ignis niger was portrayed . . . and these two circles were
so joined as to be one circle.’ There was thus one outer zone representing the fire.
‘Under the circle of the ignis niger there was another circle in the likeness of the purus
aether which was of the same width as the two conjoined [outer] fiery circles. And
below this circle again was the circle of the aer aquosus as wide as the lucidus ignis.
And below this circle was yet another circle, the fortis et albus lucidusque aer . . . the
width whereof was as the width of the ignis niger, and these circles were joined to make
one circle which was thus again of width equal to the outer two. Again, under this last
circle yet another circle, the aer tenuis, was distinguishable, which could be seen to
raise itself as a cloud, sometimes high and light, sometimes depressed and dark, and to
diffuse itself as it were throughout the whole disk. . . . The outermost fiery circle
perfuses the other circles with its fire, while the watery circle saturates them with its
moisture, [cp. Wisdom of Solomon, xix. 18–20]. And from the extreme eastern part of
the disk to the extreme west a line is stretched out [i.e. the equator] which separates the
northern zones from the others’68 (see Fig. 3 and Plates vii and viii).

Fig. 3. HILDEGARD’S SECOND SCHEME OF
THE UNIVERSE
Reconstructed from her measurements. ab, cd, and ef are all equal
to each other, as are also gh, hk, and kl. The clouds are situated in
the outer part of the aer tenuis, and form a prolongation
downwards from the aer aquosus towards the earth.

The earth lies concentrically with the aer tenuis, and its measurements are given thus:
‘In the midst of the aer tenuis a globe was indicated, the circumference of which was
everywhere equidistant from the fortis et albus lucidusque aer, and it was as far across
as the depth of the space from the top of the highest circle to the extremity of the
clouds, or from the extremity of the clouds to the circumference of the inner
globe’68 (Fig. 3).
In her earlier work, the Scivias, Hildegard had not apparently realized the need of
accounting for the independent movements of the planets other than the sun and moon.
She had thus placed the moon and two of the moving stars in the purus aether, and the
sun and the three remaining moving stars in the lucidus ignis. Since these spheres were
moved by the winds, their contained planets would be subject to the same influences. In
the Liber Divinorum Operum, however, she has come to realize how independent the
movements of the planets really are, and she invokes a special cause for their vagaries.
‘I looked and behold in the outer fire (lucidus ignis) there appeared a circle which girt
about the whole firmament from the east westward. From it a blast produced a

movement from west to east in the opposite direction to the movement of the
firmament. But this blast did not give forth his breath earthward as did the other winds,
but instead thereof it governed the course of the planets.’69 The source of the blast is
represented in the Lucca MS. as the head of a supernatural being with a human face
(Plate viii).

From the LUCCA MS. fo. 27 v

Plate VIII. THE MACROCOSM THE MICROCOSM AND
THE WINDS

Plate IX. From THE LUCCA MS fo. 37 r

CELESTIAL INFLUENCES ON MEN ANIMALS AND PLANTS

These curious passages were written at some date after 1163, when Hildegard was at
least 65 years old. They reveal our prophetess attempting to revise much of her earlier
theory of the universe, and while seeking to justify her earlier views, endeavouring also
to bring them into line with the new science that was now just beginning to reach her
world. Note that (a) the universe has become round; (b) there is an attempt to arrange
the zones according to their density, i.e. from without inwards, fire, air (ether), water,
earth; (c) exact measurements are given; (d) the watery zone is continued earthward so
as to mingle with the central circle. In all these and other respects she is joining the
general current of mediaeval science then beginning to be moulded by works translated
from the Arabic. Her knowledge of the movements of the heavenly bodies is entirely
innocent of the doctrine of epicycles, but in other respects her views have come to
resemble those, for instance, of Messahalah, one of the simplest and easiest writers on
the sphere available in her day. Furthermore, her conceptions have developed so as to fit

in with the macrocosm-​microcosm scheme which she grasped about the year 1158.
Even in her latest work, however, her theory of the universe exhibits differences from
that adopted by the schoolmen, as may be seen by comparing her diagram with, for
example, the scheme of Dante (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4. D A N T E ’ S S C H E M E O F T H E U N I V E R S E
Slightly modified from Michelangelo Caetani, duca di Sermoneta, La materia
della Divina Commedia di Dante Allighieri dichiarata in VI tavole, Monte
Cassino, 1855.

Like many mediaeval writers, Hildegard would have liked to imagine an ideal state of
the elemental spheres in which the rarest, fire, was uppermost, and the densest, earth,
undermost. Such a scheme was, in fact, purveyed by Bernard Sylvestris and by

Messahalah. Her conceptions were however disturbed by the awkward facts that water
penetrated below the earth, and indeed sought the lowest level, while air and not water
lay immediately above the earth’s surface. Mediaeval writers adopted various devices
and expended a great amount of ingenuity in dealing with this discrepancy, which was a
constant source of obscurity and confusion. Hildegard devotes much space and some
highly involved allegory both in the Scivias and in the Liber Divinorum Operum to the
explanation of the difficulty, while Dante himself wrote a treatise in high scholastic
style on this very subject.70

Plate X. A C R U C I F I X I N T H E U F F I Z I G A L L E R Y
A b o u t t h e m i d d l e o f t h e X I I I t h C e n t u r y.

VII. Macrocosm and Microcosm

The winds and elements of the outer universe, the macrocosm, become in Hildegard’s
later schemes intimately related to structures and events within the body of man
himself, the microcosm, the being around whom the universe centres. The terms
macrocosm and microcosm are not employed by her, but in her last great work, the
Liber Divinorum Operum, she succeeds in most eloquent and able fashion in
synthesizing into one great whole, centred around this doctrine, her theological beliefs
and her physiological knowledge, together with her conceptions of the working of the
human mind and of the structure of the universe. The work is thus an epitome of the
science of the time viewed through the distorting medium of this theory. In studying it
the modern reader is necessarily hampered by the bizarre and visionary form into which
the whole subject is cast. Nevertheless the scheme, though complex and difficult, is
neither incoherent nor insane, as at first sight it may seem. On the contrary, it is a highly
systematic and skilful presentment of a cosmic theory which for centuries dominated
scientific thought.
As an explanation of the complexity of existence which thinkers of all ages have sought
to bring within the range of some simple formula, this theory of the essential similarity
of macrocosm and microcosm held in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, and
even into quite modern times, a position comparable to that of the theory of evolution in
our own age. If at times it passed into folly and fantasy, it should be remembered that it
also fulfilled a high purpose. It gave a meaning to the facts of nature and a formula to
the naturalist, it unified philosophic systems, it exercised the ingenuity of theologians,
and gave a convenient framework to prophecy, while it seemed to illumine history and
to provide a key and meaning to life itself. Even now it is not perhaps wholly devoid of
message, but as a phenomenon in the history of human thought, a theory which
appealed to such diverse scientific writers as Seneca, Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus,
Gilbert, Harvey, Boyle, and Leibnitz, is surely worthy of attention.
In essaying to interpret the views of our authoress on this difficult subject, we rely
mainly on the text of the Liber Divinorum Operum, supplemented by the beautiful
illuminations of that work which adorn the Lucca MS. The book opens with a truly
remarkable vision (Plate vi):
‘I saw a fair human form and the countenance thereof was of such beauty and
brightness that it had been easier to gaze upon the sun. The head thereof was
girt with a golden circlet through which appeared another face as of an aged
man. From the neck of the figure on either side sprang a pinion which swept
upward above the circlet and joined its fellow on high. And where on the right
the wing turned upward, was portrayed an eagle’s head with eyes of flame,
wherein appeared as in a mirror the lightning of the angels, while from a man’s
head in the other wing the lightning of the stars did radiate. From either

shoulder another wing reached to the knees. The figure was robed in brightness
as of the sun, while the hands held a lamb shining with light. Beneath, the feet
trampled a horrible black monster of revolting shape, upon the right ear of
which a writhing serpent fixed itself.’71

From the LUCCA MS. fo. 86 v

Plate XI. THE STRUCTURE OF THE MUNDANE SPHERE

The image declares its identity in words reminiscent of the Wisdom literature or of
passages in the hermetic writings, but which seem in fact to be partly borrowed from
Bernard Sylvestris.
‘I am that supreme and fiery force that sends forth all the sparks of life. Death
hath no part in me, yet do I allot it, wherefore I am girt about with wisdom as
with wings. I am that living and fiery essence of the divine substance that

glows in the beauty of the fields. I shine in the water, I burn in the sun and the
moon and the stars. Mine is that mysterious force of the invisible wind. I
sustain the breath of all living. I breathe in the verdure and in the flowers, and
when the waters flow like living things, it is I. I formed those columns that
support the whole earth. . . . I am the force that lies hid in the winds, from me
they take their source, and as a man may move because he breathes so doth a
fire burn but by my blast. All these live because I am in them and am of their
life. I am wisdom. Mine is the blast of the thundered word by which all things
were made. I permeate all things that they may not die. I am life.’72

WIESB. COD. B. fo. 4 r WIESB. COD. B. fo. 224
v

Plate XIIa. M A N ’ S F A L L
AND THE
DISTURBANCE OF THE Plate XIIb. T H E N E W
E L E M E N TA L H E AV E N A N D T H E N E W
HARMONY E A RT H

Hildegard thus supposes that the whole universe is permeated by a single living spirit,
the figure of the vision. This spirit of the macrocosm, the Nous or ‘world spirit’ of the
hermetic and Neoplatonic literature, the impersonated Nature, as we may perhaps
render it, is in its turn controlled by the Godhead that pervades the form and is

represented rising from its vertex as a second human face. Nature, the spirit of the
cosmic order, controls and holds in subjection the hideous monster, the principle of
death and dissolution, the Hyle or primordial matter of the Neoplatonists, whose chaotic
and anarchic force would shatter and destroy this fair world unless fettered by a higher
power.
With the details of the visionary figure we need not delay,73 but we pass to the
description of the structure of the macrocosm itself, to which the second vision is
devoted (Plate vii). Here appears the same figure of the macrocosmic spirit. But now the
head and feet only are visible, and the arms are outstretched to enclose the disk of the
universe which conceals the body. Although the macrocosm now described is
considerably altered from Hildegard’s original scheme of the universe, she yet declares,
‘I saw in the bosom of the form the appearance of a disk of like sort to that which
twenty-​eight years before I had seen in the third vision, set forth in my book of
Scivias’.74 The zones of this disk are then described (Plates vii, viii, and xi and Fig. 2).
They are from without inwards:
(a) The lucidus ignis, containing the three outer planets, the sixteen principal
fixed stars, and the south wind.
(b) The ignis niger, containing the sun, the north wind, and the materials of
thunder, lightning, and hail.
(c) The purus aether, containing the west wind, the moon, the two inner
planets, and certain fixed stars.
(d) The aer aquosus, containing the east wind.
(e) The fortis et albus lucidusque aer, where certain other fixed stars are
placed.
(f) The aer tenuis, or atmosphere, in the outer part of which is the zone of the
clouds.
From all these objects, from the spheres of the elements, from the sun, moon, and other
planets, from the four winds each with their two collaterals, from the fixed stars, and
from the clouds, descend influences, indicated by lines, towards the figure of the
macrocosm.
The microcosm is then introduced.
‘And again I heard the voice from heaven saying, “God, who created all things,
wrought also man in his own image and similitude, and in him he traced
[signavit] all created things, and he held him in such love that he destined him
for the place from which the fallen angel had been cast.”’75

The various characters of the winds are expounded in a set of curious passages in which
the doctrine of the macrocosm and microcosm is further mystically elaborated. An
endeavour is made to attribute to the winds derived from the different quarters of
heaven qualities associated with a number of animals.76 The conception is illustrated
and made comprehensible by the miniatures in the Lucca MS. (Plates vii and viii).
‘In the middle of the disk [of the universe] there appeared the form of a man,
the crown of whose head and the soles of whose feet extended to the fortis et
albus lucidusque aer, and his hands were outstretched right and left to the
same circle. . . . Towards these parts was an appearance as of four heads; a
leopard, a wolf, a lion, and a bear. Above the head of the figure in the zone of
the purus aether, I saw the head of the leopard emitting a blast from its mouth,
and on the right side of the mouth the blast, curving itself somewhat
backwards, was formed into a crab’s head . . . with two chelae; while on the
left side of the mouth a blast similarly curved ended in a stag’s head. From the
mouth of the crab’s head, another blast went to the middle of the space
between the leopard and the lion; and from the stag’s head a similar blast to the
middle of the space between the leopard and the bear . . . and all the heads
were breathing towards the figure of the man. Under his feet in the aer aquosus
there appeared as it were the head of a wolf, sending forth to the right a blast
extending to the middle of the half space between its head and that of the bear,
where it assumed the form of the stag’s head; and from the stag’s mouth there
came, as it were, another breath which ended in the middle line. From the left
of the wolf’s mouth arose a breath which went to the midst of the half space
between the wolf and the lion, where was depicted another crab’s head . . .
from whose mouth another breath ended in the same middle line. . . . And the
breath of all the heads extended sideways from one to another. . . . Moreover
on the right hand of the figure in the lucidus ignis, from the head of the lion,
issued a breath which passed laterally on the right into a serpent’s head and on
the left into a lamb’s head . . . similarly on the figure’s left in the ignis niger
there issued a breath from the bear’s head ending on its right in the head of
[another] lamb, and on its left in another serpent’s head. . . . And above the
head of the figure the seven planets were ranged in order, three in the lucidus
ignis, one projecting into the ignis niger and three into the purus aether. . . .
And in the circumference of the circle of the lucidus ignis there appeared the
sixteen principal stars, four in each quadrant between the heads. . . . Also the
purus aether and the fortis et albus lucidusque aer seemed to be full of stars
which sent forth their rays towards the clouds, whence . . . tongues like rivers
descended to the disk and towards the figure, which was thus surrounded and
influenced by these signs.’77

The third vision is devoted to an account of the human body, the microcosm (Plate viii),
with a comparison of its organs to the parts of the macrocosmic scheme, together with a
detailed account of the effects of the heavenly bodies on the humours in man, the whole
brought into a strongly theological setting. Some of these views are set forth below in
the chapter on anatomy and physiology.
The fourth vision explains the influence of the heavenly bodies and of the superior
elements on the power of nature as exhibited on the surface of the earth. It is illustrated
by a charming miniature in the Lucca MS. (Plate ix).
‘I saw that the upper fiery firmament was stirred, so that as it were ashes were cast
therefrom to earth, and they produced rashes and ulcers in men and animals and fruits.’
These effects are shown in the left upper quadrant of Plate ix, where the ashes are seen
proceeding from the lucidus ignis, the ‘upper fiery firmament’. Two figures are seen, a
female semi-​recumbent, who lifts a fruit to her mouth, and a male figure fully
recumbent, on whose legs a rash is displayed. The trees also in this quadrant show the
effects of the ashes, two of them being denuded of fruit and foliage.
‘Then I saw that from the ignis niger certain vapours (nebulae) descended, which
withered the verdure and dried up the moisture of the fields. The purus aether, however,
resisted these ashes and vapours, seeking to hold back these plagues.’ These vapours
may be seen in the right upper quadrant of Plate ix. They descend from the ignis niger,
attenuate for a space in the purus aether, and then descend through the other zones on
to an arid and parched land. Here are two husbandmen; one sits forlornly clasping his
axe, while the other leans disconsolately upon his hoe. On the legs of the latter a rash
may be distinguished.
‘And looking again I saw that from the fortis et albus lucidusque aer certain other
clouds reached the earth and infected men and beasts with sore pestilence, so that they
were subjected to many ills even to the death, but the aer aquosus opposed that
influence so that they were not hurt beyond measure.’ This scene is portrayed in the
right lower quadrant of Plate ix. Here is a husbandman in mortal anguish. He has
gathered his basket of fruit and now lies stricken with the pestilence. His left hand is
laid on his heart, while his right hangs listless on his thigh, pointing to tokens of plague
upon his legs. Beyond lies the dead body of a beast on which a carrion bird has settled.
‘Again I saw that the moisture in the aer tenuis was as it were boiling above the surface
of the earth, awakening the force of the earth and making fruits to grow.’78 This happier
scene is represented in the left lower quadrant of Plate ix. Here the beneficent fertilizing
influence is falling on trees and herbs and the happy husbandmen are reaping its results.

From WIESBADEN CODEX B fo. 224 r

Plate XIII. T H E L A S T J U D G E M E N T A N D F AT E O F T H E
ELEMENTS

The main outline of the Liber Divinorum Operum is, we believe, borrowed from the
work of Bernard Sylvestris of Tours, De mundi universitate libri duo sive megacosmus
et microcosmus.79 In this composition by a teacher at the cathedral school of
Chartres,80 the gods and goddesses of the classical pantheon flit across the stage, for
all the world as though the writer were a pagan, and the work might be thought to be
the last one from which our pious authoress would borrow. The De mundi universitate
is alternately in prose and verse and betrays an acquaintance with the classics very
rare at its date. ‘The rhythm of the hexameters is clearly that of Lucan, while the

vocabulary is mainly of Ovid.’81 The mythology is founded mainly on the Timaeus.
The eternal seminaria of created things are mentioned, and it has been conjectured
that the work exhibits traces of the influence of Lucretius,82 but the general line of
thought is clearly related to Neoplatonic literature. Thus the anima universalis of
Neoplatonic writings can be identified with the Nous or Noys of Bernard. This
principle is contrasted with primordial matter or Hyle. The parallel character of the
Liber Divinorum Operum and the De mundi universitate can be illustrated by a few
extracts from the latter. It will be seen that although the general setting is changed, yet
Hildegard’s figure of the spirit of the macrocosm is to be identified with Bernard’s
Noys. Hyle, on the other hand, becomes in Hildegard’s plan the monstrous form, the
emblem of brute matter, on which the spirit of the universe tramples.

F r o m B I B L . N AT . M S . L AT . 5 5 4 3 f o . 1 3 6 r

Plate XIV. D I A G R A M O F T H E R E L AT I O N O F
HUMAN AND COSMIC PHENOMENA
IXth Century

‘In huius operis primo libro qui Megacosmus dicitur, id est maior mundus,
Natura ad Noym, id est Dei providentiam, de primae materiae, id est hyles,
confusione querimoniam quasi cum lacrimis agit et ut mundus pulchrius petit.
Noys igitur eius mota precibus petitioni libenter annuit et ita quatuor
elementa ab invicem seiungit. Novem ierarchias angelorum in coelo ponit.
stellas in firmamento figit. signa disponit. sub signis orbes septem planetarum
currere facit. quatuor ventos cardinales sibi invicem opponit. Sequitur genesis
animantium et terrae situs medius. . . .
‘In secundo libro qui Microcosmus dicitur, id est minor mundus, Noys ad
Naturam loquitur et de mundi expolitione gloriatur et in operis sui
completione se hominem plasmaturam pollicetur. Iubet igitur Uraniam, quae
siderum regina est, et Physin, quae rerum omnium est peritissima, sollicite
perquirat. Natura protinus iubenti obsequitur et per caelestes circulos
Uraniam quaeritans eam sideribus inhiantem reperit. eiusque itineris causa
praecognita se operis et itineris comitem Urania pollicetur. . . . Subitoque ibi
Noys affuit suoque velle eis ostenso trinas speculationes tribus assignando
tribuit & ad hominis plasmationem eas impellit. Physis igitur de quatuor
elementorum reliquiis hominem format et a capite incipiens membratim
operando opus suum in pedibus consummat. . . .
‘Noys ego scientia et divinae voluntatis arbitraria ad dispositionem rerum,
quem ad modum de consensu eius accipio, sic meae administrationis officia
circumduco. . . .
‘(Noys) erat fons luminis, seminarium vitae, bonum bonitatis divinae,
plenitude scientiae quae mens altissimi nominatur. Ea igitur noys summi &
exsuperantissimi Dei est intellectus et ex eius divinitate nata natura. . . . Erat
igitur videre velut in speculo tersiore quicquid generationi quicquid operi Dei
secretior destinarat affectus.’83
Hildegard’s conception of macrocosm and microcosm, which was thus probably
borrowed from Bernard Sylvestris, has analogies also to those well-​known figures
illustrating the supposed influence of the signs of the zodiac on the different parts of
the body.84 Such figures, with the zodiacal symbols arranged around a figure of Christ,
may be seen in certain MSS. anterior to Hildegard,85 while the influence of the
‘Melothesia’, to give it the name assigned by Porphyry, has been traced through its
period of efflorescence at the Renaissance (Plates xv,86 xvi,87 and xvii,88 compare with

Plates vii and viii) right down to our own age and country, where it still appeals to the
ignorant and foolish.89
Hildegard often interprets natural events by means of a peculiarly crude form of the
doctrine, as when she describes how ‘if the excess of waters below are drawn up to the
clouds (by the just judgment of God in the requital of sinners), then the moisture from
the aer aquosus transudes through the fortis et albus lucidusque aer as a draught
drunk into the urinary bladder; and the same waters descend in an inundation’.90
Again, events in the body of man are most naively explained on the basis of the nature
of the external world as she has pictured it.
‘The humours at times rage fiercely as a leopard and again they are softened,
going backwards as a crab;91 or they may show their diversity by leaping and
goring as a stag, or they may be as a wolf in their ravening, and yet again
they may invade the body of man after the manner of both wolf and crab. Or
else they may show forth their strength unceasingly as a lion, or as a serpent
they may go now softly, now violently, and at times they may be gentle as a
lamb and at times again they may growl as an angered bear, and at times they
may partake of the nature of the lamb and of the serpent.’92
Having completed her general survey of the macrocosm (Vision II), and having
investigated in detail the structure of man’s body, the microcosm, in terms of the
greater universe (Vision III), and discussed the influence of the heavenly bodies on
terrestrial events (Vision IV), Hildegard turns to the internal structure of the terrestrial
sphere (Vision V). This vision is illustrated by the figure in the Lucca MS. reproduced
in Plate xi.
Upon the surface of the earth towards the east
stands the building which symbolizes the
aedificium of the church, a favourite
conception of our authoress. This church is
surmounted by a halo, whence proceed a pair
of pinions which extend their shelter over a
full half of the earth’s circumference. As for
the rest of the earth’s surface, part is within
the wide-​opened jaws of a monster, the
Destroyer, and the remainder is beneath the
surface of the ocean. Within the earth are five
parts analogous, as she would have us
believe, to the five senses. An eastern clear

arc and a western clouded one signify Fig. 5. From Herrade de Landsberg’s Hortus
deliciarum, after Straub and Keller.
respectively the excellence of the orient
where Zion is situated, and the Cimmerian
darkness of the occidental regions over which the shadow of the dragon is cast.
Centrally is a quadrate area divided into three zones where the qualities of heat and
cold and of a third intermediate ‘temperateness’ (temperies) are stored. North and
south of this are two areas where purgatory is situate. Each is shaped like a truncated
cone and composed also of three sectors. Souls are seen suffering in one sector the
torment of flame, in another the torment of water, while in the third or intermediate
sector lurk monsters and creeping things which add to the miseries of purgatory or at
times come forth to earth’s surface to plague mankind. These northern and southern
sections exhibit dimly by their identically reversed arrangement the belief in the
antipodean inversion of climate, an idea hinted several times in Hildegard’s writings,
but more definitely illustrated by a figure of Herrade de Landsberg (Fig. 5).

F r o m B I B L . N AT . M S . L AT . 7 0 2 8 f o . 1 5 4 r

Plate XV. A N X I t h C E N T U RY F R E N C H M E L O T H E S I A

F r o m B I B L . N AT . M S . L AT . 1 1 2 2 9 f o . 4 5 v

Plate XVI. A MELOTHESIA OF ABOUT 1400

From the SYMBOLUM APOSTOLICORUM

Plate XVII. A G E R M A N B L O C K B O O K
F i r s t H a l f o f X V t h C e n t u r y. H e i d e l b e r g U n i v e r s i t y
Library

From BODLEIAN MS. ASHMOLE 399 fo. 18 r

Plate XVIII.
A N A N AT O M I C A L D I A G R A M O F
ABOUT 1298
From the Five-Figure Series. Cp. Plate XXXIII

Fig. 6.

Fig. 7.
MELOTHESIAE
From R. Fludd, Historia utriusque cosmi, Oppenheim, 1619,
pp. 112 and 113.

Fig. 8. T H E M I C R O C O S M
From R. Fludd, Philosophia sacra seu astrologia cosmica, Frankfurt, 1628, p. 52.

Macrocosmic schemes of the type illustrated by the text of Hildegard and by the
figures of the Lucca MS. had a great vogue in mediaeval times, and were passed on to
later ages. Some passages in Hildegard’s work read curiously like Paracelsus
(1491–1541),93 and it is not hard to find a link between these two difficult and
mystical writers. Trithemius, the teacher of Paracelsus, was abbot of Sponheim, an
important settlement almost within sight of Hildegard’s convents on the Rupertsberg
and Disibodenberg. Trithemius studied Hildegard’s writings with great care and
attached much importance to them, so that they may well have influenced his pupil.
The influence of mediaeval theories of the relation of macrocosm and microcosm is
encountered among numerous Renaissance writers besides Paracelsus, and is
presented to us, for instance, by such a cautious, balanced, and scientifically-​minded
humanist as Fracastor. But as the years went on, the difficulty in applying the details
of the theory became ever greater and greater. Facts were strained and mutilated more
and more to make them fit the Procrustean bed of an outworn theory, which at length
became untenable when the heliocentric system of Copernicus and Galileo replaced
the geocentric and anthropocentric systems of an earlier age. The idea of a close
parallelism between the structure of man and of the wider universe was gradually
abandoned by the scientific, while among the unscientific it degenerated and became
little better than an insane obsession. As such it appears in the ingenious ravings of the
English follower of Paracelsus, the Rosicrucian, Robert Fludd, who reproduced, often
with fidelity, the systems which had some novelty five centuries before his time (Figs.

6, 7, and 8). As a similar fantastic obsession this once fruitful hypothesis still
occasionally appears even in modern works of learning and industry.94

VIII. Anatomy and Physiology

Hildegard’s ideas on these subjects are set out in the fourth vision of the Liber
Divinorum Operum, which is devoted to a description of man’s body according to the
macrocosmic scheme. This setting makes her account by no means easy to read, while
it increases the difficulty of tracing the origin of her views.
The list of works containing anatomical descriptions available to a German writer in
the early Middle Ages is not long. Avicenna was hardly yet accessible, and only such
scraps of Galen as appear in Constantine and the Salernitans. The available works
may be enumerated thus:
(a) The short Anatomia porci of Copho of Salerno, dating from about 1085.95
(b) An anonymous Salernitan anatomy,96 written about 1100 and largely based on
Copho and Constantine.
(c) The Liber de humana natura of Constantine the African, written probably
between 1070 and 1085 at Monte Cassino.97
(d) Constantine’s De communibus medico cognitu necessariis locis, written about the
same time as the above.98 This work is in four books, of which the second,
third, and fourth are devoted to anatomy and physiology.
(e) Here may be placed also Constantine’s translation of the Viaticum of Isaac
Judeus. Both these latter works of Constantine are long and technical, and
designed for the use of the trained physician.

In addition to these there was in the Middle Ages a definite anatomic tradition, which
expressed itself constantly in:
(f) A series of five anatomical diagrams representing respectively the arteries, veins,
bones, nerves, and muscles99 (see Plate xxxiii, opposite page 92 of the present
volume). These diagrams were copied in the most servile fashion for centuries,
and something very like them has remained in use to this day in Tibet.100 The
versions, whether in Persia or England, in Germany or Italy, were remarkably
uniform.
(g) In several MSS. there has been found attached to these remarkable diagrams a
short text describing the five systems, arteries, veins, nerves, bones, and
muscles. This text, however, purporting to be from Galen, has little relation to

the figures, which it does not really explain, and it should therefore be
regarded as a separate work.101

From WIESBADEN CODEX B fo. 22 r

Plate XIX. B I R T H . T H E A R R I VA L A N D T R I A L S O F T H E S O U L

From WIESBADEN CODEX B fo. 25 r

Plate XX. D E AT H . T H E D E P A R T U R E A N D F AT E O F
THE SOUL

Of these seven sources it appears to us that (c) and (f)—the short De humana natura
of Constantine, and the five-​figure series—are those on which Hildegard drew. The
absence of Arabisms and the scarcity of technical anatomical terms in her writings,
her failure to distinguish between veins and arteries, the absence of anything of the
nature of myology or osteology, together with the neglect of the spinal marrow as an
important organ, make it very unlikely that she consulted Constantine’s longer works
or the Salernitan authorities or the text of the five-​figure series. Her anatomical
descriptions resemble those of Constantine’s shorter work, on the other hand, in the
description of the three vesicles of the brain and their relations to the faculties of the
mind, in the treatment of the five senses, in the view of the influence of the planets on

the child and the emphasis laid on epilepsy, as well as in the absence of any distinction
between arteries and veins, and in the loose doctrines of the humours and of the
causes of deformities and monstrosities. In some of these respects also her account of
the human body presents points of resemblance to the De hominis membris ac
partibus of Hugh of St. Victor,102 with whom, however, her contact appears to be less
close than with Constantine.
We may infer that Hildegard had consulted anatomical diagrams and was accustomed
to this method of representing the organs from a passage descriptive of the
microcosm, in which she says that ‘in the mouth of the figure in whose body was the
disk, I saw a light brighter than the light of day, in the form of threads, some circular,
some in other geometrical forms, and some shaped like human members belonging to
the figure, which was clearly portrayed on the disk upright and accurately limned’.103
These ‘circles and geometrical figures’ fairly describe the highly diagrammatic
manner in which the five-​figure series represents the internal organs, and several
points suggest that she does indeed refer to this series. Her description of the
abdominal muscles (umbilicus) ‘covering the viscera like a cap’, her general
descriptions of the vessels (venae) and the muscles, and especially her account of the
vessels of the leg and of the intimate relations of the main venae to the organ of
hearing, fits in perfectly with the form of these remarkable diagrams (Plate xviii).
We here render some of the most important of her general anatomical descriptions:
‘The humours may pass to the liver, where wisdom is tested, having been
already tempered in the brain by the strength of the spirit, and having
absorbed its moisture so that now it is plump, strong, and healthy.
‘In the right of man is the liver and its great heat, so that the right is swift to
act and to work;104 but towards the left are heart and lung, which fortify the
body for its task and receive their heat from the liver as from a furnace. But
the vessels of the liver, affected by the agitation of the humours, trouble the
venules of the ear of man and sometimes confound the organ of hearing. . . .
‘I saw also that sometimes the humours seek the navel, which covers the
viscera as a cap, and holds them in, lest they be dissipated, and maintains
their course and preserves the heat both of them and of the veins. . . . But
sometimes the humours seek the loins (lumbos),105 which mock, deceive, and
endanger the virile powers and which are held in place by nerves and other
vessels; in which, nevertheless, reason nourishes so that man may know what
to do and what to avoid. . . .

‘And the same humours go to the vessels of the reins and of other members,
and pass in their turn to the vessels of the spleen, and then to the lungs and to
the heart; and they meet the viscera on the left where they are warmed by the
lungs, but the liver warms the right-​hand side of the body. And the vessels of
the brain, heart, lung, liver, and other parts carry strength to the reins, whose
vessels descend to the legs, strengthening them; and returning along with the
leg vessels, they unite with the virile organ or with the womb as the case may
be.
‘And as the stomach absorbs food, or as iron is sharpened on a stone, so do
they bring the reproductive power to those parts.

From WIESBADEN CODEX B, fo. 123 r

Plate XXI. T H E F A L L O F T H E A N G E L S

‘Again, the muscles of the arms, legs, and thighs contain vessels full of
humours; and just as the belly has within it viscera containing nourishment,
so the muscles of arms, legs, and thighs have both vessels and the [contained]
humours which preserve man’s strength. . . . But when a man runs or walks
quickly, the nerves about the knees and the venules in the knees become
distended. And since they are united with the vessels of the legs, which are
numerous and intercommunicate in a net-​like manner, they conduct the
fatigue to the vessels of the liver, and thus they reach the vessels of the brain,
and so send the fatigue throughout the body. But the vessels from the reins
pass rather to the left leg than to the right, because the right leg gets its
strength more from the heat of the liver. And the vessels of the right leg
ascend as far as the renal and kindred vessels, and these latter vessels unite
with those of the kidney. And the liver warms the reins which lie in the
fatness derived from the humours. . . .
‘The humours in man are distributed in just measure. But when they affect
the veins of the liver, his humidity is decreased and also the humidity of the
chest is attenuated; so that thus dried, he falls into disease of such a nature
that the phlegm is dry and toxic and ascends to the brain. There it produces
headache and pain in the eyes and wasting of the marrow, and thus if the
moon is in default he may develop the falling evil [epilepsy].
‘The humidity also which is in the umbilicus is dispersed by the same
humours, and turned into dryness and hardness, so that the flesh becomes
ulcerated and scabby as though he were leprous, if indeed he do not actually
become so. And the vessels of his testicles, being adversely affected by these
humours, similarly disturb the other vessels, so that the proper humidity is
dried up within them; and thus, the humours being withdrawn, impetigos may
arise . . . and the marrow of the bones and the vessels of the flesh are dried
up, and so the man becomes chronically ill, dragging out his days in languor.
‘But sometimes the humours affect breast and liver . . . so that various
foolish thoughts arise . . . and they ascend to the brain and infect it and again
descend to the stomach and generate fevers there, so that the man is long sick.
Yet again they vex the minor vessels of the ear with superfluity of phlegm; or
with the same phlegm they infect the vessels of the lung, so that he coughs
and can scarce breathe; and the phlegm may pass thence into the vessels of
the heart and give him pain there, or the pain may pass into the side, exciting
pleurisy; under such circumstances also, the moon being in defect, the man
may lapse into the falling sickness.’106

Sometimes Hildegard’s anatomical ideas can be paralleled among her contemporaries.
Thus the following passage on the relationship of the planets to the brain is well
illustrated by a diagram of Herrade de Landsberg.

Fig. 9. From Herrade de Landsberg’s Hortus deliciarum, after Straub and
Keller’s reproduction. 107

‘From the summit of the vessel of the brain to the extremity of the forehead
seven equal spaces can be distinguished. Here the seven planets are
designated, the uppermost planet in the highest part, the moon in front, the
sun in the middle and the other planets distributed among the other spaces’
(Fig. 9).

From WIESBADEN CODEX B fo. 41 v

Plate XXII. T H E D A Y S O F C R E AT I O N A N D T H E F A L L O F M A N

IX. Birth and Death and the Nature of the Soul

The method by which the soul enters the body is set forth in a very striking vision in
the Scivias and is illustrated in the Wiesbaden Codex B by a no less remarkable
miniature (Plate xix). The soul, which contains the element of wisdom, passes into the
infant’s body while yet within the mother’s womb. The Wisdom of God is represented
as a four-​square object, with its angles set to the four quarters of the earth, this form
being the symbol of stability. From it a long tube-​like process descends into the
mother’s womb. Down this there passes into the child a bright object, described

variously as ‘spherical’ and as ‘shapeless’, which ‘illumines the whole body’ and
becomes or develops into the soul.
The birth scene is strikingly portrayed. In the foreground lies the mother with the head
and shoulders supported and the right arm raised. In her womb is the infant in the
position known to obstetricians as a ‘transverse presentation’. Around the child may
be distinguished clear traces of the uterine membranes. Near the couch are ranged a
group of ten figures who carry vessels containing the various qualities of the child.
Above and to the left the Evil One may be seen pouring some noxious substance into
one of these vessels, or perhaps abstracting some element of good. The whole scene
suggests the familiar fairy tale in which, while all bring pleasant gifts to the child’s
birth, there comes at last the old witch or the ill-​used relative who adds a quota of
spitefulness.
The scene is described and expounded as follows:
‘Behold, I saw upon earth men carrying milk in earthen vessels and making
cheeses therefrom. Some was of the thick kind from which firm cheese is
made, some of the thinner sort from which more porous [tenuis] cheese is
made, and some was mixed with corruption [tabes] and of the sort from
which bitter cheese is made. And I saw the likeness of a woman having a
complete human form within her womb. And then, by a secret disposition of
the Most High Craftsman, a fiery sphere having none of the lineaments of a
human body possessed the heart of the form, and reached the brain and
transfused itself through all the members. . . . And I saw that many circling
eddies possessed the sphere and brought it earthward, but with ever renewed
force it returned upward and with wailing asked, “I, wanderer that I am,
where am I?” “In death’s shadow.” “And where go I?” “In the way of
sinners.” “And what is my hope?” “That of all wanderers.”’108 The vision is
explained as follows: ‘Those whom thou seest carrying milk in earthen
vessels are in the world, men and women alike, having in their bodies the
seed of mankind from which are procreated the various kinds of human
beings. Part is thickened because the seed in its strength is well and truly
concocted, and this produces forceful men to whom are allotted gifts both
spiritual and carnal. . . . And some had cheeses less firmly curdled, for they
in their feebleness have seed imperfectly tempered, and they raise offspring
mostly stupid, feeble, and useless. . . . And some was mixed with corruption
. . . for the seed in that brew cannot be rightly raised, it is invalid and makes
misshapen men who are bitter, distressed, and oppressed of heart, so that they
may not lift their gaze to higher things. . . .109 And often in forgetfulness of

God and by the mocking devil, a mistio is made of the man and of the woman
and the thing born therefrom is deformed, for parents who have sinned
against me return to me crucified in their children.’110 (Compare Constantine
De humana natura, sections ‘De perfectione’ and ‘De impeditione’.)
Hildegard thus supposes that the qualities and form of a child are inherited from its
parents, but that two factors, the formless soul from the Almighty and the corrupt fluid
instilled by the devil, also contribute to the character of offspring. This is the usual
mediaeval view and is broadly portrayed in the figure.
The strange conception of the body being formed from the seed, as cheese is
precipitated and curdled from milk, is doubtless derived from a passage in the Book of
Job:

‘Hast thou not poured me out as milk,
And curdled me like cheese?
Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh,
And knit me together with bones and sinews’ (Job x. 10, 11).111

When the body has thus taken shape there enters into it the soul which, though at first
shapeless, gradually assumes the form of its host, the earthly tabernacle; and at death
the soul departs through the mouth with the last breath, as a fully developed naked
human shape, to be received by devils or angels as the case may be (Plate xx).

From WIESBADEN CODEX B. fo. 47 r

Plate XXIII. THE VISION OF THE TRINITY

During its residence in the body the soul plays the part usually assigned to it in the
earlier mediaeval psychology, before the ideas of Nemesius and Ibn Ghazali had been
elaborated and systematized by Albert and Aquinas. Hildegard regards the brain as
having three chambers or divisions, corresponding to the three parts of man’s nature,
an idea encountered in the writings of St. Augustine. Parallel to these there are, she
tells us,
‘three elements in man by which he shows life; to wit, soul (anima), body
(corpus), and sense (sensus). The soul vivifies the body and inspires the
senses; the body attracts the soul and reveals the senses; the senses affect the
soul and allure the body. For the soul rules the body as a flame throws light

into darkness, and it has two principal powers or limbs, the intellect
(intellectus) and the will (voluntas); not indeed that the soul has limbs to
move itself, but that it manifests itself thereby as the sun declares himself by
his brightness. . . . For the intellect is attached to the soul as the arms to the
body: for as the body is prolonged into arms with fingers and hands attached,
so the intellect is produced from the soul by the operation of its various
powers.’112
We need follow Hildegard no further into her maze of micro-​cosmology, in which an
essential similarity and relationship is discovered between the qualities of the soul, the
constitution of the external cosmos, and the structure of the body, a thought which
appears as the culmination of her entire system and provides the clue to the otherwise
incomprehensible whole.113

X. The Visions and their Pathological Basis

For the physical accompaniments and phenomena of Hildegard’s visions we have
three separate lines of evidence: her own account; the statements of her contemporary
biographers, Theodoric and Godefrid; and the miniatures of the Wiesbaden Codex B,
probably prepared under her supervision.
It is clear that despite the length and activity of her life, Hildegard did not enjoy
normal health. From a very early age she was the subject of trances and visions, and
from time to time she was prostrated with protracted illness.
‘God punished me for a time by laying me on a bed of sickness so that the
blood was dried in my veins, the moisture in my flesh and the marrow in my
bones, as though the spirit were about to depart from my body. In this
affliction I lay thirty days while my body burned as with fever, and it was
thought that this sickness was laid upon me for a punishment. And my spirit
also was ailing, and yet was pinned to my flesh, so that while I did not die,
yet did I not altogether live. And throughout those days I watched a
procession of angels innumerable who fought with Michael and against the
dragon and won the victory. . . . And one of them called out to me, “Eagle!
Eagle!114 why sleepest thou? . . . All the eagles are watching thee. . . . Arise!
for it is dawn, and eat and drink.” And then the whole troop cried out with a
mighty voice, . . . “Is not the time for passing come? Arise, maiden, arise!”
Instantly my body and my senses came back into the world; and seeing this,
my daughters who were weeping around me lifted me from the ground and
placed me on my bed, and thus I began to get back my strength.

‘But the affliction laid upon me did not fully cease; yet was my spirit daily
strengthened. . . . I was yet weak of flesh, timid of mind, and fearful of pain
. . . but in my soul I said, “Lord! Lord! all that Thou puttest upon me I know
to be good . . . for have I not earned these things from my youth up?” Yet
was I assured He would not permit my soul to be thus tortured in the future
life. . . .115 Thus was my body seethed as in a pot . . . yet gave I thanks to
God, for if this affliction had not been from Him I had surely not lived so
long. But although I was thus tortured, yet did I, in supernal vision, often
repeat, cry aloud, and write those things which the Holy Spirit willed to put
before me.
‘Three years were thus passed during which the Cherubim pursued me with a
flaming sword . . . and at length my spirit revived within me and my body
was restored again as to its veins and marrows, and thus I was healed.’116
This illness of Hildegard was the longest and the most typical, but by no means the
only one through which she passed. She describes her affliction as continuing for long
periods, but there can be little doubt, from her history, that during much of the time
she was able to carry on some at least of her functions as head of a religious house.

WIESB. COD. B. fo. 213 v

SEDENS LUCIDUS

From WIESBADEN CODEX B fo. 153 r

Plate XXIV. ZELUS DEI

The condition from which she was suffering was clearly a functional nervous
disorder; this is sufficiently demonstrated by her repeated complete recoveries, her
activity between the attacks, and the great age to which she lived. At first sight, the
long procession of figures and visions suggests that she might have been the victim of
a condition similar to that of which Jerome Cardan has left us so complete a personal
record. But on reading the books of visions, the reader will easily convince himself
that we are not here dealing with a dream-​state. The visions are indeed essentially
vivid. ‘These visions which I saw’, she repeatedly assures us, ‘I beheld neither in
sleep, nor in dream, nor in madness, nor with my carnal eyes, nor with the ears of the
flesh, nor in hidden places; but wakeful, alert, with the eyes of the spirit and with the
inward ears I perceived them in open view and according to the will of God. And how
this was compassed is hard indeed for human flesh to search out.’117
Nevertheless, though the visions exhibit great originality and creative power—the
reader will often be reminded of William Blake—all or nearly all present certain
characters in common. In all a prominent feature is a point or a group of points of
light, which shimmer and move, usually in a wavelike manner, and are most often

interpreted as stars or flaming eyes. In quite a number of cases one light, larger than
the rest, exhibits a series of concentric circular figures of wavering form; and often
definite fortification figures are described, radiating in some cases from a coloured
area. Often the lights gave that impression of working, boiling or fermenting,
described by so many visionaries, from Ezekiel onwards.
This outline of the visions the saint herself variously interpreted. We give examples
from the more typical of these visions, in which the medical reader or the sufferer
from migraine will, we think, easily recognize the symptoms of scintillating scotoma.
Some of the illuminations, here reproduced in their original colours, will confirm this
interpretation.
‘I saw a great star most splendid and beautiful, and with it an exceeding
multitude of falling sparks which with the star followed southward. And they
examined Him upon His throne almost as something hostile, and turning from
Him, they sought rather the north. And suddenly they were all annihilated,
being turned into black coals . . . and cast into the abyss that I could see them
no more’118 (Plate xxi).
This vision, illustrated by the beautiful figure of stars falling into the waves, is
interpreted by her as signifying the Fall of the Angels.
The concentric circles appear in numerous visions, and notably in that of the Days of
the Creation of the World and the Fall of Man, illustrated by what is perhaps the most
beautiful of all the miniatures of the Wiesbaden Codex B (lib. ii, vis. 1, Plate xxii). It
is in this concentric form that Hildegard most frequently pictures the Almighty, and
the idea again appears in the eleventh miniature, here reproduced in its original
colours, which she describes as ‘a most shining light and within it the appearance of a
human form of a sapphire colour which glittered with a gentle but sparkling glow’
(lib. ii, vis. 2, Plate xxiii). Appearances of this type are recorded again and again.
The type with fortification figures is encountered in a whole series of visions, of
which we reproduce the account and illumination of the Zelus Dei (lib. iii, vis. 5, Plate
xxiv, lower section).

‘I looked and behold a head of marvellous form . . . of the colour of flame
and red as fire, and it had a terrible human face gazing northward in great
wrath. From the neck downward I could see no further form, for the body was
altogether concealed . . . but the head itself I saw, like the bare form of a
human head. Nor was it hairy like a man, nor indeed after the manner of a
woman, but it was more like to a man than a woman, and very awful to look
upon.

‘It had three wings of marvellous length and breadth, white as a dazzling
cloud. They were not raised erect but spread apart one from the other and the
head rose slightly above them . . . and at times they would beat terribly and
again would be still. No word uttered the head, but remained altogether still,
yet now and again beating with its extended wings.’
From the head extended a series of fortification lines, and this peculiar form of vision
is reproduced on several occasions and variously interpreted (Plate xxiv, upper
section). It is united with similar visions in what we regard as a reconstructed
conception of exceedingly complex structure. This she claims to see separately, and
she interprets it as the aedificium of the city of God (Plate xxv). Such reconstructed
visions are clearly of a different type and origin to the simple group in which a shining
light or group of lights is encountered and interpreted as a speaking figure.

From THE WIESBADEN CODEX B fo. 30 r

Plate XXV. T H E H E AV E N LY C I T Y

Hildegard’s visions, perhaps without exception, contain this element of a blinding or
glittering light, which she interprets in a more or less spiritual manner. We terminate
our account with the passage in which she sums up her experiences of it.
‘From my infancy’, she says, ‘up to the present time, I being now more than
seventy years of age, I have always seen this light in my spirit and not with
external eyes, nor with any thoughts of my heart nor with help from the
senses. But my outward eyes remain open and the other corporeal senses
retain their activity. The light which I see is not located but yet is more
brilliant than the sun, nor can I examine its height, length, or breadth, and I
name it the “cloud of the living light”. And as sun, moon, and stars are

reflected in water, so the writings, sayings, virtues, and works of men shine in
it before me. And whatever I thus see in vision the memory thereof remains
long with me. Likewise I see, hear, and understand almost in a moment and I
set down what I thus learn. . . .
‘But sometimes I behold within this light another light which I name “the
Living Light itself”. . . . And when I look upon it every sadness and pain
vanishes from my memory, so that I am again as a simple maid and not as an
old woman. . . .119
‘And now that I am over seventy years old my spirit according to the will of
God soars upward in vision to the highest heaven and to the farthest stretch of
the air and spreads itself among different peoples to regions exceeding far
from me here, and thence I can behold the changing clouds and the mutations
of all created things; for all these I see not with the outward eye or ear, nor do
I create them from the cogitations of my heart . . . but within my spirit, my
eyes being open, so that I have never suffered any terror when they left
me.’120

Note.—The author’s thanks are due to the Rev. H. A. Wilson, Mr. C. C. J. Webb, and Mr. R. R. Steele,
who have read the proofs of this article and have made valuable suggestions; to Mr. J. A. Herbert of the
MS. Department of the British Museum, who drew his attention to the work of Herrade de Landsberg;
and to Mr. M. H. Spielmann, who brought to his notice the crucifix figured in Plate X. He owes a
special debt of gratitude to the late Dom Louis Baillet of Oosterhoot for his courtesy and generosity in
lending him reproductions of the illuminations of the Wiesbaden Codex. Baillet was a young scholar of
great promise, whose early death is a severe loss to the knowledge of mediaeval science.
The author has also to thank Professor Henrici of the Nassauische Landesbibliothek at Wiesbaden,
Professor Wille and Professor Sillib of the Universitätsbibliothek at Heidelberg, and Signor Boselli of
the R. Bibliotica Governativa at Lucca, who have all given him exceptional facilities for the study of
the treasures under their charge.

JOHN WILFRED JENKINSON
John Wilfred Jenkinson was born in 1871, and came from Bradfield to Exeter College,
Oxford, with a classical scholarship in 1890. After taking his degree in Literae
Humaniores he came, in 1894, to University College, London, where he devoted
himself with extraordinary and never-​flagging energy to biological studies.
Without having had the usual preliminary scientific teaching, he brought, on the other
hand, a well-​trained mind to bear on his new work, and the rapidity and completeness
with which he acquired his scientific equipment was one of the most striking and
interesting points in his career. Jenkinson very soon turned to original investigation,
and from the first he showed a predilection for Embryology.
For a short time he held a post at one of the great London hospitals, but he soon
returned to Oxford to join the teaching staff of the Department of Comparative
Anatomy. He used the opportunity of University vacations to work in the laboratory of
the late Professor A. A. W. Hubrecht at Utrecht, where part of his first published
research was written. During the fifteen years of life that remained to him, he
established himself as the foremost English writer on Embryology, devoting himself
especially to its experimental aspect, a line of work in which he will rank as one of the
pioneers.
Jenkinson became Doctor of Science in 1905, and in the same year he married
Constance Stephenson. In 1906 he was appointed University Lecturer in Embryology,
and in 1909 he was elected to a Research Fellowship at Exeter College.
Jenkinson’s mind was not of the type that matures early, but one felt in him a power of
solid intellect that gained in force from year to year. The gap in the ranks of British
Science caused by his death has been generally recognized, but his loss seems greatest
to those personally acquainted with him, who know that he had by no means reached
the zenith of his powers.
Jenkinson led a single-​minded and unselfish life, wholly free from worldly and
ignoble ambitions. Of simple and winning humour, happy in his domestic life and
absorbed in his studies, he represented the very best type of scientific worker.
He was gifted with a powerful physique, and on the outbreak of war he became an
ardent member of the Oxford Volunteer Training Corps. His qualities of calm courage
and high sense of duty marked him out as a valuable officer. Although forty-​three
years of age, he took a commission in the 12th Worcester Regiment in January, 1915,

and was promoted Captain in the following April. On May 10 he left for the
Dardanelles, having been selected for service with the 2nd Royal Fusiliers. He was
killed in action on June 4, only ten days after his arrival at the Gallipoli peninsula.

BOOKS AND PAPERS BY J. W. JENKINSON

1. ‘A Re-investigation of the Early Stages of the Development of the Mouse.’
Quart. Jour. Micr. Science, xliii. 1900.
2. ‘Observations on the Histology and Physiology of the Placenta of the
Mouse.’ Tijdschr. Nederland. Dierkund. Vereen., vii (2). 1902.
3. ‘Observations on the Maturation and Fertilization of the Egg of the
Axolotl.’ Quart. Jour. Micr. Science, xlviii. 1905.
4. ‘Remarks on the Germinal Layers of Vertebrates and on the Significance of
Germinal Layers in general.’ Mem. and Proc. Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc.,
1906.
5. ‘Notes on the Histology and Physiology of the Placenta in Ungulata.’ Proc.
Zool. Soc. 1906.
6. ‘On the Effects of certain Solutions upon the Development of the Frog’s
Egg.’ Arch. Ent.-Mech., xxi. 1906.
7. ‘On the Relation between the Symmetry of the Egg and the Symmetry of
the Embryo in the Frog (Rana temporaria).’ Biometrika, v. 1906.
8. Experimental Embryology. Oxford, 1909.
9. ‘On the Relation between the Symmetry of the Egg, the Symmetry of
Segmentation, and the Symmetry of the Embryo in the Frog.’ Biometrika, vii.
1909.
10. ‘The Effects of Sodium Chloride on the Growth and Variability of the
Tadpole of the Frog.’ Arch. Ent.-Mech., xxx (2). 1910.
11. ‘Vitalism.’ Hibbert Journal. 1911.
12. ‘On the Development of Isolated Pieces of the Gastrulae of the Sea-
Urchin Strongylocentrotus lividus.’ Arch. Ent.-Mech., xxxii. 1911.
13. ‘On the Effect of certain Isotonic Solutions on the Development of the
Frog.’ Arch. Ent.-Mech., xxxii. 1911.

14. ‘On the Origin of the Polar and Bilateral Structure of the Egg of the Sea-
Urchin.’ Arch. Ent.-Mech., xxxii. 1911.
15. ‘The Development of the Ear-Bones in the Mouse.’ Jour. Anat. and Phys.,
vi (3). 1911.
16. ‘Growth, Variability, and Correlation in Young Trout.’ Biometrika, viii.
1912.
17. Vertebrate Embryology. Oxford, 1913.
18. ‘The Effect of Centrifugal Force on the Structure and Development of the
Egg of the Frog.’ Quart. Jour. Micr. Science. 1914.
19. ‘The Placenta of a Lemur.’ Quart. Jour. Micr. Science. July 1915.
20. Three Lectures on Experimental Embryology. Oxford, 1917.

VITALISM
By J. W. Jenkinson
In one of the oldest biological treatises in the world, the soul or life of an organism is
defined in the most general way as an activity of a natural organic living body—
ἐντελέχεια σώματος φυσικου̑ ὀργανικου̑ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος—life being
autonomous nutrition and growth and decay. The activity may, however, be latent or
patent, passive or active, sleeping or waking, without losing its peculiar characters. It
is substance (οὐσία), but substance as ‘form’ as opposed to the material substance of
the body, and the living body is therefore also a substance in a double sense.
It is not identical with the body; but as form, proportion (λόγος), activity (ἐνέργεια),
essence (τὸ τί ἠν εἰναι), it is related to the body, mere matter (ὕλη), and potentiality
(δύναμις) in just the same way as the seal is related to the wax; and the body is the
instrument whereby it effects its purposes; though subsequent in time, it is prior in
thought to the body, as all activities are to the materials with which they operate.
At the same time neither it nor its parts are separable from the body, with the
exception, possibly, of mind (νου̑ς); it is indeed the actual or possible functioning of
the body, like the seeing of the eye or the cutting of the axe, and with the
disappearance of the capacity of this functioning the soul itself also perishes. Lastly, it
is a cause (ἀρχὴ καὶ αἰτία) in a triple sense: first, as the source of motion; secondly, as
that for the sake of which the body exists; and thirdly, as its essence (οὐσία) or formal
cause. The soul or life is of several kinds, which form together an ascending series
each member of which is necessarily involved in those above it.
The lowest is the nutritive soul (θρεπτική), found in all living things, and the only soul
possessed by plants. It is defined as motion in respect of nutrition, decay, and growth,
processes which involve alteration (ἀλλοίωσις) in the body; and its functions (ἔργα)
are to utilize food for the maintenance and reproduction of the form of the body, and
to control and limit growth.
The second is the perceptive soul (αἰσθητική), the possession of which distinguishes
animals from plants. This also is a kind of alteration (ἀλλοίωσις τίς) and consists in
being moved and affected. The fundamental and indispensable perception is touch
(ἁφή), for it is concerned in the acquisition of the food. It is invariably present: the
others may or may not, some or all, coexist with it.

Thirdly, some animals are possessed of a capacity for locomotion, and the
performance of this function requires again a special kind of soul.
Lastly, there is the reasoning soul (διανοητικά) or mind (νου̑ς). This is found in man
alone, unless there be other beings similar to him, or even nobler than he. Mind alone
is eternal and separable from the body.
Though the observation and experiment of modern science would doubtless find much
to alter in the details of these simple definitions, yet it must be conceded that, by what
is certainly a most fortunate guess if it is not the most wonderful insight, Aristotle has
laid his finger on the cardinal point of modern physiological doctrine. For, putting
aside for the moment the mental faculties, it is here laid down in the clearest manner
that not only the functions of growth and decay, nutrition, and reproduction, but also
the capacity of responding to stimuli are to be ultimately resolved into some kind of
movement of the particles of which the body is composed. Life, in short, as we might
say with Virchow, is a mode of motion.
The biology of to-day distinguishes living from inanimate bodies by the possession
and exercise of the three principal properties or functions of metabolism, irritability,
and reproduction; and further, the body which performs these functions is not only
composed of chemically complex substances—proteids—which are not found in
things that are not alive, but possesses a structure. In no case, even the simplest, is the
organism a mere homogeneous lump of protoplasm, but it has parts or organs, visibly
different from one another, and obviously correlated with the activities appropriated to
each; and it is the preservation of that structure, in the individual and in the race,
which is the end towards which the collective performance of all these functions, or
the life of the organism, is apparently directed.
Some of these peculiarities are shared by certain things that are not commonly
regarded as alive. Crystals have of course a definite structure; they can divide, and
when broken they can make good the missing part, but they do not assimilate to the
substance of their own bodies a food-​material which is less complex than it, and they
are not irritable.
The differences, indeed, between the living and the lifeless are so profound, that it is
not to be wondered at that there should have been in all ages natural philosophers who
have held that living activities are phenomena sui generis, differing toto caelo from
the properties exhibited by lifeless bodies, and never by any conceivability to be
expressed in terms of these.
This doctrine is vitalism.

It exists in several varieties, but one at least is of very ancient lineage and can be
traced back through mediaeval times to the biological speculations of the Greeks.
Whether Aristotle really held the vitalistic views which have since been attributed to
him is a matter we shall have to discuss later on, but it is certain that in the writings of
Galen there is to be found a theory of life which bears the stamp of Aristotelian
influence, and was destined to hand that influence on to future generations. Galen
admits the sensitive soul of Aristotle as the peculiarity of animals, and the rational
soul for man, but substitutes for the nutritive soul certain works of nature—attraction,
repulsion, retention, alteration. And further, the rational soul is no longer immortal,
but perishable, and is dependent on the body, where its seat is in the brain; it is
material or quasi-​material, a πνευ̑μα, most efficient when dry.
After a long interval this doctrine reappears in the sixteenth century in the writings of
Vesalius, who tells us that the heart has a vital soul, the liver a natural soul, while
there is elaborated in the ventricles of the brain an animal spirit or principal soul.
Meanwhile, however, the conception of life as something material had been discarded
by Paracelsus for the belief that the soul, or as he called it, the ‘Archaeus’, by which
the chemical processes of the body are governed, is not a material but a spiritual force,
a view restated by Stahl more than a hundred years afterwards. ‘The events of the
body’, says this author, ‘may be rough-​hewn by chemical and physical forces, but the
soul will shape them to its own ends, and will do that by its instrument, motion.’
This, of course, is vitalism, and vitalism in its extreme or ‘animistic’ form. The idea
recurs later on in the biology of Treviranus. To be living is to have a soul, he tells us,
and the conscious Lebenskraft employs the forces of the material world to form the
organism. ‘Das Weitzenkorn hat allerdings Bewusstsein dessen, was in ihm ist und aus
ihm werden kann, und träumt wirklich davon.’ Though he adds quaintly enough, ‘Sein
Bewusstsein und seine Träume mögen dunkel genug sein’. It is curious to observe the
revival, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of this mediaeval mysticism in the
speculative writings of so accomplished an experimentalist as Hans Driesch.
Driesch is an embryologist who in his earlier days had enunciated an invaluable
analytical theory of development, a theory which suggests that while the formation of
the first or elementary organs that appear in the embryo or larva—such structures as
the larval gut or sense-​organ, or the germ-​layers—depends upon the presence in the
germ of certain specific organ-​forming substances (and this is a fact which has since
been abundantly demonstrated by experiment), the origin of parts that appear later in
development may be accounted for by the action of the first-​formed structures upon
one another, these actions being in the nature of physiological responses to stimuli;
and for this also some evidence has been produced. On this view differentiation is a

mechanical process, set in motion by fertilization or some other cause, and, given a
certain initial structure of the germ or ovum, given the presence in it of a certain
number of parts or substances capable of acting upon one another with a fixed co-
ordination or harmony of the stimuli and the responses, given further a proper
constitution of the external environment, then a definite result must follow, the
production of an organism which is like the parents that gave it birth.
But in his later treatises this hypothesis has been repudiated, and, by a remarkable
volte-​face, replaced by a dogma of a wholly different kind. For now it is urged that no
merely material factors can possibly account either for the harmony of development—
the due co-ordination of mutually reacting parts; or for the secondary harmony of
composition—the formation of complex organs by the union of tissues; or for the
functional harmony seen in the activities of the adult.
For example, it is asserted that any fragment of an egg of a sea-urchin, if not too small
(not less than 321 of the egg), can give rise to a whole and normal larva. We are told that
the cells of the segmented ovum may be disarranged to any extent by various means,
such as raising the temperature, diluting the sea-water, removing the calcium from the
sea-water, or by shaking, without prejudice to the ultimate normality of development.
Each part of the ovum can therefore, according to the needs of the case, give rise to
any part of the resulting organism. ‘Jeder Teil kann nach Bedürfniss jedes.’
And thirdly, when the gastrula of a sea-urchin is transversely divided into two, each
half, it is stated, develops into a diminished whole larva in which the gut becomes
divided into the characteristic three regions, and all the other organs are formed in
correct proportion.
For each of these acts of development in the whole uninjured larva an explanation
may conceivably be given in terms of formative stimuli exerted by the originally
distinct parts of the egg and calling forth responses in other parts. A mechanism may
be thought of which, when set in motion, will achieve a certain end in accordance with
its own pre-​established harmony; but a mechanism which can be subdivided ad
libitum, or almost ad libitum, and the parts of which will still achieve the same end,
will still behave as wholes with their parts co-ordinated in the same ratio, temporally
and spatially! Such a mechanism is inconceivable; for to ensure the uniform result, the
relative amounts and positions of the necessary substances must be imagined as
identical in every possible fragment of the egg that is not too small. Something is
therefore required to superintend, to co-ordinate the causes of development in the case
not only of the part but of the whole egg as well; and this something is not material. A
corroborative proof of the inadequacy of the purely material explanation—the causal
explanation in the ordinary sense of the phrase—may be derived from a consideration

of certain other vital processes. The facts of acclimatization and immunity betray an
extraordinary adaptability of the organism to a change in its environment; an organ
will adapt itself structurally to an alteration, quantitative or qualitative, of function
[Roux’s ‘Functional Adaptation’]; lost parts can be regenerated; and then there is the
physiology of the nervous system.
In all these cases of ‘regulation’—and indeed in all other responses to stimuli—the
same element, inexplicable in chemical and physical terms, exists and must exist in
development. This entity is not a form of energy, but a vital constant, analogous to the
constants or ultimate conceptions of mechanics and physics and chemistry and
crystallography, but not reducible to these, just as these cannot be translated into one
another.
Driesch describes it as a rudimentary feeling and willing, a ‘psychoid’,
‘morphaesthetic’ or perceptive of that form which is the desired end towards which it
controls and directs all the material elements of differentiation, like the grain of wheat
of Treviranus, dreaming dimly of its destiny. It is thus a vera causa—an unconditional
and invariable antecedent—a psychical factor which can intervene in the purely
physical series of causes and effects, and for it he revives the Aristotelian term
‘Entelechy’.
Such is the ‘vitalism’ introduced by Hans Driesch, a teleological theory clearly, but no
mere metaphysical doctrine of final causes: rather a dynamic teleology which not only
sees an end in every organic process, but postulates an immaterial entity to guide the
merely mechanical forces towards the realization of that end.
Such a theory is open to very serious criticism from both the scientific and the
philosophical side. But before we pass to that criticism let us turn aside to examine
some of the other aspects under which the Proteus of Vitalism presents himself.
Thus the modern physiologist Bunge, while owning that it would be a lack of
intelligence to expect to make with our senses discoveries in living nature of a
different order to those revealed to us in inorganic nature, yet insists that we must
transfer to the objects of our sensory perception, to the organs, to the tissue elements,
and to every minute cell, something which we have acquired from our own
consciousness, something, that is to say, which is not motion, and is not in space, but
is in time only.
The essence of vitalism, so Bunge would have it, lies in starting from what we know,
the internal world, to explain what we do not know, the external world. We can only
remark that this position appears to rest upon an epistemological confusion, for Bunge
has evidently failed to distinguish between the idealism which teaches that the world

of nature, including our own bodies, only exists in so far as it is an object of
knowledge, that reality is ultimately ideal, and the ‘animism’ which, as we have seen,
gives every object, at least every living object, in nature a directive consciousness of
its own. The former does not lie immediately within the scope of the present inquiry;
the latter we shall have occasion to discuss again.
How far the tenets of animism are to be attributed to Johannes Müller is not very clear.
For while Müller maintained that an organism is due to an idea which regulates its
structure, is the cause of its harmony, and is in action in the organism itself, exerting
on it a formative power, yet he held that the process was unconscious. Müller indeed
distinguished explicitly between the vital and the mental or conscious principle, for in
the operations of the former the manifestation of design is the result of necessity, not
of choice. At the same time the two resemble one another in being homogeneous, in
existing throughout the mass of the organism which they animate, and in being
divided together with the organism (as in regeneration) without suffering any
diminution or change of their powers.
In this conception of the unconscious idea there may possibly be some confusion
between the formal and the final cause, between the idea of the end to be realized,
present at the beginning in the mind of the artificer, and the end itself. The former is
animism: the latter is sound enough as metaphysics, but is not science at all.
There is still another school of vitalists which, while not going so far as to commit
itself to a belief in a ‘psychoid’, yet proclaims in no uncertain voice the autonomy of
the organism, and not content with the assertion that at present we have not succeeded
in reducing the activities of the organism to chemical, physical, and mechanical
processes, maintains the utter futility of such endeavour, and pronounces over the
hidden mysteries of life an eternal Ignorabimus.
Some such view as this we must, I think, attribute to Dr. Haldane. ‘In biology’, he
says, ‘the phenomena which are or ought to be observed from the very beginning are
not physical and chemical phenomena as self-​existent events, but these phenomena as
expressions of the activity of living organisms. It is the living organism, and not the
physical phenomenon, which is the reality for biology.’ His belief in organic
autonomy is based on the physiology of metabolism, secretion and absorption, the
circulation of the blood, and the nervous system. Thus in discussing the blood, after
pointing to the constancy in its volume and composition, he proceeds: ‘Neither
starvation nor ingestion of food and drink materially affect it: liquid injected into it is
got rid of with remarkable rapidity; and any loss of blood by bleeding is soon
replaced. This vital metabolism of the circulatory system is doubtless due chiefly to
the activity of its lining endothelium, which most certainly does not play the mere

mechanical part which has often been attributed to it. The other so-called
“mechanisms” can likewise be shown to have all the characteristics of the living body,
inasmuch as they actively maintain their structure, just as the organism as a whole
does so. There is thus no warrant for calling them mechanisms, and thus ignoring
what is one of their essential characteristics.’ In passages such as these we seem to
catch an echo of Müller’s unconscious idea, and again we ask ourselves, Are we
dealing with a final or a formal cause? Indeed, Dr. Haldane insists that his ground
conception is teleological.
There is still one other vitalistic theory to which we must allude, although its interest
is now merely historical. This is the belief in a special vital material, unlike the
material of which lifeless bodies are composed, and endowed with a special vital
force, different from but co-ordinate with the forces of mechanics and physics.
In his Histoire Générale des Animaux Buffon, after referring to the obvious
peculiarities of animals and vegetables—that their actions are directed to an end, the
conservation of a durable species—proceeds to elaborate a thesis in which it is held
that they are composed of organic germs, and that germs of the same kind are
distributed throughout nature, lifeless as well as living. When an animal or plant dies,
its body is dissolved into these germs, which are then scattered abroad; when it
assimilates, it is by separating these ubiquitous particles from the brute inorganic
portion of the food. The former is utilized for its own growth, the latter it gets rid of
by evacuation and excretion. Lifeless matter is therefore never converted into living
material.
Another advocate of the doctrine of a vital force, a property of the tissues of the body,
and at perpetual war with those inorganic forms which tend to their destruction, was
the physiologist Bichat, Such a conception as this could not of course survive the rise
of modern chemistry. Its death-​knell was sounded when Lavoisier and Laplace
showed that the bodies of organisms were composed of the same elements as are
found in inanimate nature, and it has long since passed into the limbo of discredited
speculations.
Apart from this, vitalistic theories would appear to be in the main of two kinds.
First, there is the metaphysical vitalism which tells us we can never explain the living
in terms of the lifeless, insists on the permanent separation of the sciences of biology
on the one hand from chemistry and physics on the other, and preaches the autonomy
of the organism without venturing to tell us in what that autonomy consists.
Secondly, there is the psychological theory of animism which posits an autonomous
psychical entity to preside over the chemical and mechanical operations of the body,

whether already formed or in process of development, and to direct them towards its
own ends, the conservation and reproduction of that body’s specific form.
A third party, halting between two opinions, suggests an unconscious idea, without,
however, clearly explaining whether this is to be taken in a metaphysical or a
psychological sense. Frankly opposed to vitalism in all its forms is the conception of
the living body as a mechanism. This has also an honourable ancestry behind it. How
far the biology of Aristotle is to be looked upon as mechanistic we shall presently
have to inquire, but in Galen the soul is certainly material, or quasi-​material, as we
have already observed. It is, however, in the physiology of Descartes that mechanism
first appears unmistakably in its modern guise.
For Descartes the body is simply an earthly machine. The nerves are tubes up which—
in sensation—the animal spirits flow to the brain only to be reflected (whence our
term reflex action) down other tubes to the muscles.
‘All the functions of the body’, he tells us, ‘follow naturally from the sole disposition
of its organs, just in the same way that the movements of a clock or other self-​acting
machine or automaton follow from the arrangement of its weights and wheels. So that
there is no reason on account of its functions to conceive that there exists in the body
any soul, whether vegetative or sensitive, or any principle of movement other than the
blood and its animal spirits agitated by the heat of the fire which burns continually in
the heart and does not differ in nature from any of the other fires which are met with
in inanimate bodies.’
The rational soul, the soul which thinks, that is, understands, wishes, imagines,
remembers, and feels, is not material. Yet it always acts through the machine, though
that machine can go on perfectly well without the soul. ‘When the body has all its
organs properly arranged for a particular movement it has no need of the soul to carry
them out. All movements, even those which we call voluntary, depend principally on
the same disposition of the organs. One and the same cause renders the dead body
unfit to produce the movements and leads the soul to quit the body.’
The biology of Descartes appears to have been accepted by contemporary
physiologists like van Helmont and Borelli, and certainly commended itself to another
philosopher of eminence, Leibnitz. Like Descartes, Leibnitz also affirms that the body
is a machine or natural automaton; unlike Descartes, however, he refuses to believe
that the mind directs the machine in any way. Rather there is a complete series of
psychical parallel to a complete series of physical events, and between the two a pre-​
established harmony.

Although the details of Cartesian physiology have long since been exploded, yet the
mechanical principle which that philosophy enunciated so clearly has persisted and
has indeed proved to be the rock on which modern physiological science has been
built. For, when once the chemists had discovered animal and plant structure to be
composed of elements found in lifeless bodies, and had proved that compounds found
only in the organism could yet be synthesized in vitro, there was no longer any reason
why the properties of the compounds should be considered as of a different order to
the properties of their component elements. A method applicable to one was
applicable to the other, and as Claude Bernard has put it, mechanical, physical, and
chemical forces are the only effective agents in the living body, and they are the only
agencies of which the physiologist has to take account.
The substances of which the living body is made up are no doubt extremely complex,
yet none the less—to quote a more recent writer, Verworn—‘physiology is in the last
resort the chemistry of the proteids’. This is the principle that has now for nearly a
century guided and stimulated research into the functions of the organism: to this
principle physiologists, too numerous to name, have not been ashamed to subscribe:
under its banner some of the proudest triumphs of the science have been won. Yet it is
precisely this which modern or neo-​vitalism has challenged and asks us to relinquish
in favour of a theory of psychoids or a pseudo-​metaphysical view of life.
The vitalistic position may be assailed from two points, the scientific and the
philosophical.
In the first place the vitalist asserts that mechanism is inadequate to explain the
phenomena of metabolism, of transmission of nervous stimuli, or of development. It is
upon the last of these that Driesch lays special stress.
He has urged, as we have seen, that although a mechanical explanation might be given
(such an explanation has indeed been put forward by himself) of the specific
differentiation of the organism by supposing the first-​formed elementary organs,
developed out of the substances given in the initial structure of the germ, to act and
react upon one another in accordance with a certain harmony, provided for by the
same structure; yet a mechanism which can be subdivided ad libitum or almost ad
libitum, and each part of which will still give rise to a complete organism, is not to be
conceived. The answer to this objection has, however, been supplied by the
experiments of Driesch himself and of many others. For though it is true that each of
the first two, four, eight, or even in some cases each of the first sixteen cells into
which the fertilized ovum becomes segmented, can, when separated from its fellows,
give rise to a complete organism, yet in all cases there comes a time when the parts
cease to be totipotent and produce not whole but partial structures.

This invariable restriction of potentialities, which occurs earlier in some cases than in
others, and is not due to mere deficiency of substance, is not hard to account for.
Those substances on the presence of which in the ovum, as experiment has taught us,
the formation of the elementary organs of the embryo or larva depends, are arranged
in different cases in different ways: and they certainly may be, and very frequently
are, so distributed that while each of the first four cells contains a like quantity of each
of these specific substances, arranged in it exactly as they were in the whole ovum, the
next division will sunder these materials in such a way that of the resulting eight
blastomeres four will have more of one of the primary egg-​substances, less of another;
the amounts apportioned to the other four being in just the inverse ratio of this: and
the result will be a difference in the fate of the cells when they are isolated from one
another. In those of the one group the proportions of the organs developed out of these
substances will not be the same as they are in the other. This is precisely the result
which experiment has revealed; it is exactly this result which Driesch has ignored, or
rather attempted to explain away.
It is evident, then, that to some extent the parts of this mechanism are interchangeable,
that it can be subdivided, and that each part, brought now under new conditions, will
still possess the potentialities of the whole, just as such a mechanism as a rocket, out
of which, under the appropriate stimulus, a certain pattern of stars is developed, might
be subdivided into two or more rockets of half size or less. There is, however, a limit
to this interchangeability, while if the subdivision be carried beyond a certain point the
totipotence of the parts is lost.
If the number of these organ-forming substances given in the germ were very large, as
large, let us suppose, as the total number of separately inheritable characters, it might
indeed be difficult to imagine a mechanism divisible into even two totipotent parts.
But from the need for this assumption we are saved by the second part of Driesch’s
own Analytische Theorie, which accounts for subsequent processes of differentiation
by attributing the production of new parts to the mutual interactions of those that are
the first to appear. For this also experimental evidence, though meagre, is not lacking,
while a close parallel is found in the dependence of certain bodily functions upon
substances—the hormones of Professor Starling—secreted by other organs.
In the second place the vitalist maintains that the processes of metabolism defy, nay
more, always will defy, chemical and physical analysis. The first part of this statement
may be a true description of the knowledge of to-day, but the existence in the living
body of the same elements as are met with elsewhere, the synthesis of complex
organic substances, the establishment of the equivalence of the energy which leaves
the body as mechanical work or heat to that which enters it in chemical form in the

food, should surely make us hesitate before abandoning all hope of attaining to a
chemistry of life.
And thirdly, there are physiologists who believe that the complex phenomena
presented to us in the activities of the nervous system are susceptible of a purely
mechanical explanation.
‘A feature’, says Gotch, ‘which more particularly suggests spontaneous cellular
activity is the well-​known fact that centrifugal discharges may continue after the
obvious centripetal ones have ceased. This is pre-​eminently the case when the central
mass is rendered extremely unstable by certain chemical compounds, such as
strychnine, &c. There are, however, suggestive indications in connexion with such
persistent discharges. The more completely all the centripetal paths are blocked by
severance and other means, the less perceptible is such persistent discharge, and since
nervous impulses are continually streaming into the central mass from all parts, even
from those in apparent repose, it would seem that could we completely isolate nerve-​
cells, their discharge would probably altogether cease.’ Even in the hyper-​excitable
condition produced by strychnine the spinal motor nerve cells do not discharge
centrifugal impulses when cut off from the centripetal connexions. The physiologist,
therefore, has ‘definite grounds for believing that, as far as present knowledge goes,
both the production and cessation of central nervous discharges are the expression of
propagated changes and that these changes reveal themselves as physico-​chemical
alterations of an electrolytic character. The nervous process, which rightly seems to us
so recondite, does not, in the light of this conception, owe its physiological mystery to
a new form of energy, but to the circumstance that a mode of energy displayed in the
non-​living world occurs in colloidal electrolytic structures of great chemical
complexity.’
To all these considerations we must add the fact that life did once originate upon this
planet from matter which was not alive, and that even now some inorganic
phenomena present at least remote analogies with certain vital processes. Such are the
structure, the spontaneous division, and the regeneration of crystals.
We turn now to the philosophical objections that may be raised to vitalistic
speculations; and here we must be careful to distinguish what we may term the
psychological from the metaphysical form of the theory.
Driesch has maintained that the belief in a morphaesthetic psychoid finds support in
the philosophies of Kant and Aristotle. Let us examine the merits of this claim.
Like the scientists of to-day, Kant, in his Critique of the Teleological Judgement, lays
it down as a rule that the mechanical method, by which natural phenomena are

brought under general laws of causation and so explained, should in all cases be
pushed as far as it will go, for this is a principle of the determinant judgement. There
are cases, however, in which this alone does not suffice. The possibility of the growth
and nutrition, above all of the reproduction and regeneration of organisms, is only
fully intelligible through another quite distinct kind of causality, their purposiveness.
Organisms are not mere machines, for these have simply moving power. Organisms
possess in themselves formative power of a self-​propagating kind, which they
communicate to their materials. They are, in fact, natural purposes, both cause and
effect of themselves, in which the parts so combine that they are reciprocally both end
and means, existing not only by means of one another but for the sake of one another
and the whole. The whole is thus an end which determines the process, a final cause
which brings together the required matter, modifies it, forms it, and puts it in its
appropriate place. Such purposiveness is internal, for the organism is at once its own
cause and an end to itself, not merely a means to other ends, like a machine whose
purposiveness is relative and whose cause is external.
Such is the principle of the teleological judgement. It is a heuristic principle rightly
brought to bear, at least problematically, upon the investigation of organic nature, by a
distant analogy with our own causality according to purposes generally, and
indispensable to us, as anatomists, as a guiding thread if we wish to learn how to
cognize the constitution of organisms without aspiring to an investigation into their
first origin.
Could our cognitive faculties rest content with this maxim of the reflective judgement
it would be impossible for them to conceive of the production of these things in any
other fashion than by attributing them to a cause working by design, to a Being which
would be productive in a way analogous to the causality of intelligence. Natural
science, however, needs not merely reflective but determinant principles which alone
can inform us of the possibility of finding the ultimate explanation of the world of
organisms in a causal combination for which an understanding is not explicitly
assumed, since the principle of purposes does not make the mode of origination of
organic beings any more comprehensible. And then, in a passage remarkable for its
prophetic insight, Kant proceeds to show how this might be. This ‘analogy of forms’,
he says, ‘which with all their difference seem to have been produced according to a
common original type, strengthens our suspicion of an actual relationship between
them in their production from a common parent, through the gradual approximation of
one genus to another—from those in which the principle of purposes seems to be best
authenticated, that is from man down to the polype, and again from this down to
mosses and lichens, and finally to the lowest stage of nature noticeable by us, namely,
crude matter’. And so the whole technic of nature, which is so incomprehensible to us

in organized beings that we believe ourselves compelled to think a different principle
for it, seems to be derived from matter and its powers according to mechanical laws
like those by which it operates in the formation of crystals. A purposiveness must,
however, be attributed even to the crude matter, otherwise it would not be possible to
think the purposive form of animals and plants.
Although there are doubtless in the Critique many obscurities and inconsistencies, to
which we cannot allude now, the general meaning of Kant’s reflections upon
organisms is perfectly clear. He who would ‘complete the perfect round’ of his
knowledge must think not only in beginnings but in ends. The end in the case of a
living being is apparently plain—it is the maintenance and reproduction of its form;
the end in the case of the cosmic process is to be sought in the ethical, or, in Kantian
phraseology, the ‘practical’ concept of the freedom of the moral consciousness of man.
Such a position is quite intelligible, philosophically, but the testimony it brings to the
theory of the psychoid is of very doubtful value, as Driesch is well aware. He
complains indeed that Kant’s teleology is descriptive or ‘static’, rather than ‘dynamic’,
as is perfectly true, except in the case of man, a point of which Driesch naturally
makes the most. There are, no doubt, passages where Kant speaks of ‘a cause which
brings together the required matter, modifies it, forms it and puts it in its appropriate
place’; but against these must be set the explicit statement ‘that if the body has an
alien principle (the soul) in communion with it, the body must either be the instrument
of the soul—which does not make the soul a whit more comprehensible—or be made
by the soul, in which case it would not be corporeal at all.’ Vitalism can glean small
comfort from this. Let us turn, then, to the second authority.
As we have seen already, the souls or functions of nutrition and perception are, in the
Aristotelian biology, ultimately to be expressed as alterations or movements of the
particles of the body; mind alone is separable from body and eternal.
In the development of the individual organism the mind comes in from outside, but
the two souls of lower order are present in the σπέρμα, or κύημα, as Aristotle calls it,
which results from the commingling of the male and female elements, or, as we
should say, the fertilized ovum. The material and efficient causes of development are
not, however, both contributed by each of the parents.
The teaching of Aristotle is that the matter is provided by the female and the female
alone. The egg (or catamenia in mammals) is described as being mere matter (ὕλη),
body (σω̑μα), potentiality (δύναμις), passive (παθητικόν) and merely quantitative,
although it is true that a sort of soul, the nutritive, is somewhat grudgingly conceded
to it, since unfertilized eggs appear in some sense to be alive. The male element, on
the other hand, provides the principle of motion (ἀρχὴ τη̑ς κινήσεως) and the form

(εἰδος); it is qualitative, it is activity, it produces the perceptive soul, if it is not itself
that soul, and it is responsible for the ‘correct proportionality’ (λόγος) of the
organization. The male element contributes only motion, but no matter; it acts upon
the female element as rennet acts when it coagulates milk, except that the analogy is
incomplete, since the γονή brings about a qualitative and not merely a quantitative
change in the material on which it operates. To this it imparts the same kind of motion
which itself possesses, the motion which was present in the particles of the food in its
final form from which it was itself derived. The communication of this motion is
enough to set going the machinery (αὐτόματον); the rest then follows of itself in
proper order.
Lastly, the sperm of the male acts like a cunning workman who makes a work of art,
using heat and cold as the workman uses his tools: for this heat and this cold could
never of themselves—by coagulations and condensations—produce the form of the
body as the older naturalists had supposed, regarding only the efficient and ignoring
the formal and the final cause: for the organic body is not what it is because it is
produced in such and such a fashion, rather it is because it is to be such and such that
it must be developed as it is.
And here lies the kernel of the whole matter. For while Aristotle has made it perfectly
plain that, according to his idea, the soul, at least its nutritive and perceptive faculties,
is to be regarded as a function of matter and that this function may be ultimately
expressed in terms of movement, and further that development is a mechanism which
is set going by the communication of motion proceeding from the ‘soul’ of the male
element and derivable eventually from the motions into which the ‘functions’ or ‘soul’
of the parent can be resolved to the mere matter which the female provides, it is
equally evident that he does not regard this mechanical explanation—in terms of
material and efficient causes—as satisfactory or complete. But when we inquire why,
he gives us no certain nor consistent answer. On the one hand, there are passages in
which he tells us that there must be something which controls the material forces and
imposes on them a limit and proportionality of growth; that the soul makes use of
them as the artist makes use of his implements, and such passages are naturally
interpreted by Driesch in the sense of a ‘dynamic’ teleology; it is the ψυχή which
superintends and controls, and the ψυχή is ‘entelechy’.
Elsewhere, however, we are informed that even the proportionality of the developing
parts is simply the outcome of the motion imparted by the male, which is actu what
the female element only is potentia.
Moreover, it may be questioned whether Aristotle ever intended to imply more than an
‘analogy with the causality of purpose’ when he uses the figure of the workman and

his implements to illustrate his meaning of the formal cause. The formal cause of a
work of art is an intelligible vera causa; it is the idea in the mind of the artist
antecedent to the execution of the work; but the formal or final cause of an organism,
the end which it apparently strives to attain, can only be said by a metaphor to be prior
in time to the existence of the organism itself. Prior in thought, however, it certainly
is, for it is only the performance of its functions (ἐντελέχεια) by the organism
complete in all its parts that makes the mere mechanism of development
comprehensible to us; the process, therefore, exists for the sake of the end. Only as
efficient cause is the soul prior in time; only so far as it is prior in thought can it be
said to be a final cause.
Such a teleology is, it is obvious, indistinguishable in principle from the position in
which Kant leaves us. It is the position adopted by Driesch himself in his earlier
Analytische Theorie, but abandoned in the Vitalismus in favour of a theory of
‘psychoids’.
Now quite apart from the meaning which Aristotle may or may not have intended to
convey, there are grave objections to this belief. This ‘psychoid’, to which the name
‘entelechy’ is surely misapplied, this rudimentary feeling and willing, which is aware
of the form it desires to produce, must be psychically at least as complex as the
phenomena it is designed to account for, and stands, therefore, as much in need of
explanation as they; as Kant has observed, this will involve us at once in an infinite
series of such entities. In fact it is only a photograph of the problem, and not a
solution at all.
Again, when we ask what the modus operandi of this cause is, we get no reply either
from Driesch or from any other neovitalist. The objection that the intervention of a
psychical cause in a physical process is unintelligible, an objection which would
probably appeal to many, may be waived, for in the last resort the connexion between
any—even simple mechanical—causes and effects is equally hard to understand.
It may, however, be doubted whether these entities are not being multiplied beyond
necessity, and whether the progress of science would not be better served by an
adherence to a simpler philosophy. But even when it has discarded the psychoid we
find vitalism still denying the possibility of mechanical explanation, still preaching the
autonomy of the organism. The ‘dynamic’ teleology of Driesch has only disappeared
to be replaced by the metaphysical doctrine of the final cause.
We may point out, perhaps, in passing, that the organism is by no means as
autonomous as might be desired. The end towards which the creature strives, the
maintenance and reproduction of its own specific form, is not a constant terminus ad
quem, for species are as mortal as individuals: nor is it always achieved; the autonomy

of a worm, which, bisected in a certain way, regenerates a tail instead of a head, or of
a frog, which, after a particular injury, develops six legs instead of two, has surely
renounced its rights. But, setting this aside, it must be seriously questioned whether
any good purpose is served in biological discussion by decrying the value of
mechanical conceptions or by confounding two distinct orders of thought. The
questions are grave ones: for the issue at stake is no less than the existence of
physiology as the science of the causes of living activities.
‘Recte ponitur’, said Francis Bacon, ‘vere scire esse per causas scire.’ The maxim of
the great founder of modern inductive science has been the lode-star of biology in the
past, and is still its watchword to-day. By exact observation and crucial experiment,
utilizing every canon of induction, the activities of the living organism are to be
brought under wide general laws of causation, which will be, in the first instance,
physiological laws—of response to stimuli, of metabolism, and of growth: by means
of these laws predictions can be made, and verified as often as we please. But no bar
can legitimately be set to the scope of human inquiry; the thought process will not rest
here, and ultimately it may be possible to state the widest generalizations of biology in
chemical and physical, and these again in purely mechanical terms. The maintenance
and evolution of form in the individual, as well as the larger evolution of form in the
race, become but the final terms in a far vaster cosmic process, from ‘homogeneity to
heterogeneity’.
The idea is, of course, perfectly familiar: it is the analysis of purely physical causes,
carried to its extreme limit. Phenomena are thought out in terms not of origins merely,
but of one origin, and that one origin is the only mystery that remains. This unification
of the sciences has always been and must still remain the dream and the faith and the
inspiration of the scientific man, and could such an edifice of the intellect ever be
realized, the task of science would have been completed. Only when this purely
deterministic method has been pushed as far as it will go does science leave off; only
where science leaves off does philosophy begin.
There is an order of time, and there is an order of thought. Science works in the order
of time, and necessarily so: for although science can never say what constitutes the
invariable link between antecedent and consequent which it terms causal, yet it rightly
speaks of the first as cause, determining the second as effect, since it is its function to
predict from the past which is known to the future which is not.
But the outlook of philosophy is different. Dissatisfied with the endless regress of
cause and effect, sceptical of first causes and original homogeneities, out of which by
no conceivability could any heterogeneity have ever been developed, philosophy
looks to the end.

The activities of living organisms at least appear to be directed to an end; they are
apparently purposive, and it is this purposiveness which lends to biology, though built
on the fundamental conceptions of chemistry and physics, peculiar features of its own,
and is, of course, answerable for the teleological language which biologists so
frequently employ. And by a knowledge of the end, the view of science, to which qua
science it cannot too rigidly confine itself, will doubtless be supplemented and
enlarged.
But, plain and definite though the end of an individual life may be, the end of the race
—of the human or any other race—the end of the universe, are things only to be
guessed at, and all we are left with is an indefinite series of evolving systems
emerging out of an infinite past and fading into an infinite future.
In the final issue, indeed, the last effect is as delusive an ignis fatuus as the first cause.
The philosophy which has rejected one must divest itself of the other, and seek its end,
if anywhere, in the logical prius of the mind, which, though last in time, is yet first in
thought, since through it alone can that ordered knowledge of nature which we call
science be born and brought to perfection.

From the Italian translation of ‘KETHAM’,
VENICE 1493

Plate XXVII. MUNDINUS(?) LECTURING ON
A N AT O M Y

B I B L I O T H È Q U E N AT I O N A L E M S . f r . 2 0 3 0
Written in 1314

T O I L L U S T R AT E T H E A N AT O M Y O F
HENRI DE MONDEVILLE

BODLEIAN MS. ASHMOLE 399 fo. 34 r

Plate XXVIII. A DISSECTION SCENE
circa 1298

A STUDY IN EARLY RENAISSANCE ANATOMY,
WITH A NEW TEXT:

THE ANOTHOMIA OF HIERONYMO MANFREDI
(1490)
By Charles Singer
TEXT TRANSCRIBED AND TRANSLATED BY A. MILDRED WESTLAND

I. Anatomy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries 79
II. Bolognese Works on Anatomy 92
III. Hieronymo Manfredi, Professor at
Bologna, 1463–93 97
IV. The Manuscript Anatomy of Manfredi 103
V. Translation of Selected Passages from the
Anothomia, with Commentary 106
(a) The Brain, Cranial Nerves, &c. 106
(b) The Eye 118
(c) The Heart 122
Italian Text of the Anothomia 130

I. Anatomy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

There was little or no progress in the knowledge of anatomy between the death of
Mondino in 1327 and the sixteenth century. This appears the more remarkable when
we recall how widespread was the practice of dissection during the period. In France,
at the University of Montpellier, public dissections were decreed in the year 1377,121
and Catalonian Lerida followed suit in 1391.122 At Bologna, where dissection had long
been customary, it received official recognition in the University Statutes in 1405,123
and the same event took place at Padua in 1429. Public anatomies were instituted at
the University of Prague in 1460, of Paris in 1478, and of Tübingen in 1485.124 For
these ‘Anatomies’ the bodies of executed criminals were usually employed, and
therefore the number of subjects available varied greatly in different localities.125 In
addition to these regular dissections, there was certainly a considerable amount of

post-​mortem examination, surreptitious (Plate xxviii b126), or even open (Plate xxix127),
long before Benivieni published his memorable list of cases.128

Fig. 1. From the French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Lyons, 1482. The first printed picture of
dissection.

M S . f r. 1 8 4 f o . 1 4 r

Plate XXIX. A P O S T - M O R T E M E X A M I N AT I O N . L a t e X I V t h C e n t u r y

B R I S TO L R E F E R E N C E L I B R A RY M S .
VAT I C A N M S . H I S P A N I C E 4 8 0 4 f o . 8 r fo. 25 r

Plate XXX a. A D E M O N S T R AT I O N Plate XXX b. A D E M O N S T R AT I O N O F
O F S U R FA C E M A R K I N G S T H E B O N E S T O I L L U S T R AT E G U Y D E
CHAULIAC

That so much industry was rewarded by so small an increase in knowledge may
probably be attributed to the method adopted. The so-called ‘anatomies’ were
conducted in the most formal manner. Bertuccio, for example, who succeeded
Mondino as professor of Surgery at Bologna, was accustomed, as we learn from his
pupil Guy de Chauliac, to give short systematic anatomical demonstrations on a fixed
and rigid method.129 The occupant of the chair at this period was indeed no professor
in the modern sense of the word. To expound the tradition of anatomy as it had
reached him was regarded as the limit of his duty. Of any attempt to extend the bounds
of knowledge, of any systematic endeavour to correct or improve the anatomical
views of his predecessors, we find little or no trace. Indeed, at Padua it was expressly
laid down in the statutes that the exposition of anatomy should follow the very words
of Mondino.130
Early figures portraying the teaching of anatomy (Plate xxvii and Figs. 1–3, 5) usually
show us a medical doctor sitting at a desk, well removed from the subject of
dissection, and reading from his text-book the description of the part. Meanwhile an
assistant, who is usually also a doctor, performs the actual work of dissection. The

professor of Surgery, to whom the teaching
of anatomy was entrusted, stands by with a
pointer to indicate the different organs.
Sometimes the professor changes places
with the reader at the desk. In some later
MSS. the teacher is figured as himself
handling the body and demonstrating to his
pupil (Plate xxx a132 and b133), but there is
evidence that the miniatures portraying this
are the work of artists unfamiliar with
dissection and with the teaching of
anatomy.

Fig. 2. Title-page of Mellerstadt’s edition of the
Anatomy of Mondino, Leipzig, 1493. The scene is
laid in the open air. 131

Fig. 3. A D I S S E C T I O N S C E N E
From the Venice 1495 edition of ‘Ketham’ (compare Plate xxvii).

Fig. 4. From the English translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, printed by Wynkyn
de Worde, 1495. The first picture of dissection in an English-​printed book.

Fig. 5. A L E C T U R E O N A N AT O M Y
From the 1535 Venice edition of Berengar of Carpi’s Commentary on
Mondino.

The study of anatomy had to contend with two great difficulties, want of subjects for
dissection, and faith in the written word.
Thus, at Bologna, where it was arranged that every medical student of over two years’
standing should attend an Anatomy once a year, no less than twenty students were
admitted to see the anatomy of each man, and thirty to the anatomy of each woman.134
This was all the practical instruction received. Some other Universities had to be
content with the cadaver of a single criminal per annum for the whole body of
students.
In the first period during which the human body was dissected in Europe, the
thirteenth century, a certain amount of progress was certainly made, despite the rarity
of subjects. The rebirth of learning in the thirteenth century was not, however, as
favourable to anatomical progress as might have been hoped. Galen, indeed, ceased to
be a mere name, and the Latin translations of his text, or of its adumbra in the writings
of the Arabians, became ever more familiar. On the other hand, with more
authoritative texts in their hands, men were but the more inclined to follow the evil
scholastic way, and to trust rather to the written words of the master than to the
evidence of their own senses. Thus it came about that the second period, which covers
the fourteenth and most of the fifteenth century, was really stationary so far as the
first-​hand knowledge of anatomy was concerned. With the last decade of the fifteenth
century, however, there opens a new and third period in the history of our subject.
From that time dates the true era of anatomical renaissance, which may be regarded as
continuing until the commencement of modern anatomy with the great work of
Vesalius in 1543.

Plate XXXI. F r o m t h e M S . o f G U Y D E V I G E VA N O o f 1 3 4 5
a t C H A N T I L LY

Plate XXXII. F r o m t h e M S . o f G U Y D E V I G E VA N O o f 1 3 4 5
a t C H A N T I L LY

We have said that throughout the second period, the formal demonstrations based on
the declaimed text of Galen or Avicenna or Mondino were practically the sole
opportunities afforded to either teacher or pupil for the investigation of the minuter
details of the human frame. But in making this statement concerning the arrest of
anatomical progress, we must expressly exclude the products of the mighty genius of
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose anatomical researches were without influence,
and remained long unnoticed.135 We must also omit evidence gathered from the work
of such early Renaissance painters as Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429–98) or Andrea del
Verrocchio (1435–88), for these pursued the study of anatomy in a special field and
with a special object.136 Furthermore, there are a number of artists of similar date of

whose anatomical studies we have no direct evidence, but who yet outlined the
muscles of the nude human figure in such a way as leads us to suppose that they had
investigated the superficial structures at least of flayed parts. Such is the suggestion of
some of the work of Luca Signorelli (c. 1442–c. 1524), and of Andrea Mantegna (died
1506). With such reservations, however, it is probably true that no evidence is
forthcoming until the last decade of the fifteenth century of any advance from the
standpoint of Mondino.137
But if descriptive anatomy developed slowly in the hands of the physicians, the art of
graphic representation of anatomical structures was still more backward. Several
groups of anatomical drawings of mediaeval date have come down to our time, but
examination of them shows that they have been drawn without direct reference to the
human frame. Some of these figures are of the crude type known as the ‘five-​figure
series’ (Plate xxxiii), mere traditional diagrammatic sketches.138 Hardly better or more
instructive are the series of dissections which illustrate certain MS. works of Henri de
Mondeville (Plate xxviii a)139 and Guido de Vigevano (Plates xxxi and xxxii), 1345.140
A few sketches representing the separate organs have also survived (Fig. 6),141 but
these never suggest that the draughtsman had before him the structure which he seeks
to depict, and the drawings appear to have been made in order to illustrate
contemporary physiological theory rather than observed anatomical fact. Even the
magnificent illuminated Dresden Codex of Galen, prepared in France or Flanders as
late as the second half of the fifteenth century, betrays not the slightest first-​hand
knowledge of anatomy.142 Although the illustrations of this MS. are prepared with the
utmost technical skill, they yet show us a teacher exhibiting to his pupils a heart of the
form found on playing-​cards, and other anatomical figures scarcely more faithful to
the facts (Plate xxxiv).

Fig. 6. D I A G R A M S O F T H E I N T E R N A L O R G A N S
After Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 399 of about 1298, fos. 23 recto–
24 recto.

The spirit of investigation of the artist who perforce went direct to nature, dissecting
with his own hands and observing with his own eyes (Plate xxxvi), showed itself
indeed far more fruitful than the tedious ex cathedra methodization of the professor.143
Yet the system of the schools needed to be combined with the freedom of the artist for
the production of an effective anatomical work. What the projected treatise of
Marcantonio della Torre (1473–1506) might have been we may guess from the
anatomical sketches of Leonardo da Vinci (Plate xxxv), who was to have been
associated with him in the work.144 In the event, however, the medical schools had to
wait yet another generation before the subject was placed on a sound basis by André
Vesale.
The Mondino pamphlet—for it is little more—used since its author’s death in 1327 as
a text-book in the schools of northern Italy, was first printed in 1478. Not until the last

decade of the fifteenth century did there appear another work bearing evidence of the
hand of a practical anatomist. This was an Italian translation of Ketham’s Fasciculus
medicinae, impressed at Venice in the year 1493.145 The volume comprises Mondino’s
pamphlet and a collection of other medical tracts that were probably put together by
Giorgio di Monteferrato from the work of a writer of the previous century, for their
contents are traceable to a fourteenth-​century MS.146 The text is neither original nor
remarkable, but the Venice volume derives its importance from certain figures which
appear in it for the first time.
Two of these plates are of great interest both intrinsically and also in relation to the
history of anatomy. One of them is the magnificent representation of a dissection
scene, which is regarded as perhaps the finest example of book illustration produced
during the first century of typography147 (Plate xxvii). This work of the ‘maître aux
dauphins’, as the unknown artist is called by critics,148 is doubly interesting, for it is
the subject of an experiment in colour printing, no less than four pigments being laid
on by means of stencils. As early as 1457 the method of stencilling was employed for
colouring the initials of a Psalter, and in 1485 Erhard Ratdolt in an astronomical work
added yellow to the earlier red and black. The figure from which our plate is taken
represents, however, the first attempt at a complex colour scheme and leads up to the
work of Hugo da Carpi.149
In this picture the professor, a youthful figure perhaps intended to represent Mondino
himself, is shown standing at a desk which hides his book. Around a corpse, laid on a
trestle table before him, there cluster a number of men in doctor’s robes. Their valid
faces are sufficient to convince us that the artist is here presenting us with portraits.
One of the listeners has removed his robe and stands with upturned sleeves and knife
in hand, ready to make the first incision on the direction of the doctor, who points to
the part with a wand held in the left hand. In the impression of 1495 and in those of
later date, the book appears above the desk, the attitudes of the students are somewhat
changed, and many other details are altered. In all these, however, the blocks have
been recut and the result is artistically inferior150 (Fig. 3).

Fig. 7. A FEMALE FIGURE LAID OPEN TO SHOW
THE WOMB AND OTHER ORGANS
From the 1493 Venice edition of ‘Ketham’ translated into Italian. This is the
first printed anatomical figure drawn from the object.

The second plate from the 1493 Ketham with which we are here concerned is the
outline of a female body, in a traditional pose,151 laid open to exhibit some of the
internal organs (Fig. 7). These had clearly been sketched from the object, and
therefore this drawing, the first printed figure of its kind, may be said to introduce the
new era for the investigation of the human frame. The anatomical renaissance had
begun. Into a discussion of the full development of that age we cannot now enter. But

the MS. of Manfredi, with which we have here to deal, was written at the very dawn
of the new era and is itself one of its earliest documents.

II. Bolognese Works on Anatomy

An organized Medical Faculty existed at Bologna at least as early as 1156,152 though
the first record of dissection there is of considerably later date. In February 1302 a
certain Azzolino died under suspicious circumstances. Poison was suspected, an
inquest was held and a post-​mortem examination ordered. The investigation was
conducted by two physicians and three surgeons, who unanimously agreed ‘that the
said Azzolino assuredly met his death by no poison, but on the contrary, we assert that
the quantity of blood collected in the great vein known as the vena chilis [vena
cava]153 and in the veins of the liver adjacent thereunto, has prevented the due
movement of the spiritus throughout the body, and has thus produced the diminution
or rather extinction of the innate heat and thereby induced a rapid post-​mortem
discoloration. Of this condition we have assured ourselves by the evidence of our own
senses and by the anatomization of the parts.’154
The first anatomical document emanating from the University of Bologna is, however,
of still earlier date, and is the work of William of Saliceto (1210?–80). This writer was
educated at Bologna, and it is claimed that he was the first to dissect the human body
there.155 His Cyrurgia, which was completed in 1275 (editio princeps, Piacenza,
1476), is divided into five books, of which the fourth and shortest is devoted to
anatomy. Its descriptions are brief and concise. They are often clearly the result of
actual observation, and they show hardly any trace of the absurd and irritating
teleology that the influence of the Arabians and of Galen made customary in early
anatomical literature. The anatomy of Saliceto appears to us very sensible and so far
as it goes practical. It betrays the method rather of the Salernitan than of the Arabian
anatomical writings, and is on the whole the best European work of the kind before
the Renaissance. It was, however, soon replaced by the text-book of Mondino di Luzzi
(1285–1327),156 which, though inferior to that of Saliceto, held the field until the
subject was revolutionized by Vesalius.

Plate XXXIII. The FIVE-FIGURE SERIES BODLEIAN MS. ASHMOLE 399,
about 1292 Fos. 18 r–22 r

VEINS, &c. A RT E R I E S N E RV E S BONES
MUSCLES

From the DRESDEN GALEN MS.

Plate XXXIV.D E M O N S T R AT I O N S O F
A N AT O M Y
Second half of XVth Century

Mondino was professor at Bologna till his death in 1327. His work, easily accessible
in one of its many editions, ‘is corrupted by the barbarous leaven of the Arabian
schools, and his Latin defaced by the exotic nomenclature of Avicenna and Rhazes’.157
But it is not the language alone that has suffered. The schoolman’s attitude, well fitted
for the classification of ideas, is an ill instrument for the investigation of Nature, and
in the scholastic Mondino the very basis of scientific judgement is undermined, so that
he readily accepts the views of the ancients against what must often have been the

evidence of his own senses. The work, however useful to the contemporary student,
was thus essentially reactionary as against the efforts of the earlier Salernitan
anatomists and of William of Saliceto. This is the more remarkable because it is quite
clear that he was accustomed to demonstrate on the actual body—a privilege denied to
the early Salernitan school,—and he was, moreover, a popular and successful teacher.
His work is a manual of dissection rather than a treatise on anatomy. This, added to its
conciseness and brevity, strengthened its appeal to the ‘practical’ man—an epithet
claimed then, as now, by the majority of stupid and unpractical people. The personal
influence and enthusiasm of its author no doubt helped also towards the phenomenal
success of this work, which for two hundred years held a position without rival as the
text-book of the medical schools of Italy, where even as late as the sixteenth century
Mondino ‘was still worshipped by all the students as a very god’.158
Mondino was succeeded in the chair of Surgery at Bologna by his pupil, the Lombard
Bertuccio, who died in the Black Death of 1347. Bertuccio’s surviving work is
unnoteworthy, but he was the anatomical teacher of Guy de Chauliac, whose
Surgery159 is of great value and was very influential in standardizing practice,
especially in the north and west of Europe. Nevertheless it appears to us that the
anatomical section is the weakest part of Guy’s great work. The teleology that is a blot
in Mondino has here become a perfect plague, and Guy’s anatomy consists of one-​
third description and two-​thirds wearisomely reiterated reasons for the existence of
imperfectly described structures. Through Guy de Chauliac the anatomical tradition of
Mondino passed over into the University of Montpellier.
A later fourteenth-​century Bolognese writer was Tommaso di Garbo (died 1370), who
did little but comment on Avicenna. A surgeon of the next generation, however, Pietro
d’Argellata, deserves to be remembered for his description of the examination of the
body of Pope Alexander V, who died suddenly at Bologna on May 4, 1410. His
account throws light on the customary procedure and may be rendered here.160
‘I ordered the attendants’, he says, ‘first to cut the abdomen from the
pomegranate [i.e. the Adam’s apple or laryngeal cartilage161] to the os
pectinis [i.e. the symphysis pubis]. Then, so that they should not rupture the
intestines, I myself sought the rectum and ligatured it in two places and then
cut it between. Next I removed all the intestines as far as the duodenum and
dealt with them as with the rectum, and so I had the intestines clean and
without fetor. After this I extracted the liver, seizing its ligaments; then the
spleen and then the kidneys, and these were all placed together in a jar. I now
passed to the spiritual members [i.e. the thorax] and removed lung and heart
and all their ligaments. Then I ligatured the meri [the Arabian term for

oesophagus] and removed the stomach. When this had been done there were
some who wished to remove the tongue but knew not how. I however cut
under the chin and extracted the tongue through that hole, together with
trachea arteria [trachea] and meri. Then I passed to the arteria adorti [aorta]
and vena chilis [vena cava]. Lastly I removed the ligatured remnant of the
intestines as far as the anal margin.’
Giovanni da Concoreggio (died 1438), who was lector in Surgery at Bologna in the
early part of the fifteenth century, left a few anatomical observations of little note,162
and not very much more can be said for his successors and Manfredi’s contemporaries
Gabriele Gerbi (de Zerbis, died 1505) and Alessandro Achillini (1463–1512). Gerbi163
does little but repeat in the most verbose fashion the work of Mondino and of
Avicenna, some of whose errors, however—e.g. the three ventricles of the heart—he
omits. He wrote also an anatomy of the infant, or rather of the foetus,164 and a treatise
taken mainly from Avicenna’s De generatione embryonis. Like all his work, these are
in the full scholastic style of a professor of Logic, a position to which, in fact, he
ultimately attained.
Achillini’s work165 is but a slight advance on that of Gerbi. It is really little else than a
note-book for students, and gives the baldest directions for dissection, accompanied
by a few comments taken from Avicenna. Achillini occasionally ventures to criticize
Mondino, and his work has at least the advantage of brevity. He has a claim to be
remembered in that he was the first to describe the duct of Wharton and is said to have
been the first to describe the ear ossicles, malleus and incus. Achillini, like Gerbi, was
a windy and very ‘scholastic’ disputator. He was best known to his contemporaries as
a supporter of the philosophy of Averroes. In 1506, when driven from Bologna with
the other supporters of Bentivoglio, he became professor of Philosophy at Padua.

Fig. 8. T H E A B D O M I N A L M U S C L E S
From Berengar of Carpi’s Commentary on Mondino, Bologna, 1521.

With Giacomo Berengario da Carpi we come at length to one who definitely advanced
the science, and who may be regarded as the first modern anatomist, so far as printed
works are concerned. He was professor of Surgery from 1502 to 1527, and during that
period published his great anatomical work.166 This volume, though modestly put
forward as a commentary on Mondino, is in reality an original contribution of great
value. It is the earliest anatomical treatise that can properly be described as having
figures illustrating the text (Fig. 8).167 Carpi does not hesitate to criticize the work on
which he comments—as for instance when he denies the existence of the ‘rete
mirabile’ below the brain, though descriptions of the ‘rete mirabile’ had been based on
the statement of no less an authority than Galen. Furthermore he was the first to
describe the vermiform appendix, and he gave the earliest correct account of several
other organs, e.g. the choroid plexus and the olfactory nerves. He was an industrious
dissector, and he tells us that he had examined more than a hundred bodies.
With Carpi we close our series of Bolognese anatomists. Into that group we now
proceed to fit the writer with whom we are here specially concerned, Hieronymo
Manfredi.

F r o m a d r a w i n g i n t h e L i b r a r y, W I N D S O R C A S T L E

Plate XXXV. VIEW OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS
LEONARDO DA VINCI

From a Drawing in the ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD, attributed to
B A RT O L O M E O M A N F R E D I ( 1 5 7 4 ? – 1 6 0 2 )

Plate XXXVI. T H E T W O F I G U R E S D I S S E C T I N G A R E T R A D I T I O N A L LY S A I D
TO REPRESENT MICHELANGELO AND ANTONIO DELLA TORRE

III. Hieronymo Manfredi

Hieronymo Manfredi was a member of a family that had already for more than two
centuries provided distinguished citizens, and especially physicians, to the city of
Bologna.168 He was born about the year 1430 and was educated at the University of
Bologna. Here in 1455 he was laureatus in Philosophy and Medicine, and here he
became professor of the latter subject in 1463.169
During the second half of the fifteenth century, a perfect mania for the study of
astrology infected Italy and penetrated equally into the Court, the Church, and the
Academy. The profession of Medicine was far from immune, and at the University of
Bologna, where a chair of Astrology had long been established,170 the study was
pursued with ardour and enthusiasm. Here Manfredi early devoted himself to that
will-o’-the-wisp, the pursuit of which absorbed and sterilized many of the best
intellects of his day. By the year 1469 he was already regarded as an authority on the
vainest of studies,171 and as the years went on he seems to have devoted himself to it
ever more and more. The generally credulous character of Manfredi’s astrological

ideas may be gathered from the page of his Prognosticon ad annum 1479 which we
here reproduce (Fig. 10).
The history of Manfredi’s connexion with the University of Bologna may be briefly
told. He appears for the first time on the professorial roll in 1462, when we find him
giving the ‘extraordinary’ lectures on Philosophy, a subject then regarded as under
especial charge of the physicians. In 1465 he was conducting the ‘ordinary’ course in
Philosophy, and at the same time giving occasional lectures on Medicine. In the
following year he was called to the chair of Theoretical Medicine, and in 1469 he
helped the Faculty out of a difficulty by giving lectures on ‘Astronomia’ in place of
the aged professor Giovanni de Fundis. The latter died in 1474, and from that date
onward Manfredi assumed responsibility for the course on ‘Astronomia’. Among the
colleagues who joined him were Gabriele de Gerbi, who became lecturer on Logic in
1476, Filippo Beroaldo, who became lecturer on Rhetoric and Poetry in 1479, and
Alessandro Achillini, who became lecturer on Logic in 1484.172
Such was the regard for Manfredi’s powers of astrological prediction that to all the
University announcements of his course of lectures on Astronomy is added ‘cum hoc
quod faciat iudicium et tachuinum’.173 In spite of his proficiency in the science,
however, he was unable to foretell his own death. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
writes of him thus derisively:
‘quo anno [1493] obiit omnimoda[m] uite incolumitate[m] fuerat pollicitus
Hieronymus manfredus astrologus nostra aetate singularis: a quo tamen nihil
mirandum minus praeuisam aliorum mortem: qui nec suam ipse praeuiderit:
nam cum proxima estate uita sit functus: in istius tame[n] anni publico
uaticinio qui s[cilicet] ei fuit fatalis: multa & mira sequenti anno dicturum se
non semel pollicebatur. Qui nescio oppignoratam fidem quomodo reluet: nisi
forte de caelo uerius nunc terrena despiciat q[uam] de terra oli[m] caelestia
suspiciebat.’174
Manfredi died in 1493 and was buried in the church of Santa Margarita in Bologna.
This church no longer exists, but it contained in the eighteenth century a tomb bearing
the inscription:
hieron. manfredo bonon. philosopho ac medico
svae aetatis nemini secvndo astronomorvmqve
citra invidiam facile primario.
posvit svperstes ioan. filivs
svisqve posteris.

vale atqve illvm
valere opta. 175

Manfredi left a widow, Anna, who was still living in 1496 with a household of ten
persons in the Via S. Margarita.176 The houses on one side of this street backed on the
very walls of the buildings belonging to the ‘University of Medicine’,177 and we may
suppose that Hieronymo Manfredi had resided here on that account. His surviving
son, Giovanni, lived hard by in the Via S. Antonio di Padoa.
It cannot be said that Manfredi’s printed works suggest great scientific attainments.
All are permeated by the same astrological obsession. They comprise the following:
(a) The editio princeps of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia and Tabulae Cosmographiae, the
best-​known printed work to which Manfredi’s name is attached. He was associated in
its production with the famous scholar Filippo Beroaldo, and the finely produced
volume was published at Bologna in 1472 (?),178 and dedicated to the memory of Pope
Alexander V (died 1410). It is interesting as containing the first printed map of
England (Fig. 9). At the end of the work we read:
‘Accedit mirifica imprimendi tales tabulas ratio. Cuius inuentoris laus nihil
illorum laude inferior. Qui primi litterarum imprimendarum artem pepererunt
in admirationem sui studiosissimum quemque facillime conuertere potest.
Opus utrumque summa adhibita diligentia duo Astrologiae peritissimi
castigaueru[n]t Hieronimus Mamfredus & Petrus bonus. Nec minus curiose
correxerunt summa eruditione prediti Galeottus Martius & Colla montanus.
Extremam emendationis manum imposuit philippus b[e]roaldus.’

THE FIRST PRINTED MAP OF ENGLAND.
From the 1472 (?) Bologna Ptolemy, edited by Manfredi and others.

(b) Liber de homine: cuius su[n]t libri duo. Primus liber de conservatione
sanitatis. . . . [Liber secundus de causis in homine circa compositione[m] eius],
Bologna, 1474. The work is in Italian, and consists of a number of paragraphs, each
beginning with the word ‘perchè’. There is a servile dedicatory epistle in Latin
addressed to Giovanni Bentivoglio. The first book is concerned with diet, and
occupies two-​thirds of the volume. The second book answers questions on the subject
of physiognomy and bears resemblance in many passages to the Anatomy. It is taken
in the main from the pseudo-​Aristotelian Problemata. The book is without pagination
or figures. It is well printed, and illuminated examples are not infrequently
encountered.
This work was very popular. In 1478, during the lifetime of its author, it was
audaciously pirated at Naples with the following incipit: ‘Incomenza el Libro
chiamato della uita costumi natura & om[n]e altra cosa pertine[n]te tanto alla
conservatione della sanita dellomo quanto alle cause et cose humane. Co[m]posto per
Alberto Magno filosofo excellentissimo.’

In 1497, after Manfredi’s death, the work appeared in black-​letter folio at Bologna,
with its author’s original dedication slightly altered. The text in this edition
commences, ‘Perchel sophio nele cose che noi viuemo: & lo indebito modo del viuere
nostro: induce in noi egritudine’.
In 1507 it appeared at Venice in small black-​letter quarto as Opera noua intitulata Il
perche utilissima ad intendere la cagione de molte cose. By this title, Il Perchè, the
work, which ran through numerous editions, has usually been known. It continued to
be reprinted as late as 1668.
(c) A treatise on the Plague: Tractate degno & utile de la pestile[n]tia co[m]posto
p[er] el famosissimo philosopho medico & astrologo maestro Hieronymo di manfredi
da Bologna, Bologna, 1478. This was translated into Latin by the author himself in the
same year. The work owes much to Avicenna, but contains some original clinical
observations, and shows a certain independence of the prevailing spirit of the age by
quoting opinions of contemporary as well as of ancient physicians. The remedies are
similar to those recommended by John of Bourdeaux in his widely distributed tract on
the plague, and are probably derived ultimately from the Regimen Sanitatis Salerni.
(d) Prognosticon ad annum 1479, Bologna, 1478. We reproduce the terminal page of
this work (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10. The last page of Manfredi’s Prognosticon ad annum
1479, Bologna, 1478.

From his tomb in the Church of S. Giacomo
Maggiore at Bologna

Plate XXXVII. G I O VA N N I B E N T I V O G L I O I I

B R I T . M U S . M S . R O Y. 7 F v i i i , f o . From a drawing in WINDSOR
50 v CASTLE

Plate XXXVIII a. R O G E R B A C O N ’ S Plate XXXVIII b. L E O N A R D O D A
DIAGRAM OF THE EYE. VINCI’S
XIIIth Century D I A G R A M O F T H E H E A RT
Early XVIth Century

(e) Prognosticon anni 1481, in which is embodied Oratio contra turcos & hostes
Christianorum, s. 1. Jan. 1481.
(f) Centilogium de medicis et infirmis, Bologna, 1488. With a dedication to
Bentivoglio. This short work is wholly astrological, and consists of one hundred
precepts concerning the relationship of the stars to various diseases and conditions.
Reprinted Venice, 1500, and Nuremberg, 1530.
The following three works are attributed to Manfredi, but are not mentioned in Hain,
Copinger, or Reichling’s lists of Incunabula; we have not seen any of them and their
existence is doubtful.
(g) Ephemerides astrologicae operationes medicas spectantes, mentioned in the
Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Aerzte of E. Gurlt and A. Hirsch.
Possibly it represents another edition of (e).
(h) Quaestiones subtilissimae super librum aphorismorum, Bologna, 1480 (?),
mentioned by Haller.179 Possibly it represents another edition of (b).
(i) Chiromantia secundum naturae vires ad extra, Padua, 1484, mentioned by
Haller.179

IV. The Manuscript Anatomy of Manfredi

The MS. of Manfredi’s Anatomy is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Canon. Ital.
237, Western 20287). It is a fairly preserved small quarto parchment, originally of
forty-​nine folios, of which the third and fourth are missing. The writing is in the fine
Italian hand that the printed type of the period was accustomed to imitate. There are
no figures or illuminations, but the titles are rubricated in burnished gold or in colours.
There is no reference to this work in any account of Manfredi, and the volume itself
appears to be quite unknown. Neither the man nor his work is mentioned in Medici’s
detailed history of the anatomical school at Bologna180 nor in Martinotti’s recent study
on the same topic,181 nor is any MS. of Manfredi included in Mazzatinti’s monumental
catalogue of the MSS. in the Italian libraries.182
Manfredi’s MS. is written in the involved Italian of the day, with sentences of
inordinate length. These general characters of style are encountered also in his
published works. The dedication is in Latin, of the same unpleasing quality, and is
couched in the usual subservient manner. It is addressed to Giovanni Bentivoglio, and
in it Manfredi relates that
‘Your illustrious lordship Johannes Bentivolus in this present year 1490 with
your usual humanity condescended on one occasion to watch the dissection
of a corpse. . . . It was then that you saw the wonderful works of Nature in
the anatomy . . . and you parentally urged me, Hieronymo Manfredi, to
inscribe to your most noble name this work on anatomy. . . . I therefore
extracted this work as best I might from various works of antiquity and
abbreviated it. I have not followed their order, but I have so composed it that
the work should be pleasing to your lordship.
‘Accept then, O great and powerful lord, this work on the anatomy of the
human body inscribed to your noble name! Accept it with your customary
benevolence and humanity and in a kindly and gracious spirit, for it will be
pleasing to you and will delight you greatly, for it is a worthy work!’
The Giovanni Bentivoglio (Plate xxxvii), with adulation of whom Manfredi was thus
accustomed to plaster his works, was the second of the name and was the son of
Annibale Bentivoglio. In the year 1462 he became head of the republic of Bologna,
and played there much the same rôle as did Lorenzo de’ Medici at Florence. He
adorned Bologna with numerous buildings,183 and acted as patron of the arts and the
sciences. The Palazzo dei Bentivogli still stands as a memorial to him and his family.

A stern and high-​handed tyrant, he held his position until 1506, when he was expelled
and the city reverted to the papacy. He died two years later.
It is remarkable to find a man of Bentivoglio’s eminence and position taking an
interest in the practical study of anatomy. Other Italian rulers, Lorenzo de’ Medici
among them, encouraged and legalized the practice of dissection, but probably
Bentivoglio is the only one recorded as having patronized an ‘anatomy’ in person. The
interest taken in the subject by the heads of states must have been of great value to the
artists whose patrons they were.
The MS. is a unique copy, and was doubtless written for presentation to Bentivoglio.
That it was never printed is perhaps due to the fact that Manfredi died within a
comparatively short time of its composition. It represents the most satisfactory post-​
mediaeval account of the human frame until the appearance of the work of Berengario
da Carpi in 1521. It is more complete than the work of William of Saliceto or of
Mondino or the anatomy erroneously attributed to Richardus Anglicus; it is more
natural than the book of Gabriele de Gerbi, and is far superior to the crude
contemporary sketches of Hundt, Peyligk, and Achillini, while it wastes less space
than Guy de Chauliac on teleology, though it has none of the charm of the work of
that great surgeon. In one respect at least, viz. the spirit in which it is written,
Manfredi’s Anatomy is original and probably unique for its age. There is no reason to
doubt the assurance of the dedication that it was composed for the edification of the
tyrant of Bologna, and for the simple purpose of setting forth the wonderful structure
of man’s body without thought of any medical application.
The sources of the MS. are obvious. It is in the main a rearranged and on the whole
improved Mondino, but amplified by reference to translations from Galen, Rhazes,
Haly Abbas, and Avicenna. Guy de Chauliac has perhaps also been used. The work
gives a general impression of being the product of a practical dissector, and it provides
us with a good example of early Renaissance anatomy as taught in the Italian schools
before the reforms of Vesalius. It is perhaps the first complete treatise on its subject
written originally in the vernacular.184 It exhibits, however, no other original features
nor any considerable departures from its sources, and it may be taken to represent,
with but little modification, the tradition of Mondino as developed at his own
University of Bologna at the end of the fifteenth century.
Manfredi’s work, however, if not original is at least eclectic, and the variety of its
sources indicates a dawning consciousness of the unwisdom of trusting to the
infallibility of any one writer. The work is thus in a sense intermediate between the
early printed versions of Mondino, such as that of 1478, and the edition published in

1528 by Berengario da Carpi with its frank commentary of the master. All represent
stages towards the freedom of the later Renaissance investigators.
We reproduce the text in full, and the passages on the head, on the eye, and on the
heart, are rendered into English. All are similar to the accounts of Mondino. We are
able to illustrate them by figures from contemporary works, and thus to give an idea
of the limits of the anatomical knowledge of the day.

V. Translation of Selected Passages from the Anatomy, with
Commentary

(a) THE HEAD

Tractate i, Chapter 2
(folio 5 verso) There are ten layers of the head.
The first is the hair made by nature for the better protection of the head from external
things, and also for beauty.
The second part is the skin, which has here to be very thick, so that the hair may be
firmly embedded, having its roots thick and long; and also to be a better shield and
covering for the bone and brain, since there is no muscular part here.
The third part is the flesh, developed only on the face, the temples, and about the jaws,
not on the other parts.
The fourth part is an external membrane called almochatim [Arabian term for cranial
periosteum] which, when the skin is raised, appears to be continuous and covers the
whole cranium. And nature made this membrane firstly so that the skin which is soft
should not come into contact with the hard bone, secondly that the bone of the head
should have sensation through it, and thirdly that the internal membrane of the head,
called dura mater, should, by means of this membrane, be attached to the bone of the
cranium by certain nerves and ligaments. These, issuing through the commissures of
the bones, have thus their origin in the aforesaid internal membrane, while on
emerging through the bone, they weave themselves into or rather compose the
external membrane called almochatim.
The fifth part is the skull. This is a bone like a cap, inside the cavity of which is
located the brain. In the skull are four bones sutured together. Nature made the skull
not of one but of many pieces, firstly, so that if harm should fall on one part it might
not spread to the others; secondly, so that by their joints or rather sutures [Italian
cusiture=sewings], the humours of the brain might be the better exhaled; and thirdly,

so that when there is need of applying medicines, these might the better penetrate to
the parts within.
Hence it is that four pieces of bone are sutured and joined together by nature in a
denticulate fashion, so that they might be the firmer and stronger. Nor are they bound
with ligaments as are the joints, for these would not have been so strong, and
furthermore the bones of the head do not need to move.
These sutures are five in number, three being true and two false. The true sutures are
those which pass right through the bone, while the false do not. Of the true sutures one
is in the anterior part and is called coronal; it is made like the letter C, and stretches
from right to left of the head, the two wings of the C being directed towards the
forehead. The second true suture extends along the length of the head, beginning from
the coronal and reaching the back part of the head. It is like a shaft or rather arrow that
goes backwards from the brow, wherefore it is called sagittal ——(. The third true
suture is in the posterior part and is called laudal, for it is made like a Λ, the letter
called by the Greeks lauda. The sagittal suture extends from the coronal to the lauda
〉——(.
The false sutures are two, one on each side. They are called cortical because they do
not penetrate.
Now if we consider these five sutures we shall see that there are four bones articulated
together. One is the forehead bone [frontal] which begins at the coronal and ends
below at another suture, which itself begins as a branch of the coronal suture and
proceeds by way of the eyebrow to the corresponding branch [of the other side] Ɑ.
A second bone is behind and terminates at the laudal suture. There are two other bones
which form the temples. These terminate at the false sutures which themselves begin
at the laudal and end at the coronal suture.
The sixth part [of the head] consists of two membranes. One of these is called dura
mater, and lies in contact with the cranium. The other is called pia mater and is in
contact with and covers the brain. And nature contrived it thus, having great solicitude
for this latter member, that while close to the bone, it should yet not be touched by it.
Wherefore, taking due precautions, she made the one [membrane] harder than the
other. Furthermore she made two membranes, so that if harm befell one of them, it
might not be communicated to the underlying brain.
In the pia mater are woven certain veins by which the brain is nourished. [The brain
is] everywhere covered by it except on the posterior part; because this part being dry,
it has no need of this membrane, as have the anterior and middle parts. The two
membranes in many places penetrate the substance of the brain, dividing it into a right

and a left, a front and a back section. By this division, divers cells or rather small
chambers are made therein, in which the soul (anima) performs its divers operations,
for which reason it is necessary that these parts should be of different structure.
When the two membranes are raised, the seventh part of the head, namely the brain
itself, appears. The brain is wrought by nature so that the vital spirit from the torrid
heart should be tempered by its cold, for here it is converted into animal spirit, which
is the beginning of the perceptive (cognoscitiue) and motive processes.
The brain is of a substance like marrow, white, soft, and viscous, and from it the
nerves arise. The anterior part is moister, softer, and less cold than the posterior
because the senses [sentimenti = senses + mental processes], which are themselves
moist and soft, have here their origin. In the posterior part the motor nerves arise, and
it is therefore drier and firmer.
The brain is divided into three parts or ventricles. The first ventricle or anterior part is
itself divided into two, right and left, and is moreover larger than any of the other
ventricles, for in this first ventricle nature has placed the two faculties subservient to
perception (al cognoscere). One of these is called common sensation (senso comune);
in it the external senses terminate as at a centre and deliver the images or rather
species of sensible things, so that this faculty may perceive and distinguish between
one sensible thing and another, and also comprehend the operations of particular
senses; which two things none of these [senses of themselves can do]. The other
faculty of the first ventricle is called fantasia and by some imagination; it retains and
preserves the species of sensible things in the absence of the material objects
themselves.
When thou examinest the first ventricle thou wilt see three things before thou comest
to the second ventricle.
[a] The first is itself double, and is formed of the very substance of the brain, so that it
forms the base of the anterior ventricle both right and left [= corpora striata].
[b] To the side of this is another thing like a subterranean worm, red as blood, yet
tethered by certain ligaments and nervelets [= choroid plexus and taenia
semicircularis]. And this worm when it lengthens itself closes these passages, and thus
blocks the path between the first ventricle and the second. Nature has wrought it thus,
so that when a man wills he may cease from cogitation and thought; and similarly
when, on the other hand, he would think and contemplate, this worm contracts itself
again and opens these passages and thus frees the way between one ventricle and
another.

[c] The third structure is a little lower and is a lacuna or rounded concavity
[= infundibulum]. In the middle of this is a hole which passes down towards the
palate, and this lacuna provides also a direct passage which descends from the middle
ventricle to its colature [= sieve-​like structure, i.e. certain parts of the sphenoid bone].
And this lacuna has around it certain large round eminences which support the veins
and arteries that ascend to the ventricle. This passage is wide above and narrow below,
and by it the first and second ventricles purge themselves of their superfluities, but the
anterior part [of the first ventricle] purges itself more by the colature of the nose
[= cribriform plate]. Thus nature has made two passages to cleanse the superfluities of
the brain.
When thou hast seen these three structures there will appear the second or middle
ventricle which is as a passage and transit from the anterior to the posterior ventricle.
Here are two faculties. One, the estimative, deduces [Italian elicere] the insensible
from the sensible. The other, called the cognitive, comprehends both things sensible
and things insensible, synthesizing and analysing them (componendo e dividendo).
These [two] faculties in the middle ventricle minister to the intellect. Now all the other
faculties described, and even the power of memory, are found in brute animals, but
this [intellectual power] is encountered in man alone.
Now will appear the third ventricle in the posterior part; and it is hard, for it gives rise
to the greater part of the motive nerves which are of a strong and firm nature. This
ventricle is pyramidal in shape, and culminates in an apex directed upwards where
images of visible things (spetie) are conserved, for these are better stored in a strait
than in an ample space; but the part below is wide to receive these images, which are
better received in an ample than in a strait place. This ventricle has two functions: it
gives rise to the spinal cord [nucha, an Arabian term] and motor nerves; and it is also
the storehouse of the memorative faculties.
From what [has been said] it will be apparent that when the back of the head is
injured, the memory immediately suffers; when the middle part is injured, the
estimative and cognitive faculties suffer; and when the anterior part is injured, the
faculties of common sensation and of imagination (fantasia) suffer. And thus it is that
the doctors have become aware of the location of these powers.
This being disposed of, thou wilt next raise the brain carefully so as not to break the
nerves. Commencing now with the part in front, there will first appear two small
fleshy protuberances like two nipples, of like substance to the brain in which they
originate, and covered by a thin membrane, the pia mater. These are the olfactory
organs, wherein is the sense of smell.

From the brain arise seven pairs of nerves. Proceed therefore farther with the anterior
part, and thou wilt see the first pair of these nerves, which are large, and called the
nervi optici. These have their origin in the front ventricle of the brain and proceed
towards the eyes. But before they pass through the pia mater, they join together, and at
their place of union there is a perforated spot. Galen maintains that these nerves only
join or rather unite, but do not intersect, so that the nerve that comes from the right
after union returns again towards the right, and similarly with the nerve coming from
the left, which after the union returns towards the left eye.185 But Rhazes maintains the
contrary,186 although the opinion of Galen is the more common. These nerves are
subservient to sight, and they are united so that the images of the things received by
the two eyes and conveyed by the two nerves should return in unity; so that one thing
should not appear as two.
After these two nerves, raise the brain towards its middle and thou wilt see another
pair of nerves, thin and firm, which also go to the eyes, to give them voluntary
movement, controlling certain muscles.
Farther on thou wilt see the third pair of nerves, one part of which goes to the face to
give it sensation and voluntary movement, while another part goes to give taste to the
tongue. Yet a third part of these nerves mingles with the fourth187 pair of nerves, and
together they descend to give sensation to the diaphragm, stomach, and other viscera.
A certain part also of the fourth187 pair of nerves goes to give sensation to the palate.
Then there is the fifth pair of nerves [which] go to the petrous bone around the ear;
and of these nerves there are framed in the ear-holes certain membranes, which are the
organs of hearing.
Next there is the sixth pair of nerves, which divides into three parts. One part goes to
the muscles of the throat, the second to the muscles of the shoulders, and the third and
largest descends to the epiglottis and to the diaphragm, and spreads into the chest, the
heart, and the lungs, accompanying the nerves of the third pair. From the nerves of
this sixth pair which go to the epiglottis arise the nerves of the voice, called reversive.
The seventh pair of nerves arise at the back of the brain and give voluntary movement
to the tongue.
Of these seven pairs of nerves, the first two pairs originate in the anterior part of the
brain, the third pair originates between the anterior and posterior parts, while the
remaining four pairs originate in the posterior part.
Proceeding still farther, the brain may be completely raised, and the eighth part of the
head will appear, that is, the two membranes situated below the brain. When these in

turn are raised there will appear the ninth part, which is a certain net called rethe
mirabile, because it is composed of exceedingly strong and marvellous texture,
augmented by certain very fine arteries which are branches of arteries that ascend
from the heart, and are called the apoplectic arteries. In these arteries of this net is
contained the vital spirit, sent from the heart to be changed to animal spirit. That the
spirit may be the better modified and distributed, nature made these arteries very fine,
and separated them into very small branches so that the spirit should be minutely
divided. Nature placed the rethe mirabile under the brain because it was necessary to
guard its site carefully, and also that the moist vapours of the brain which fall upon the
net, obstructing it, should induce natural sleep.
After all these things thou wilt see the basal bone which is the tenth and last part of
the head, and called basilar, because it is the base and foundation of the whole head;
and it was made hard so that the superfluities which descend to it should not putrefy
it. This bone can be seen to be formed of many other bones articulated together. It is
divisible into the petrous bones and the bones of the nose and eyes and two other
lateral bones which can only be seen by means of disarticulation. [Folio 10 verso, line
22.]

Fig. 11. From M. Hundt, Antropologium, de hominis dignitate natura
et proprietatibus, Leipzig, 1501. The figure shows the ten layers of the
head, the cerebral ventricles and cranial nerves, and the relation of the
nerves to the senses.

Fig. 12. T H E L A Y E R S O F T H E H E A D
From the Anatomia of Johannes Dryander, Marburg,
1537.

The ten parts or layers of the head are a commonplace of the anatomy of the period,
taken from Avicenna. We may illustrate the division by the crude contemporary
diagram of Fig. 11, which is improved in the later drawing reproduced in Fig. 12.
Manfredi’s account of the brain itself is amplified from Mondino. The division of this
organ into three ventricles, each associated with a corresponding division of the
mental functions, was very familiar to medical writers of the fifteenth century. The
idea is found among Western writers as early as St. Augustine (354–430), and is
encountered in the writings of Roger Bacon (1214–94). It had long been popularized
in mediaeval psychology by the writings of Albertus Magnus (1206–80). The
anatomical distinction is found in Haly Abbas, Avicenna, and Rhazes, and in some of
the best MSS. of the latter writer a rough diagram of the ventricles is given.188 These
writers are all clearly indebted to the anatomy of Galen,189 but on the psychological
side Albertus Magnus probably drew mainly either from Ghazali190 (1059–1111), who
in turn derived his inspiration from Nemesius (fourth century) and Johannes
Damascenus (died 756), or else from early writers of the Salernitan tradition, such as

Constantine191 (eleventh century), or Petrocello192 (twelfth century), who drew largely
on Theophilus (seventh century).193

Fig. 13. From Illustrissimi philosophi et theologi domini
Alberti magni compendiosum insigne ac perutile opus
Philosophiae naturalis, Venice, 1496, showing the ventricles
of the brain.

This outline of a tripartite division of the brain and its cavities was closely followed
throughout the Middle Ages, as was also the curiously naïve and excessively
‘materialistic’ psychology to which it gave rise, and which Manfredi adopts. We
illustrate his views of the relationship of the different parts of the brain and their
parallelism in mental processes, from a series of diagrams extracted from
contemporary works (Figs. 13–18).

Fig. 14. Diagram of the senses, the humours, the cerebral ventricles,
and the intellectual faculties. MS. Sloane 2156, folio 11 recto, in the
British Museum, being a copy written in 1428 of the De Scientia
Perpectiva of Roger Bacon

Fig. 15. From K. Peyligk’s Philosophiae naturalis compendium,
Leipzig, 1489. Illustrating the general ideas on anatomy current at
the Renaissance.

Fig. 16. The cerebral ventricles from

above and from the side. According to K.
Peyligk, Philosophiae naturalis
compendium, Leipzig, 1489.

Fig. 17. The localization of cerebral functions. From the Italian edition of ‘Ketham’,
Fasciculus Medicinae, Venice, 1493.

Fig. 18. From G. Reisch, Margarita philosophiae, Leipzig,‍?
1503. Diagram of the ventricles and the senses with their
relation to the intellectual processes according to the doctrine of
the Renaissance anatomists.

The brain was regarded by mediaeval and early Renaissance anatomists as having two
channels of discharge through which the phlegm, the especial product of this organ,
could be evacuated when in excess. One of these channels communicated with the
anterior ventricle of the brain and poured its secretion into the nose. It may be
identified with the anterior colature or cribriform plate. The second, the lacuna, led
down from the second ventricle and poured its secretion into the pharynx. It may be
identified with the infundibulum, pituitary body, and ‘cella turcica’. The term
‘pituitary’ which we still use is derived from its supposed association with the ‘pituita’
or phlegm. At an early date this process was connected with the four humours
(Fig. 14). The rest of the description of the brain can be easily followed. The
comparison of the choroid plexus to a worm is very common. The suggestion
originated with Galen and was developed by the Arabians.

Comparative Table of Ancient and Modern Nomenclature of Cranial Nerves.
Mondino and Manfredi following
Galen, especially in the περὶ χρείας
Modern usage.
τω̑ν ἐν ἀνθρώπου σώματι μορίων.
De usu partium corporis humani.
Not regarded as separate
I. Olfactory nerves.
nerves.
τὰ μαλακὰ νευ̑ρα τω̑ν
I. II. Optic nerves.
ὀφθαλμω̑ν.
τὰ κινητικὰ τω̑ν ἀμφ᾽ αὐτοὺς
II. III. Oculomotor nerves.
μυω̑ν.
Not mentioned. IV. Trochlear nerves.
III. τρίτη συζυγία.
V. Trigeminal nerves.
IV. τετάρτη συζυγία.
Mondino and Manfredi
confuse Galen’s fourth pair
and Galen’s sixth pair.
Not mentioned by Manfredi.
By Galen probably united VI. Abducent nerves.
with II.
VII. Facial nerves.
V. πέμπτη συζυγία.
VIII. Auditory nerves.

Glossopharyngeal
IX.
nerves.
VI. ἕκτη συζυγία. X. Vagi.
Accessory nerves of
XI.
Willis.
VII. ἑβδόμη συζυγία. XII. Hypoglossal nerves.
The nomenclature of the cranial nerves adopted by Manfredi is taken from Mondino
and is almost identical with that of Galen, whose classification is summarized
above.194 Manfredi’s description of Galen’s fourth pair is confused and inadequate, but
his account of Galen’s sixth pair is an improvement upon Mondino.
The ‘rete mirabile’ is an interesting survival of Galenic anatomy. This structure is
hardly present in man, but is developed in the lower animals, and especially in calves,
upon whose bodies Galen worked. The father of physiology regarded the ‘rete
mirabile’ as the place where the psychic pneuma was elaborated.195 Galen’s findings in
the lower animals were assiduously transferred to the human body, to which his
descriptions are much less applicable, while his views on the pneuma lasted in more
or less misunderstood form well into the seventeenth century.

(b) THE EYE

Tractate i, Chapter 3
(folio 11 recto) The socket of the eye is not over-depressed, for it has to receive the
images (spetie) of visible things. Nor does it project greatly, lest it should be liable to
injury from exterior violence. For the eyes of man being very soft and susceptible,
nature provided eyebrows as a shield above, and eyelids as protectors in front, and
made moreover the projections of the maxillae and the nose, so that the eyes should be
guarded on every side. So great was the solicitude of nature for these members.
Seven are the tunics of the eye and three its humours. Three front coatings join with
three coatings at the back like six shields, the edges of every pair joining each to each,
the outer being larger and containing the others. The seventh tunic is largest of all, and
encloses the whole eye, and therefore it is called conjunctiva because it joins and
surrounds the whole eye except the place where the pupil is, and that small part [is
covered] by the cornea. Now this first tunic where it covers the outside part is seen to
be white.
The second tunic in its front part is called cornea because it resembles horn in its
substance and colour; and this covering is transparent, so that the images of visible

things may penetrate through it. And it is also solid and large and composed of four
membranes, so that being near external things it should not receive hurt. With this
[corneal tunic] is united posteriorly another tunic [the third] called sclerotic, i.e. hard.
These two coverings have their origin in the membrane about the brain, that is in the
dura mater, just as the first tunic arises from the membrane over the skull, called
almochatim.
The fourth tunic as to its front part is called uvea [because] it is like a seed of a black
grape, and in its midst is a hole called the pupil. Nature made this tunic opaque so that
the visual spirit should be conserved and not dissipated by the light outside. Moreover
nature made the opening in the tunic that the image might penetrate freely; while it is
narrow, so that the visual spirit should be concentrated. Thus when the said pupil, or
rather hole, dilates more than usual, either naturally or accidentally, the sight becomes
imperfect. [The uveal tunic] joins posteriorly the fifth tunic, called secundina because
it is made like the after-birth, i.e. the membrane in which the child is enveloped in its
mother’s womb, and it arises from the pia mater.
The sixth coating in front is called arachnoid because it is formed after the manner of
a spider’s web, and posteriorly it joins the seventh coating, called retina, because it is
made like a net.
Between the uvea and the arachnoid anteriorly there is a humour called albugineus,
like the white of an egg, to moisten the eye and to preserve the convexity of the
cornea. In a dead man this humour dries up, and the cornea falls and is flattened, and
then the vulgar say that there appears a curtain before the eyes which is an infallible
sign of death. Also this humour holds the pupil open; therefore when it dries up the
pupil contracts.
Between the two last tunics, i.e. the arachnoid and the retina, which have their origin
from the optic nerve, there are two humours. These are the vitreous humour, so called
from its likeness to liquified glass, and the crystalline humour, from its likeness to a
crystal. This is also called the grandid, because it is like a hailstone; and it is
somewhat hard and round, but flattened anteriorly where it receives the images of
visible things, and posteriorly pyramidal shape and pointed. And here is completed the
act of seeing. In the posterior part it is surrounded by the vitreous humours by which it
is nourished. The crystalline humour is convex anteriorly and the vitreous posteriorly.
And the optic nerves come to the eyes and convey the images seen by the eyes to [the
seat of] common sensation and to the other internal faculties. [Folio 12 verso, line 7.]

Fig. 19. T H E A N AT O M Y O F T H E E Y E
From G. Reisch, Margarita philosophiae, Leipzig,? 1503. Showing
the seven tunics and three humours of the eye according to the
doctrines of Renaissance anatomists. 196

A great deal of attention was paid by the Arabians to the diseases and the structure of
the eye, and the essentials of Manfredi’s description are to be found in Rhazes, Hunain
ben Ishak, and Haly Abbas. The tradition presented by these writers passed early into
Western science, and is reproduced, for example, in the works of Constantine
Africanus and in the well-​known anatomy to which the name of Richardus Anglicus
(Richard of Wendover) has become attached197 (cp. Fig. 19). Avicenna’s description of
the eye is somewhat different, and gave rise to the tradition reproduced in the works
of John of Peckham and of Roger Bacon (Plate xxxviii a), and it influenced the views
of Leonardo and even perhaps of Vesalius (Fig. 20). The views on the anatomy of the
eye expressed by Rhazes, Hunain ben Ishak, and Haly Abbas were, on the whole,
more widely accepted than those of Avicenna.
The treatment of the eye was always felt to be hardly within the range of the ordinary
practitioner of surgery, and its structure, as we learn from Guy de Chauliac,198 was not

usually treated in the general course of anatomy. The
custom was rather to refer the student to special works
such as those of Jesu Aly or of Alcoatim.
Manfredi’s description of the anatomy of the eye is that
generally accepted at the end of the fifteenth and the
beginning of the sixteenth centuries, and is unusually
clear for its date. It represents a considerable advance on
such writers as Henri de Mondeville (1260–1320)199 or
the pseudo Richardus Anglicus, and is far superior to the
descriptions of the eye dating from the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries recently brought to light by Sudhoff.200
We reproduce as illustrating Manfredi a diagram taken
from the Margarita philosophica of Gregorius Reisch
(died 1525). This represents the earliest printed figure of
any value of the anatomy of the eye (Fig. 19).201 We give Fig. 20. T H E A N AT O M Y
for comparison the figure from a thirteenth-​century MS. OF THE EYE
of Roger Bacon (Plate xxxviii a), representing the rival From Vesalius, De humani
tradition of Avicenna and Alhazen that influenced corporis fabrica, Basel, 1543,
p. 643. a, Crystalline humour; o,
Leonardo da Vinci and other contemporaries of Albugineous humour; c, Vitreous
Manfredi. These figures may be compared with that of humour; n, Cornea; q,

Vesalius (1543, Fig. 20), whose description of the eye is Conjunctiva; m, Sclerotica; g,
Secundina; h, Uvea; k,
less free from traditional bias than are most parts of his Arachnoidea; e, Retina.
epoch-​making work.
In reading any early description of the eye, it is to be remembered that until the
nineteenth century the ‘emanation theory’ prevailed. Light was regarded as of the
nature of a stream of particles emitted from the object seen, and the act of vision was
considered as a collision of this emanation with an emission of something from the
eye itself, called in mediaeval writings the ‘visual spirit’.

(c) THE HEART

Tractate ii, Chapter 3
(folio 19 verso) Then you will see in the midst of the lung the heart, covered by its
membranes. [It is thus situated] that the air attracted by this lung should cool it, and
that thus the heat and spirit of the heart be tempered. This member is the most
important of the four [principal members], because it is the first to live and the last to
die. It is of medium size compared with the other members of man, but compared with

the hearts of other animals it is very large, because man, in a quantitative and not an
intensive sense, has more natural heat than other animals. It is pyramidal, that is in the
form of a flame; because it is of excellent warmth, therefore it is necessary that it
should be of a shape resembling a flame. Its figure is also called ‘pine-​shaped’,
because it is wide below and narrow above, being thus formed that distinction could
better be made between its cavities or ventricles; moreover, had it been made of a
shape all uniform as is the lower part, it would be too heavy and ponderous.
This member is situated in the middle of the entire body, measured in every direction;
that is, in the middle between the upper and lower parts: in the middle also between
front and back and right and left, like a king standing in the midst of his kingdom, and
this was done that it might give the strength of life equally to all the members; and
although the heart as regards its foundation and base be in the middle, yet its point
declines to the left below the left breast, so that it warms the left side as the liver
warms the right.
This member is sustained and strengthened by a certain cartilaginous bone. For since
it is continually moving, it needs some point of purchase to support it in its
movements. Moreover, it has a certain fatty layer on the outside which prevents the
heart from drying and keeps it moist: and there are certain veins and arteries dispersed
through its substance: and it is formed also of a kind of hard flesh so that it may
sustain many and forceful movements; also it is formed of longitudinal, latitudinal,
and transverse fibres, so that it may have the power to attract, retain, and expel.
This member has three ventricles or chambers, like the brain. One ventricle is on the
right side, the second on the left, and the third in between. The right ventricle towards
the liver has two orifices. One is towards the liver and is very large. Into this there
enters a vein called vena chilis, which arises in the convexity of the liver and brings
the blood from the liver to the heart. In that right ventricle the blood is purified, and
then sent by the heart to all the other members.
Now since the heart attracts by this orifice of the vena chilis more than it expels,
therefore nature ordains that in the moment of contraction when the blood is expelled
this orifice closes, and when the heart dilates it opens.
Moreover there are three little valves (hostiolitti) or doors opening from without
inward, and these valves are not very depressed; so that by this same orifice only part
of the purified blood is expelled to the other members, because part goes to the lungs
and the remainder forms the vital spirit; therefore nature ordains that these valves do
not entirely close. From the vena chilis, before it enters the cavity of the heart, there
arises another vein, which surrounds the root of the heart; and from it are given off

branches which disperse themselves through the substance of the heart, and from the
blood of that vein the heart nourishes itself.
The right ventricle towards the lung has another orifice into which opens the arterial
vein, bringing the blood from the heart to nourish the lung: in this orifice also are three
valves (hostioli) opening from within outward and closing from without inward, in the
opposite way to the valves of the other orifice; and this is so that they should entirely
close. Hence by this orifice the heart during the period of contraction can expel, and
yet during the period of its dilatation cannot attract anything through it as was done in
the first orifice.
The left ventricle of the heart has its sides denser and thicker than the sides or walls of
the right ventricle; and this for three reasons: Firstly, because in the right ventricle is
contained the blood, which is heavy, while in the left ventricle there is spirit, which is
very light; therefore in order that the heart should not be heavier and more ponderous
on one side than on the other, it was necessary to compensate in this manner, that is,
that the left ventricle should be thicker in its walls than the right. In the second place,
the spirit being more subtil and more volatile (resolubile) than blood, it needs a
stronger habitation and better supports. Thirdly, the left ventricle is much warmer than
the right, because in it is generated the spirit from the blood, by a great heat which
makes that blood more subtil; and heat is better preserved in a substance that is dense
and thick.
In the cavity of this ventricle near its root are two orifices: one is the orifice of an
artery called artharia adorti [= aorta], because it has immediate origin in the heart and
because it is the source of all the others: by this artery the heart sends the generated
spirit to all the members; and the very subtil blood is mixed with the spirit when the
heart contracts. For which reason there are at the entrance of this orifice three valves,
which close entirely from the outside inwards; and they open from the inside
outwards, and this orifice is very deep.
The other orifice is that of the venal artery which conveys the air from the lung to
cool the heart and transports warm vapours from the heart to the lung as has been said
above; and in this orifice are two valves which do not entirely close: and they are well
raised so that they can better apply themselves to the sides [edges] of the heart when it
sends out the spirit: these are marvellous works of nature, as is also the central
ventricle of the heart, for this ventricle has not one cavity but many; these are small
but wide, and more numerous on the right than on the left; and nature contrived thus,
so that the blood which goes from the right ventricle to the left to be converted
continually into spirit becomes thin in these cavities.

And by this thou canst see that four things have birth in the heart. The first is the
artery called adorti, the second is the vena chilis, the third is the arterial vein, and the
fourth the venal artery.
Also thou wilt see in the heart certain membranous parts like auricles, or rather like
small ears, able to dilate or contract: these are contrived by nature in order that when
overmuch blood or spirit is generated the heart can dilate so as to contain it; and also
that the heart may contract when there is no such abundance.
And it is here that Galen asks, Why did not nature make the heart so large that it could
contain every increase of blood or spirit without the addition of these membranes?
Galen replies that this was first because the heart would have been too large and
therefore too heavy; secondly, because as it is not always generating a great quantity
of blood and spirit, if the heart had been too large, its cavity would usually have been
empty: but these auricles dilate with the accumulation of blood or spirit, and contract
with its decrease.
The heart is surrounded by a firm and nervous membrane, like a little house in which
it is placed as in a tabernacle to defend it from accidents. This capsule is very dilated,
that the heart in its dilations and movement may not be impeded thereby, and therefore
nature made this capsule so that it should contain a certain dewy moisture with which
the heart is bathed and moistened so that in its continual movement it should not
become dry. For when this water be dried up, then the heart itself is desiccated, and
emaciates and dries up all the body.

The description of the heart follows Mondino closely. Occasionally a phrase or two is
reminiscent of Mondeville. The trite conception of the heart as a king in its necessarily
central position was very frequently repeated by writers in the Middle Ages. To
Harvey, who had a certain mediaeval element in his mentality, it seems to have
appealed, and he used it in his Prelectiones Anatomiae,202 and chose it to introduce his
great work on the circulation of the blood.203 The heart was similarly described as
‘flame-​shaped’, because it was regarded as the source of animal heat. The idea that it
is the first to live and the last to die comes from Aristotle.204 The bone in the heart also
comes from Aristotle.205 The idea was quite familiar to mediaeval anatomists, who
frequently endeavoured to identify the bone with the firm tissue around the orifices of
the aorta and pulmonary artery. The reader may be reminded that a true ‘os cordis’ is
in fact to be found in some mammalia.

Mondino, followed by Manfredi, describes the action of the heart and blood-​vessels
mainly according to the views of Galen, but without any very clear or connected
statement. The ‘third ventricle’ especially has its origin in a misunderstanding.
This mythical structure is an attempt to combine the views of Aristotle and of Galen.
Aristotle, who probably never dissected a human body, derived his anatomical
conceptions largely from cold-​blooded animals, in some of which the heart is
provided with three cavities. He considered that the heart had three chambers, the
largest being on the right, the smallest on the left, and one of intermediate size
between the two. As far as they can be identified, the largest was the right ventricle
plus the right auricle, the smallest or left chamber was the left auricle, while the
intermediate cavity appears to have been the left ventricle.206
Galen’s description differed altogether from that of
Aristotle. He tells us expressly and somewhat
contemptuously that ‘it is no marvel if Aristotle erred in
many anatomical matters, a man who thought forsooth
that the heart in the larger animals had three chambers’.207
Galen always describes the heart as having but two
chambers, the right and left ventricles, a wholly
subordinate part being assigned to the auricles. These
latter were regarded as safety-​valves, expanding to hold Fig. 21. T H E H E A R T
superfluous blood when the chambers of the heart to From the Roncioni MS. (Pisa 99)
after Sudhoff.
which they correspond become overfilled.
No third ventricle is described by Rhazes or Haly
Abbas,208 but Avicenna, in his Canon, makes an effort to combine the views of
Aristotle and Galen. Speaking of the anatomy of the heart (lib. iii, fen. xi, chap. 1) he
describes the ventricular portion as follows: ‘In the heart are three cavities, two large,
and a third as it were central in position. So that the heart has [a] a receptacle [the
right ventricle] for the nutriment with which it nourishes itself—this nutriment is thick
and firm like the substance of the heart; [b] a place where the pneuma is formed [the
left ventricle], being engendered of the subtil blood; and [c], thirdly, a canal between
the two.’209 A somewhat similar account is given in Constantine’s translation of
Isaac.210 The idea soon crept into European medicine, for in a Pisan MS. dating from
the first half of the thirteenth century211 a crude figure of a three-​chambered heart is to
be found (Fig. 21).
The first translator of the Canon of Avicenna, Gerard of Cremona, whose work
appeared towards the end of the twelfth century, improved on his original. ‘In it [the

heart] are three ventricles; two are large, and the third as it were between, which
Galen called the fovea or non-​ventricular meatus, so that there may be a receptaculum
for the thick and strong nourishment, like to the substance of the heart, with which it
is nourished, and also a storehouse for the pneuma (spiritus) generated in it from the
subtil blood. And between the two are channels or meatuses.’212 Henri de Mondeville
(died about 1320), by going direct to Galen, avoided some of the errors of Avicenna,
with whom, however, he still describes three ventricles.213 Mondino does little but
copy the Arabian, whom Manfredi also follows.
We may terminate our description of the mythical third ventricle by quoting from
Bartholomew the Englishman. His encyclopaedia written about 1260 was translated
into English in 1397, and printed by Thomas Berthelet214 in the 27th year of the reign
of Henry VIII (1535), when Bartholomew’s work was still extremely popular.
Berthelet’s rendering runs as follows:
‘And the hert hath ij holownesses, one in the left syde, that cometh sharpe:
and one in the ryght side, that is within: And these two holownesses ben
called the wombes of the hart. And betwene these two wombes is one hole,
that some men call a veyne, other an holowe way. And this hole is brode
afore the ryghte syde, and streyte afore the left syde. And that is nedefulle to
make the bloode subtyll, that commeth from the ryght wombe to the lefte,
and so the spirite of lyfe may be bredde the easelyer in the lefte wombe.’
In order to understand why all these authors invoked the existence of the third
ventricle, regarded by some of them as a passage between the other two, we must turn
to the physiological beliefs of the age. It must be recalled that before the
demonstration of the circulatory movement of the blood a certain amount of
communication was believed to exist between right and left ventricles. The
complicated nature of the ventricular cavities and the intricacy of the columnae
carneae promoted the idea of the presence of minute passages in the interventricular
septum. Even so astute an observer as Leonardo da Vinci considered that ‘the
ventricles are separated by a porous wall, through which the blood of the right
ventricle penetrates into the left ventricle, and when the right ventricle shuts, the left
opens and draws in the blood which the right one gives forth’ (Plate xxxviii b).215

Fig. 22. From Johannes Adelphus, Mundini de omnibus humani corporis
interioribus menbris Anathomia, Strassburg, 1513. The diagram shows the two
lateral ventricles and the ‘central’ ventricle. By a printer’s error the letters c and
d are transposed. The arteria adorti is the aorta, the arteria venalis the
pulmonary vein, the vena chilis the vena cava, and the vena arterialis the
pulmonary artery. The auricles are ignored, as is frequently the case in works of
the period, and the pulmonary veins are represented as opening directly into the
ventricles.

Although the third ventricle is described in all the twenty-​five editions of Mondino,
many of which are illustrated, they present no drawing of it except the wretched little
diagram of J. A. Muelich (Johannes Adelphus) in 1513, which we here reproduce
(Fig. 22). The confusion, however, to which the idea of a third ventricle gave rise
influenced anatomy almost as late as the seventeenth century, and is illustrated in the
anatomical figures of a late edition of Hans von Gersdorff (1556),216 where the trachea
is actually shown opening into the left ventricle (Fig. 23). It was Vesalius who took
the first great step towards the discovery of the circulation of the blood, by firmly
maintaining that the interventricular septum was solid and contained neither passages
nor intermediate ventricle.217

Fig. 23. From Hans von Gersdorff, Feldt und Stattbüch bewerter
Wundartznei, Frankfurt, 1556. The trachea (d) is represented as
opening directly into the heart.

VI. Italian Text

MS. Canonici Ital. 237

Hyeronimi manfredi ad Magnificum & potentem dominum ac militem Iohannem
Bentiuolum insequens opus de corporis humani anothomia exordium.
[folio 1 verso] Opportet de sapientia admirari creatoris ut xvº de utilitate particularum scribitur a Galieno. Cum
enim membrorum nostri corporis admirabilem Galienus aspiceret Armoniam predictum sermonem explicauit: ut
nos ad dei sublimis et gloriosi admiranda opera commoueret: Quamuis nostra cognitio a dei compraehensione
deficiat: unde et Seneca xlª epistola ad Lucillum ait quid deus sit incertum est habitat in nobis: Sed deum mouemur
inuocare eius sapientiam mirabiliter contemplantes. Quanta enim fuerit summi opificis in producendo res sapientia
quanta eius solicitudo et prudentia opera profecto nature declarant: unde et psalmista mirabilia sunt opera tua deus,
et alibi celi enarrant gloriam dei et opera manuum eius annuntiat firmamentum. Quis enim talia et tanta inspitiens
creatorem suum abneget et eius potentiam? Inscipiens quidem erit hic iuxta illud psalmiste dixit inscipiens in corde
suo non est deus. Sublimis autem dei multiplitia et diuersa fuere opera. Creauit enim duplitia entium genera scilicet
corruptibilia et incorruptibilia; et in utrisque suam admirabilem sapientiam, suamque [folio 2 recto] infinitam
potentiam ostendit. Totam enim entis latitudinem nihil prorsus de spetiebus, quas ab aeterno in mente sua retinuit
obmittens perfulciuit, et eas quas ab aeterno in sua habebat essentia ad aliud esse procreauit, ut in indiuiduis esse
haberent: quae in suae maiestatis lumine existebant: et uniuscuiusque spetiei modo perfecit ac uarietates per esse
quod in singularibus habent (natura mediante & cum lege) imposuit. Admirantur angelorum caetus obstupent
hominum intellectus tantae maiestatis opera mirabilia: ut hoc summo bono: hoc perfectissimo ente nihil melius
excogitari possit. O admirabilem maiestatem, O deitatem incompraehensibilem, O inefabilem potentiam: Quis te
negliget? Quis te non insequetur? Quis in operibus tuis non delectabitur?
Omnis igitur qui in operum dei gloriosi intuitu delectatur, hic prudens et non inscipiens est: hic dignus homo: hic
intellectu non caret. Cum igitur tua illustris Dominatio Iohannes bentiuole magnanimis praesenti anno ex sui qua
solet humanitate ad cuiusdam hominis defuncti anothomiam uno semel uidere non fuerit dedignata ob sui
intellectus dignitatem qui semper alta intelligere concupiscit, cumque tu opera tam naturae miranda in
anothomizato incaepisti uidere corpore tunc haec intelligendi creuit animus tua digna [folio 2 verso] creuit
uoluntas: Et me hyeronimum Manfredum ad hoc opus de anothomia intitulatum materno sermone tuo dignissimo
nomini inscribere concitasti: (ut omnino sicut debeor) rem gratam tuae faciam dominationi: In hoc enim tui agnoui
dignitatem intellectus, tui ingenii solertiam quod in rebus naturae mirandis tuum peruoluas intellectum. Hoc enim
opusculum quantum melius potui ex uariis antiquorum uoluminibus exserpsi ac id abreuiaui: nec eumdem forte
tenui ordinem ut illi: et ipsum materno composui sermone ut opus hoc delectabilius tuae sit magnificentie.
Accipe igitur magnifice et potens domine hoc opus de corporis humani anothomia tuo dignisimo nomini
intitulatum, ea benignitate et humanitate, qua soles: et animo illari ac gratioso id accepta: qui satis tibi erit

delectabile et perplacebit quia dignum est opus: Vale miles magnanimis, et solito ama.

Finis prohemii.
[Here a folio is missing.]
[folio 3 recto] a li nerui lequale hano origine da le extremita di musculi: Unde e da sapere che li musculi sono
compositi de nerui, corde, e ligamenti e carne facti da la natura a dare el moto uoluntario, Impero da le soe
extrimita escono queste tale corde e uadono a membri che se debano mouere: e quando se retraheno li dicti musculi
consequenter se se retraheno le lor corde: & finaliter i membri: et similiter quando se dilatano i musculi se dilatano
etiam le corde & consequenter i membri.
Li ligamenti sono etiam simili a nerui facti a ligare le iuncture de le osse e non li dette la natura sentimento como
fece a li nerui & a le corde acio che per el molto mouimento e fricatione de le iuncture non doleseno.
Le Artarie sono de substantia neruosa & ligamentale in longo extense o concaue: ne le quale se contene el sangue
sutilissimo & depurato et el spirito uitale el quale e mandato dal core a dare uita a tuti i membri: et hano origine da
esso core: & impero hebeno doe tuniche acio chel sangue sutile & el spirito uitale non usisseno fuora.
Le vene sono simile a lartarie ma sono quiete e non se moueno, ma hano origine dal figato et in esse se contene el
sangue grosso cum li altri humuri che non e cusi depurato ne [folio 3 verso] cusi sutile como e el sangue de le
artarie: impero non li fece senon una tunicha: per che quelo sangue non era cosi sutile chel potesse penetrare fuora
ne anche non bisognandose mouere non era suspitione de rompersi como ne le artarie che era neccessario a
mouerse per refrigerare el core atrahendo laiere frigido & expellendo fuora li fumi caldi da esso.
Li panniculi sono composti e texuti de fili neruosi sutilissimi che non se posseno uedere e sono questi paniculi
spissi e sutili e sono de molte manerie: Alcuni forno facti a continere o coprire a Alcuni membri e custodirli ne la
sua figura e substantia como sono li paniculi che copreno el cerebro e molti altri di li quali poi diremo: Alcuni altri
panniculi sono facti a suspendere uno membro a laltro como li rognoni sono aligati a laschina mediante uno certo
paniculo: Alcuni altri paniculi sono facti acio che alcuni membri che non hano sentimento recceuano qualche
sentimento per el panniculo: nel quale sono inuolti como sono el pulmone el figato la milza & i rognoni li quali
sono priuati de sentimento impero la natura aciascuno di loro li fece uno panniculo doue fusseuo inuolti per la
casone dicta.
Da poi tuti questi membra hauendo la natura ordito el corpo de lhomo de [folio 4 recto] li predicti bisogno reimpire
le uacuita e reimpille de carne: Fece aduncha la natura la carne per reimpire le uacuita che rimangono da lorditura
de nerui uene & altri membri dicti.
Praeterea e da sapere che la natura ha dato aciascuno di li predicti membri quatro uirtu. Una e uirtu atratiua per
laquale ha ad atrahere el nutrimento suo a se del quale el membro se ha a nutricare: La seconda uirtu e digegtiua
per laquale el nutrimento atrato se digerisse & conuertese ne la sustantia del membro: La terza uirtu si e retentiua
per laquale el nutrimento atrato se retiene debito tempo acio che la uirtu digestiua possa perficere la sua operatione
circha quello: La quarta uirtu e expulsiua laquale ha expellere le superfluita che se generano dal nutrimento ne la
digestione.
Anche e da sapere che la natura nel corpo de lhuomo ha facto quatro membri principali como quatro signori et
aciascuno di loro li ha dato una casa o uero uno palazo a sua custodia doue habite cum certe camare o uero stantie
che hano aseruirli al suo bisogno: El primo membro principale e signore e el cerebro al quale li fece la natura el
capo cum le sue circumstantie per suo habitaculo e dette a questo membro che lui fusse principio e radice de tuto el
sentimento e moto de tuto el [folio 4 verso] corpo: dal quale tuti li altri membri recceueno el sentire: e el mouere,
& a questo membri li dette etiam cinque uirtu cognoscitiue exteriore cio e li cinque sentimenti e cinque altre uirtu
cognoscitiue interiore che deserueno a lo intellecto.
El secondo membro principale e signore si e el Core alquale la natura ha dato la sua casa cio e el pecto cum le sue
adiacentie: et aquesto membro li ha dato la uirtu de la uita dal quale proceda la uita in tuti li altri membri como da
uno primo principio.

El terzo membro principale e signore e el Figato alquale dette la natura per suo domicilio el uentre inferiore cum li
altri membri circumstanti che sono neccessarii a la sua operatione e dette a questo membro la uirtu nutritiua chel
fusse principio e radice del nutricare de tuti li membri.
El quarto membro principale fu li testiculi e la sua casa e la bursa laquale li contene et aquilli deserueno piu altri
membri como poi se uedera et a questi testiculi ha dato la natura la uirtu generatiua cio e de generare el sperma o
uero seme el quale habia una uirtu generatiua che possa produre una cosa simile a colui dal quale se decide tale
sperma: et questo fu facto per conseruare lhuomo in spetie non se possendo conseruare in indiuiduo.
Ultra questi quatro membri principali e suoi domicilii [folio 5 recto] ha facto la natura alcuni altri membri cio e el
collo cum la gola che fusse uia e transito dal primo membro principale cio e cerebro ali altri membri principali et
etiam a tute laltre parte & per altre utilita quale noi da poi diremo.
Item ha facto la natura le braza e le mane che hauesseno a pigliare el cibo e mandarlo al luoco conueniente et etiam
per che lhuomo solo uiue per arte lequale non se possono perficere senza le braza e mano.
Item fece le cosse, gambe e piedi acio se potesse mouere da luocho a luocho secondo li soi bisogni.
Noi aduncha poneremo la Anothomia de tuti li membri e parte dicte: Comenciando per ordine dal cerebro e da la
sua casa et consequenter descendendo per insino apiedi.

Capitulum secundum, tractatus primi de anothomia capitis et omnium contentorum in
eo.
Fece la natura el capo ossuoso per magiore tutela del cerebro: el quale essendo inmobile non li bisogno hauere
musculi: Et per che el cerebro ne lhuomo e magiore che ne li altri animali secondo la sua grandeza impero bisogno
chel capo de lhuomo fusse etiamdio grande per rispecto de li altri animali: Et etiam bisogno li meati del capo ne
lhuomo essere piu distincti essendo piu dedito al cognoscere.
La figura [folio 5 verso] del capo naturale e rotonda compressa da dui canti como sel fusse una cera rotonda
compressa cum le mano da la parte drita e da la stancha faria doe eminentie una dinanzi e laltra de drieto e la parte
drita e stancha rimaneriano piane: Bisogno fusse rotondo acio fusse pin capace et etiam che fusse piu securo e
risguardato da nocumenti exteriori a li quali e molto exposito: Bisogno etiam essere facto cum quelle eminentie
acio che li meati del cerebro hauesseno megliore distinctione et acio che li cinque sentimenti exteriori hauesseno
origine da la eminentia anteriore.
Diece sono le parte del capo: La prima e li capilli quasi capitis pili facti da la natura a magiore tutela del capo da le
cose exteriore et etiam per belleza: La seconda parte del capo e la cute la quale bisogno essere molto grossa acio
che li capilli fusseno ben firmi hauendo le radice sue molte grosse e longhe et etiam che fusse megliore scuto e
cooperimento de losso et del cerebro non li essendo parte musculose: La terza parte si e la carne laquale solo e ne
la fronte e ne le tempie e circha le masselle e non in le altre parte: La quarta parte e uno panniculo exteriore
chiamato almochatim elquale appare in continenti como e liuata su la cute e copre tuto losso del craneo de fuora:
Et fece la natura questo panniculo [folio 6 recto] acio che lacute che e molle non tochasse incontinenti losso che e
duro: Et etiam acio che losso del capo hauesse sentimento per questo panniculo: Et tertio anche acio che el
paniculo interiore del capo chiamato Duramater mediante questo panniculo stesse suspeso a losso del craneo cum
certi nerui e ligamenti che escono per le comissure del dicto osso et hano origine dal dicto panniculo interiore &
uscendo fuora de losso texono o uero componeno quello panniculo exteriore dicto Almochatim: La quinta parte e el
craneo cioe osso facto como uno capello nela concauita del quale glie locato el cerebro: & in questo craneo furno
quatro ossa cusite insieme e la natura non fece questo osso uno ma de piu pezi acio che achadando nocumento in
una parte non comunicasse a laltre parte: Et etiam acio che per quelle comissure o uero cusiture potesseno meglio
exhalare fuora le fumusitade dal cerebro: Et tertio acio che bisognando la uirtu de le medicine applicate potesseno
meglio penetrare ale parte dentro quisti aduncha quatro pezi de osso furno da la natura cusiti et insieme ionti in
modo de denti acio fusse piu fermi e forti et non furno facti in modo che se potesseno uincare como fano le iunture
per che non seriano state cusi forte: et etiam [folio 6 verso] per che non bisognaua a losso del capo mouerse: Et
queste comissure sono cinque cio e tre uere e doe mendose: Le comissure uere sono quelle che passano tuto losso
et le mendose non passano: De le uere comissure una si e ne la parte anteriore chiamata coronale et e facta a modo

de uno C e protende da la parte drita a la stancha del capo et ha li branchi uerso la fronte. La secunda comissura
uera si protende per la longheza del capo comencianda da la comissura coronale ala parte posteriore como una friza
o uero sagitta che uene da larcho, impero e chiamata sagitale ——(. La terza comissura e ne la parte posteriore
chiamata laudale facta a modo de uno A, per abacho chiamato dal greco lauda: e la comissura sagittale protende da
la coronale a la laudale 〉——(.
Le comissure mendose sono due da ciascaduno lato una cio e dal drito e dal stanco e sono dicte corticate per che
non passano.
Et se noi consideremo per queste cinque comissure hauemo quatro ossi cusiti insieme: Uno si e losso de la fronte
che comenza dala comissura coronale e termina uerso la parte inferiore a una altra comissura la quale comenza da
uno brancho de la comissura coronale e procede a presso le ciglie de li ochii a laltro brancho Ɑ. Laltro osso si e de
drieto el [folio 7 recto] quale se termina a la comissura laudale e dui altri ossi da le tempie che se terminano da le
comissure mendose le quale comenzano da la comissura laudale a la comissura coronale.
La sexta parte sono doi paniculi uno chiamato Dura mater el quale e in continenti de poi el craneo: e laltro se
chiama pia mater el quale incontinente copre el cerebro e questo fece la natura hauendo grande solicitudine di
questo membro acio che in continenti non fusse tocho da losso ma processe per piu mezi che uno fusse piu duro
che laltro: Et anche fece dui panniculi acio che se la cadesse nocumento in uno de loro non comunicasse al cerebro
in continente. Ne la pia matre sono texute certe uene per le quale se nutrisse el cerebro e si lo copre per tuto
excepto la parte posteriore per che essendo quella parte sicca non bisogno di questo paniculo como la parte
anteriore e meza. Questi dui panniculi in piu luochi penetrano la sustantia del cerebro et se lo diuide in parte drita e
parte sinistra et in parte anteriore & parte posteriore: et per queste tale diuisione furno fabrichate nel capo diuerse
celule o uero camerette ne le quale produce lanima diuerse operatione per che bisognaua che queste tale parte
fuseno de diuerse complexione.
E leuati adoncha questi dui panniculi apparera La [folio 7 verso] Septima parte del capo: et e esso cerebro facta da
la natura acio che el spirito uitale mandato dal core calidissimo sia contemperato da la frigidita de esso cerebro: et
iue douenti spirito animale elquale e principio de le operatione cognoscitiue & motiue: e questo cerebro e una
sustantia medulare biancha molle e uiscosa a cio che da essa hauesseno origine li nerui: ma la parte dinanci fu
generata piu humida e molle & mancho frigida che la parte posteriore per che da la parte anteriore hano origine li
sentimenti li quali sono molli & humidi ma da la parte posteriore hano origine li nerui motiui li quali bisognano
essere piu sicci e forti: Questo cerebro aduncha se diuide in tri uintriculi oucro tre parte: El primo uentriculo o
parte anteriore e diuisa in doe, cio e dextra e sinistra: et e magiore che nesuno de li altri uentriculi: et in questo
primo uentriculo li pose la natura doe uirtu deseruente al cognoscere una se chiama senso comune doue se
terminano li altri sensi exteriori como al suo centro et deferiscono le imagine o uero spetie de le cose sensiue a
quello luocho acio che quella uirtu cognosca e distingua tra una cosa sensibile e laltra et etiam cognosca le
operatione di li sentimenti particulari lequale doe cose non puo fare nesuno de quilli.
Laltra uirtu de questo primo uentriculo se [folio 8 recto] chiama fantasia et apresso alcuni se chiama imaginatiua
laquale ha a retinere et conseruare le spetie de le cose sensibile ne la absentia de le cose sensibile. Quando tu harai
ueduto el uentriculo primo tu uederai tre cose inanzi che uegni al uentriculo secondo. La prima si e doe anche cio e
una cosa facta de la sustantia del cerebro in modo de doe anche che sono fundamento del uentriculo anteriore cusi
da la dextra como da la sinistra parte: et dal lato di ciascuna ancha glie una altra cosa facta a modo de uno uerme
subterraneo rosa se sanguinea ligata de certi ligamenti e neruitti el quale uerme quando se alonga chiude quelle
anche et consequenter chiude la uia tra el primo uentriculo et el secondo et questo fece la natura acio che lhuomo
quando uole posse cessare da le cogitatione e dal considerare et similiter quando uole considerare e pensare questo
uerme se contrahe et contrahendosi apre quelle anche et consequenter apre la uia che e tra uno uentriculo e laltro:
La terza cosa che tu uederai un poco piu de sotta e una lacuna cio e una certa conchauita rotonda che tra allongo
nel mezio de laquale glie uno bucho che ua gioso al palato et a questo bucho li occorre una uia drita laquale
descende dal uentriculo di mezo al colatorio e questa lacuna ha circumquaque eminentie grande rotonde facte a
sustentare [folio 8 verso] le uene et artharie che ascendeno a dicti uentriculi: e quello bucho e lato di sopra e stretto
in fonde e per questa lacuna el primo e secondo uentriculo purgano le sue superfluitade benche la parte anteriore
piu se purghi per li colatorii del naso: Unde queste doe uie fece la natura ad expurgare le superfluita del cerebro.

Quando adoncha tu hauerai ueduto queste tre cose incontinente te apparera el secondo uentriculo del mezo el quale
e como una uia et uno transito dal primo uentriculo al posteriore: in questo uentriculo sono doe uirtu una chiamata
extimatiua, laquale ha elicere cose insensate da le cose sensate. Laltra uirtu se chiama cogitatiua laquale cognosce
cusi le cose sensate como le cose insensate componendo e diuidendo: e questa uirtu in mediate deserue a lo
intellecto: et tute le altre uirtu dicte et anche la uirtu memoratiua se ritrouano ne li animali bruti, ma questa solo se
retruoua ne lhuomo.
Dapoi te occorrera el terzo uentriculo situato ne la parte posteriore duro per che e principio de la piu parte di nerui
motiui liquali bisogno essere piu forti e duri: Questo uentriculo e de figura pyramidale cio e facto in ponta e la
ponta si e ne la parte superiore doue ha aconseruare le spetie per che meglio se riserua la cosa [folio 9 recto] in
stretto luocho che in amplo: e la parte di sotto e lata per che ha a receuere le spetie e meglio se receue in luocho
amplo che stretto: Due adoncha utilita se ha da questo uentriculo una che e principio de la nucha e di li nerui
mottiui. Laltra si e che e camera de la uirtu memoratiua.
E per questo appare che quando e offesa la parte posteriore del capo in continenti se offende la memoria e quando
se offende la parte de mezo se offende la uirtu extimatiua & cogitatiua & offesa la parte dinanzi se offende el senso
comune e la fantasia et in questo modo ueneno in cognitione li medici de li luochi de le dicte uirtu.
Facto questo tu leuarai el cerebro ligieramente chel non si rompa alcuno neruo e comezarai da la parte di nanzi &
incontinenti te apparerano doe carne picole in modo de doi capi de mamille simile ala sustantia de cerebro per che
nascono da quello et sono coperte dal paniculo subtile cio e da la pia matre e queste sono lorgano de lo oderato
doue e la uirtu olphatiua.
Dal cerebro nascono septe para de nerui: procedi adoncha piu oltra ne la parte dinanci e uederai el primo paro de
dicti nerui liquali sono grandi chiamasi nerui obtitii de li quali la origine e dal cerebro ne li uentriculi anteriori e
procedeno uerso li ochii ma nanci che escano la pia matre se coniongeno [folio 9 verso] et in luocho de la sua
unione sono perforati: Uolse Galieno che dicti nerui solo se coniongeseno o uero se unisseno e non se incrutiasseno
ma quello neruo che uiene dala parte drita da poi la unione ritorna pure dala parte drita et similiter quello che uiene
da la parte sinestra da poi la unione ritorna uerso lochio sinistro: Ma Rasis uolse el contrario benche la opinione de
Galieno sia piu comune: questi nerui deserueno al uedere e fu necessario che se uniseno acio che le spetie de la
cosa che se uede receuuta in doi ochii e portata per doi nerui ritorni a unita acio che una cosa non appara doe.
Dapoi li dicti nerui leua el cerebro secondo la sua medieta e uederai uno altro pare de nerui subtili et duri li quali
uengono similiter a li ochii a darli el mouimento uoluntario componendo certi musculi.
Da poi tu uederai el terzo pare de nerui di quali una parte se ne ua ala faza a darli el sentire e el mouere uoluntario
et anche una parte de quisti ua a dare el gusto a la lengua: Un altra parte de dicti nerui se mescola insieme cum el
quarto 218 pare de nerui et descendeno insieme gioso a dare sentimento al Diafragma et al stomaco et alaltre
uiscera: Una certa parte de li nerui del quarto 218 pare se ne ua a dare el sentimento al palato.
Da poi e el quinto pare de nerui se ne ua a li ossi petrosi liquali sono apresso [folio 10 recto] le orechie e de questi
nerui ne li buchi de lorechie se componeno certi panniculi liquali sono organo de lo audire.
Da poi e el sexto pare de nerui che se diuide in tre parte una parte ua ali musculi de la gola: Laltra parte ua ali
musculi de le spalle la terza parte che e magiore de le altre descende gio a lo epyglotto e nel diafragma se sparge
nel pecto nel core e nel polmone a compagnandosi insieme cum li nerui del terzo pare dicti: Et anche da li nerui di
questo sexto pare quali uadeno gio a lo epyglotto se generano li nerui de la uoce chiamati reuersiui dili quali piu
disotto se uedera.
Dapoi e el septimo pare de nerui ha origine da la parte posteriore del cerebro e uadeno a dare el mouimento a la
lingua uoluntario: De questi septe para de nerui li primi doi pari hano origine da la anteriore parte del cerebro: el
terzo pare ha origine dal mezo de lanteriore e posteriore parte: li altri quatro para de nerui hano origine da la parte
posteriore.
E dapoi quisti procedendo piu oltre leua tuto el cerebro & apparera la octaua parte del capo cioe doi panniculi posti
sotto el cerebro li quali leuati apparerati la nona parte che e una certa rethe laquale se chiama rethe mirabile per che
e contexta de una tessetura fortissima et miraculosa multiplicata de certe artharie sutilissime: lequale sono [folio 10

verso] rami de alcune artharie che ascendeno dal core chiamate artharie apopletice: & in queste artharie di questa
rethe se contiene el spirito uitale mandate dal core acio che douenti animale: et acio che questo spirito meglio se
alterasse e disponesse fece la natura quelle artharie sutilissime diuise per minime parte acio che questo spirito fusse
diuiso anche in minime parte: et pose la natura questa rethe mirabile sotto el cerebro perche bisogno hauere de
molta custodia onde lo situo in luoco tutissimo et etiam acio che le humidita uaporese del cerebro che cadeno sopra
questa rethe opilandola inducesse el somno naturale.
Da poi tute queste cose uederai losso basilare che e la decima et ultima parte del capo e chiamasi basilare per che e
base e fondamento de tuto el capo e fu facto duro acio che le superfluita che descendono a lui non lo putrefesse: e
questo osso e diuiso in molti altri ossi como se puo uedere cociandelo. Onde se diuide ne le osse petrose e ne li ossi
del naso e ne le ossi de li ochii & in doi altri ossi laterali li quali non se possono uedere se non per uia de
decocione.

Capitulum tertium de anothomia oculorum et membrorum deseruientium uisui.
Le ossa del naso forno cauernose e porrose acio che le superfluita del cerebro possano meglio de [folio 11 recto]
scendere e lo odore ascendere.
Dapoi scinde tuti doi li ossi de gliochii e uederai la colligantia loro cum li nerui obtitii e cum li nerui motiui: e el
loco de li ochii non fu molto in profondo per che douca receuere le spetie de le cose uisibile: ne anche fu tropo
eminente acio non receuesse lesione da le cose exteriore: Et essendo li ochii molto molli e passibili ne lhuomo fece
la natura li supercilii acio fusseno custoditi da le cose che descendeno de su in gioso e fece le palpebre che fuseno
custoditi da le cose che uengono da fuora dentro: e fece le eminentie de le maxille et anche el naso in mezo che da
ogne lato e per ogne uerso fusseno custoditi: tanto fu la solicitudine che hebe la natura di questo membro.
Septe sono le tuniche e tri humori di liquali e composto lochio tre tuniche anteriore se coiongeno cum tre altre
posteriore como se fusseno sei scutelle che cum la bocha ogne doe se coniongesseno e che doe fussene magiore
che contineseno le altre doe e poi li e la septima tunica che e magiore de tute e contene tuto lochio: e pero se
chiama coniontiua per che congionge e circunda tuto lochio excepto el luocho de la pupilla e quello pocho de la
cornea che appare e questa e la prima tunicha comenzando da le parte de fuora et e biancha.
La seconda tunicha ne la parte dinanci se si chiama cornea, [folio 11 verso] per che se asomiglia al corno quanto
ala substantia e quanto al colore: e fu questa tunicha transparente acio che le spetie de le cose uisibile potesseno
penetrare per essa e fu etiam sollida e grossa composita de quatro pellicule e questo fu per che e propinqua a le
cose exteriore non receuesse nocumento da esse e cum questa tunicha ne la parte posteriore se conionge un altra
tunica dicta scliroticha cio e dura e queste doe tuniche hano origine dal paniculo di sotto el craneo cio e da la dura
matre cusi como la prima tunicha ha origine dal panniculo disopra el craneo dicto almochatim.
La quarta tunicha ne la parte dinanzi se chiama uuea a similitudine de uno grano de uua negra et in el mezo di
quella glie uno buco che se chiama la pupilla: fece la natura questa tunica obscura acio chel spirito uisiuo se
confortasse e che non si resoluesse dal lume exteriore: e fece quello buco in questa tunica acio che le spetie
potesseno penetrare senza impedimento e fecelo stretto acio chel spirito uisiue fusse unito: Onde quando dicta
pupilla o uero buco se alargha oltra el debito o per natura o per accidente se impedisse el uedere: e ne la parte de
drieto se li coniongne la quinta tunica dicta secundina per che e facta a similitudine de la secondina cio e paniculo
nel quale se inuoltano li putti nel uentre [folio 12 recto] de la matre et hano origine de la pia matre.
La sexta tunicha se chiama ne la parte dinanzi aranea per che e facta in modo de una tela de ragno a la quale ne la
parte posteriore se li coniongne la septima tunicha chiamata arethina per che e facta in modo de una rethe: et in
mezo de la tunicha uuea et de la aranea da la parte dinanzi glie uno humore dicto albugineo facto a similitudine de
uno albumo de ouo facto per humettare lochio et acio che la tunicha cornea stia suleuata impero in li homini che
moreno quando questo humore se desicca cade la cornea e se si spiana et a lhora dice el uulgo che appare una tela
dinanzi da gliochii et e signo infalibile de la morte: Et anche questo humore tiene la pupilla apperta impero quando
se sicca se stringe la pupilla: Nel meze de le due ultime tuniche cio e aranea et arethina lequale hano origine da
nerui obtitii li sono dui humuri cio e uno humore uitreo a similitudine de uno uetro liquefacto: Laltro humore e
dicto cristallino a similitudine del cristallo: dicto etiam grandineo a similitudine de una grandine et e alquanto duro
e rotondo cum una certa planitie ne la parte anteriore doue se receueno le spetie de le cose uisibile: e ne la parte

posteriore e de figura pyramidale cio e che e facta in ponta: et iue se conpisse [folio 12 verso] lacto del uedere: e ne
la parte posteriore e circumdato da lhumore uitreo dal quale se nutrisse: e questo humore cristalino declina piu
uerso la parte anteriore e lhumore uitreo uerso la parte posteriore. Et a li ochii uengono li nerui obtitii per li quali se
de portano le spetie uisibile da gliochii al senso comune et ali altri sensi interiori.

Capitulum quartum de anothomia aurium et membrorum deseruientium auditui.
Expedito questo tu uederai le orechie poste da doi lati del capo in mezo de lanteriore parte e posteriore acio che la
uoce o uero sono se potesse audire da ogne canto cio e da la parte drita e stancha dinanzi e de drieto de sopra e
disotto: non furno situate da la parte dinanzi per che iue li sono gliochii el gusto e lolphato: non furno poste de
drieto per che seriano state tropo distante dal senso comune: forno poste sotto la tonsura di capilli per che se piu
sopra fusene stato poste seriano state uelate da cepilli e da quelle cose che se portano in capo.
Furno le orechie rotonde acio fusseno piu capace de laere sonoro: non furno ossuose acio che per qualche
percussione o caso non se rompeseno: forno adoncha carthilaginose acio che fusseno piu sonore: non furno
etiamdio carnose ne paniculare per che non hauerebeno seruata la figura e compositione [folio 13 recto] debita.
Hebbe uno buco ritorto e non dritto como quello de le limache acio che se facesse megliore reuerberatione de laiere
sonoro in esse: et anche ne aiere disproportionato ne sono si tropo forte senza misura peruenisse a lorgano de
laudito: e questo buco e uelato de uno paniculo duro texuto de fili neruosi che hano origine dal quinto pare de nerui
del cerebro et de fili ligamentali che hano origine da losso petroso al quale se termina el dicto buco: ne la concauita
del quale li e el neruo auditiuo cio e nel quale se compisse laudito et e texuto in modo de uno panniculo: et e
continuo a la dura matre nel quale se contiene uno certo spirito auditiuo dal principio de la generatione iue
complantato: et apresso di quello li e una certa uisichetta ne laquale e posto un certo aiere connaturale el quale
deserue a laudito.

Capitulum quintum de anothomia nasi et aliorum membrorum deseruientium olphatui.
Le osse de le maxille comenzano da la comissura che e tra el craneo e losso basilare in luocho che e ne la fine del
sopracilio e de la fronte et procede uerso la parte posteriore a presso losso petroso doue se termina lorechia e
terminano ne la parte di sotto a li denti: de liquali poi uederemo la nothomia.
El naso e composito de doi ossi figurati [folio 13 verso] secondo la forma de doi trianguli che hano le ponte in su
uerso el collatorio: et sono lati ne la parte de sotto. Onde el naso e piu largo di sotto che di sopra e queste ossa
furno sutile acio che fusseno ligiere e non graue: ne anche furno tropo dure per che non li bisognaua in quello
luocho grande forteza.
Fu etiam el naso composto de tre carthilagine cio e doe ne lextremita de doi ossi acio che le parte molle cio e la
cute e li musculi inmediate non fusseno tochi da le osse dure e che le nare stesseno aperte e se potesseno dilatare e
constringere secondo la neccessita de laiere atrato & expulso e questo non se harebe potuto fare se solo fusse stato
ossuoso.
La terza carthilagine diuide el naso per mezo per el longo et e piu dura ne la parte superiore che ne la inferiore:
Onde furno facti doi meati e buchi acio che uscendo le superfluita per uno laltro deseruisse a laiere atrahato et
expulso: Onde essendo uno meato solo ne lexito de le superfluita harebbe impedito el transito de laiere: questi doe
meati peruengono al collatorio cio [e] uno buco che e ne losso basilare et similiter iue sono perforati li dui
panniculi che copriuano el cerebro per insino a le caronchole mamillare: lequale sono ne lextremita de le due parte
del uentriculo anteriore del cerebro como e stato dicto.
El naso etiam fu composto de doi musculi [folio 14 recto] picoli acio che essendo grandi non impedisseno glialtri
musculi de la faza cio e quilli che sono ne le maxille che moueno i labri: et similiter glialtri musculi.
El naso fu composto per molte rasone: prima per euentare el cerebro: Secundo ad atrahere laiere: nel quale sono le
spetie de le cose odorabile: e cusi deserue a lolphato: Tertio acio che le littere prolate meglio se distinguano come
el buco grande de la fistola o uero zalamella deserue ala distinctione di soni: Quarto acio che per questo meato se
expurgaseno le superfluita del cerebro.

Capitulum sextum de anothomia oris palati dentium uuulae faucum et linguae.
Ne la bocha sono doi labri uno disotto e laltro si e disopra composti de nerui carne cute e panniculo de una mirabile
comixtione in modo che la cute e la carne e li nerui et el panniculo non se posseno seperare insieme: e questo fu
facto acio che hauendo bisogno quisti labri di mouerse per ognie uerso bisogno che fusseno cusi composti per che
non se posse fare in quello luocho musculi per la graueza grande che seria stata: el paniculo che copre i labri nasce
da la tunicha intrinsecha del meri cio e de la uia che ua a lo stomaco: et consequenter se continua per questo modo
cum la tunicha interiore del stomaco cusi como etiam dio tute le altre parte de la bocha se [folio 14 verso]
continuano acio chel sentimento del stomaco se conformi al sentimento de la bocha et per questo appare che
quando el de uenire uomito a qualche uno trema lo labro inferiore.
Da poi li labri sono trentadoi denti sedeci superiori et sedici inferiori: de li inferiori doi sono dicti duali: doi altri
incisiui: doi altri canini: quatro maxillari: et sei molari che sono in tuto sedici: & altratanti superiori. Forno facti li
denti: prima per masticare el cibo acio che meglio si digesta: secundo per la uoce et distinctione de la eloquela cusi
como furno facti li labri. Onde quilli che manchano de denti o de labri non proferiscono bene.
Da poi tu uederai el palato el quale ha una certa concauita ne la sumittade acio che la uoce habbia el suo tono: et
etiam chel cibo quando se masticha meglio si possa reuolgere per bocha:
Ne la fine del palato tu uederai una carne pendente in modo de uno grano duua: impero si chiama uuula: et e de
substantia rara e spongiosa per che fu facta principalmente a receuere la humidita che descende dal capo acio non
descenda a membri inferiori impero spesso se tumefa dicta uuula: fu facta etiamdio acio che temperasse et
modulasse la uoce refrangendo laiere che uiene dal polmone: et etiam che lo aiere atrahato al polmone lo ritenga al
quanto repercutiendolo acio che cusi frigido non peruenga al polmone [folio 15 recto] ma alquanto alterato: e per
questa rasone appare che quilli che hano tagliata la uuula sono molto catarosi impero comandano i medici che non
se taglie quando e apostomata: ma che se cauterige cum fuoco.
Dapoi la uuula sono le fauce: e sono li luochi ampli glandosi disposti a receuere le superfluitade del cerebro impero
facilmente se apostemano.
Dapoi e la lingua laquale e fabricata et ligata a losso posteriore del capo dicto lauda facto a modo de uno A per
abacho e fu composta di carne, panniculo, uene, artharie, et noue musculi: e forno facti tanti musculi in essa per
che se douea molto mouere per ogne uerso secondo el bisogno de la loquela: Et fu in essa piu uene artharie e nerui
che in qualoncha altro membro rispetto de la sua grandeza: et fu facta la lingua acio che fusse organo del gusto per
nerui che uengono dal terzo pare di nerui gia dicto circa la sua radice: et sono de due facta nerui che uengono a la
lingua cio e uno paro di nerui motiui a darli el moto: et uno altro paro di nerui sensitiui a darli el gusto: et tu
uederai che li nerui motiui piu se profondano ne la lingua per darli el mouere: et li nerui sensitiui sono piu expansi
ne la superficie: et nel suo panniculo a darli el gusto e el tacto: Fu etiam facto la lingua che deseruisse al proferire
de le parole: et etiam a reuolgere el cibo per bocha quando se masticha.
Circa [folio 15 verso] la radice de la lingua da ciascuno lato sono carne glandose facte acio che generasseno la
humidita saliuale che hauesse a humetare la lengua acio che non se siccase per tanti mouimenti che ha in se: et in
queste carne glandose sono dui buchi che poria intrare uno stile e per quilli buchi se distilla la humidita saliuale.
Sotto la lingua sono doe uene grande uiride da le quale poi procedeno piu altre uene.
Et nota che la megliore lingua quanto al deseruire al parlare e la lingua che e mediocre ne la longitudine e sua
latitudine cio e che non sia tropo longa ne tropo larga: e che apresso de la ponta et extremita sua exteriore sia sutile
per che la lingua che e longa larga e grossa o uero tropo picola non e conueniente al parlare.
Nota etiam che la lingua ha colligantia cum el cerebro mediante li nerui che uengono ad essa et cum el figato
mediante le uene: et cum el core mediante le artharie et cum el stomaco mediante el meri: et cum el polmono
mediante la cana de esso polmone: impero in ciascuna infirmita i signi de la lengua sono molti efficaci a iudicare di
tale infirmita: e quiue se finisse la anothomia del primo membro principale cio e [el] cerebro e del suo habitaculo.

Tractatus secundus de anothomia membrorum spiritualium et secundi membri
principalis: capitulum primum de anothomia gule et colli.

[folio 16 recto] Finito el primo membro principale e ueduta la anothomia del suo habitaculo e de le altre camare
deseruente a quello resta a uedere la anothomia di gli altri membri principali: E prima uederemo la nothomia del
collo e de la gola che e condutto e meato dal primo membro principale a glialtri. Diciamo adoncha che la gola si e
uno certo spatio nel quale sono doe uie una che mena el cibo al stomaco: e questa se chiama meri: Laltra uia mena
laiere al pulmone a rifrigerare el core: & etiam mena fuora laiere e uapori caldi da esso core: Onde se tu scarni el
collo e la gola tu uederai certi musculi longitudinali sopra liquali nota le uene da tuti doi li canti: et eleuati quilli
musculi tu uederai doe carne ala forma de doe mandole ne la radice de la lingua: una da ciascuno lato: de le quale
habiamo dicto parte disopra: et anche noi dicemo che sono como doe orechiette picole, e sono neruose acio [che]
siano forte et aiuteno a fare penetrare laiere a la canna del polmone: et etiam queste tale amigdale hano a
congregare una certa humidita per humettare la lingua como e stato dicto et per humetare etiam la canna del
polmone acio [che] non se dessiccasse: et anche acio che reimpisseno i luochi uacui de la gola: et anche acio che
fusseno scuto e tutella de le uene & artharie che ascendeno al capo: Onde per questo collo e gola passano le uene
dal figato ascendendo al cerebro a darli el nutrimento [folio 16 verso] per esso anche passano le artharie che
ascendeno dal core al cerebro a darli la uita: et acio chel spirito uitale per esse uada al rethe mirabile delquale e
stato dicto douenti animale e chiamase queste artharie apopletice per che quando se opillano generano la poplesia
cio e el male de la gozola prohibendo el transito del spirito. Per questo etiam collo passano i nerui che descendeno
dal capo ai membri inferiore a darli el sentire et el mouere: e tute queste parte potrai uedere escarnando e tagliando
el collo e la gola per lo longo.

Capitulum secundum de anothomia pulmonis et tracheae artharie; id est cane
pulmonis.
Vediamo hora la anothomia del core el quale e laltro membro principale: e del suo domicilio nel quale e anche
collocato el polmone como quello che serue ad esso core.
Volse Aristotile chel core fusse el primo principio e cagione de tute le operatione del corpo: e che fusse principio
del sentire e del mouere e del nutrire e del uiuere e che li era solo uno membro principale: e che el cerebro e el
figato erano suoi ministri: ma questo non piaque a Galieno ne a li altri medici liquali per hora noi seguitemo.
El domicilio adoncha del core si e el luocho del pecto circundato da le coste dala parte dinanzi e da la parte de
drieto [folio 17 recto] da uno certo panniculo chiamato mediastino e da la parte di sopra el comenza dal principio
de la canna del polmone et terminase ale parte di sotto a uno paniculo chiamato diafragma. Comentiamo aduncha
ala parte disopra cio e dal principio de la canna del polmone e diciamo che el meri cio e la uia del cibo et la trachea
artharia cioe la canna del polmone che e uia de lo hanelito comentiano in uno medesimo luocho: Et impero fece la
natura uno coopertorio al principio de la canna del polmone de una carne carthilaginosa e panniculosa anexa al
palato sotto luuula e questa carne copre lorificio de essa canna del polmone el quale orificio si chiama epiglotto:
acio che ne lhora del transglutire niente del cibo e del poto descendesce a la uia del polmone per che indurebbe
suffocatione: Impero aduiene che se uno ridendo transglutisse qualche cosa ua al polmone et appare che lhuomo se
soffochi per che ne lhora del ridere se apre lo epiglotto: Lieua adoncha el meri da la trachea artharia acio che tu
uidi la compositione sua: ma sapii che el meri e la trachea facilmente se seperano per insino al epyglotto cio e al
orificio de essa trachea ma circa lo epyglotto cum dificulta se seperano per che la tunica del meri si e dispersa ne lo
epyglotto: e questo fece la natura sagacemente acio che ne lhora del transglutire del cibo quando [folio 17 verso] el
meri se lieua uerso la bocha ad atrahere el cibo anche lo epyglotto se lieua acio che remanendo gioso per la sua
dureza non impedisse el transito del cibo.
La trachea artharia o uero canna del polmone e composita de anuli carthilaginosi e panniculosi e de ligamenti che
continuano quilli anuli insieme facta da la natura a transportare laiere al polmone per auentare el core: & a
transportare fuora i uapori caldi da esso et etiam fu facta a formare la uoce ne la sua extremita cio e ne lo epyglotto:
Questa canna bisogno che fusse carthilaginosa et alquanto dura et non pelliculare e molle perche bisognaua stare
aperta essendo uia de laiere: e non fu etiam ossuosa per che douea essere flexibile per la formatione de la uoce: et
anche se fusse ossuosa impediria el transito del cibo per el meri quando fusse tropo: Et per questa ragione la
carthilagine di questa canna non fu una ma furno piu continuate per certe pellicole insieme: e queste sono facte
como certi semicirculi in modo de uno C per che se fusse una carthilagine seria dura e comprimirebbe el meri et
impediria el transito del cibo. Onde questa cana ne la parte anteriore e carthilaginosa per che uerso quella parte non

tocha el meri et anche acio che sia piu difesa da le cose exteriore ma uerso la parte posteriore e pelliculare per
insino a lo epyglotto: La quale poi tuta e carthilaginosa [folio 18 recto] per la ragione dicta: e questa canna del
pulmone non descende se non insino a la furcula sotto laquale e incontinenti situato el pulmone: et el sito de essa e
ne la parte dinanzi: et dritamente procede e non storta acio che laiere habbia piu libero ingresso: et lo epyglotto che
e principio di questa canna si e tuto carthilaginoso acio che sia piu sonoro: et e apresso la bocha acio che sia
instrumento dela uoce: laquale poi ne la bocha douenta locutione per che la uoce finalmente ne lhuomo se ordina al
parlare. Questo epyglotto e composto de tre carthilagine e uinti musculi: Una carthilagine si e ne la parte anteriore
e chiamasi clipeale a modo de uno capello: Laltra si e ne la parte posteriore uerso el meri e questa non ha nome: La
terza si e in mezo di queste doe et in essa e una lenguetta in modo de una lingua de zalamella e chiamasi questa
carthilagine fistula de lo epyglotto per che como la fistula se ordina nel sono cusi questa carthilagine si e ordinata
al canto e la melodia: Questo epyglotto etiam e composto de uinti musculi a dare el moto uoluntario secondo el
bisogno de formare la uoce: e dodeci di quisti sono da la parte di dentro e octo dala parte de fuori et a quisti
musculi uengono dui nerui che hano origine dal sexto pare de nerui del cerebro dicti: di quali una parte descende
per insino al core e poi comenza a reascendere per insino a lo epyglotto impero [folio 18 verso] sono dicti nerui
reuersiui li quali sono nerui de la uoce e quando sono alo epyglotto se spargeno inquisti uinti musculi a darli el
sentire e el mouere. Questi nerui forno reuersiui e non directi per molte cagione: prima acio [che] fusseno piu forti
per che quanto el neruo e piu remoto dal cerebro tanto e piu sicco e forte: La seconda acio [che] fuseno facti a
modo de uno freno da cauallo acio chel cerebro meglio mouesse lo epyglotto secondo lo imperio de la sua uolunta
mediante questi nerui como lhuomo moue el cauallo al suo libito mediante el freno: La terza cagione e per che la
uoce non solo depende dal cerebro como dal principio del moto uoluntario ma etiam depende dal core como da
quello nel quale se formano i concepti del cerebro et consequenter i concepti de la uoce: bisogno adoncha che dicti
nerui comunicasseno al core: La quarta cagione e per che quisti nerui douendo uegnire ali musculi predicti bisogno
che uigniseno al principio de dicti musculi e non a la fine: et el principio di quisti musculi de lo epyglotto e ne la
parte inferiore.
Da poi la trachea artharia tu uederai el pulmone ala compositione del quale concorreno piu parte ramificate como
fili sutili ad ordire la sua substantia: La prima parte che entra ne la substantia del polmone si e la trachea artharia
laquale [folio 19 recto] como gionge a la furcula del pecto se diuide in doe parte: una ua al dritto e laltra al sinistro
del pulmone e ciascuna di quelle se diuide in doe altre parte cio e superiore et inferiore: e ciascuno de quilli rami:
se diuide etiam in rami minori e cusi diuidendosi peruengono a rami minimi como fili e circundano tuta la
substantia del pulmone. Una altra parte che ordisse la substantia del pulmone si e una certa uena che ha origine dal
uentriculo dritto del core laquale porta el sangue sutile dal core a nutrire el pulmone: e chiamasi uena arthariale
Vena per che non pichia arthariale per che e composta de doe tuniche como sono le artharie: e questa uena se
ramifica ne la substantia del pulmone como la trachea artaria.
La terza parte che compone el pulmone si e una certa artharia che nasce dal sinistro uentriculo del core dicta
artharia uenale: Artharia per che pichia Venale per che e composta de una tunica como le altre uene et per questa
artharia se transporta dal pulmone al core laiere che uiene da la trachea artharia a refrigerare esso core: Et
perquesta artharia etiam se manda dal core al pulmone laiere e uapori caldi e dal polmone poi escono fuori per essa
trachea e questa artharia similiter se ramifica como le altre doe parte predicte: Onde li rami de la trachea [folio 19
verso] e de lartharia uenale e uena arthariale compongono tuto el pulmone in modo de una rethe: et i buchi de
questa rethe reimpisse una certe carne molle spongiosa laquale proprio e substantia de esso pulmone: Et tute queste
quatro parte predicte sono inuolute da uno certo panniculo che ha origine da uno panniculo che e sotto le coste
chiamato pleura del quale poi se dira per questo panniculo ha el pulmone el sentimento per che el pulmone non
sente secondo la sua substantia.
Et nota che li rami de la trachea artharia sono magiori che li rami de la uena arthariale, et de la artharia uenale per
che nascono da magiore troncho et etiam nota che el pulmone e magiore ne la parte dritta che ne la stancha per che
dal lato stancho glie el core che occupa quello luocho: Similiter e magiore ne la parte posteriore che ne la parte
anteriore: Questo membro sie como flabello del core a refrigerarlo et etiam a mondificarlo da li uapuri che
continue se generano in esso: impero e seruo e ministro del core.

Capitulum tertium de anothomia cordis quod est secundum membrum principale.

Dapoi te apparera el core nel mezo del pulmone cooperto da le sue penole acio che laiere atrahatto da esso
pulmone lo refrigere, e del suo caldo e spirito se tempri: Questo membro tra lialtri quatro e principalissimo per che
e el primo che ne la generatione [folio 20 recto] uiue et e lultimo che more. Questo membro e de mediocre quantita
per rispecto di li altri membri de lhuomo: ma per rispecti di li cori de lialtri animali e molto grande perche lhuomo
ha piu del caldo naturale che glialtri animali quantitatiue et non intensiue: Et e di figura pyramidale cio e de la
forma del fuocho per che esso e de excellente calidita impero bisogno che fusse de una figura che asomigliasse a la
figura del fuocho: e questa tale figura se chiama pigneale cio e simile ala figura de una pigna laquale e lata disotto
e strecta di sopra et di tale figura fu facto acio che meglio se facessono distinctione de le sue cellule o uentriculi: et
etiam se fusse stato de una figura tuta uniforme como e la parte disotto seria stato tropo graue e ponderoso. Questo
membro e situato nel mezo de tuto el corpo tolti uia glie extremi cio e nel mezo de le parte superiore et inferiore:
nel mezo de le parte dinanzi e de drieto, e nel mezo de la parte dritta e sinistra como uno re che sta nel mezo del
suo regname e questo fu facto acio [che] potesse equalmente dare la uirtu de la uita a tuti membri: E benche el core
sia quanto al suo fondamento et ala sua base nel mezo tamen secondo la sua ponta declina al lato stancho sotto la
mamilla sinistra acio che riscaldasse la parte sinistra como el figato riscalda la parte dritta: e questo [folio 20 verso]
membro se sustenta e ferma de uno certo osso cartilaginoso per che e in continuo mouimento: bisogno aduncha che
hauesse uno apogiamento alquale se fermasse nel suo mouimento: Et e etiam composto de una certa pinguedine ne
la parte exteriore acio che prohibisca chel core non se desichi tenendolo humectato: Et e composto di certe uene et
artharie disperse per la sua substantia: et e composto etiamdio de una certa carne dura per che haueua a sustignire
de molti e forti mouimenti: Et etiam fu composto de uili longitudinali latitudinali e transuersali per che bisognaua
che hauesse uirtu de atrahere retignire et expellere: E questo membro ha tri uentriculi o uero tre cellule como ha el
cerebro. Uno uentriculo e dal lato dritto e laltro dal lato stancho e el terzo e in mezo: el uentriculo dritto uerso el
figato: el quale ha doi orificii: uno e uerso el figato et e molto grande nel quale entra una uena chiamata uena chilis
laquale nasce dal gibbo del figato e porta el sangue dal figato al core: Et in questo uentriculo dextro del core se
puriffica quello sangue e cusi purificato poi lo manda el core a tuti li altri membri: e per che per questo orificio ha
el core piu ad atrahere che ad expellere impero ordino la natura che ne lhora de la constrictione quando de
expellere che questo orificio se chiudesse: e che [folio 21 recto] quando el core se dilatta se aprisse: Et iui sono tre
hostiolitti o uero usitti liquali se apreno da fuora adentro: e questi hostioli non sono molto depressi e per che per
questo medesimo orificio se expelle el sangue depurato aglialtri membri ma non tuto per che una parte ua al
polmone e de laltra parte se ne fa spirito uitale: impero ordino la natura che quisti hostioli non se chiudesseno in
tuto: E da questa uena chilis inanzi che entri la concauita del core nasce un altra uena laquale circunda la radice del
core e da quella nascono alcuni rami che se disparghono per la substantia del core: E del sangue de questa uena se
nutrisse esso core.
Uno altro orificio ha questo uentriculo destro uerso el pulmone nel quale entra la uena arthariale che porta el
sangue dal core a nutrire el pulmone: Et in questo orificio li sono etiam tri hostioli liquali se apreno de la parte
dentro a la parte difuori e se chiudeno da la parte difuori a la parte di dentro per el contrario di li hostioli de laltro
orificio: e questo e per che in tuto se chiudeno: Onde per questo orificio el core ne lhora de la constrictione solo ha
ad expellere: e ne lhora de la sua dilatatione non ha ad atrahere alcuna cosa como faceua nel primo orificio.
El uentriculo sinistro del core ha i lati piu densi e piu spissi che li lati o uero parieti del uentriculo dextro: e questo
[folio 21 verso] fu per tre ragione: La prima per che nel uentriculo dextro se de contenere el sangue el quale e
graue. E nel uentriculo sinistro se de continere el spirito el quale e molto ligiero: acio aduncha chel core non fusse
piu graue e ponderoso da una parte che da laltra bisogno recompensare in questo modo cio e che lo uentriculo
stancho hauesse piu groseza ne li suoi parieti che el dextro: La seconda cagione e che essendo el spirito piu suttile e
piu resolubile chal sangue bisogno adoncha che el suo habitaculo hauesse piu grosso e de megliore sponde: La
terza cagione si e per che el uentriculo sinistro e molto piu caldo cha el dextro per che iui se genera el spirito dal
sangue per una grande calidita che suttiglia quello sangue e la calidita meglio se conserua nel subiecto denso e
grosso:
Ne la concauita di questo uentriculo circa la sua radice li sono dui orificii: uno si e lorificio de una artharia
chiamata artharia adorti per che inmediate ha origine dal core e per che e principio de la origine de tute le altre: per
laquale artharia manda el core el spirito generato a tuti i membri: et etiam el sangue molto suttile insieme cum el
spirito e questo fa quando el core se constringe: Onde nel principio di questo orificio li sono tri hostioli liquali in

tuto se chiudeno da la parte difuori a quella dentro: e se se apreno da la parte dentro a la parte difuori e questo
[folio 22 recto] orificio e molto profundo.
Laltro orificio si e de lartharia uenale laquale transporta laiere dal polmone a refrigerare el core e transporta i
uapori caldi dal core al polmone como e stato dicto disopra: Et in questo orificio li sono doi hostioli che non se
chiudeno altuto: Et sono molto eleuati acio che se apogiono melglio a la sponda del core quando el manda el
spirito: Queste sono mirabile opere de la natura como anche mirabile opera fu nel uentriculo mezo del core per che
questo uentriculo non ha una concauita ma piu lequale sono picole ma larghe e piu nela drita parte che la sinistra: E
questo fece la natura acio chel sangue che ua dal drito uentriculo al sinistro per conuertersi in spirito continuamente
se uegna suttigliando per quelle concauita.
Et per questo tu poi uedere che dal core nascono quatro cose cio e lartharia chiamata adhorti: Laltra si e la uena
chilis: la terza si e la uena arthariale: e la quarta si e artharia uenale.
Anche uederai nel core certe parte pelliculare & in modo de auricule o uero orechiette apte a dillatarsi e
constringersi facte da la natura acio che quando nel core se genera molto sangue o molto spirito se potesse el core
dilatare a contenire quello sangue o quello spirito multiplicato et anche se constrinza quando non glie tanta
habundantia di sangue o de spirito.
E qui adimanda Galieno [folio 22 verso] per che non fece la natura el core si grande che potesse continere ogne
multitudine di sangue e de spirito senza quilli adittamenti di quelle pellicule. Risponde Galieno che questo fu:
prima perche el core seria stato tropo grande: et consequenter tropo ponderoso: Secundario per che non se
generando sempre molta quantita de sangue o de spirito sel core fusse stato tropo grande per la piu parte de le uolte
la concauita del core seria stata uacua: ma queste tale auricule se dillatano ne lo aduenimento del sangue o del
spirito e cusi se stringono ne la paucita soa.
Questo core e circumdato da uno panniculo duro neruoso o uero pelliculare facto in modo de una cassetta nel quale
e posto el core como in uno suo tabernaculo a diffensarlo da le cose occurrente: Et e questa capsula molto dilatata
acio chel core ne la sua dillatatione e mouimento non fusse agrauato da essa: Et etiam fece la natura questa capsula
acio che continesse una certa aquosita rorida de laquale se bagnasse et humetasse el core acio che per el suo
continuo mouimento non se sichasse: Onde quando questa aqua che e ne la capsula del core sie desiccata etiam se
desicca esso cuore et consequenter se demacra e desicca tuto el corpo.

Capitulum quartum de anothomia trium panniculorum interiorum scilicet mediastine,
pleure, & diafragmatis.

[folio 23 recto] Tri sono li panniculi interiori diquesto domicilio del core: Uno che se chiama mediastino
che diuide la concauita del pecto per mezo cio e la parte dinanzi da la parte de drieto et consequenter
diuide el polmone per mezo: e questo panniculo non e neruoso ne anche e ueramente uno continuo como li
altri paniculi: e questo ha facto la natura per alcune utilita: prima acio che se una parte del polmone
receuesse nocumento di qualchi superflui humuri che se agregasseno in quella non peruegnisse el
nocumento e non regurgitasse quella materia a laltra parte; Secundario acio che tenesse suspeso e ligato el
polmone al pecto.
El secondo panniculo chiamato pleura e uno panniculo duro e neruoso e molto grande: el quale copre tute
le coste da la parte dentro: impero ha colligantia cum tuti li membri liquali se contengono ne la concauita
del pecto e questo panniculo fece la natura acio che cuprisse tuti quilli membri a sua tutela; et acio che li
paniculi dili membri tuti del pecto hauesseno principio et origine da quello.
El terzo panniculo se chiama Diafragma e da Aristotile e chiamato diazona per che e como una cintura che
cinge per mezo: Questo panniculo e musculoso cio e carnoso e neruoso et e situato ne la fine del pecto e de
le coste e ne la parte dinanzi quanto a la parte sua [folio 23 verso] carnosa e continuato cum le carthilagine
de le coste mendose, e ne la parte posteriore e continuato cum la duodecima spondile doue sono le rene:
De le coste e di li spondili poi noi diremo.
La utilita de questo panniculo prima fu acio chel seperasse li membri spirituali da li membri naturali cio e
el secondo domicilio dal terzo acio che li fumi leuati da le feze non peruegniseno a li membri spirituali:
Secundario per che ha a mouere el pulmone al mouimento de lo hanelito: e questo panniculo benche
cingha per mezo oblique tamen et non ex directo: e la cagione di questa obliquita sie che da questo
panniculo insieme cum el myrach del quale poi noi diremo se comprimino le feze che sono ne lintestini ne
lhora de la egestione como se fusseno tra doe asse de uno torchio: E quanto a la parte meza di questo
panniculo laquale e neruosa e panniculosa e colligato cum el pulmone per darli el mouimento como e stato
dicto mediante i nerui quali uengono ad esso dal cerebro e da la nucha e per questo appare la cagione de la
diuersita de el Diafragma e de li altri musculi per che li altri musculi nel luocho doue se congiongeno cum
el membro quale debeno mouere sono como corde e ne li altri luochi sono carnosi per che sono facti
principaliter a mouere le osse: ma nel diafragma e tuto el contrario per che fu instituito principalmente
[folio 24 recto] a mouere el pulmone e non le ossa, e per questo appare chel diafragma sie rotondo cum
una certa longitudine e che la sua substantia e musculosa e cordosa e che le utilitade sue sono tre: Prima
acio che sia principio del moto de lo hanelito: Secundo acio che diuida tra membri spirituali e naturali:
Tertio acio che aiuti el mirach ad expellere le superfluita quale sono ne lintestini.

Capitulum quintum de anothomia pectoris seu toracis continentis membra
spiritualia.
Dicto di li membri che sono contenuti dentro dal pecto: poniamo adesso la anothomia de esso pecto: e
disopra habiamo dicto che glie uno paniculo chiamato pleura quale copre tute le coste da la parte di dentro:
Da poi quello panniculo tu uederai le ossa le quale sono di doe maniere cio e le coste e li spondili che sono
como sponde doue se apogiano le coste lequale sono dodece da ciascuno lato cio e septe uere e cinque
mendose: Le coste uere sono continuate cum li spondili a coprire et perficere el pecto: ma le mendose non:
et una costa non attinge laltra ne la extremita acio che meglio se possa dilatare e constringere el pecto: Li
spondili sono septe che se coniungono cum le septe coste uere mediante certe cartilagine lequale sono tra
luno e laltro: e da queste carthilagine cum le sue ossa [folio 24 verso] se compone uno membro chiamato
la furcula del pecto facta a modo de una furcula bifurchata; e ne la extremita sua li e una certa carthilagine
facta a modo de uno scuto a custodire la bocha del stomaco e chiamasi pomo granato: Da li lati de le coste
mendose sono certe carthilagine.

Da poi uenendo a le parte de fuora: sono alcuni musculi di li quali alcuni sono a dillatare el pecto e sono
dui musculi del Diafragma posti ne le parte inferiore del pecto: et hano a dillatare el Diafragma et
consequenter el pecto ne la parte inferiore doue e una grande spaciosita: Item li sono dui altri musculi
liquali sono nel collo et hano a dillatare la concauita superiore del pecto la quale e picola. Item sono altri
musculi ne la schina doue e la origine de le coste, e comenzano apresso la origine de la prima costa: Item
sono molti altri musculi picoli liquali cum difficulta se possono uedere ne la anothomia: e tuti quisti
musculi predicti sono solo a dillatare.
Alcuni altri musculi sono a dilatare e constringere e sono situati tra le coste perche tra ciascune doe coste li
sono doi musculi di liquali uno ha li uili latitudinali a dillatare, e laltro ha li uili transuersali a constringere.
Oltra questi musculi appare la pinguedine le mamille e la cute: La cute e la pinguedine e asai manifesta
[folio 25 recto] impero solo noi direme de la anothomia de le mamille e haueremo fornito la anothomia del
secondo domicilio e del secondo membro principale.

Capitulum sextum de anothomomia mamillarum et de utilitatibus earum.
La figura de le mamille si e in modo de una cucha rotonda per che bisognaua essere capace del sangue che
se ha a connetere in lacte e la figura rotonda e piu capace cha le altre: et etiam per che le mamille sono
como scuto del core impero doueano hauere una figura piu secura da li nocumenti: e questa tale figura e la
rotonda.
Le mamille hebbeno doi capi picoli acio che la creatura potesse suciare el lacte: E la substantia sua si e
certe carne glandose le quale de sua natura sono frigide acio che el sangue douenti biancho in esse e questo
non se fa senon per infrigidatione del dicto sangue.
La quantita de le mamille ne la dona e magiore che nel maschio per che bisognaua generare el lacte ne la
dona e non nel maschio. Et etiam essendo la femina piu frigida chel maschio bisogno essere magiore le
mamille in esse acio che facesseno magiore reuerberatione del caldo al core et per questa reuerberatione lo
fortifficaseno.
Le mamille ne lhuomo forno facte due como in tuti li altri animali che generano una o doe creature: ma ne
[folio 25 verso] glialtri animali che generano piu figlioli sono facte piu mamille.
Ne lhuomo forno situate nel pecto e ne li altri animali nel uentre: e questo fu per molte casone: La prima
secondo Galieno e chel sangue del quale se genera el lacte deba essere ben digesto impero bisogno essere
propinque al core ne lhuomo per la cui calidita quello sangue fusse meglio digesto: ma ne li altri animali
molta quantita de tale sangue superfluo ua a conuertirse in corni o in altri membri.
La seconda cagione asegna Aristotile che li altri animali hano le gambe dinanzi molto strette et impero
hano el pecto molto stretto: ma ne lhuomo el pecto e amplo: onde non potete la natura situare le mamille
ne glialtri animali como ne lhuomo.
La terza cagione si e chel core de lhuomo hebbe bisogno de essere piu deffensato che el core de li altri
animali li quali li hano pili disopra impero fece la natura le mamille como defensaculo ne lhuomo che non
ha pili inquelle parte.
Le mamille hano colligantia cum el core e cum el figato per una certa uena che ascende dal figato ad esse
mamille: ha etiam dio colligantia cum la matrice mediante certe uene che uengono da la matrice ad esse e
procedeno quelle uene tortuose acio che continuamente se asuttiglie el sangue e meglio se digesta a
conuertirse in lacte.

[folio 26 recto] Tractatus tertius de anothomia tertii membri principalis scilicet
epatis et eidem deseruientibus: capitulum primum de anothomia stomaci.

Veduto de doi membri principali et di li suoi ministri et etiam de li suoi domicilii vediamo mo la
anothomia do doi altri membri principali cio e figato e testiculi et di li membri che sono suoi ministri et
etiam de li suoi domicilii: E noi determinaremo de tuti dui quisti inquesto tractato per che li membri che
deserueno a la generatione non hanno distincto domicilio da li membri nutritiui: E questo domicilio
comenza dal pomo granato che copre la bocha del stomaco del quale habiamo dicto e dura per insino al
petenechio inclusiue includendoli la uirga e li testiculi: et questo e quanto per lo longo, ma quanto per el
largo dura da uno fiancho a laltro e per el profondo dura da la cute de lombelico che copre el corpo dinanzi
dale coste ingioso per insino a laschina de drieto:
Inquesto domicilio li sono contenuti di molti membri cio e stomaco, intestini, figato, fele, milza misinterii,
girbo, rognoni, vesica, testiculi, vasi spermatici, matrice ne la femina, e la uirga ne lhuomo de liquali
membri solo dui sono principali cio e el figato et li testiculi secondo Galieno, o uasi spermatici secondo
Aristotile.
Noi adoncha sequitaremo secondo el nostro ordine consueto comentiando a li membri superiori e
descendendo a linferiori. Comentiaremo [folio 26 verso] adoncha dal stomaco e dal meri che e uia del cibo
ad esso stomaco, E noi habiamo dicto di sopra che como la cana del pulmone era conducto de laiere cusi el
meri era conducto del cibo e del poto: E che la bocha de la cana del pulmone e la bocha del meri erano
congionte insieme per la rasone iue dicta.
La sustantia di questo meri sie pelliculare e molle como la cana del pulmone e pelliculare e carthilaginosa
e bisogno chel meri fusse molle acio potesse dilatarsi quando lhuomo piglia tropo cibo, et anche questo
meri non sta aperta como fa la cana del pulmone ma per la sua mollitie una parte cade sopra laltra.
La subatantia del meri e composta de doe tuniche una intrinsecha che ha certi uili o neruetti longitudinale
che sono facti ad atrahere el cibo: e laltra sie exteriore lie laquale sono uili latitudinali facti ad expellere
quello che e stato atratto da la tunicha interiore: benche la prima tunicha sie piu principale che la seconda.
La quantita del meri e magiore che non e la quantita de la cana del pulmone per che el meri ua piu longo
che non fa essa cana: Onde el meri ua per insino al diafragma e desotto da esso se continua cum la bocha
del stomaco onde el stomaco e incontinenti sotto el diafragma: Et anche el meri e magiore in largheza per
che hauea a passare per esso cosa piu grosa che non e [folio 27 recto] laiere.
Questo etiam Meri e posto piu nel profondo uerso le parte posteriore cio e uerso la schina doue ua a
ritrouare la bocha del stomaco laquale bocha e uerso le parte posteriore: per che la bocha del stomaco e
ligata ala schina ex directo in el principio de la sua ligatura cio e a la decima terza spondile sotto el
diafragma: el quele se termina ala duodecima spondile e poi consequenter procede el stomaco aligandosi
ali spondili de le rene.
Questo stomaco sie cella del cibo et e quasi in mezo de tuto el corpo como e stato dicto del core: per che
essendo como lauezo doue se ha a cocere el cibo bisogno essere in mezo acio chel receuesse calore da tute
le parte e da tuti li membri circumstanti: et non fu posto el stomaco apresso de la bocha per la rasone dicta:
Tu uederai adoncha el stomaco hauere sopra si el core e el diafragma e desotto el misinterio e lintestini: da
la parte dritta el figato el quale lo abraza cum cinque sue penole: da la parte sinistra la milza laquale li
rende calore mediante le sue artharie: da la parte dinanzi ha una rethe chiamata el Girbo: da la parte de
drieto li musculi de la schina e una uena grande e una artharia che passa per la schina como poi se uedera:
da tuti quisti membri receue calore el stomaco acio che coza bene el cibo.
E ben chel stomaco sia situato sopra de la Schina niente di meno la parte sua superiore declina al [folio 27
verso] lato stancho, e la parte inferiore al lato drito: e questo fu per che ne la parte dritta li e el figato molto
eleuato ne le parte superiore, e la milza ne la parte stancha e piu de pressa: impero la parte superiore del
stomaco non se potete locare ne la parte dritta per che el figato occupaua quello luocho ma ben se potete
locare ne la sinistra cio e disopra dala milza doue li era uacuita. Item per che disotto dal figato li sono

glintestini suttili e gracili liquali occupano pocho luocho et iue remane una grande concanita impero fu
locata la parte inferiore del stomaco iue a reimpire quella concauita: Et per che etiam ne la parte stancha
disotto da la milza apresse de le rene glie uno intestino molto grosso chiamato colon el quale occupa uno
grande luocho impero non se potete locare dicta parte inferiore nel lato stancho.
Una altra cagione per laquale el stomaco non fu posto a presso de la bocha e perche apresso de la bocha
bisognorno essere i membri de lo hanelito ad atrahere laiere: Et anche per che el bisognaua che glintestini
fusseno continuati cum el stomaco, e bisognaua che glintestini fusseno disotto dal diafragma.
Et per questo appare che per molte cagione el stomac non fu locate per el dritto ma per lo storto e per lo
obliquo: la prima si e gia dicta acio reimpisse la uacuita de la parte dritta e stancha: La seconda per che
essendo lhuomo de statura dritta non retigniria bene el cibo [folio 28 recto] ma subito uscirebe fuori per la
bocha disotto: La terza cagione per che bisognaua chel stomaco receuesse da la milza quanto a la bocha
superiore lhumore melenconico a darli lapetito: et quanto a la bocha disotto bisono che receuesse lhumore
collerico dal figato: et impero bisogno che la bocha superiore del stomaco fusse dal lato stanco doue e la
milza e la bocha inferiore fusse dal lato dritto doue e el figato.
E per questo appare chel stomaco ha colligantia cum la milza per certe nene che portano lhumore
melenconico ad esso: et ha similiter colligantia cum el figato per molte altre uene che li portano el
nutrimento dal figato: et ha colligantia cum el core mediante una grande artharia che e posta sotto esso: et
ha colligantia cum el cerebro mediante uno certo neruo el quale ua ala bocha del stomaco et iue se sparge e
diuidese circa la superiore parte de esso stomaco.
La figura del stomaco fu rotonda acio che fusse piu tuta da li nocumenti extrinseci et acio anche che fusse
piu capace per che bisognaua continere di molto cibo: Ma non fu perfectamente rotonda per la rasone dicta
per che bisognaua che una parte declinasse al lato dritto e laltra al lato stanco impero e di figura arcuale in
modo de una cucha ritorta e fu molto grande el stomaco acio potesse receuere grande quantita de cibo.
El stomaco e composto de due tuniche: Una interiore laquale e neruosa e laltra [folio 28 verso] exteriore e
carnosa: Et la prima tunica neruosa e piu grossa e spessa che la seconda per che hauea a tochare el cibo
acio che non receuesse nocumento da esso e per che se potesse dilatare e constringere secondo el bisogno
de la quantita del cibo: ma la tunicha exteriore fu piu suttile onde e da notare che la tunicha interiore
bisogno essere neruosa per molte rasone: prima per che in essa & de essere lapetito e el sentimento e non e
dubio che meglio se sente la cosa quando senza mezo ocorre al sentimento: ma la exteriore fu carnosa
facta a digerire et alterare el cibo: la alteratione e digestione se puo ben fare per mezo e non occorrendo in
mediate a la cosa: Questa tunicha adoncha exteriore e piu suttile che la interiore per che e aiutata dai
membri circumstanti a digerere: non bisogno essere adoncha tropo grossa.
La tunicha interiore e deputata ad atrahere el cibo et a retignirlo debito tempo per insino che se digestisse:
impero ha alcuni uili longitudinali ne la superficie interiore mediante li quali atrahe a se el cibo: e ne la
superficie exteriore ha alcuni uili transuersali per liquali ritiene el cibo: Et la tunicha exteriore ha a digerire
el cibo et consequenter ha ad expelerlo quando e digesto: impero in essa certi uili latitudinali sono posti
per liquali ha ad expellere el cibo digesto:
La bocha del stomaco superiore e piu lata che non e la inferiore per che [folio 29 recto] per la bocha
disopra hauea intrare el cibo grosso indigesto e per la bocha disotto hauea uscire el cibo suttile e digesto: E
quisti doi orificii non sono facti molto eminenti ma la parte inferiore del stomaco e piu disotto che la bocha
inferiore acio chel cibo se retegna et similiter la parte superiore del stomaco e piu eminente e piu insuso
che non e la bocha superiore acio che essendo el stomaco pieno de cibo inclinandosi lhuomo cum la bocha
in giu non ritornasse el cibo fuora.
Doe adoncha sono le utilita del stomaco: Una ad appetere el cibo necessario per tuto el corpo: e questo fa
per la tunicha neruosa interiore e laltra e a digerere el cibo e questo fa per la tunica exteriore carnosa.

Capitulum secundum tractatus tertii de anothomia intestinorum et misinterii.
Dapoi il stomaco li sequitano glintestini li quali sono sei reuoluti cioe tri suttili e tri grossi et non fu ne
lhuomo uno solo intestino recto ma furno piu e circumuoluti acio chel cibo longo tempo se continesse nel
stomaco et intestini per che se cusi non fusse bisogneria che lhuomo fusse in continua asumptione de cibo,
et in continua egestione e seria stato lhuomo molto occupato in tale uile operatione: Et anche sel fusse
stato uno solo intestino recto non seria stato tuto el cibo da ciascuna parte de lo [folio 29 verso] intestino
toco et consequenter non seria stato exsiccata tuta lhumiditade del cibo: Acio adoncha tuta la humidita del
cibo sia desiccata et atratta al figato e che niente o pocha non rimanga ne le feze: Furno facti piu intestini
circumuoluti: El primo adoncha intestino e chiamato duodeno et e suttile e chiamasi duodeno perche e
longo quanto e dodice uolte el dito grosso di quello tale: Et in questo intestino li entra el cibo como e
digesto nel stomaco per la bocha de sotto de esso stomaco chiamata portonaria o uero pylerum cum la
quale se continua questo intestino duodeno. Digesto andoncha el cibo nel stomaco se apre questo
portonario e manda la uirtu expulsiua del stomaco questo tale cibo ne lo intestino duodeno: A questo
intestino ua uno canale o uero condutto dal fele per el quale se porta la collera ad esso intestino. Da poi
questo intestino li sequitan uno altro intestino suttile chiamato ieiuno perche e la piu parte del tempo uacuo
per doe ragione: Prima per che e dritto e non inuoluto: La seconda per che una grande multitudine de
collera pura uiene ad esso per quello medesimo condutto che ua al duodeno: e questa collera mordica lo
intestino e fa descendere gioso el cibo.
Dapoi sequita el terzo intestino suttile chiamato ileon per che e situato circa gli ilii id est li fianchi: Onde in
questo intestino glie uiene el dolore iliaco cio e dolore de fianco e questo [folio 30 recto] intestino hebbe
molte inuolutione, et anche ad esso peruengono de molte uene picole dal figato chiamate mesaraiche: E
questo fece la natura acio che el figato atrahesse la humorosita dal cibo per quelle uene, onde a questo
intestino li peruengono piu uene mesaraiche che nesuno di li altri.
Dapoi questi tri intestini sutili sucedeno li grossi: E questo fu facto per che quanto el cibo uiene piu
descendendo tanto piu douentano dure le feze e piu grosse impero bisogno che glintestini inferiori fusseno
piu ampli che li superiori.
El primo adoncha intestino grosso che sequita ali suttili si e chiamato monoculo, non per che habia solo
uno oreficio per che questo seria impossibile anzi ne ha doi como li altri uno per elquale atrahe el cibo e
laltro per elquale expelle: ma per che quisti doi oreficii inquesto intestino sono uno a presso de laltro como
coiuncti e non dispartiti como ne glialtri impere appare hauere solo uno oreficio, onde per questo
monoculo e chiamato: Et anche chiamato sacco per che pende la sua concauita como un sacco stando li
suoi orificii de sopra: Questo intestino e situato ne la parte dritta apresso lancha e disotto dal rognone
dritto. E fu facto acio che retinesse el cibo ançi lo reuerberase a li intestini superiori e prohibisse che non
descendesse acio che in quilli intestini se esuccasse dal figato la sua humidita como e stato dicto.
Da poi questo intestino sequita laltro grosso [folio 30 verso] chiamato colon per che ha piu colli o uero
cellule ne lequale el stercho recceue la sua forma.
Questo intestino ha de molte inuolutione circa el rognon stancho e poi ascende e copre la milza e poi se
declina a la parte dritta uendo piu uerso le parte exteriore e copre el stomaco.
E per questo appare la cagione per che fu locato sopra del stomaco e de sopra tuti li altri intestini: questo fu
per che era piu ignobile de lialtri, e como membro piu ignobile fu posto uerso le parte exteriore et anche
per che le feze se indurano in esso acio che hauesse qualche humidita dal girbo del quale poi noi
uederemo. Laltra cagione de cio e che essendo questo intestino facto a continere et expellere le feze ma piu
ad expelere impero bisognaua ad esso uenire piu collera che hauesse a stimulare la uirtu expulsiua piu che
ne glialtri: impero sopra di quello ne la parte dritta una penula del figato doue e alligata la cesta del fele

como appare al sentimento: e questo fu che de sopra de questo intestini li peruenisse la collera oltra quella
che ua a la sua concauita como etiam ua a le concauita de glialtri intestini.
La substantia di questo intestino e grossa e sollida facta cusi per la uentosita grande che se genera in esso
laquale fa dolore fortissimo chiamato dolore collico: Et in questo intestino se generano certi uermi longi
[folio 31 recto] et altre manerie de uermi chiamati lombrici.
Da poi e lultimo intestino chiamato intestino dritto de el quale la extremita et oreficio inferiore se chiama
ano o uero culo: e uasene uerso el fiancho stancho doue poi comenza lo intestino colon predicto. In questo
intestino recto li sono una grande moltitudine de uene meserayce che uengono a sugare se qualche
humidita fusse rimasta ne le feze.
Quisti sono adoncha li sei intestini liquali sono alligati a la schina mediante uno certo membro chiamato
misinterio o uero intriglio quasi interiora tenens che non solo glintestini ma tute le uiscere sono alligate per
questo interiglio ala schina et impero questo membro fu composto de uene, corde, panniculi, e ligamenti
acio potesse ligare li predicti membri: Et e etiam e composto de una sustantia seposa e pingue acio che li
membri duri como sono li spondili non se congiongesseno senza mezo cum li membri molli cio e cum li
intestini e le altre uiscere acio che el molle non receuesse nocumento dal duro. Le altre uacuita di questo
membro sono reimpite de certe sustantie glandose, facte etiam acio che sustentino le uene meseraiche che
sono disperse in questo membro: et forse che sono facte etiam a generare la humidita che humetti la feze
de glintestini acio che piu tosto lubrichi: et impero uedemo che mangiando cibi duri [folio 31 verso] niente
dimeno quello che nesce per egestione e liquido.

Capitulum tertium de anothomia epatis quod est tertium membrum principale:
et de uenis orientibus ab eo.
Vediamo mo del terzo membro principale situato in questo palazo et e el figato alquale deseueno tuti li altri
membri che sono posti quiue. El figato naturalmente e situato sotto el diafragma et non sotto le coste uere,
ma una parte de esso sta sotto le parte mendose: benche ne lhuomo morto appara essere locato tuto sotto le
coste, e questo e per che li membri spirituali ne lhumo morto sono molto anihilati et el figato ua a reimpire
le uacuita derelicte: impero quando tu fai la anothomia tu dei eleuare el corpo morte e tirare in gioso el
figato acio chel uada al suo luocho naturale.
La quantita del figato fu molto granda ne lhuomo per che e molto sanguineo e de natura calda e humida.
El figato sie composto de certe uene diuise e disperse in modo de una rethe et le uacuita sue reimpisse una
certa carne rossa che e como sangue coagulato: Et per queste uene se si sparze el cibo digesto nel stomaco
chiamato chile cio facto in modo de suco dorzo che cusi douenta nel stomaco, e questo fu facto acio che se
diuidesse in parte picole che tuto el figato potesse tochare tuto quello chilo acio che meglio lo conuertisse
in sangue: Ma nel stomaco non sono tal uene done se hauesse a receuere el cibo ma solo [folio 32 recto] li
fece una concauita per che li cibi che se pigliano sono molto grossi che non harebono potuto penetrare per
dicte uene. Questa decocione che se fa nel figato a conuertere el chile in sangue piu se compisse ne la parte
superiore: et impero quella parte e piu solida e dura: Hebbe el figato cinque penule benche ne lhuomo non
siano sempre diuise che se possano uedere.
Questo figato ha doe parte cio e la parte gibosa e la parte concaua, et ha colligantia cum el core per una
certa uena che nasce dal suo gibo e uasene al core, et e chiamata uena chilis: Et etiam ha colligantia cum el
diafragma alquale sta suspenso. Et similiter a li spondili de la schina ala quale e alligato mediante un certo
paniculo: Onde ha dui panniculi uno chel suspende e liga al diafragma e ala schina e laltre chel copre e sel
circunda. Dala gibosita sua nasce la uena chilis laquale porta el sangue al core de laquale habiamo gia
dicto. E da la parte sua concaua ne nasce unaltra chiamata porta o uero uena concaua e questa uena ha
cinque rami: cusi como sono cinque penule del figato ne le quale entrano quisti cinque rami. E poi quando

escono fuora del figato sono da poi otto de lequale doe sono molte picole che male se possono discernere
ma si le altre sei: De lequale una ua ala dextra parte del stomaco a nutrire la tunicha sua exteriore et
maxime la parte inferiore: Laltra uena ua a la milza et e asai grande de laquale nel mezo del [folio 32
verso] suo transito nasce un ramo che descende gioso a nutrire lintriglio e portali el sangue piu aquoso: Da
poi quando questa uena sa proxima a la milza nasce un altro ramo el quale ua a nutrire la parte sinistra
inferiore del stomaco da poi sucede piu oltra e uasene ala concauita de la milza et iue se diuide in doi rami
cio e inferiore e superiore: linferiore ramo descende gioso a nutrire el girbo quanto ala parte sua sinistra: el
ramo superiore passa per le concauita de la milza e diuidise in doi altri rami di liquali uno ua a nutrire la
parte superiore sinistra del stomaco, Laltro ua circa la bocha superiore del stomaco a portarli lhumore
melenconicho per incitare lo apetito: Laltro ramo che rimane ua a la milza anutricarla.
La terza uena di queste sei sene ua al lato stancho e uaseno alo intestino recto a sucare se qualche humidita
uiuatiua fusse rimasta ne le feze.
La quarta uena se ne ua a la superiore parte dritta del stomaco per nutrirla: La quinta uæna ha doe parte
una ua a nutrire la dritta parte del girbo, laltra parte se ne ua alo intestino colon a sucare quello che e
rimasto ne le feze de humidita et anche a nutrirlo: et impero el girbo molto se congionge cum lo intestino
colon ne la parte dritta: La sexta uena sene ua alo intestine ieiuno et a lialtri intestini suttili a sucarli e
nutrirli.
La figura del figato debba [folio 33 recto] essere lunare in modo de una luna quando e piu che meza.
Questo membro ha quatro uirtu una atratiua per la quale atrahe el chilo a se: La seconda retentiua per
laquale lo ritiene debito tempo acio che la terza uirtu che e digestiua lo conuerta in sangue: La quarta uirtu
e expulsiua per laquale manda el sangue a tuti i membri a nutricarli: et cum esso sangue manda anche el
spirito nutritiuo el quale se genera in esso figato.

Capitulum quartum. Tractatus tertii de anothomia chistis fellis.
El fele si ha uno uase como una cista doue se contiene lhumore collerico et e apicata a la meza penula del
figato acio che depuri el sangue da lhumore collerico: e fu situate nel concauo e non nel gibo acio che piu
facilmente potesse mandare la colera aglintestini a incitare la uirtu expulsiua che mandi fuora le feze.
Et ha doe parte cio e el collo che porta la collera e la uesica chela contiene: El collo a certa distantia
rimane uno: E dapoi se diuide in doi rami uno ua amezo del figato ad attrahere la collera da esso. Laltro
ramo descende alo intestino duodeno et questo se diuide anche in doi altri rami uno ua al fondo del
stomaco a confortare la digestione e questo ramo e picolo per che non bisognaua [folio 33 verso] andare
tropo collera al stomaco per non incitare tropo la uirtu expulsiua del stomaco ad expellere, ma solo a
confortare como e stato dicto: Et impero quilli che hano questo rame molto grande sono chiamati da
medici infelici impero che sempre & al continuo regurgita su al stomaco la collera:
E per questo appare che questo membro ha colligantia cum el stomaco, intestini e figato e chel se nutrisse
per certe uene et artharie che uadeno ad esso cio e a la sua concauita: et anche peruengono a lui alcuni
nerui a darli el sentimento: Onde ha anche colligantia cum el core e cum el cerebro.
Questo membro si e di figura oblonga cum una certa rotondita e la sua substantia e pelliculare cio e in
modo de una pellicula facta per le utilita sopradicte.

Capitulum quintum de anothomia splenis et de eius uiuamentis.
Dal lato stanco sotto le coste mendose li e la milza laquale cum el suo concauo al lato del stomaco stanco
se glie apozia: E quanto ala parte sua gibosa e alligata ala Schina et al panniculo dicto siphae mediante
alcuni panniculi sutili.

Et non fu posta cusi insu o uero in luocho alto como el figato ma piu ingioso: Et e di figura quadrangulare
per che ha areimpire la concauita sinistra circumstante del stomaco che e di tale figura: ma e piu grossa ne
la parte disopra et e piu sutile ne la parte inferiore a modo de una lingua.
E questo [folio 34 recto] membro e composto de una certe carne spongiosa acio che meglio receua
lhumore grosso melenconico alquale finalmente e ordinata, Et anche e composta di uene et artharie molte,
& de uno paniculo che linuolge. Onde appare che la milza ha colligantia cum el figato, lintriglio, girbo, &
cum el stomaco, cum le coste e cum el diafragma, et ha anche colligantia cum el core mediante certe
artharie che uengono ad esse acio chel sangue grosso melenconico per el calore di queste artharie se
suttigliasse e digerisse: Et anche acio che riscaldasse la sinistra parte del stomaco a laquale lui se apogia.
Fu facto questo membro per molte utilita: Prima acio chel mondificasse el sangue da lhumore melenconico
el quale atrahe asi: Secondo fu facto a contra operare ala calidita del core e del figato: Tertio acio che
excitasse lo appetito transmitendo lhumore melenconico a la bocha de esso stomaco.

Capitulum sextum de anothomia girbi siue, rethis cooperientis stomacum &
intestina.
Appare uno certo panniculo chiamato el Girbo o uero la rethe el quale copre el stomaco da la parte dinanzi:
e ne lhuomo tuti glintestini: e non ne lialtri animali: E questo fu facto ne lhuomo per che tra glialtri animali
de equale quantita la uirtu digestiua piu debile ne lhuomo: et etiam per che glintestini suoi per la suttilita
de la cute sono piu dispositi a [folio 34 verso] receuere li nocumenti exteriori: Et impero appare la utilita di
questo membro per la quale fu principalmente facto: et e acio chel confortasse la uirtu digestiua nel
stomaco e de glintestini reuerberando el caldo naturale ad essi: Onde narro Galieno de uno che fu
uulnerato e cauato li fu el girbo e da poi che fu guarito non potete mai ben padire.
Et impero bisogno che fusse composto di tre sustantie cio e prima de doi panniculi subtili acio che
continesse glialtri membri et etiam per che douea essere ligiero e che se potesse dilatare: et anche fu spesso
acio che reuerberasse piu la calidita ali membri predicti: Secundo e composto de una assungia seposa la
quale hauesse ariscaldare essendo la natura de lasongia molto propinqua al caldo: Tertio e composto di
certe artharie e uene lequale molto riscaldano.
Et per questo appare chel girbo ha colligantia cum el stomaco cum la milza e cum glintestini, Et maxime
cum lo intestino colon cum liquali lui si termina cooperendoli: Et etia ha colligantia cum li membri da
liquali ha origine: onde nasce da uno certo panniculo carnoso da la schina tra el diafragma per che a questo
panniculo seglie terminano do extremita del panniculo chiamato siphac del quale poi noi diremo: Lequale
extremita compogono el girbo: Et etiam per che iue glie una uena grande et etiam artharia [folio 35 recto]
de lequale apresso el stomaco nascono certe uene et artharie picole lequale componeno el girbo: Ha etiam
colligantia cum lintriglio dal quale nasce la sua songia seposa laquale reimpie le sue uacuita.
Per insino adoncha qui habiamo ueduto la anothomia del girbo, del stomaco, de glintestini, de lintriglio,
del figato, del fele, e de la milza andiamo mo a glialtri membri di questa terza casa.

Capitulum septimum de anothomia membrorum urine scilicet renum & uesice et
aliorum membrorum deseruentium eis.
Vediamo la anothomia dele rene. Onde tu uederai che da la uena chilis che nasce dal gibo del figato se fa
uno ramo grande che descende gioso a le parte inferiore, e quando questo ramo e indritto de lerene se
diuide in doi altri rami di liquali uno ua al rognone dritto e laltro al rognone stanco cio e a le sue concauita
e chiamase uene emulgente: E gliorificii di queste doe uene non sono indritto uno dilaltro ma uno piu elto
et e quello del rognone dritto e laltro piu basso cio e quello che ua al rognone stanco: Et questo fu perche
el rognone dritto si e piu de sopra per che el rognone dritto e piu caldo cha el stanco, e de natura del caldo

e distare disopra benche a le uolte acada chel rognone stanco sia disopra al dritto et alhora el rognone
stanco uira essere piu caldo che el dritto: ben che questo sia [folio 35 verso] rare uolte.
Queste uene deportano la aquosita del sangue che e inutile al nutrimento del corpo a le rene et
consequenter ala uesica: laquale esce poi fuora per urina: E per che cum questa aquosita e mescolato anche
del sangue impero bisogno fare a la natura che el se colasse ne le rene in modo chel sangue mescolato cum
questa aquosita rimanesse, e laquosita sola pasasse ala uesica: et impero se tu scindi el rogne ne la parte
gibosa per lo longo per insino ala concauita tu uederai uno panniculo como uno panno raro per el quale
puo passare la aquosita ma el sangue non impero quilli che hano aperto questo panniculo o uero colatorio
orinano sangue. E questo panniculo si genera da la uena emulgente dicta laquale intrando ne la concauita
del rognone se rariffica in modo de uno colatorio.
E bisognorno essere dui rognoni e non uno per che era molta quantita daquosita laquale uno solo rognone
non haueria potuto atrahere sel non fusse stato molto grande e non se seria posuto debitamente situare sel
non hauesse facto qualche eminentia in quello luoco che seria stato molte deforme.
Quisti rognoni sono picoli in comparatione de li altri membri interiori e sono de una figura alquanto
rotonda acio che fusseno capaci di magiore quantita, et etiam che fusse piu tuto da li nocumenti extrinseci:
E furno etiam alquanto longhi acio che li suoi oreficii cio e el superiore, doue entra [folio 36 recto]
laquosita e loreficio inferiore doue esce haueseno megliore distintione: a loreficio di sotto segli continua
uno porro chiamato Uritides cioe che porta la urina da le rene a la uesica: Onde sono dui porri uritides
como sono doi rognoni: Et in quisti rognoni ale uolte se genera la preda de molte harenule per la calidita
de le rene la quale desicca certa humidita fleumaticha laquale se genera nel stomaco per indigestione, e poi
sene ua al figato, et tandem se ne uiene ale rene, et iue per la calidita de esse rene se conuerte in harenule
et tandem se conuerte in preda: laquale poi si discerne dala preda generata ne la uesica per che la preda de
le rene e rossa e quella de la uesica e biancha. Li homini adoncha che hano fredo el stomaco e calde le rene
sono disposti ala generatione de la preda et maxime hauendo li meati de lurina stricti.
Leuate adoncha le rene e ueduti i porri uritides tu uederai che terminano al mezo de la uesicha e non
forano la uesicha ex directo cum uno bucho grande ma cum piu busitti picoli et obliqui facti tra una tunica
e laltra de la uesica o uero tra el cooptorio e la tunica e non uno indritto de laltro, e questo fu acio che
quando la uesica fusse piena de urina ritornasse la urina indrieto ale rene, anzi quanto la uesica e piu piena
de urina tanto piu se chiudeno dicti buchi.
La uesica e composta de doe tuniche quanto al suo fundo ma quanto al [folio 36 verso] suo collo e
composta de carne e musculo. Item e composta de nerui e de uene e de artharie ad atrahere laquosita dale
rene et consequenter ad expellerla fuora per la uena.
E per questo appare che tuti quisti membri dicti cioe uene emulgente rognoni porri uritides e la uesica sono
facti de la natura a mondificare el sangue che de nutrire el corpo de la predicta aquosita e mandarla fuora
per urina.
Et impero li rognoni furno de sustantia e carne dura acio non fusse mordicata et corrosa de lacuita de lurina
e da alcuni humori acuti che molte uolte se mescola cum essa urina.
Questi rognoni hebbeno dui paniculi uno che li copre e questo li da el sentimento, e laltro chel liga e
suspende a la schina et anche questo li da el sentire: e ciascuno di questi doi panniculi e composto de uno
certo neruo che nasce da la nucha de li spondili de la schina in luocho chiamato alchatim che e luocho a lo
indritto de le rene et etiam e composto de uno certo ligamento che nasce da quilli medesimi spondili.
E per questo appare che hano colligantia cum el cerebro e la nucha et cum la schina mediante li nerui di li
predicti panniculi, et hanno colligantia cum el core mediante certe artharie che nascono da lartharia adorthi
e cum el figato mediante le uene emulgente, e [folio 37 recto] cum la uesica mediante li porri uritide

liquali sono certi canili stricti per liquali passa la aquosita urinale da le rene a la uesica como e stato dicto.
E questa uesica ha una grande concauita laquale e neruosa et el suo collo e carnoso e musculoso acio che
quando bisogna lhuomo expella la urina e quando bisogna lui la ritengha et congiongese el collo de la
uesica cum la uirga ne li maschii, nel quale collo insieme cum la uirga e uno bucho per loquale se urina:
ma ne le femine lextrimita del collo de lauesica se termina apresso a dua dita al oreficio de uulua: et el
collo de la uesica ne li maschii e piu longo che ne le done.
E per questo appare che sel se incide la uesica nel collo se puo consolidare ma se si taglia nel fondo non si
puo saldare, per che el collo e musculoso e carnoso, et el fonde da la uesica e neruoso.
Et el collo de la uesica ne li homini ha tre tortuosita, ne le quale se ritiene lurina acio che facilmente non
esca fuori senza uolunta de lhuomo ma ne le femine non ha sino una tortuosita, et el collo ne le femine e
piu largo che ne li maschii: Et el fondo de la uesica e composto de doe tuniche como e stato dicto, e la
tunica interiore e doe uolte piu grossa che la exteriore per che inmediate tocha la urina.
A la uesica peruengono nerui da la nucha et anche le uene da la uena chilis et etiam certe artharie da la
artharia adhorthi. Et nel collo suo e solo uno [folio 37 verso] musculo che circunda esso collo del quale la
utilita e a retinere la urina secondo el bisogno e la uolunta de lhuomo. E quando lhuomo uole urinare se
relassa quello musculo: et alhora li musculi del uentre de liquali diremo constringeno la uesica e mediante
la uirtu expulsiua mandano fuora lurina.

Tractatus quartus de anothomia membrorum generationis capitulum primum,
de anothomia matricis et uasorum spermaticorum in mulieribus.
Veduto la anothomia de tri membri principali e signori li quali cum li soi ministri sono producti da la
natura a conseruare lo indiuiduo poniamo adesso la anothomia del quarto membro principale el quale e
facto a conseruare la spetie. Et benche anche noi non habiamo fornito la anothomia del domicilio del terzo
membro principale per che in uno medesimo domicilio quasi sono locati dicti membri cum li suoi ministri.
Diciamo adoncha che i membri de la generatione in alcune cose conuenene ne li maschii e ne le femine:
prima quanto a la origine per nascono circa le rene in questo modo che li uasi che sono ne la parte sinistra
e li uasi che sono ne la parte dritta nascono desopra de le rene, cio e le loro uene da la uena chilis e le lore
artharie da lartharia adorthi. Onde appare per questo che li uasi spermatici ne li maschii e ne le femine
sono decusi da el core e da el figato e questa e la seconda conuenientia.
Ma etiam sono differenti per che ne le femine questi uasi se terminano a la matrice [fol. 38 recto] nel
luocho exteriore doue sono li loro te testiculo anzi propriamente parlando non sono ueramente testiculi
como ne gli maschii anzi sono como testiculi de lepore. Onde fuora de la matrice se riuolgono e se
contexeno e le concauita diquella texitura se reimpiseno di certe carne minute glandose: E sono facti ne le
femine acio che generino una certa humidita saliuale laquale e cagione de la delectatione de cohito ne la
femina.
Da poi quisti uasi spermatici penetrano la matrice per insino a la concauita e li suoi oreficii di quisti uasi
ne la concauita de la matrice se chiamano cotilidoni cio e legamenti per che mediante quilli sta ligata la
creatura ala matrice: e per questi oreficii uene el sangue mestruo ala femina: Et alcuni di questi uasi
peruengono a la bocha de la matrice a portar li la humidita saliuale gia dicto: Et da queste uene ramificate
nascono doe uene da ciascun lato cio e una che penetra nel panniculo chiamato mirach et ascendeno per
insina che peruengono ale mamille a deportare el sangue a quelle: Et nota che quanto piu ascendeno tanto
piu se acostano a la cute di fuora: et sono piu manifeste: ma nel mirach sono piu oculte e questo e contrario
ne la porcha o altri animali che hano le mamille nel mirach: Queste uene nascono da la matrice e se
manifestano nel mirach doue sono poste le mamille.

E dapoi queste uene ascende dal [folio 38 verso] profondo del pecto indrito al pomo granato una certe uena
laquale uene ale mamille a cuocere el sangue che se de conuertire in lacto e non appare senon una uena.
El luocho de la matrice e che le situata ne la concauita del luocho chiamato alchatim, laquale concauita e
circundata da certi spondili dela schina per insino a la cauda da la parte de drieto, ma da la parte dinanzi e
circundata da la parte che se chiama petenechio: onde la matrice e locata inmediate tra lo intestino recto el
quale e como colcitra sua da la parte posteriore e fra la uesica da la parte dinanzi et el collo de la uesica e
piu eminente cha el collo de la matrice benche la concauita de la matrice sia piu profonda che la concauita
de la uesica: et la matrice e posta nel mezo preciso tra el lato dritto e el stanco.
Questa matrice ha colligantia quasi cum tuti li membri superi cio cum el core mediante certe artharie e
cum el figato mediante certe uene, e cum el cerebro mediante molti nerui, e cum el stomaco mediante
nerui e uene: et ha colligantia cum li membri di mezo cio e cum el diafragma le rene, et mirach: per che
mediante quisti e alligata ali predicti ha maxime colligantia cum le mamille como e stato dicto: Ha etiam
colligantia cum li membri inferiori cio e cum la uesica mediante el suo collo: et e similiter cum lo intestino
colon.
Et e alligata a le [folio 39 recto] anche mediante alcuni ligamenti grossi e forti li quali apresso de la
matrice sono larghi e grossi et apresso le anche sono suttili como corne che sono nel capo de glianimali et
impero sono chiamati corni de la matrice.
La figura sua e quadrangulare cum certa rotondita: et ha el collo inferiore longo et hebbe questa figura acio
che meglio se potesseno distinguere le cellule o uero camerette che sono ne la sua concauita e sono septe
tre ne la parte dritta e tre ne la parte stancha e una ne la sumita o uero mezo e queste celule sono certe
concauita ne la matrice ne lequale el sperma cum el sangue mestruo se possano continere et coagulare et
consequenter alligarsi a li oreficii de le uene.
La quantita de la matrice fu mediocre secondo la quantita de la uesica, ma e magiore in una femina che in
laltra per che la femina che fa figlioli ha magiore matrice che la sterile et similiter la femina che e usa al
cohito lha magiore che la uergene et similiter la matrice de la giouene e magiore che quella de la puta e de
la uechia e per altre cagione narrate da medici puo essere questa diuersita.
La sua sustantia e neruosa e pelliculosa acio che se possa dillatare a continere la creatura: et e molto spessa
e grossa.
Le parte exteriore de la matrice sono queste cio e li lati difuori aliquali sono alligati li testiculi e anche
sono li uasi seminarii e [folio 39 verso] le sue corne di liquali tuti habiamo dicto: et el suo collo del quale
lextremita se chiama uulua: e questo collo e longo quanto e uno palmo como e la uirga de lhuomo et e lato
e dillatabile: et impero pelliculoso: Et ha le rughe o uero crespe in modo de sangue sughe acio che la uirga
de lhuomo nela confricatione del cohito se le induca tintalatione e consequenter dolceza: Et ne lextremita
di questa uulua sono doe pellicole che se lieuano e deprimeno sopra el dicto oreficio acio che prohibiscano
lo introito de laiere o di qualche cosa extrinsecha nel collo de la matrice o uero uesica como la uirga de
lhuomo e custodita da la pellicula del preputio.
E la bocha de la matrice e molto neruosa facta in modo de una bocha de uno cagnolo nouamente nato o
uero meglio a modo de una tench uechia: et e ualata de uno uele suttile ne le uergene e ne le uiolate se
rompe et impero se sanguina.
Facto e adoncha questo membro da la natura per la conceptione: et ne lhomo fu facto anche acio che
mondificasse tuto el corpo de la femina dal superfluo sangue indigesto el quale se genera in essa per la sua
frigidita, e nel maschio non e cusi: ma li altri animali non hano questo fluxo mestruale per che tale
superfluita che se genera in loro se conuerte in pelle in pili in unghie in rostri e penne e simili membri di
quali lhuomo e priuato.

[folio 40 recto] Capitulum secundum de anothomia uasorum spermaticorum et
testiculorum in viris seu masculis.
Dicto di uasi spermatici e testiculi de le femine diciamo di quilli di li maschii: Onde e da sapere che li uasi
spermatici sono de doe manerie, alcuni sono uasi che preparano el sperma e quisti descendeno da luochi
predicti ali testiculi & circa la parte superiore de essi se inuolgeno intanto che fano in modo de uno sacho o
uero de una bursa e questi non intrano la sustantia dili testiculi e questi sono uenosi e neruosi.
Alcuni altri uasi sono dilatorii liquali portano el sperma preparato ne li altri uasi dicti a li testiculi e questi
se continuano cum li predicti et sono piu neruosi: e quanto uano piu ascendendo da li testiculi sono tanto
piu neruosi et ascendeno per insino a losso del petenechio: et alhora se profondano dentro apresso el collo
de la uesica e finaliter procedeno al meato de la uirga nel luocho che e nel bucho de losso del petenechio e
per doe meati che sono iue mandano el sperma fora da li testiculi el quale fu preparato prima negli altri
uasi e mandano quello sperma nel canale de la uirga e poi la uirga el manda fuori.
Et li testiculi ne lhuomo maschio sono di fuora e non detro como e ne le femine onde li uasi spermatici del
maschio non sono terminati dentro dal mirach o uero dentro dal corpo ma escono fuora e se copulano a li
[folio 40 verso] testiculi como a doi suspensorii o uero contrapeso, Et quisti uasi sono cooperti & uelati de
uno panniculo chiamato didimo el quale nasce del paniculo siphach del quale poi noi diremo, e questo
didimo se ha uno oreficio chiuso ne la fine de dicti uasi et in processo se dillata e tanto procede dilatandosi
che infine di quello se dillatta ala quantita de li testiculi et iue fa una bursa la quale se chiama borsa di
testiculi: onde appare che questo didimo fu facto a continere o custodire li testiculi: et li uasi spermatici
che peruengono ad essi.
Et in questa borsa glie sono posti doi testiculi facti de sustantia glandosa rotondi facti secondo li medici a
generare e produre el sperma per che benche el sia preparato ne li uasi spermatici tamen non recceue in
essi la debita forma specifica ma da li testiculi. Et secondo el philosopho Aristotile el sperma
perfectamente se produce ne li uasi spermatici e che li testiculi furno facti como doi contrapesi a retinere i
uasi aper ne la proiectione del sperma.

Capitulum tertium de anothomia uirgae et de musculis ani: & de quinque uenis
emoroydalibus.
Ultimo e la uirga continuata cum lo collo de la uesica carnoso e e continuata cum esso cum molti ligamenti
e corde lequale nascono da losso del petenechio insieme cum certi nerui [folio 41 recto] che nascono da la
nucha: et impero questo membro e molto sensibile et extensible; Et anche e continuata la uirga cum gran
uene che nascono dal ramo de la uena che descende ale parte inferiore et similiter e continuata cum grande
artharie lequale nascono da quella artharia laquale se bifurcha ale doe anche: onde a la lingua et ala uirga
uengono magiore uene et arthariae che a nesuno altro membro a tanto pertanto: Et impero queste uene &
artharie nel luocho chiamato peritoneon cio e tra loreficio del culo et el luocho di testiculi sono inuolute e
sono molto grande: et iue e el principio de la uirga: Et per questo la uirga e tuta cauernosa e le sue
cauernosita se reimpino de uentuosita laquale se genera in quelle artharie et alhora se driza la uirga: Onde
se tu scindi per lo longo la uirga insino al suo canale et apparerano dui buchi predicti et etiam le sue
cauernosita.
La quantita de la uirga o uero longheza sie duno palmo como e quello del collo de la matrice.
La sustantia de la uirga sie neruosa excepto la extremita sua che se chiama preputio.
Da poi a lextremita delo intestino recto chiamato anus tu trouerai certi musculi che apreno & asera o quello
oreficio et similiter ne lextremita del dicto oreficio li sono cinque uene terminato ad esso chiamate uene
[folio 41 verso] emoroydale per lequale in alcuni homini a certi tempi esce di molto sangue.

Capitulum quartum de anothomia mirach: quod est domicilium predictorum
duorum membrorum principalium.
Dapoi che noi habiamo ueduto de doi membri principali uno che serue al nutrimento di li membri a
conseruare el corpo e laltro a conseruare la spetie: et anche de li suoi ministri resta a uedere del suo
domicilio el quale e comune a tuti quilli el quale se chiama mirach.
Questo mirach o uero questo domicilio si e composto de cinque parte cio e cute pinguedine uno certo
panniculo carnoso e certi musculi cum le sue corde et el siphac: de tute queste cinque parte se constituisse
uno cooperculo et una casa ne laquale se contengono li membri predicti.
E questo tale domicilio fu posto di sotto da li altri per la ignobilita di membri che se contengono in esso:
Onde contiene alcuni membri deputati a purgare le feçe e le superfluita lequale essende graue descendeno
a le parte inferiore.
Questo domicilio non potette essere ossuoso ma fu carnoso et pelliculoso acio che secondo li bisogni se
potesse dillatare et intumescere como ne la femina pregnante o uero in colui che ha pigliato troppo cibo o
uero ne lo ydropico o per qualche altra cagione bisognasse infiare el uentre, sel fusse ossuoso non se potria
fare questo.
[folio 42 recto] La prima parte di questo mirach si e la cute de fuora circa laquale sono da considerare piu
luochi: Uno si e corespondente ala bocha del stomaco che una cartiligine che copre quello e chiamasi
pomo granato como e stato dicto.
Laltro luocho si e la parte che e sopra el stomaco sopra de lombelico circa a quatro dita.
El terzo luocho si e la parte umbelicale cio e doue e lombellico cum el quale sta alligata la creatura nela
matrice cum le uene de essa matrice: et impero ne le parte interiore de lombelico appare una certa uena che
se continua cum esso, et passa per el gibo del figato e per questa uena se porta el sangue da le uene de la
matrice al figato de la creatura et inquesto modo se nutrisse nel uentre de la matre: Ma questa uena quando
lhuomo e nato se priua di sangue per che mancha la sua operatione quale facea alhora: Et impero
continuamente se ua diminuendo quella uena, onde ne li uechii appare molte minore che ne li gioueni: Et
similiter cum questa uena descende una certa artharia a lombelico de la creatura laquale quando e ne
lombelico descende gioso e uasene a lartharia adorthi apresso li spondili de le rene et di li fianchi e questa
artharia simelmente se ua deleguando e continue appare minore como e stato dicto de la predicta uena. E
questa artharia tu uederai exscarnando apresso lombelico et apparerati in forma de uno neruo o de una
corda [folio 42 verso]. El quarto luocho se chiama sumen, di sotto da lo imbilico quatro dita et e una parte
ne laquale se terminano alcune uene ala cute per le quale la creatura nel uentre de la matre manda fuora le
sue aquosita: e queste uene e questa tale parte si e piu manifesta ne li puti che non sono nati che ne li
perfecti perche essendo queste uene frustrate da la sua operatione se uadeno anullande.
El quinto luocho si e el petenechio doue sono li membri genitali.
Da poi anche tu hai a considerare le parte laterale cioe li li fianchi e li ypocondrii uno da la parte dritto
sotto el quale sta el figato e laltro da la parte mancho doue e locata la milza.
Dapoi la cute apparerati incontinenti la pinguedine la quale e molto piu grande nel porcho che ne lhuomo.
Dapoi et tertio te apparera uno panniculo el quale e composto de carne e nerui.
Quarto di sotto a questo panniculo li sono etiam octo musculi di liquali doi sono longitudinali che
protendeno per el longo dal clipeo de la bocha del stomaco insino a lossa del petenechio, e quisti musculi
non hano gran corde senon ligamentale, Quatro altri sono transuersali dui superiori e dui inferiori: Li
superiori nascono da le parte di sopra a presso le coste et terminano a certe corde circa le ossa del

petenechio inquesto modo che la corda [folio 43 recto] dritta ua alingioso al musculo che uiene da la parte
sinistra, et la corda stancha ua gioso al musculo che uiene da la parte dritta: Onde le corde se incrociano ne
la parte inferiore. Li altri dui musculi transuersali sono inferiori per che comentiano da le ossa del
petenechio et de le anche e se terminano a certe corde in questo medesimo modo che la corda dritta ua al
musculo sinistro e la sinistra ua al musculo dritto, e le corde se incrociano como e stato dicto.
Doi altri sono latitudinali cusi dicti per che li fili di liquali se componeno protendendeno secondo el lato:
Et uno di quisti musculi e dal lato dritto e laltro del lato stancho, e sono piu manifesti et anche la sua
origine apresso de la schina uerso la parte superiore: e quisti musculi latitudinali insieme cum li
longitudinali se intersecano ne li anguli dritti.
La utilita di quisti musculi sie prima acio che deffendeseno li membri interiori da li nocumenti extrinseci,
et anche che li riscaldaseno reuerberando la loro calidita a le parte dentro. La seconda e acio che aiutino ad
expellere le superfluita dal pecto e le superfluita dele feze et etiam ad expellere la creatura fuora, e queste
sono utilita comune a quisti octo musculi: Ma piu particularmente parlando Li musculi [folio 43 verso]
longitudinali sono facti primo ad atrahere, secondo ad expellere, onde expelleno contrahendo li suoi uili
liquali contratti comprimeno glintestini uerso el diafragma como se fosseno tra doe mane che li
comprimeseno e per questo modo expelleno fuora le feze: Et per che glintestini hano bisogno maxime di
queste doe operatione cio e de atrahere et expellere impero quisti musculi furno grandi.
Ma li musculi latitudinali sono solo facti ad expellere: & impero sono piu apresso glintestini et fano questa
expulsione comprimendo la parte da laquale deno expellere: Et per che la expulsione se fa da suso ingioso
impero furno locati piu tosto ne le parte superiore che inferiore.
Li transuersali furno facti a retinere e questo fano mediante li suoi uili transuersali, E questo bisogno fare
la natura acio che le superfluita gio descese non reascendeseno impero fece li dui transuersali superiori et
anche hebbe intentione che le feçe non descendeseno molto ueloce mente anzi se retignisseno tanto che el
figato le potesse bene esuccarle como e stato dicto impero fece altri du imusculi transuersali inferiori:
liquali sono minori che li superiori per che magiore fu intentione de la natura a fare che le feze non
reascendeseno cha che uelocemente non descendeseno.
La quinta parte de questo mirach [folio 44 recto] si e uno panniculo suttilissimo e molto duro chiamato
siphac et fu facto acio chel prohibisse che li musculi dicti non comprimeseno i membri naturali e per
questo fu neruoso acio che se possa dillatere e constringere quando quilli membri se dillateno e se
constringeno. E fu sutile acio che quello non li agrauasse. Et fu duro acio che facilmente el non se
rompesse per che quando se rompe accade quella passione che si chiama crepatura.
E fu facto etiam questo panniculo acio che el lighe glintestini a la schina et acio che tuti li panniculi de li
altri membri interiori che se contengono in esso habiano origine da quello: Et etiam acio chel prohibisca
che glintestini non se rompano quando se infiano de uentosita, e perquesto appare la anothomia de tuto el
mirach el quale e domicilio de tuti li altri membri gia dicti.

Tractatus quintus de anothomia partium extremarum & ossium Capitulum
primum de anothomia ossium et neruorum quae sunt a collo usque ad
caudam.
Expediti li quatro membri principali cum li loro ministri e cum li loro domicilii. Vediamo mo la anothomia
de le parte extreme cio e braza cum le mano, et de le cosse cum li piedi ma prima uederemo de le ossa
nerui e nucha comentiando dal collo per infino a la cauda.
Diciamo adonca che el collo fu facto per el pulmone e per la sua cana ne li animali che respirano: et
inquesto collo sono septe [folio 44 verso] ossa chiamati spondili, et sono piu suttili de glialtri inferiori per

che sono sustentati da quilli: Et benche siano suttili pur sono molto duri e firmamente congionti acio che
non si dislacaseno, et anche che non receuesseno nocumento da le cose extrinsece. Et quisti spondili
benche siano piu suttili de li altri pur hano el bucho magiore per che la nucha e piu grossa nel collo che in
alcuna pare di li altri spondili e questo fu per che iue ha la sua origine.
Dapoi quisti septe spondili li sono altri spondili che se chiamano spondili de le coste e sono dodece
secondo el numero de le coste de lequale septe sono uere e cinque mendose.
Da poi sono li spondili de le rene liquali sono cinque, e sono molto grossi e grandi per che sono
fondamento e sustentaculo de li altri spondili.
Da poi sono alcuni altri spondili liquali sono ne plichatura che e da la schina a la cauda e sono tri minori di
li predicti per che se doueano congiongere cum li spondili de la cauda liquali sono picoli.
Ultimo sono li spondili de la cauda et quiui sono molte differentie de buchi per liquali passano li nerui, e
queste tale diuersitade se uedeno meglio nel corpo cotto o uero perfectamente esiccato.
Et in ciascuno spondile e posta la nucha la quale e una medula simile ala substantia del cerebro senon che
e piu uiscosa e piu salda et ha [folio 45 recto] origine da esso cerebro, el quale essendo diuise in doe parte
cio e ne la parte dritta e ne la parte mancha impero ne la superficie di questa nucha appare uno filo che la
diuide per mezo cio e la parte dritta da la parte stancha: E fu facta da la natura acio desse el sentire e el
mouere a tuto el corpo dal capo ingio onde la nucha e ditta uicaria del cerebro.
Da la nucha in ciascaduno spondile nasce uno pare de nerui che uanno a dare el sentire e el mouere a certi
e uarii membri. E per che li spondili sono intuto trenta impero sono trenta para de nerui secondo el numero
di li spondili: et poi dala cauda ne nasce un altro pare de nerui onde sono intuto trentauno pare de nerui
oltra quelli sei para ditti disopra che nascono dal cerebro.

Capitulum secundum de anothomia brachiorum et manuum.
Le braze e le mano sono composti de cute pinguedine, carne, uene, corde, ligamenti, ossa.
Tu uederai una uena che penetra per sotto la lasina del brazo e procede per la parte domestica e uasene ala
curuatura del brazo et appare ne la parte inferiore de gubito e chiamasi basilica e poi protende piu oltra
descendendo gioso a la mano ne la parte siluestra e uasene tra doi digiti cio e el digito picolo chiamato
auriculare et el suo proximo digito [folio 45 verso] chiamato annulare, e chiamasi questa uena iue sylen e
coresponde ala basilica como suo ramo.
Vederai simelmente un altra uena che uiene per la parte domestica del brazo ne la parte superiore de gubito
e chiamasi cephalica per che e uacua del capo et nasce da una uena che ascende al capo e questa uena piu
oltra procede uerso la mano e uassene ne la siluestra parte tra e il dito grosso e lindice e chiamasi saluatella
e corresponde a la cephalica.
Un altra uena uederai ne la curuatiua del brazo in mezo de le predicte como uno ramo continuato cum tute
doe e chiamase uena media o uero uena comune.
Da poi le uene tu uederai di molti musculi e molte corde grande e grosse. Li musculi furno facti a dare el
moto uoluntario al quale deserueno etiam esse corde.
Dapoi tu uederai le ossa et comentiando ala spala tu uederai prima uno osso chiamato spatula de simile
figura como e una spatula de legno el quale e largo disotto acio che non impedischa el pecto e le coste, et e
strecto di sopra acio che cum laltro osso che tu uederai chiamato aiutorio meglio se firme: et impero ne la
extremita superiore di questa spatula glie una concauita superficiale rotonda acio che in esse sia situata la
extrimita de lo aiutorio rotonda del quale el capo primo e rotondo locato ne la extremita de losso de la
spatula poi nel mezo se obliqua uerso la domestica parte acio che nel plicare et [folio 46 recto] amplexare

de le cose sia piu habile: Et lo extremo di questo aiutorio ha quasi doe eminentie per che se congionge cum
dui ossi chiamati focilli, et in mezo de quelle parte eminente ha piu disopra una certa concauita ne laquale
entra lextremita del focille inferiore laquale e facta a modo de uno instrumento da trare laqua acio che sia
piu ferma la sua coniunctione et el focille inferiore e piu longo che el superiore per che linferiore sustenta
el superiore: Ma tuti dui conuegono in questo che ne li extremi sono piu grossi che nel mezo per che da li
extremi loro nascono ligamenti e iuncture, et nel mezo glie sono musculi che supliseno a la loro sutilita: Et
el focille superiore non procede dritamente como linferiore acio che sia cagione de plicare la mano et el
brazo.
Dapoi questi do focilli glie la resetta de la mano ne la quale sono octo ossi in doe schiere cioe quatro per
schiera: Dapoi sono le ossa del pectine de la mano perche e facta ala forma de uno pectine e sono quatro
correspondenti a quatro digiti per che al dito grosso non corresponde alcuno osso di questo pectine per che
non e in schiera cum li altri digiti.
Dapoi sono le ossa de li cinque digiti, et hano tre ossi per digito che sono intuto quindice: Da poi sono le
corde che uano ale iuncture et ultimo la carne laquale e molto piu ne la parte domestica, et da li lati ma
pocha ne la parte siluestra per che plicandosi [folio 46 verso] ne la parte domestica non recceuesse lesione
per la dureza de li ossi e che non accadesse uacuita alcuna dai lati e da poi li sono le onghie a coprire la
cornosita che e ne lextremita de dicti digiti.

Capitulum tertium de anothomia cossarum tibiarum et pedum.
Vediamo mo ultimamente de la anothomia de le cosse, gambe e piedi. Diciamo adoncha che scorticando le
cosse tu trouerai doe uene grande che sono ramificate dal troncho de la uena chilis che descende gioso el
quale quando e nel fine de li spondili dele rene se diuide in doi rami uno ua ala gamba dritta e laltro ala
stancha et similiter se ramifica el troncho de lartharia adorthi che descende: e ciascuno di quisti doi rami in
ciascuna gamba se diuide in doi altri rami uno descende per el dritto e per la domestica parte de la gamba
et chiamas Saphena per che flobotomata e uacua dai membri naturali e genitali et appare questa uena sopra
del genochio e sopra la cauichia del piede, e desotto nel calchagno et appare anche nel pectine del pede.
Un altro ramo se obliqua et intra apresso la iunctura de la scia 219 o del galbue 219 impero e chiamata
siatica: ondo per la obliquatione che fa circa queste iuncture flobotomata uale ne le sue passione: Et appare
questa uena intuti i predicti [folio 47 recto] luochi como e dicto de la saphena.
Ne la parte siluestra ua escarnando e lieua su li musculi e le corde e uederai prima losso del petenechio
sopra del quale sono fabricati li spondili de la schina et consequenter tuto el corpo ne la parte inferiore ha
una concauita ne laquale e locata la extremita rotonda laquale extremita se chiama uertebro e nel mezo di
quisti doi da la parte dentro lie uno certo ligamento e questa iunctura di questi doi ossi se chiama scia: et
impero el dolore che uiene iui se chiama dolore sciatico.
Dapoi tu uederai losso grande de la cossa el quale e magiore de tute le ossa che sono nel corpo per che
sustentaculo de tuto el corpo: Et hebbe una grande concauita acio che fusse piu ligiero e che hauesse molta
merolla. Et per che potesse meglio sustentare non lo fece dritto la natura ma ne la extremita fecelo pighato
uerso la domestica parte: e nel mezo sie plicato e conuexo.
Dapoi questo osso nela iunctura del genochio sono dui ossi dicti focilli de la gamba ma uerso la parte
dinanzi di quella iunctura glie uno osso chiamato patella facto in modo de una patella acio che la iunctura
fusse piu forte: e questa iunctura e facta de ligamenti como fusse ligata per uno groppo. Et el focille che e
ne la parte domestica e magiore e piu grosso per che ha piu a sustentar el peso [folio 47 verso] del corpo e
quello de la parte siluestra e piu sutile e curto facto solo chel sia apogio del magiore.
Da poi lie losso de la caichia cum el quale se congiongeno li dicti focilli, et e losso del calcagno grosso
quadrangulato sotto del quale e una cute grossa e callosa molto.

Da poi e uno osso facto in modo de una u nauicula quadrangulare alquanto longo.
Dapoi e la rasetta del pede composto de tri ossi e non de octo como fu la resetta de la mano perche el pede
douea stare firmo e non mouersi a retinire qualche cosa como la mano.
Da poi li e el pectine composto da cinque ossi per che el dito grosso e inschiera cum li altri.
Da poi sono le ossa dili digiti che sono quatuordice cioe dui al dito grosso e tri per ciascaduno de li altri.
Da poi sono certi musculi e molte corde a mouere contrahendo e dillatando i digiti et ultimo li sono le
onghie che copreno la carnosita de li cime de li digiti como e stato dicto di digiti de le mane. E cussi a
laude de dio habiamo compiuto quello che era nostra intentione e quello che dal principio noi
prometessimo di narrare.

THE BLESSING OF CRAMP-RINGS
A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE TREATMENT OF
EPILEPSY
by Raymond Crawfurd

The origin of this ceremony of blessing rings, by the kings and queens of
England, for the cure of epilepsy and other spasmodic disorders, appears to be
well attested by the evidence of many contemporary records. All alike refer it
back to Edward the Confessor, or, to be more exact, to the ring which was one
of the sacred relics in the shrine of the Confessor in his abbey of Westminster.
Caxton, in the Golden Legend,220 tells the tale of this wonderful ring, as follows:
‘When the blessed King Edward had lived many years, and was fallen
into great age, it happened he came riding by a church in Essex called
Havering, which was at that time in hallowing, and should be dedicated
in the honour of our Lord and S. John the Evangelist; wherefore the
king for great devotion lighted down and tarried, while the church was
in hallowing. And in the time of procession, a fair old man came to the
king and demanded of him alms in the worship of God and S. John the
Evangelist. Then the king found nothing ready to give, ne his almoner
was not present, but he took off the ring from his finger and gave it to
the poor man, whom the poor man thanked and departed. And within
certain years after, two pilgrims of England went into the holy land to
visit holy places there, and as they had lost their way and were gone
from their fellowship, and the night approached, and they sorrowed
greatly as they that wist not whither to go, and dreaded sore to be
perished among wild beasts; at the last they saw a fair company of men
arrayed in white clothing, with two lights borne afore them, and behind
them there came a fair ancient man with white hair for age. Then these
pilgrims thought to follow the light and drew nigh. Then the old man
asked them what they were, and of what region, and they answered that
they were pilgrims of England, and had lost their fellowship and way

also. Then this old man comforted them goodly, and brought them into a
fair city where was a fair cenacle honestly arrayed with all manner of
dainties, and when they had well refreshed them and rested there all
night, on the morn this fair old man went with them, and brought them
in the right way again. And he was glad to hear them talk of the welfare
and holiness of their king S. Edward. And when he should depart from
them, then he told them what he was and said: I am John the Evangelist,
and say ye unto Edward your king that I greet him right well, by the
token that he gave to me this ring with his own hands at the hallowing
of my church, which ring ye shall deliver to him again. And say ye to
him that he dispose his goods, for within six months he shall be in the
joy of heaven with me, where he shall have his reward for his chastity
and for his good living. . . . And when he had delivered to them the
ring he departed from them suddenly. And soon after they came home
and did their message to the king, and delivered to him the ring, and
said that S. John the Evangelist sent it to him.’
Shortly after this Edward departed this life, and was laid in his abbey of
Westminster, where the usual abundant harvest of miraculous cures was enacted
at his shrine. In the above story we have also the explanation of one synonym of
epilepsy, the ‘morbus sancti Iohannis’.
The further history of the ring may be gleaned from several sources, but notably
from a MS. by one Richard Sporley, a monk of the abbey, entitled, ‘De
fundacione ecclesie Westm’, dated a.d. 1450, and now in the British Museum.221
St. Edward’s ring was deposited with his corpse in the tomb in a.d. 1066. He
was translated at midnight of October 13, 1163, when his body was found to be
incorrupt. Abbot Lawrence took the robes from the body and made them into
three copes, and gave the ring as a sacred relic to the Abbey:
‘Dompnus Laurentius quondam abbas huius loci . . . sed et annulo
eiusdem (Sancti Edwardi) quem Sancto Iohanni quondam tradidit, quem
et ipse de paradiso remisit, elapsis annis duobus et dimidio, postea in
nocte translationis de digito regis tulit, et pro miraculo in loco isto
custodiri iussit.’

F r o m C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A RY M S . E c . i i i . 5 9

Plate XXXIX. M I R A C L E S AT T H E T O M B O F E D WA R D T H E C O N F E S S O R
XIIIth Century

The story of the ring is also depicted in the miniatures of a beautiful illuminated
Norman-French MS. Life of St. Edward the King, dating from the thirteenth
century, and now in the University Library at Cambridge.222 The single
miniature reproduced here (Plate xxxix) shows seven blind men, restored to
sight, kneeling at the shrine, while a priest reads the Te Deum. At the sides of
the shrine are figures on pillars of St. John as the palmer (left), and St. Edward
with his ring (right). No cure of epilepsy, so-called cramp, is depicted among
the many miraculous cures recorded in the MS. The earliest extant records of
the use of the ring for this purpose date from the reign of Edward II.
Anstis223 cites the following entry from the last chapter of the Constitutions of
the Household of Edward II: ‘Item le Roi doit offrer de certein le jour de grant
vendredi a crouce. v s. queux il est acustumez receivre devers lui a la mene le

chapelein afair ent anulx a donner pur medicine az divers gentz’: the language,
however, of the entry leaves little room to doubt that the custom was already an
established one. At his coronation, too, Edward II offered a pound of gold
wrought into a figure representing St. Edward holding a ring, and a mark of
gold, or eight ounces, worked into the figure of a pilgrim putting forth his hand
to receive the ring: and the presumption is that this gold was to be converted
into cramp-​rings.
We have detailed accounts of the manner of this ceremony of hallowing cramp-​
rings dating from early Tudor times, and there is sufficient evidence in the brief
notices of earlier date to show that the ceremonial observed by the Plantagenet
kings was essentially similar. On Good Friday, when the king went to adore the
cross, he used to make an offering of money, which was redeemed by a sum of
equivalent value: the money so received was converted into rings, which were
subsequently hallowed by the king. In Tudor times the hallowing of the rings
took place on Good Friday, so that the offering of the money must have been
made at some previous time, or this part of the ritual may have actually become
obsolete. The change of custom was effected some time between 9 Edward IV
(1470–1) and 13 Henry VIII (1521–2), and was probably therefore the work of
Henry VII, who, as we know, materially altered the kindred ceremonial of
Touching for the Evil.
A MS. copy of the Orders of the King of England’s Household, 13 Henry VIII,
preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris,224 contains, ‘The Order of the
Kynge, on Good Friday, touching the cominge to Service, Hallowinge of the
Crampe Rings, and Offeringe and Creepinge to the Crosse’. It is quoted in
extenso in the Northumberland Household Book,225 and also by Mansell in his
Monumenta Ritualia.226 It runs as follows:
‘First the king to come to the closett or to the chappell with the lords
and noblemen wayting on him, without any sword to bee borne before
him on that day, and there to tarry in his travers till the bishop and
deane have brought forth the crucifix out of the vestry (the almoner
reading the service of the cramp rings) layd upon a cushion before the
high altar, and then the huishers shall lay a carpet before yt for ye king
to creepe to the crosse upon: and yt done, there shall be a fourme set
upon the carpet before the crucifix, and a cushion layd before it for the

king to kneele on; and the Master of the jewell house shal be ther ready
with the crampe rings in a basin or basins of silver: the king shall kneele
upon the sayd cushion before the fourme, and then must the clerke of
the closett bee ready with the booke conteyninge ye service of the
hallowing of the said rings, and the almoner must kneel upon the right
hand of the king, holding of the sayd booke, and when yt is done the
king shall rise and go to the high altar, where an huisher must be ready
with a cushion to lay for his grace to kneele upon, and the greatest Lord
or Lords being then present shall take the basin or basins with the rings
and bear them after the king, and then deliver them to the king to offer;
and this done the queen shall come down out of her closett or travers
into the chappell with ladies and gentlewomen wayters on her, and
creepe to the crosse; and that done she shall returne againe into her
closett or travers, and then the ladies shall come downe and creepe to
the crosse, and when they have done, the Lords and noblemen shall in
likewise.’
Creeping to the Cross seems to have been practised in noble households as well
as in that of the king. The following entry is found in the Northumberland
Household Book227 (temp. Henry VIII):
‘Item my Lord useth and accustometh yerely when his Lordship is at
home to cause to be delyveride for the Offerings of my Lordis Sone and
Heire the Lord Percy upon the said Good Friday When he crepith the
Crosse ijd. Ande for every of my Yonge Maisters my Lords Yonger
Sonnes after jd. to every of them for their Offerings when they Crepe
the Cross the said Good Friday iiijd.’
Many of the entries in the accounts of the Plantagenet kings show that the
homage was paid to the Gneyth Cross. This cross was held in great veneration,
and, according to tradition, was made of wood from the true Cross presented by
a pilgrim to Richard Cœur de Lion: no satisfactory explanation of its name is
forthcoming. It seems to have been transferred from place to place. Under
Edward I we find it in the royal chapel of the Priory of Plympton: under Edward
II in the royal chapel within the Tower: under Edward III in the private chapel
of the royal Manor of Clipstone, and later in the same reign in St. George’s
Chapel at Windsor, where it was in the time of Henry VII. The purpose of the
ceremony is set forth in a Proclamation of February 26, 30 Henry VIII, now in

the possession of the Society of Antiquaries: ‘On Good Friday it shall be
declared howe creepyng of the Crosse signifyeth an humblynge of ourselfe to
Christe before the Crosse, and the kyssynge of it a memorie of our redemption
made upon the Crosse.’ When Convocation, in a.d. 1536, abolished some of the
old ceremonies, on the ground that they were superstitious, this of Creeping to
the Cross was retained as a laudable and edifying custom.
The following records, taken from the Household Books and Account Rolls of
the times, serve to establish the continuity of the ceremonial subsequent to its
first mention in the time of Edward II.
In the Eleemosyna Roll of 9 Edward III228 occurs the following entry:
‘In oblacione domini Regis ad crucem de Gneythe die parasceues in
capella sua, infra mannerium suum de Clipstone, in precium duorum
florencium de Florencia, xiiii die Aprilis, vis. viijd., et in denariis quos
posuit pro dictis florenciis reassumptis pro annulis medicinalibus inde
faciendis, eodem die, vis.: summa xiis. viiid.’ [For the offering of the
lord King to the Gneythe Cross on Good Friday in his chapel, in his
manor of Clipstone, to the value of two florins, on the 14th day of April,
vis. viiid., and for the pence bestowed in redemption of the said florins
for the making of medicinal rings, on the same day, vis.: total xiis.
viiid.]
Again, in the Eleemosyna Roll of the following year, 10 Edward III:229
‘In oblacione domini Regis ad crucem de Gneyth in die parasceues apud
Eltham, xxix die Marcii, vs., et pro iisdem denariis reassumptis pro
annulis inde faciendis per manus Iohannis de Crokeford eodem die, xs.’
In this entry the name of the almoner is introduced, and the form of the account
is abbreviated by omitting repetition of the substituted vs.
And in 11 Edward III:230
‘In oblacione domini regis ad crucem de Gneyth in capella sua in pcħo
de Wyndesore die parasceues, vs., et pro totidem denariis reassumptis
pro annulis inde faciendis vs.’
Here the sum total is omitted: the three entries, though mutually explanatory,
show how puzzling becomes a too strict economy of words.

Entries substantially the same as these may be seen in the Wardrobe Accounts
of 12–14 Edward III.231
One more entry from the Account Books of John de Ypres, 44 Edward III, is
perhaps worth quoting, as it seems to point definitely to the rings being made in
this instance of both gold and silver:
‘In oblacionibus Regis factis adorando crucem in capella sua infra
castrum suum de Wyndesore die parasceues in pretio trium nobilium
auri et quinque solidorum sterling xxvs.—In denariis solutis pro iisdem
oblacionibus reassumptis pro annulis medicinalibus inde faciendis,
eodem die xxv.’
The offering of both gold and silver money would seem to bear out the
suggestion as to the material of the rings, as we know that in later times both
metals were used. It is, of course, arguable that the larger sum of money
indicates only a greater demand for the rings.
Richard II’s Account Books232 show that he maintained the practice of his
grandfather. The following is from an account of the Controller of the Wardrobe
in his reign:
‘in denar̄ solut̄ decano capelle Regis pro eisdem oblacionibus reassumpt̄
pro anulis medicinaƚ inde faciendis, xxvs.’
The substituted money seems to have been actually laid on the altar, and
removed thence to be made into rings: this will explain payment being made in
this case to the Dean of the Chapel Royal.
Henry IV could ill afford to dispense with any of the prerogatives of royalty,
and we find him offering 25 shillings in the chapel of the palace of Eltham for
the making of medicinal rings.233
It is no matter for surprise that no mention should be forthcoming of cramp-​
rings in the reign of Henry V, most of which was spent beyond the shores of
England, and in the propagation rather than in the relief of disease. A passage,
however, in the literary remains of Sir John Fortescue234 taken from a tract
entitled Defensio Iuris Domus Lancastriae, now to be seen in the Cotton
Collection at the British Museum, and referable to the year a.d. 1462, seems to

show that the practice had not been allowed to lapse during his memory, which
ranged over the reigns of Henry IV, V, and VI. The translated passage runs thus:
‘Many duties likewise are incumbent on the Kings of England in virtue
of the kingly office, which are inconsistent with a woman’s nature, and
Kings of England are endowed with certain powers by special grace
from heaven, wherewith Queens in the same country are not endowed.
The Kings of England at their very anointing receive such an infusion
of grace from heaven, that by touch of their anointed hands they cleanse
and cure those infected with a certain disease, that is commonly called
the King’s Evil, though they be pronounced otherwise incurable.
Epileptics too, and persons subject to the falling sickness, are cured by
means of gold and silver devoutly touched and offered by the sacred
anointed hands of the kings of England upon Good Friday, during
divine service (according to the ancient custom of the Kings of
England); as has been proved by frequent trial of rings, made of the said
gold and silver and placed on the fingers of sick persons in many parts
of the world. The gift is not bestowed on Queens, as they are not
anointed on the hands.’
The passage also brings out the fact that the use of both gold and silver rings
had long been customary.
We have abundant evidence of the maintenance of the ceremony under Edward
IV in a number of separate entries. Thus in an Eleemosyna Roll of 8 Edward IV
is the following: ‘Pro eleemosyna in die parasceves c. marc. et pro annulis de
auro et argento pro eleemosyna Regis eodem die.’ And in a Liber Niger Domus
Regis Edwardi IV: ‘Item, to the Kynge’s offerings to the crosse on Good Friday,
out from the counting-​house for medycinable rings of gold and silver, delyvered
to the jewell house xxvs.’ And again in a Privy Seal Account of 9 Edward IV:
‘Item, paid for the King’s Good Fryday rings of gold and silver xxxiiil. vis.
viiid.’ Edward IV seems to have aimed at fortifying himself upon the throne by
a liberal use of the Royal Gift of Healing, and I have elsewhere expressed my
belief, in the absence of any written evidence, that it was in his reign, and not in
that of Henry VII, as commonly believed, that the dole of the angel to those
touched by the King for the Evil was instituted. Cramp-​rings are mentioned in
the Comptroller’s Accounts of 20 Henry VII, but the Tudors certainly devoted
their healing powers chiefly to sufferers from the Evil.

There is a passage in the Historia Anglicana of Polydore Vergil,235 the Italian,
who came to live in England in a.d. 1502, and wrote his history during the
reigns of Henry VII and VIII, which shows the nature of the patients for whom
these sacred rings were used.
‘Iste annulus in eodem templo (scil. Westmonasterii), multâ veneratione
perdiu est servatus, quod salutaris esset membris stupentibus valeretque
adversus comitialem morbum, cum tangeretur ab illis, qui eiusmodi
tentarentur morbis. Hinc natum, ut reges postea Angliae consueverint in
die Parasceues, multâ coeremoniâ sacrare annulos, quos qui induunt,
hisce in morbis omnino nunquam sunt.’
Besides true epileptics, they were used for those who had palsied limbs: this is
interesting as suggesting the inclusion of Jacksonian epilepsy, and perhaps
hemiplegia, and the resulting contractures in these conditions may have
contributed to the confusion with contractures from other causes, such as
chronic rheumatism. We have to bridge over in some such way the gap between
their conception of ‘cramp’ and ours.
In the will of John Baret of Bury St. Edmunds,236 dated 1463, is a bequest to
‘my lady Walgrave’ of a ‘rowund ryng of the Kynges silver’; and also to
‘Thomais Brews, esquiyer, my crampe ryng with blak innamel, and a part silvir
and gilt.’ And in 1535 Edmund Lee bequeaths to ‘my nece Thwartow my gold
ryng wt a turkes, and a crampe ryng of gold wt all.’
There are even earlier bequests than this of healing-rings,237 but not specifically
termed cramp-​rings: they are simply spoken of as ‘vertuosi’. Thus Thomas de
Hoton, rector of Kyrkebymisperton, in 1351, bequeathed to his chaplain ‘j.
zonam de serico, j. bonam bursam, j. firmaculum, et j. anulum vertuosum. Item,
domino Thome de Bouthum j. par de bedes de corall, j. anulum vertuosum.’
Talismanic rings, inscribed with the names of the three Magi, Caspar, Melchior,
Balthazar, were used as preservatives from epilepsy in Plantagenet times.
The royal cramp-​rings enjoyed no monopoly in the cure of epilepsy, as is shown
by an extract from a medical treatise written in the fourteenth century:238
‘For the Crampe. Tak and ger gedine on Gude Friday, at fyfe parriche
kirkes, fife of the first penyes that is offerd at the crosse, of ilk a kirk
the first penye: than tak them al and ga before the crosse and say V.

pater nosters in the worschip of fife wondes, and bere thaim on the V.
dais, and say ilk a day als mekyl on the same wyse: and then gar mak a
ryng thar of with owten alay of other metel, and writ with in Jasper,
Batasar, Altrapa, and writ with outen Ih’ c. nazarenus; and sithen tak it
fra the goldsmyth upon a Fridai, and say V. pater nosters als thu did
before and use it alway afterward.’
The ‘fife wondes’ are, of course, the five wounds of the crucified Jesus.
A silver ring, made of five sixpences contributed by five different bachelors,
conveyed by a bachelor to the hand of a smith that was also a bachelor, was
another reputed remedy for epilepsy; and its virtue was enhanced, if none of the
bachelors knew for what purpose or to whom it was given.239
In Berkshire, rings made from a piece of silver collected at the Communion
found favour, and they were more efficacious if collected on Easter Sunday.
Devonshire preferred a ring made of three nails or screws that had been used to
fasten a coffin, and that had been dug out of a churchyard.240
Cramp-rings hallowed by the King of England enjoyed repute beyond the
shores of England.241 Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart, when ambassador
to Charles V, writing to ‘my Lorde Cardinall’s grace from Saragoza, the xxi daie
of June, 1510’, says: ‘If your grace remember me with some crampe rynges ye
shall do a thynge muche looked for, and I trust to bestow thaym well, with
Godd’s grace, who evermor preserve and encrease your moste reverent astate.’
Among various charms that Charles V carried about with him were ‘gold rings
from England against cramp’.242
In a.d. 1518 we find the President of the College of Physicians lending his
patronage to the royal cramp-​rings. In a letter to the Parisian scholar, Guillaume
Budé,243 Thomas Linacre writes that he ‘has sent him some rings consecrated by
the King as a charm against Spasms’: and on July 10, 1518, Budé replies to him
from Paris that he has ‘received his letter with the rings on July 6’, and has
distributed among the wives of his relatives and friends the eighteen rings of
silver and one of gold he received from Linacre, telling them that they were
amulets against slander and calumny.
Even the hard-headed Scot was not proof against the magnetism of the royal
rings. A letter from Dr. Thomas Magnus, Warden of Sibthorpe College,

Nottinghamshire, to Cardinal Wolsey,244 written in a.d. 1526 says:
‘Pleas it your Grace to write that M. Wiat of his goodnes sent unto me
for a present certaine cramp ringges, which I distributed and gave to
sondery myne acquaintaunce at Edinburghe, amonges other to M.
Adame Otterbourne, who, with oone of thayme, releved a mann lying in
the falling sekenes, in the sight of myche people: sethenne which tyme
many requestes have been made unto me for cramp ringges, at my
departing there, and also sethenne my comyng from thennes. May it
pleas your Grace therefore to show your gracious pleasure to the said
M. Wyat, that some ringges may be kept and sent into Scottelande;
whiche after my poore oppyniyoun shulde be a good dede,
remembering the power and operacion of thaym is knowne and proved
in Edinburgh, and that they be gretly required for the same cause both
by grete personnages and other.’
When Bishop Gardiner was in Rome in a.d. 1529, Anne Boleyn wrote him the
following letter:245
Master Stephyns,
I thank you for my letter, wherein I perceive the willing and faithful
mind that you have to do me pleasure, not doubting, but as much as is
possible for man’s wit to imagine, you will do. I pray God to send you
well to speed in all your matters, so that you would put me to the study,
how to reward your high service: I do trust in God you shall not repent
it, and that the end of this journey shall be more pleasant to me than
your first, for that was but a rejoicing hope, which causing the like of it,
does put me to the more pain, and they that are partakers with me, as
you do know: and therefore I do trust that this hard beginning shall
make the better ending.
Master Stephyns, I send you here cramp-rings for you and Master
Gregory, and Mr. Peter, praying you to distribute them as you think
best. And have me kindly recommended to them both, as she that you
may assure them, will be glad to do them any pleasure, which shall be
in my power. And thus I make an end, praying God send you good
health.

Written at Grenwiche, the 4th day of April,
By your assured friend,
Anne Boleyn.
[To Master Stephyns this be delivered.]
Burnet246 refers to this letter, as follows:
‘When he [Gardiner] went to Rome, in the year 1529, Anne Boleyn writ
a very kind letter to him, which I have put in the Collection (Records
No. 24). By it, the reader will clearly perceive that he was then in the
secret of the King’s designing to marry her as soon as the divorce was
obtained. There is another particular in that letter, which corrects a
conjecture which I had set down in the beginning of the former book
concerning the cramp rings that were blessed by King Henry, which I
thought might have been done by him after he was declared head of the
Church.247 That part was printed before I saw this letter: but this letter
shows they were used to be blessed before the separation from Rome:
for Anne Boleyn sent them as great presents thither. This use of them
had been (it seems) discontinued in King Edward’s time: but now, under
Queen Mary, it was designed to be revived, and the office for it was
written out in a fair MS. yet extant, of which I have put a copy in the
Collection (No. 25). But the silence in the writers of that time makes me
think it was seldom if ever practised.’
Queen Mary’s Manual, of which we shall have more to say later, seems to have
been the source from which Burnet transcribed the Office. In his time it was in
the library of R. Smith, titular Bishop of Chalcedon.
Numerous allusions in the records of the De Lisle family bear testimony to the
popularity of cramp-​rings in the reign of Henry VIII.248 Edward Seymour, Earl
of Hertford and afterwards Duke of Somerset, writes to Lady Lisle, in 1537:
‘Hussey told me you were very desirous to have some cramp-rings
against the time that you should be brought a bedd. . . . I send by the
present messenger 18 cramp-​rings, which you should have had long
ago.’249

John Husee writes from London on April 17, 1535, to his mistress, Lady Lisle:
‘I send you by Mr. Degory Gramefilld 59 cramp rings of silver, that Christofer
Morys giveth you, and one of gold’;250 and again, on May 2, 1538: ‘Cramp-​
rings I can get none out of the jewel-​house. Mr. Wyllms says the King had the
most part of gold, but has promised me twelve silver.’251
In a letter of May 13, 1536, John Husee combines denunciation of Anne Boleyn
with a promise of cramp-​rings to Lady Lisle:
‘Madam, I think verily that if all the books and cronycles were totally
revolved and to the uttermost proscuted and tried, which against wymen
hath been pennyd, contryvyd, and wryten, syns Adam and Eve, these
same were I think verily nothing in comparison with that which hath
been done and committed by Anne the Queen. . . . I think not the
contrary but she and all they shall suffre. John Williams hath promised
me some cramp rings for your Ladyship’;252
and again, six days after:
‘Your ladyship shall receive of this berer 9 cramp-rings of silver. John
Williams says he never had so few of gold as this year. The king had the
most part himself: but next year he will make you amends.’253
This day, May 19, 1536, was the day of Anne Boleyn’s execution.
Margaret Mylynton, in 1516, bequeaths to ‘my dame Croche my best gown and
a kercheve, and my cramp-ring’.254 There is nothing, however, to show that it
had received the royal benediction.
Andrew Boorde, in his Introduction of Knowledge, says, ‘the kynges of
Englande doth halowe every yere crampe rynges, ye which rynges worne on
ones fynger doth help them whych hath the crampe’; and again, in his Breviarie
of Health, published in 1547, but written during the lifetime of Henry VIII: ‘The
kynges majesty hath a great helpe in this matter, in hallowing crampe rynges,
and so given without money or petition.’ Boorde was medical attendant to
Thomas, eighth Duke of Norfolk, Lord President of the Council and uncle of
Anne Boleyn, and by him was recommended to the notice of Henry VIII, who
employed him much in State business, but not, so far as is known, in a medical
capacity. His testimony therefore is peculiarly reliable, and shows that Henry

VIII maintained the ceremony throughout his reign, as is borne out by the
scattered references we have adduced from other contemporary sources.
In 1547, after the death of Henry VIII, Gardiner sent a letter to Ridley, which
contains the following passage:
‘The late king used to bless cramp rings both of gold and silver, which
were much esteemed everywhere, and when he was abroad they were
often desired from him. The gift he hoped the young king would not
neglect. He believed the invocation of the name of God might give such
a virtue to holy water as well as to the water of baptism,’ and further he
speaks of the rings as endued ‘by the special gift of curation ministered
to the king of this realm’.255
That Edward VI did not relinquish the practice of blessing cramp-​rings, as has
been supposed, and as Burnet submits, is conclusively proved by an entry in the
Household Accounts of the year 1553, before his death. Under the heading
‘Oblations’ is 25 shillings for the redemption of rings commonly called
medicine rings, to be made of gold and silver.256
It was little likely that Mary would allow a Catholic ceremonial to lapse for
want of royal patronage. In the Appendix to Illustrations of the manners and
expences of antient times in England, in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries,
deduced from the accompts of churchwardens and other authentic documents,
London, 1797, 4to, printed in the same year, is a list of the New Year’s gifts
presented by Queen Mary in 1556, among which we find:
‘Item, deliuerid by the queins commandement—to the said Robert
Raynes, in broken golde, to make crampe rings, etc. Item, more
deliuerid the same time, to make cramp ringes, in broke plate of silu’
theise parcelles,’ &c.

Plate XL. Q U E E N M A RY T U D O R B L E S S I N G
CRAMP-RINGS

F r o m Q U E E N M A RY ’ S M S . M A N U A L f o . i v
Library of the Roman Catholic Cathedral at
WESTMINSTER

But there is further the evidence of the actual existence of Queen Mary’s
Illuminated MS. Manual, in the Library of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of
Westminster, giving the Office of the Blessing of Cramp-​rings in Latin, with
rubrics in English showing it to be the form made use of by herself. It also
contains a miniature painting of Queen Mary performing the service of
consecration. The whole office is transcribed below. A full description of the
Manual will be found in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries,257 at a

meeting of whom it was shown and described by Sir Henry Ellis. Sparrow
Simpson has also described it in the Journal of the Archaeological Association,
1871. It is a ‘small quarto volume, eight and a half inches in height by six and
three-​eighths in width’. Cardinal Wiseman, to whom it formerly belonged, has
written on the fly-leaf, ‘Queen Mary’s manual for blessing cramp-​rings and
touching for the Evil. Bound 1850.’ The cover is spangled with roses and fleurs-
de-lis, together with the Queen’s monogram MR. ‘The volume consists of
nineteen leaves of vellum, each surrounded with a rich border, and filled either
with miniatures or with the two offices which it comprises. Then follow four
ruled leaves and fifteen plain leaves without manuscript. . . . On the recto of
leaf 1 the royal arms of Philip and Mary are emblazoned, surrounded by a garter
and surmounted by a crown. A rich border containing the rose, the fleur-de-lis,
and the pomegranate, together with a shield bearing the cross of St. George,
completes the decorations of the page.’ The red and white roses represent Queen
Mary’s double title to the throne of England as the heiress of the houses of
Lancaster and York, the fleur-de-lis her claim to the throne of France, and the
pomegranate of Granada her descent from Ferdinand and Isabella. The Cross of
St. George is derived from the shield of the Order of the Garter. ‘On the verso
of this leaf is an illumination (Plate xl) representing the interior of a chapel with
an altar furnished with curtains, candlesticks, and crucifix. At a prayer-​desk
before the altar kneels the Queen; before her is an open book, and on either side
two golden basins containing cramp-​rings.’ Leaves 2 to 10 contain ‘certayn
prayo’s to be vsed by the quenes heighnes in the consecration of the crampe
ryngs’. A study of the rubrics, which are in English, suffices ‘to show the
essentials for the consecration of the rings: the prayers, the royal touch, the holy
water. . . . The recto of leaf 11 is filled with an illumination of the Crucifixion
with St. Mary and St. John. In the border are the instruments of the Passion—
the spear, the reed and sponge, the hammer and pincers, three nails, two
scourges, and (a very unusual addition) a centre-​bit of the same form as that
now in use. On the verso of this leaf is a very interesting full-​page illumination.
At a prayer-​desk, on which is an open book, kneels the Queen, turning to the
right (the dexter side of the picture), wearing the head-dress familiar to us in all
her portraits. Before her kneels a sufferer, apparently a young man, whose bare
and swollen neck the Queen holds between her two hands. Behind him, holding
open the collar of the patient’s coat, kneels the “clarke of the closett” in a
cassock and gown, and with a tonsured head. On the left of the prayer-​desk

stands “the chaplen”, a bald-​headed, venerable man in a long cassock, a
somewhat short surplice with full sleeves, and the “stole abowte his neck”
ordered in the rubric, reading the appointed office. The Queen wears a brown
dress cut square at the neck, white sleeves, and a lace ruff and waist-​bands. The
office for the healing follows, commencing on folio 12a, and ending on folio
19a.
‘The rubrics are in red ink, bright and fresh; and each page has a rich border of
scrolls, leaves, flowers, and fruit, with occasional figures of children, &c. I
enumerate the most important subjects. Folio 1b, David with head of Goliath,
St. George and the Dragon, and a child with a skull; folio 2b, arms of the city of
London; folio 3a, veritas temporis filia (the Queen’s favourite motto), with a
sword and sceptre; folios 3b and 4a, large terminal figures with grapes; folio 4a,
arms of France and England quarterly; folio 4b, dn̅ s mihi adivtor; folios 5a and
b, portcullis and rose; folios 6a and b, pacientia and prvdētia, with allegorical
figures; folios 7a and b, charitas and ivsticia; folios 8a and b, fides and spes;
folios 9a and b, fortitvdo and temperancia.’
With the death of Mary, the ceremonial seems finally to have fallen into disuse.
There is, however, a passage in the Historia Anglicana Ecclesiastica of
Nicholas Harpsfield,258 which was written entirely in the reign of Elizabeth,
which seems to throw some doubt on the point. The words are as follows:
‘Quin et annulus ille, de quo diximus, magna in Westmonasteriensi
Londini coenobio postea reverentia reservatus, adversus comitialem
morbum multis profuit: indeque etiam ortum, ut ad sacram parasceuen
Reges Angliae certos annulos statis quibusdam precibus et caerimoniis
consecrare consueverint, adversus eundem morbum salutares. Quae
consuetudo et ad nostra usque tempora perducta est, multique
huiusmodi annulorum beneficium, nostra etiam aetate, senserunt.’ [And
further the above-​mentioned ring was reverently preserved afterwards
in the monastery of Westminster in London, and relieved many of
epilepsy. That too was the origin of the custom of the Kings of England
on Good Friday consecrating certain rings with set prayers and
ceremonies, for the cure of the same disease. Which custom has
persisted even down to our own times, and many even in our own
lifetimes have derived benefit from rings of this kind.]

Nicholas Harpsfield, though he did not write till the reign of Elizabeth, was
born as early as a.d. 1519, so that his words are consistent with discontinuance
of the ceremony after the time of Queen Mary.
It remains to consider what diseased states were embraced by the term ‘cramp’.
Epilepsy, convulsions, and rheumatism certainly. All these terms have in
common the idea of muscular contraction or spasm, and their relation in usage
to one another may be represented graphically as under:

Confusion of these terms is far more marked in medical than in lay writers; but
at the same time there is little doubt that the conservative sentiment inspired by
the royal ceremonial kept the term ‘cramp’ alive in a sense that was all but
obsolete in the common diction.
Chaucer applies ‘crampe’ to muscular spasm:

But wel he felte about his herte crepe . . .
The crampe of death, to streyne him by the herte.259

Linacre, as we have seen, speaks of cramp-rings, in 1518, as a charm against
spasms, while about the same year Polydore Vergil speaks of the royal cramp-​
rings as a cure for the morbus comitialis. Each of these two writers clearly
indicates epilepsy. In 1526 Magnus speaks definitely of cramp-​rings as relieving
a man lying in the falling-​sickness, a term habitually applied to epilepsy.
Nicholas Harpsfield too, writing in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, speaks
of cramp-​rings blessed by the kings as remedies for the morbus comitialis. In all
probability royal cramp-​rings were used for epilepsy and epilepsy only, but it is
quite possible, and I am inclined to think probable, that other cramp-​rings had a
less exclusive use.
Bacon’s description of cramp in his Natural and Experimental History is fairly
explicit and obviously does not embrace epilepsy: ‘The cramp cometh of
contraction of sinews, which is manifest, in that it comes either by cold or
dryness.’

Shakespeare recognizes both epilepsy and rheumatism as entities apart from
cramp. Epilepsy he seems to associate more with falling than with convulsion:
thus, of the fit that attacked Caesar when the crown was offered to him, he
writes:
Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was
speechless.
Brutus. ‘Tis very like: he hath the falling-sickness.260
‘Cramp’ is used by Shakespeare for muscular spasms or contractures, and he
links the term on the one side to rheumatism, and on the other to convulsions, in
the following passages:

For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up.261

Parolles says:
‘In a retreat he outruns any lackey: marry, in coming on he has the cramp.’262
Prospero says:

Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints
With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews
With aged cramps.263

and
‘Leander . . . went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and being taken
with the cramp was drowned.’264
Robert Bayford, in his Enchiridion Medicum published in 1655, includes both
wry-​neck and convulsions under the heading cramp, but he treats epilepsy
separately on the ground that, as we know to be the case, it is not always
associated with convulsions. He has no word ‘rheumatism’ at all.
Pepys (1664) carried about with him a hare’s foot as a charm against colic, i.e.
against muscular spasm. Among Indians, Norwegians, and Central Africans, the
foot of an elk was a charm against epilepsy. Pepys also recites a charm against
cramp:

Cramp, be thou faintless
As our Lady was sinless
When she bare Jesus.

In this charm the word cramp seems to refer to the painful muscular spasms of
labour. Pepys, as we know, suffered from colic, but not from epilepsy, so in
using a hare’s foot as a charm against colic he was probably employing a charm
against epilepsy. In like manner the ‘rheumatic ring’ of to-day seems to be the
lineal descendant of the cramp-​ring of aforetime, and the confusion of
nomenclature has doubtless not affected its efficacy. Folk-​medicine serves
rather to confirm than to elucidate the confusion, for in Suffolk moles’ feet are
carried as a charm against rheumatism, but in Sussex against cramp. In
Devonshire a dried frog is worn as a cure for fits.
Boswell, in his description of Johnson at the time of their tour to the Hebrides,
uses the word ‘cramp’ in its earlier significance. ‘His head,’ he says, ‘and
sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy:
he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions, of
the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus’s dance.’
It may be asked how it came about that rings were used in the first instance as a
remedy for epilepsy. It has occurred to me that their use may have originated in
the time-​honoured belief that an epileptic seizure may be aborted by ligature of
a limb or part above the situation in which the warning ‘aura’ commences.
Galen, Alexander of Tralles, Rhazes, and Avicenna, among the earlier writers on
medicine, all recommend the measure.
THE OFFICE OF CONSECRATING THE CRAMP-RINGS
Certain prayers to be used by the queen’s highness, in the consecration of the
cramp-rings.
Deus misereatur nostri et benedicat nos Deus, illuminet vultum suum super nos
et misereatur nostri.
Ut cognoscamus in terra viam tuam, in omnibus gentibus salutare tuum.
Confiteantur tibi populi Deus, confiteantur tibi populi omnes.
Laetentur et exultent gentes, quoniam iudicas populos in aequitate, et gentes in
terra dirigis.

Confiteantur tibi populi Deus, confiteantur tibi populi omnes, terra dedit
fructum suum.
Benedicat nos Deus, Deus noster, benedicat nos Deus, et metuent eum omnes
fines terrae.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum, Amen.
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui ad solatium humani generis, varia ac
multiplicia miseriarum nostrarum levamenta uberrimis gratiae tuae donis ab
inexhausto benignitatis tuae fonte manantibus incessanter tribuere dignatus es,
et quos ad regalis sublimitatis fastigium extulisti, insignioribus gratiis ornatos,
donorumque tuorum organa atque canales esse voluisti, ut sicut per te regnant
aliisque praesunt, ita te authore reliquis prosint, et tua in populum beneficia
conferant: preces nostras propitius respice, et quae tibi vota humillime
fundimus, benignus admitte, ut quod a te maiores nostri de tua misericordia
sperantes obtinuerunt, id nobis etiam pari fiducia postulantibus concedere
digneris. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
The rings lying in one bason, or more, this prayer to be said over them.
Deus coelestium terrestriumque conditor creaturarum, atque humani generis
benignissime reparator, dator spiritualis gratiae, omniumque benedictionum
largitor, immitte Spiritum Sanctum tuum Paracletum de coelis super hos
annulos arte fabrili confectos, eosque magna tua potentia ita emundare digneris,
ut omni nequitia lividi venenosique serpentis procul expulsa, metallum a te
bono conditore creatum, a cunctis inimici sordibus maneat immune. Per
Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
Benedictio annulorum.
Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, Deus Iacob, exaudi misericors preces nostras, parce
metuentibus, propitiare supplicibus, et mittere digneris sanctum Angelum tuum
de coelis qui sanctificet ✠ et benedicat ✠ annulos istos, ut sint remedium
salutare omnibus nomen tuum humiliter implorantibus, ac semetipsos pro
conscientia delictorum suorum accusantibus, atque ante conspectum divinae
clementiae tuae facinora sua deplorantibus, et serenissimam pietatem tuam
humiliter obnixeque flagitantibus; prosint denique per invocationem sancti tui

nominis omnibus istos gestantibus, ad corporis et animae sanitatem. Per
Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
Benedictio.
Deus qui in morbis curandis maxima semper potentiae tuae miracula declarasti,
quique annulos in Iuda patriarcha fidei arrabonem, in Aarone sacerdotale
ornamentum, in Dario fidelis custodiae symbolum, et in hoc regno variorum
morborum remedia esse voluisti, hos annulos propitius ✠ benedicere et ✠
sanctificare digneris: ut omnes qui eos gestabunt sint immunes ab omnibus
Satanae insidiis, sint armati virtute coelestis defensionis, nec eos infestet vel
nervorum contractio, vel comitialis morbi pericula, sed sentiant te opitulante in
omni morborum genere levamen. In nomine Patris ✠ et Filii ✠ et Spiritus
Sancti ✠. Amen.
Benedic anima mea Domino: et omnia quae intra me sunt nomini sancto eius.
Here follows the rest of that Psalm.
Immensam clementiam tuam misericors Deus humiliter imploramus, ut qua
animi fiducia et fidei sinceritate, ac certa mentis pietate, ad haec impetranda
accedimus, pari etiam devotione gratiae tuae symbola fideles prosequantur:
facessat omnis superstitio, procul absit diabolicae fraudis suspicio, et in gloria
tui nominis omnia cedant: ut te largitorem bonorum omnium fideles tui
intelligant, atque a te uno quicquid vel animis vel corporibus vere prosit,
profectum sentiant et profiteantur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
These prayers being said, the queen’s highness rubbeth the rings between her
hands, saying:
Sanctifica Domine annulos istos, et rore tuae benedictionis benignus asperge, ac
manuum nostrarum confricatione, quas, olei sacra infusione externa,
sanctificare dignatus es pro ministerii nostri modo, consecra, ut quod natura
metalli praestare non possit, gratiae tuae magnitudine efficiatur. Per Christum
Dominum nostrum. Amen.
Then must holy water be cast on the rings, saying:
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. Domine Fili Dei unigenite,
Dei et hominum Mediator, Iesu Christe, in cuius unius nomine salus recte
quaeritur, quique in te sperantibus facilem ad Patrem accessum conciliasti,
quem quicquid in nomine tuo peteretur, id omne daturum, cum certissimo

veritatis oraculo ab ore tuo sancto, quum inter homines versabaris homo
pronunciasti, precibus nostris aures tuae pietatis accommoda, ut ad thronum
gratiae in tua fiducia accedentes, quod in nomine tuo humiliter postulavimus, id
a nobis, te mediante, impetratum fuisse, collatis per te beneficiis, fideles
intelligant. Qui vivis et regnas cum Deo patre in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus,
per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Vota nostra quaesumus Domine, Spiritus Sanctus qui a te procedit, aspirando
praeveniat, et prosequatur, ut quod ad salutem fidelium confidenter petimus,
gratiae tuae dono efficaciter consequamur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.
Amen.
Maiestatem tuam clementissime Deus, Pater, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus,
suppliciter exoramus, ut quod ad nominis tui sanctificationem piis hic
ceremoniis peragitur, ad corporis simul et animae tutelam valeat in terris, et ad
uberiorem felicitatis fructum proficiat in coelis.
Qui vivis et regnas Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
THE CEREMONIES OF BLESSING CRAMP-RINGS, ON GOOD
FRIDAY, USED BY THE CATHOLICK KINGS OF ENGLAND
The psalme ‘Deus misereatur nostri, etc.’, with the ‘Gloria Patri’.
May God take pity upon us and blesse us: may he send forth the light of his face
upon us, and take pity on us.
That we may know thy ways on earth: among all nations thy salvation.
May people acknowledge thee, O God: may all people acknowledge thee.
Let nations rejoice and be glad, because thou judgest people with equity: and
doest guide nations on the earth.
May people acknowledge thee, O God, may all people acknowledge thee: the
earth has sent forth her fruit.
May God blesse us, that God who is ours: may that God blesse us: and may all
the bounds of the earth feare him.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, and now, and ever: and for ever and ever. Amen.

Then the king reades this prayer:
Almighty eternal God, who by the most copious gifts of thy grace flowing from
the unexhausted fountain of thy bounty, hast been graciously pleased for the
comfort of mankind, continually to grant us many and various means to relieve
us in our miseries, and art willing to make those the instruments and channels of
thy gifts, and to grace those persons with more excellent favours, whom thou
hast raised to the royal dignity; to the end that as by thee they reign and govern
others, so by thee they may prove beneficial to them, and bestow thy favours on
the people: graciously heare our prayers and favourably receive those vows we
powre forth with humility, that thou mayest grant to us, who beg with the same
confidence, the favour which our ancestors by their hopes in thy mercy have
obtained, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The rings lying in one bason, or more, this prayer is to be said over them:
O God, the maker of heavenly and earthly creatures, and the most gracious
restorer of mankind, the dispenser of spiritual grace, and the origin of all
blessings: send downe from heaven thy holy Spirit the Comforter upon these
rings, artificially fram’d by the workman, and by thy greate power purify them
so, that all the malice of the fowle and venomous serpent be driven out; and so
the metal, which by thee was created, may remaine pure and free from all the
dregs of the enemy, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The blessing of the rings.
O God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, heare mercifully our prayers.
Spare those who feare thee. Be propitious to thy suppliants, and graciously be
pleased to send downe from heaven thy holy angel: that he may sanctify ✠ and
blesse ✠ these rings: to the end they may prove a healthy remedy to such as
implore thy name with humility, and accuse themselves of the sins which ly
upon their conscience: who deplore their crimes in the sight of thy divine
clemency, and beseech with earnestnes and humility thy most serene pity. May
they in fine by the invocation of thy holy name become profitable to all such as
weare them, for the health of their soule and body, through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
A blessing.

O God, who has manifested the greatest wonders of thy power by the cure of
diseases, and who were pleased that rings should be a pledge of fidelity in the
patriark Judah, a priestly ornament in Aaron, the mark of a faithful guardian in
Darius, and in this kingdom a remedy for divers diseases: graciously be pleased
to blesse ✠ and sanctify ✠ these rings, to the end that all such as weare them
may be free from all snares of the devil, may be defended by the power of
celestial armour, and that no contraction of the nerves or any danger of the
falling-​sickness may infest them, but that in all sort of diseases by thy help they
may find relief. In the name of the Father, ✠ and of the Son, ✠ and of the Holy
Ghost ✠. Amen.
Blesse, O my soule, the Lord: and let all things which are within me praise his
holy name.
Blesse, O my soule, the Lord: and do not forget all his favours.
He forgives all thy iniquities: he heales all thy infirmities.
He redeemes thy life from ruin: he crownes thee with mercy and
commiseration.
He fils thy desires with what is good: thy youth like that of the eagle shal be
renewed.
The Lord is he who does mercy: and does justice to those who suffer wrong.
The merciful and pitying Lord: the long sufferer and most mighty merciful.
He will not continue his anger for ever: neither wil he threaten for ever.
He has not dealt with us in proportion to our sins: nor has he rendred unto us
according to our offences.
Because according to the distance of heaven from earth: so has he enforced his
mercies upon those who feare him.
As far distant as the east is from the west: so far has he divided our offences
from us.
After the manner that a father takes pity of his sons; so has the Lord taken pity
of those who feare him: because he knows what we are made of.
He remembers that we are but dust: man like hey such are his days: like the
flower in the field so wil he fade away.

Because his breath wil passe away through him, and he wil not be able to
subsist: and it wil find no longer its owne place.
But the mercy of the Lord is from all eternity: and will be for ever upon those
who feare him.
And his justice comes upon the children of their children: to those who keep his
wil.
And are mindful of his commandements: to performe them.
The Lord in heaven has prepared himselfe a throne: and his kingdom shall reign
over all.
Blesse yee the Lord all yee angels of his, yee who are powerful in strength: who
execute his commands, at the hearing of his voice when he speakes.
Blesse yee the Lord all yee vertues of his: yee ministers who execute his wil.
Blesse yee the Lord all yee works of his throughout all places of his dominion:
my soule praise thou the Lord.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, and now, and ever: and for ever and ever. Amen.
Wee humbly implore, O merciful God, thy infinit clemency: that as we come to
thee with a confident soule, and sincere faith, and a pious assurance of mind:
with the like devotion thy beleevers may follow on these tokens of thy grace.
May all superstition be banished hence, far be all suspicion of any diabolical
fraud, and to the glory of thy name let all things succeede: to the end thy
beleevers may understand thee to be the dispenser of all good; and may be
sensible and publish, that whatsoever is profitable to soul or body, is derived
from thee: through Christ our Lord. Amen.
These prayers being said, the king’s highnes rubbeth the rings between his
hands, saying:
Sanctify, O Lord, these rings, and graciously bedew them with the dew of thy
benediction, and consecrate them by the rubbing of our hands, which thou hast
been pleased according to our ministery to sanctify by an external effusion of
holy oyle upon them; to the end that what the nature of the mettal is not able to

performe, may be wrought by the greatnes of thy grace: through Christ our
Lord. Amen.
Then must holy water be cast on the rings, saying:
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Ghost. Amen.
O Lord, the only begotten Son of God, mediatour of God and men, Jesus Christ,
in whose name alone salvation is sought for, and to such as hope in thee givest
an easy access to thy Father; who when conversing among men, thyself a man,
didst promise by an assured oracle flowing from thy sacred mouth, that thy
Father should grant whatever was asked in thy name; lend a gracious eare of
pity to these prayers of ours: to the end that approaching with confidence to the
throne of thy grace, the beleevers may find by the benefits conferrd upon them,
that by thy mediation we have obteined, what we have most humbly beg’d in
thy Name; who livest and reignest with God the Father, in the unity of the holy
Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Wee beseech thee, O Lord, that the Spirit, which proceedes from thee, may
prevent and follow on our desires; to the end that what we beg with confidence
for the good of the faithful, we may efficaciously obteine by thy gracious gift:
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
O most clement God; Father, Son, and holy Ghost: wee supplicate and beseech
Thee, that what is here performed by pious ceremonies to the sanctifying of thy
name, may be prevalent to the defense of our soule and body on earth; and
profitable to a more ample felicity in heaven. Who livest and reignest God,
world without end. Amen.

DR. JOHN WEYER AND THE WITCH MANIA
By E. T. Withington
The value of every new truth or discovery is relative, and depends upon the
state of ideas or knowledge prevalent at the time. Should it go greatly beyond
this, it may lose much in practical effect, like good seed falling on unprepared
soil; but the discoverer is no less worthy of praise though he be so far in
advance of his fellows that they refuse to accept his teaching, and persecute
instead of honouring him. Posterity, however, often ignores former conditions,
especially in an era of rapid progress, for the quicker the advance the sooner
will the early stages be forgotten, however important and difficult they may
have been.

Among those who were so far beyond their age that the truths they proclaimed
not only were rejected by the majority but brought them into danger was Dr.
John Weyer, the first serious opponent of the witch mania. He stood almost
alone. His attack on the witch-​hunters, though it marks the turn of the tide, was
followed by more than a century of cruelty, injustice, and superstition; yet our
ideas on the subject are now so entirely altered that it is hard to imagine the
value and danger of the service he performed, and his name was almost
forgotten even by members of his own profession, when his biography was
published by Dr. K. Binz in 1885.265
Let us try to get some idea of the nature of the witch mania, that we may better
appreciate the courage and intelligence of this ancient physician.
In the second half of the fifteenth century a new age began in Western Europe.
The revival of Greek, the invention of printing, and the discovery of America
gave fresh ideas and new prospects to mankind. But, as the sun’s rays were
believed to breed serpents in fermenting matter, so amid this ferment of new life
and light rose a hideous monster, more terrible than any fabled dragon of
romance or superstition of the darkest ages, which for generations satiated itself
on the tears and blood of the innocent and helpless. This was the witch mania.
For two centuries the majority of theologians and jurists in Western Europe
were convinced that vast numbers of their fellow creatures, especially women,
were in league with the devil, that they had sexual intercourse with him or his
imps, and that he bestowed on them in exchange for their souls the power of
injuring their neighbours in person or property. They thought it their duty to
search out these witches, to force from them, by the most terrible tortures they
could devise, not only confessions of their own guilt, but also denunciations of
their associates, and finally to put them to death, preferably by burning. In
consequence, many thousands of innocent persons of all ages and ranks, but
especially poor women, were judicially murdered, after being first compelled by
unspeakable torments to commit moral suicide by declaring themselves guilty
of unmentionable crimes, and to involve their dearest friends and relations in a
similar fate. There is no sadder scene in the whole tragicomedy of human
history.
There had been nothing like it in the darkest of the dark ages, there was nothing
like it among the far more ignorant and superstitious adherents of the Eastern
Church. The witch mania in its extreme form has been manifested only by the

Catholics and Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and by
some tribes of African savages.
In early Christian times, witchcraft was recognized as a relic of paganism, but it
was not feared. Christ had overcome the powers of darkness, and His true
followers need fear no harm from them. A canon of the Church, at least as early
as the ninth century, declared that women who thought they rode through the air
with Diana or Herodias were only deluded by the devil, and that those who
believed human beings could create anything, or change themselves or others
into animal forms, were infidels and worse than heathens; and confessors were
instructed to inquire into and inflict penance for the belief that witches could
enter closed doors, make hail-​storms, or kill persons without visible means.266
In the enlightened sixteenth century, any one who professed his disbelief that
witches could ride through the air, change themselves into cats, or make
caterpillars and thunder-​storms, would have had an excellent chance of being
burnt as a heretic or concealed sorcerer. St. Boniface (680–755) classed belief in
witches and were-wolves among the works of the devil, and St. Agobard of
Lyons (779–840) declared the idea that witches caused hail and thunder-​storms
to be impious and absurd.267 The laws of Charlemagne made it murder to put
any one to death on charge of witchcraft, and in the eleventh century King
Coloman of Hungary asserted briefly, ‘Let no one speak of witches, seeing there
are none’.268 Few, indeed, were quite so sceptical as this; still witchcraft was in
the Middle Ages looked upon by the educated in a half-​contemptuous fashion,
and even those who openly professed sorcery frequently escaped with no worse
punishment than penance, banishment, or an ecclesiastical scourging.
This may be well illustrated by a story told in the life of the learned Dominican,
St. Vincent of Beauvais. An old woman once (1190–1264) came to a priest in
his church and demanded money from him, saying she had done him a great
service, for that, when she and her companions, who were witches, had entered
his bedroom the previous night, she had prevented them from injuring him. ‘But
how’, asked the priest, ‘could you enter my chamber, seeing that the door was
locked?’ ‘Oh,’ said the witch, ‘that matters naught to us, for we go through
keyholes as easily as through open doors.’ ‘If what you say is true,’ replied the
holy man, ‘you shall not lack a reward, but I must first have proof of it.’ With
these words, he locked the church door, and began vigorously to beat the old

woman with the handle of the crucifix he carried, asking her, when she
complained, why she did not escape through the keyhole.269
The great Pope Nicholas I (died 867) strongly condemned the use of torture to
induce confessions, and Gregory VII (died 1085) forbade inquisition to be made
for witches and sorcerers on occasions of plague or bad weather.270 Later, the
inquisitorial process, combined with torture to enforce denunciations, became
the chief agent in spreading and maintaining the witch mania.
The Eastern Church remained in this mediaeval stage, and never developed a
witch mania. In the West the change seems to have been brought about mainly
by two causes, the development of heresies and the increasing prominence of
the devil.
There is no doubt that the Albigensian and other heresies of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries contained Manichean elements. It was taught that there were
two divinities—one perfectly good, the creator of the invisible spiritual world,
the other the creator of the material world, the Demiurgus, a being capable of
evil passions, wrath, jealousy, &c., who was identified with the Jehovah of the
Old Testament.271 It required very little to confound this Demiurgus with Satan,
the Prince of this world; after which it was easy to look upon Satan as a being
not entirely evil, as Lucifer, son of the morning, the disinherited son or brother
of God, a natural object of worship for the oppressed and discontented.272
The serfs, equally tyrannized over by bishop and noble, the relics of the
persecuted sects Waldenses and Cathari,273 sought refuge, like Saul of old, in
forbidden arts, and thus sects of Luciferans, or devil-​worshippers, arose
(especially in Germany and France) whose numbers were exaggerated by the
fear and horror of the orthodox.274
At the same time the devil acquired more importance in other ways. That fearful
calamity, the Black Death, seemed to display his power over both the just and
the unjust; while the Great Schism in which each pope excommunicated the
other, handing him and his adherents over to Satan, put every one not absolutely
certain of being on the right side in reasonable fear of the powers of darkness.
The belief in the great activity and power of the devil and his servants the
sorcerers was further supported by the vast authority of St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225–74), whose ingenuity enabled him to explain away those ancient canons

which seemed opposed to the more extreme views. Thus the synod of Bracara
(a.d. 563) had declared the doctrine that the devil can produce drought or
thunder-​storms to be heresy; to which the Doctor Angelicus replied that though
it is doubtless heresy to believe the devil can make natural thunder-​storms, it is
by no means contrary to the Catholic faith to hold that he may, by the
permission of God, make artificial ones.275
For these and other reasons, the devil assumed greater prominence during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than ever before. Men believed that he might
appear to them from behind every hedge or ruin, that his action was to be seen
in almost all pains and diseases, but that he was to be dreaded most of all when
he entered into a league with some man or woman. Thus everything was ready
for the outbreak of witch mania when, in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII by his bull
Summis desiderantes gave the sanction of the Church to the popular beliefs
concerning witches, such as sexual intercourse with devils, destruction of crops,
and infliction of sterility and disease on man and beast.
The charge of sorcery had usually been employed in earlier times either to
check learned men who seemed to be going too far, or tending to heresy in their
researches, as in the case of the physicians Arnold of Villanova (1240–1312)
and Peter of Abano (1250–1320), or to crush individuals and societies who were
politically dangerous, as with Joan of Arc, the Duchess of Gloucester, and the
Templars—the Church being called in to aid the civil power. Now it was the
Church which called upon the civil power to assist in a crusade against witches
and sorcerers as being the worst and most dangerous of heretics.
In the Middle Ages it was held that a man who called up the devil, knowing it to
be wrong, was not a heretic but merely a sinner. But if he thought it was not
wrong, or that the devil would tell him the truth, or that the devil could do
anything without God’s permission, he was also a heretic, since these beliefs are
contrary to Church doctrine. In the fifteenth century it was taught that all
sorcerers are heretics, maleficus being, according to the learned authors of the
Malleus Maleficarum, a contraction of male de fide sentiens or heretic.276
Nor was the identification of heresy and witchcraft illogical, whatever we may
think of the etymology. The Church is the kingdom of God, heretics form the
kingdom of the devil, and just as the Church possesses saints who see visions,
work miracles, and commune with Christ face to face, so there are specially

eminent heretics, saints of the devil’s church, who work miracles and have
obscene intercourse with their master. All true Christians are potential saints, all
heretics potential sorcerers, for all have committed treason against the divine
Majesty, though only some may have entered into a definite compact with the
enemy. The former, if they repent, may hope for perpetual imprisonment; the
latter are to be put to death whether they repent or not.
This view was also of advantage to the Church, for it increased the horror of
heresy and facilitated its suppression. The laity had never entirely reconciled
themselves to the sight of their apparently harmless neighbours being tortured
and burnt for differences in abstract belief, but almost every one was ready to
torture and burn a sorcerer, and local outbreaks of witch-​hunting were
frequently started by mob violence. In 1555 it was declared by the Peace of
Augsburg that no one should suffer in life and property for his religion; but to
take a Lutheran, call him a sorcerer, confiscate his goods, and force him by
torture to confess that he was led into his errors by the devil himself, seems to
have been too great a temptation for the prince-​bishops who headed the
‘counter-​reformation’ in South Germany to resist. That this was partly the cause
of the great witch-​burnings in the bishoprics of Würzburg, Bamberg, Fulda, and
Trèves is evidenced by the large proportion of male victims, and by the frequent
and significant appearance of the phrase ‘is also Lutheran’ in the official
reports.
As soon as the Reformation was established, Protestants vied with Catholics as
witch-​hunters. Eager to show that they were in no way inferior to their
opponents in zeal for the Lord and enmity against Satan and his servants, they
had the advantage of being able to follow the scriptural injunction, ‘Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live’, without previously explaining away ancient canons
and decrees of Church synods which seemed to throw doubt on the very
existence of the more typical forms of witchcraft. Nor did they hesitate to attack
their rivals with similar weapons. If Protestants were burnt as sorcerers at
Würzburg, we find the first Danish Lutheran bishop, Peter Palladius,
recommending the zealous members of his flock to seek out the so-called wise
women of their neighbourhoods on pretence of having some disease. If then the
latter use paternosters, holy water, or invocations of saints, they are probably
not only Catholics but witches, and should be treated accordingly.277

Almost all the victims of the witch mania were executed on their own
confession, extorted in the vast majority of instances by torture or the fear of
torture. In England, where torture was theoretically illegal, confessions were
comparatively rare, and nearly all died protesting their innocence. The few
exceptions prove the rule; thus Elinor Shaw and Mary Philips, almost the last
witches legally executed in England, 1705, confessed because they were
threatened with death if they refused, and promised release if they pleaded
guilty,278 while others were induced to admit their guilt by being kept awake
several nights, and forced to run up and down their cells till utterly exhausted,
methods almost as effectual in producing ‘a readiness to confess’ as the rack or
the thumb-screw.279
Nearly all the confessions were to a similar effect. From Lisbon to Liegnitz,
from Calabria to Caithness, the central point of the story was the ‘sabbat’, an
assembly of witches and sorcerers in some barren spot where they adored a
visible devil, indulged in feasts, dances, and sexual orgies, reported what evil
they had done and plotted more.
A few examples will therefore suffice, and they may be best taken from the
Daemanolatria280 of Nicholas Remy, Inquisitor of Lorraine, who burned nearly
900 witches and sorcerers in fifteen years, 1575–90.
He proves the reality of the witch dances as follows: A boy named John of
Haimbach confessed that his mother took him to a sabbat to play the flute. He
was told to climb up into a tree that he might be heard the better, and was so
amazed by what he saw that he exclaimed: ‘Good God! where did this crowd of
fools and lunatics come from?’ Thereupon he fell from the tree and found
himself alone with a dislocated shoulder. Ottilia Velvers, who was arrested soon
after, confirmed the whole story, as did also Eysarty Augnel, who was burnt the
following year. So too, Nicholas Langbernard, while going home in the early
morning of July 21, 1590, saw in full daylight a number of men and women
dancing back to back, some of them with cloven hoofs. He cried out ‘Jesus’ and
crossed himself, upon which all vanished except a woman called Pelter, whose
broomstick dropped, and who was then carried off by a whirlwind. The grass
was afterwards found to be beaten down in a circle with marks of hoof-​prints.
Pelter and two other women were arrested and confessed they were present, as
also did John Michael, who said he was playing the flute in a tree, and fell down

when Nicholas crossed himself, but was carried off in a whirlwind, his
broomstick not being at hand.
‘What further evidence’, asks the inquisitor, ‘can any one require?’ The only
possible objection, viz. that they were phantoms or spirits of people whose
bodies were asleep in their beds, is worthless, ‘it being the pious and Christian
belief that soul and body when once parted do not reunite till the day of
judgement’.
The food at these sabbats usually included the flesh of unbaptized children, and
was always abominable. A certain Morel said he was obliged to spit it out, at
which the demon was much enraged. ‘Dancing opens a large window to
wickedness,’ and is therefore specially encouraged by the devil, but the dances
cause great exhaustion, just as his feasts cause loathing, and his money changes
to dung or potsherds. ‘Barberina Rahel, and nearly all others, declared they had
to lie in bed two days after a witch dance, but even the oldest cannot excuse
themselves, and the devil beats them if they are lazy.’ The music is horrible;
every one sings or plays what he likes, a favourite method being to drum on
horse skulls or trees. Sometimes the devil gives a concert of his own, at which
all are required to applaud and show pleasure; those who do not are beaten so
that they are sore for two days, as Joanna Gransandeau confessed.
All are compelled to attend and give an account of their evil deeds under heavy
penalties. C. G. said ‘he was beaten till he nearly died for failing to attend a
sabbat, and for curing a girl whom he had been told to poison. The devil also
carried him up into the air over the river Moselle, and threatened to drop him
unless he swore to poison a certain person.’ The witch Belhoria was attacked by
dropsy because she refused to poison her husband. If they failed in their
attempts on others, they were compelled to poison their own children, or
destroy their own property.
Antonius Welch was asked to lend his garden for a witch dance. He refused, and
found it full of snails and caterpillars. Men of little faith have objected that only
God can create, for ‘without Him nothing is made that was made’; but why
should not demons collect vast numbers of insects in a moment? Look at the
well-​known rain of frogs, blood, &c. This is doubtless done by devils out of
mere sport: how much more would they do for love of harm? The making of
thunder-​storms is harder to believe, but has been admitted by more than 200

condemned witches and sorcerers. Almost all confessed that they could creep
into locked rooms and houses in the form of small animals, and resuming their
natural shape commit all sorts of crimes, showing, says Remy, what a peril they
are to mankind.
A worthy comrade of Remy was Peter Binsfeld, suffragan Bishop of Trèves and
foremost opponent of John Weyer. He is said to have burnt no fewer than 6,500
persons and to have so desolated his diocese that in many villages round Trèves
there was scarcely a woman left. His Tractatus de confessionibus
maleficorum281 begins with the following case, which with those mentioned
above affords a complete view of the usual witch confessions. John Kuno
Meisenbein, a youth about eighteen years old, was studying ‘poetry and the
humaner letters’ at the High School in Trèves, when he confessed to the
authorities that his mother, brother, sister, and self were all in league with the
devil. He said that in his ninth year his mother had initiated him as a sorcerer,
and had carried him up the chimney on a goat to a heath near Trèves, where he
took part in the usual sabbat and had intercourse with a female demon named
Capribarba. The mother, Anna Meisenbein, a woman of good position, had
already escaped to Cologne, but a son and daughter were arrested, strangled,
and burned. ‘They died with much sorrow and penitence.’ The eldest son, John
Kuno, thereupon urged the judges to use all means to capture his mother, ‘that
by punishment and momentary death in this world she might escape eternal
damnation’.
Moved by this most creditable and merciful petition (honestissima et plenissima
misericordiae petitione excitatus), the prior wrote to his friends at Cologne, and
the unhappy woman was arrested and taken back to Trèves. At first she
protested her innocence, ‘but when more severe tortures were employed’ she
made the usual admissions. Having lost a baby, she had, for a moment, doubted
the goodness of God. Whereupon a man in black raiment appeared at the side of
the bed, and promised if she would renounce God and serve him he would give
her peace of mind. She did so, and he became her lover, and gave her money,
which however vanished. He called himself Fedderhans, and had asses’ feet.
Then follows the usual story of the sabbat. ‘This woman’, concludes the bishop,
‘was burnt alive October 20, 1590, and had a good end.’ They offered to behead
John Kuno as a reward for his filial piety and repentance, but he said he was
unworthy of such a favour and was therefore strangled and burnt. ‘He had a

most edifying end,’ says the bishop, who proceeds to comment upon sexual
intercourse between witches, sorcerers, and demons, ‘which is so certain that it
is an impudence to deny it, as St. Augustine saith,282 being supported by the
confessions of learned and unlearned, and by all the doctors of the Church,
though a few medical men, advocates of the devil’s kingdom [an obvious
reference to Weyer, whom he abuses in the preface], have dared to deny it’.283
It is not our purpose to try and discover what amount of truth is contained in the
immense farrago of absurdities comprised in the witch confessions. Actual
nocturnal meetings of peasants, either to celebrate heathen rites or to plot
against their oppressors, or merely to enjoy rude dances and music, as the negro
in the Southern States was supposed to play the banjo nightly after his labours
on the plantation, may or may not have assisted in spreading and confirming the
belief in the sabbat, but they were not necessary. The whole story of child
murder, obscene worship of a demon, dances and sexual orgies, was ready to
hand long before. It had been applied in classic times to the worshippers of Isis
and Bacchus, by the pagans to the early Christians, by the orthodox to the first
heretics, to the Jews, to the Templars, and in our own day we have seen very
similar charges brought against the Freemasons. All these sets of people had
known meeting-​places—the witches had none; they must therefore meet on
some barren moor or mountain and be carried there supernaturally. Once
started, the belief spread rapidly. Indeed we know from contemporary writers
that it was a common subject of village gossip, and if any wretched victim had
any doubt as to what she was expected to confess, the gaoler and judges were
always ready with hints or leading questions.
One learned German284 has attributed the whole witch mania to the Datura
Stramonium, or thorn-apple, a plant introduced into Europe about this time.
Women dosed themselves with this drug, or applied it in ointments, and
forthwith had hallucinations of broomstick rides and witch dances. Others look
upon belladonna as the principal agent, and one ardent investigator took
dangerous doses of it in the hope of experiencing the adventures of a mediaeval
sorcerer, but without definite effect. A similar experiment has recently been
made by Kiesewetter, the historian of ‘Spiritualism’. He used the witch
ointments described by Baptista Porta and others, but could produce nothing
more diabolical than dreams of travelling in an express train.285 Others, again,
have supposed that the badly baked rye bread of the period must have produced

an immense amount of nightmare among the poorer classes. The power of
suggestion, doubtless, had a very real influence both on the victims and their
judges, and with the aid of narcotics may not infrequently have produced vivid
dreams of dancing and other intercourse with demons.
No doubt many persons were quite ready to become witches or sorcerers, and
some really believed they had acquired such powers. Cases are recorded in
which formal agreements, duly signed in blood, and awaiting the devil’s
acceptance, were discovered, and resulted in the arrest and burning of the
would-be wizard. Others took pleasure in the terror the reputed powers inspired,
and may have sometimes caused or increased it by the use of actual poisons.
But these formed but a small minority of the vast army of victims; and even
when some real criminal was arrested or some half-​insane person voluntarily
‘confessed’, she was encouraged or compelled to denounce her supposed
associates, and thus often involved scores of innocent acquaintances in her own
awful fate.
The witch-hunters are not to be blamed for believing in witchcraft, or even for
carrying out the scriptural injunction ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’. It is
the methods they employed, compared with which the procedure of a Jeffreys or
a Caiaphas was just and merciful, which cannot be excused by any talk about
the spirit of the age, which brought agony and death to many thousands of
innocent men, women and little children, and which excited the fiery and
righteous indignation of Dr. John Weyer.
According to Pascal, men never do wrong so thoroughly and so cheerfully as
when they are obeying the promptings of a false principle of conscience. To
which we may add that men are never more cruel and unjust than when they are
in a fright. The witch-​hunters, most of them at least, were pious and
conscientious men. They appeal to God, the Church, and the Bible at every step.
Nicholas Remy, for instance, after torturing and burning over 800 of his fellow
creatures, retired from work thinking he had done God and man good service.
But one thing troubled his conscience. He had spared the lives of certain young
children, and merely ordered them to be scourged naked three times round the
place where their parents were burning. He is convinced that this was wrong,
and that they will all grow up into witches and sorcerers. Besides, if God sent
two she-bears to slay the forty and two children who mocked Elisha, of how

much greater punishment are those worthy who have done despite to God, His
Mother, the saints, and the Catholic religion?286 He hopes his sinful clemency
will not become a precedent—a fear which was quite unnecessary, for scores of
children under twelve were burnt for witchcraft; and the one plea which even
then respited the most atrocious murderess did not always avail a witch, since it
was believed that her future child, if not the actual offspring of the devil, would
infallibly belong to his kingdom.
But the witch-hunters were urged on by fear as well as by piety, for not only did
they think themselves exposed to personal attacks from the devil and his allies,
but they believed there was a vast and increasing society of men and women in
league with the evil one, and that the fate of the world depended on its
suppression.
All the machinery, therefore, which the Roman emperors had devised for their
protection against treason and the Church for the suppression of heresy was
brought into action against the witches, for witchcraft was the acme of treason
and heresy, a crimen laesae maiestatis divinae.287
For a description of the methods employed we cannot do better than go to the
Malleus Maleficarum,288 the guide and handbook of the witch-hunters.
All proceedings in cases of witchcraft, say the reverend authors, must be on the
plan recommended by Popes Clement V and Boniface VIII, ‘summarie,
simpliciter, et de plano, ac sine strepitu ac figura iudicii’, a harmless looking
phrase which swept away at a stroke all the safeguards which the lawyers of
pagan Rome and the ruder justice of ancient Gaul and Germany had placed
around accused persons. There are, says the Malleus,289 two forms of criminal
procedure: (1) the old legal or accusatorial form where the prosecutor offers to
prove his charge and to accept the consequences of failure, which must be
carefully avoided as being dangerous and litigious; and (2) the inquisitorial,
where a man denounces another either from zeal for the faith, or because called
upon to do so, but takes no further part nor offers to prove his charge, or where
a man is suspected by common report and the judge makes inquiry, and this
method must always be preferred. The inquisitors, on entering a new district,
should issue a proclamation calling on all persons to give information against
suspected witches on pain of excommunication and temporal penalties. Any one
may be compelled, by torture if necessary, to give evidence, and if he refuses

must be punished as an obstinate heretic. Other sorcerers, or the man’s wife and
family, are lawful witnesses against, but not for, the accused. Criminals and
perjured persons, if they show zeal for the faith, may be admitted to give
evidence. Priests, nobles, graduates of universities, and others legally exempt
from torture are not exempt in the case of witch trials.290
‘Delation,’ the scandal of imperial Rome, was not only encouraged but
enforced, and in some places, as at Milan, boxes were put in the churches, into
which any one might drop an anonymous denunciation of his neighbour.
Names of informers are not to be revealed under penalty of excommunication;
the advocate, if there is one, need be told the charges only. This advocate must
not be chosen by the accused but by the inquisitor, and he must refuse the case
if it seems to him unjust or hopeless. He must not use legal quibbles or make
delays or appeals, and is to be specially warned that if he be found a protector of
heretics or a hinderer of the inquisition, he will incur the usual penalties for
those heinous crimes. If he reply that he defends the person, not the error, this
avails not, for he must make no defence which interferes with proceeding
summarie, simpliciter, et de plano.291 After this it is not surprising to find that
those accused of witchcraft were rarely defended by an advocate.
Faith need be kept with heretics and sorcerers ‘for a time only’.292 Therefore an
inquisitor may promise not to condemn a person if he confesses, and then pass
sentence after a few days, or if of very tender conscience by the mouth of
another. It is also lawful to introduce persons, etiam mulieres honestae, to the
accused who promise to find means for their escape if they will teach them
some form of witchcraft. This, say the authors, is a most successful method for
getting convictions.293
Torture, though it may not be repeated on the same charge, may be continued as
long as necessary, and any fresh evidence justifies a repetition. Finally the
accused may be burnt without confession if the evidence is strong enough, or he
may be kept in prison for months or years, when the squalor carceris may
induce him to confess his crimes.294
Such are the proceedings recommended against persons suspected of or
denounced for witchcraft, and they conclude appropriately with the hideously
hypocritical formula with which they were delivered over to be burnt:

‘Relinquimus te potestati curiae secularis, deprecantes tamen illam ut erga te
citra sanguinis effusionem et mortis periculum suam sententiam moderetur’,295
which means, according to the Malleus, that sorcerers are to be burned even
though they repent, while repentant heretics may be imprisoned for life.
What was meant by the squalor carceris may be seen from the following
description by an eye-​witness, Pretorius:296

‘Some [of the dungeons] are holes like cellars or wells, fifteen to
thirty fathoms (?) deep with openings above, through which they let
down the prisoners with ropes and draw them up when they will.
Such prisons I have seen myself. Some sit in great cold, so that their
feet are frost-​bitten or frozen off, and afterwards, if they escape,
they are crippled for life. Some lie in continual darkness, so that
they never see a ray of sunlight, and know not whether it be night or
day. All of them have their limbs confined so that they can hardly
move, and are in continual unrest, and lie in their own refuse, far
more filthy and wretched than cattle. They are badly fed, cannot
sleep in peace, have much anxiety, heavy thoughts, bad dreams. And
since they cannot move hands or feet, they are plagued and bitten by
lice, rats, and other vermin, besides being daily abused and
threatened by gaolers and executioners. And since all this
sometimes lasts months or years, such persons, though at first they
be courageous, rational, strong, and patient, at length become weak,
timid, hopeless, and if not quite, at least half idiotic and desperate.’
Yet all this was not considered torture, and if some poor wretch, after a year
of it, went mad, or preferred a quick death to a slow one, her confession
was described as being ‘entirely voluntary and without torture’.
As to the torture itself, it combined all that the ferocity of savages and the
ingenuity of civilized man had till then invented. Besides the ordinary rack,
thumb-​screws, and leg-​crushers or Spanish boots, there were spiked wheels
over which the victims were drawn with weights on their feet; boiling oil
was poured on their legs, burning sulphur dropped on their bodies, and
lighted candles held beneath their armpits. At Bamberg they were fed on
salt fish and allowed no water, and then bathed in scalding water and
quicklime. At Lindheim they were fixed to a revolving table and whirled
round till they vomited and became unconscious, and on recovery remained
in so dazed a state that they were ready to confess anything.297 At Neisse
they were fastened naked in a chair ‘with 150 finger-long spikes in it’ and
kept there for hours. And so effective were these tortures that nine out of ten

innocent persons preferred to die as confessed sorcerers rather than undergo
a repetition of them.
The Jesuit Father Spee, a worthy successor of John Weyer, accompanied
nearly two hundred victims to the stake at Würzburg in less than two years.
At the end of this time his hair had turned grey and he seemed twenty years
older, and on being questioned as to the cause, declared that he was
convinced that all these persons were innocent. They had, he said, at first
repeated the usual confession, but on being tenderly dealt with had one and
all protested their innocence, adjuring him at the same time not to reveal
this, for they would much rather die than be tortured again. He added that
he had received similar reports from other father confessors.298 A few years
later, 1631, he plucked up courage to publish anonymously his Cautio
Criminalis, in which he exclaims:
‘Why do we search so diligently for sorcerers? I will show you at
once where they are. Take the Capuchins, the Jesuits, all the
religious orders, and torture them—they will confess. If some deny,
repeat it a few times—they will confess. Should a few still be
obstinate, exorcise them, shave them: they use sorcery, the devil
hardens them, only keep on torturing—they will give in. If you want
more, take the Canons, the Doctors, the Bishops of the Church—
they will confess. How should the poor delicate creatures hold out?
If you want still more, I will torture you and then you me. I will
confess the crimes you will have confessed, and so we shall all be
sorcerers together.’299
In the most notorious of judicial murders, we read that the judges had some
difficulty owing to a disagreement between the witnesses. This rarely
troubled the witch-​hunters. At Lindheim a woman was accused of having
dug up and carried off the body of an infant, which, under torture, she
admitted, denouncing four others as her accomplices. But on the grave
being opened, the body was found uninjured. The inquisitors at once
decided that this must be a delusion of the devil, and all five women were
burned. A man confessed, under torture, that he was a were-wolf, and in that
form had killed a calf belonging to a neighbour; the latter, however, said he

had never lost a calf, though two or three years ago two hens had
disappeared, he believed through witchcraft. The accused was burnt, for
what need had they of witnesses? Had they not heard his confession?300
It was even laid down as a principle that doubtful points must be decided
‘in favour of the faith’—in other words, against the accused. ‘If a sorcerer
retracts his denunciations at the stake, it is not void, for he may have been
corrupted by friends of the accused. Also when witnesses vary, as they often
do, the positive assertion is always to be believed,’ says Bishop Covarivias,
a prominent member of the Council of Trent. In which he is supported by
the jurist Menochius of Padua, ‘ne tam horrendum crimen occultum sit’.
Anything might start a witch-hunting, and once started it increased like an
avalanche. If an old woman happened to be out of doors in a thunder-​storm;
if the winter was prolonged; if there was a more than usual number of flies
and caterpillars; if a woman had a spite against her neighbour, some one
might be denounced and forced in turn to denounce others. The prolonged
winter of 1586 in Savoy, for instance, resulted in the burning of 113 women
and two men, who confessed, after torture, that it was due to their
incantations.
It is thus not difficult to understand how, in the diocese of Como, witches
were burnt for many years at an average rate of 100 per annum; how in that
of Strassburg 5,000 were burnt in twenty years, 1615–35; how in the small
diocese of Neisse 1,000 suffered between 1640–50, insomuch that they
gave up the stake and pile as being too costly, and roasted them in a
specially prepared oven; and how the Protestant jurist Benedict Carpzov
could boast not only of having read the Bible through fifty-​three times, but
also of having passed 20,000 death sentences, chiefly on witches and
sorcerers.301
One of Carpzov’s victims is specially interesting to medical men, the Saxon
physician, Dr. Veit Pratzel, who on one occasion (1660) produced twenty
mice by sleight of hand in a public-​house, probably for the sake of
advertisement. He was denounced as a sorcerer, tortured and burnt, while

his children were bled to death in a warm bath by the executioner, lest they
should acquire similar diabolical powers.302
A like fate befell the servant of a travelling dentist at Schwersenz in Poland.
The dentist, John Plan, left his assistant in the town to attract attention by
conjuring tricks, while he went to sell his infallible toothache tinctures in
the neighbouring villages. On his return next evening, he was horrified to
see the body of the unfortunate man hanging on the town gallows, and was
told on inquiry that he was an evident sorcerer who had made eggs, birds,
and plants before everybody in the market-​place. He had therefore been
arrested, scourged, put on the rack, and otherwise tortured till he confessed
he was in league with the devil. Whereupon the town council, ‘out of
special grace and to save expense’, had, instead of burning him, mercifully
condemned him to be hanged. The dentist fled in terror to Breslau.303
But it was by no means necessary to be so foolhardy as this to fall into the
hands of the witch-​hunters. A woman at Lindheim was noticed to run into
her barn as the inquisitorial officials came down the street. She had never
been accused or even suspected of witchcraft, but was nevertheless
immediately arrested, and brought more dead than alive to the chief
inquisitor, Geiss,304 who declared her flight justified the strongest suspicion.
Exposed to the most extreme torture, she confessed nothing, but at length,
at the question whether she had made a compact with the devil, one of the
inquisitors declared he saw her nod her head. This was enough; she was
burnt; probably a happy fate under the circumstances, for she thus escaped
being forced by further tortures to give details of her imaginary crime and
to denounce her neighbours.
Once in the clutches of the witch-​hunters, the unfortunate victim was
confronted by a series of dilemmas from which few escaped. A favourite
beginning was to ask whether he believed in witchcraft. If he said ‘Yes’, he
evidently knew more of the subject; if ‘No’, he was ipso facto a heretic and
slanderer of the inquisition; if in confusion he tried to distinguish, he was
varius in confessionibus,305 and a fit subject for immediate torture. If he
confessed under torture, the matter was, of course, settled; if he endured

manfully, it was evident that the devil must be aiding him. If a mark could
be found on his body which was insensible and did not bleed when pricked,
it was the devil’s seal and a sure sign of guilt; but if there was none, his case
was no better, for it was held that the devil only marked those whose
fidelity he doubted, so that a suspected person who had no such mark was
in all probability a specially eminent sorcerer.306
Then came the water test, of which there is no better account than the report
sent by W. A. Scribonius, Professor of Philosophy at Marburg, to the town
council of Lemgo in 1583:
‘When I came to you, most prudent and learned consules, 26th
September, there were, two days later on St. Michael’s eve, three
witches burnt alive for divers and horrible crimes. The same day
three others, denounced by those aforesaid, were arrested, and on
the following day about 2 p.m. for further proving of the truth were
thrown into water to see whether they would swim or not. Their
clothes were removed and they were bound by the right thumb to
the left big toe and vice versa, so that they could not move in the
least. They were then cast three times into the water in the presence
of some thousands of spectators, and floated like logs of wood, nor
did one of them sink. And it is also remarkable that almost at the
moment they touched the water a shower of rain then falling ceased,
and the sun shone, but when they were taken out it started raining as
before.’
On request of the burgomaster, he investigated ‘the philosophy’ of this, and,
though he could find nothing definite, had no doubt of its value as a test of
witchcraft. ‘The physician Weyer rejects it as absurd and fallacious, but he
can produce no good arguments or examples against it, and may therefore
be ignored.’ Perhaps witches are made lighter because possessed by demons
who are ‘powers of the air’ and often carry them through the air. All who
float have afterwards confessed, therefore though not scriptural nor of itself
sufficient to convict, the swimming test is not to be despised.307

With regard to the number of victims, even sober historians, such as Soldan,
speak of millions, but if we take three-​quarters of a million for the two
centuries 1500–1700, it will give a rate of ten executions daily, at least eight
of which were judicial murders.
Even more pathetic than the notice of 800 condemned in one body by the
senate of Savoy308 are the long lists of yearly executions preserved in the
fragmentary records of small towns and villages. Thus at Meiningen,
between 1610–31 and 1656–85, 106 suffered—in 1610 three, 1611 twenty-​
two, 1612 four, &c. &c., the intervening records being omitted owing to
war. Similar notices have survived at Waldsee, Thun in Alsace, and many
other hamlets, where through a long series of years we read of one to
twenty persons burnt annually, some of them being previously ‘torn with
red-hot pincers’.309
At Würzburg the Prince-bishop, Philip of Ehrenberg, is said to have burnt
900 in five years (1627–31), and we have terrible lists of twenty-​nine of the
burnings, almost all of which include young children. Here are two of them:
‘In the thirteenth burning, four persons: the old court smith, an old
woman, a little girl of nine or ten years, a younger girl her sister.’
‘In the twentieth burning, six persons: Babelin Goebel, the prettiest
girl in Würzburg; a student in the fifth form who knew many
languages and was an excellent musician, instrumental and vocal;
two boys from the new minster, twelve years old; Babel Stepper’s
daughter; the caretaker on the bridge.’310
At Bamberg the Prince-bishop, John George, 1625–30, burnt at least 600
persons, and his predecessors had been hardly less vigorous witch-​hunters.
He was ably seconded by his suffragan, Bishop Förner, and two doctors of
law, Braun and Kötzendörffer, who besides the ordinary torture implements,
salt fish and quicklime baths, found a so-called prayer stool or bench
covered with spikes, on which the victim was forced to kneel, and a cage
with a sharp ridged floor on which he could not stand, sit, or lie without
torment, of great value in extorting confessions. The record of their deeds
has been published by Dr. F. Leitschuh,311 librarian of Bamberg, and

contains, among other cases, that of the Burgomaster, John Junius, which
throws more light on the nature of the witch trials than do volumes of
second-hand history.312
John Junius, a man universally respected, had been five times Burgomaster
of Bamberg, and held that office in June 1628, when he was arrested on a
charge of sorcery. He protested his innocence though six witnesses
declared, under torture, that they had seen him at the witch dances. On June
30 he endured the torment of the thumb-​screws and leg-​crushers (Spanish
boots) without confession. Then they stuck pins in him and found a ‘devil’s
mark’, and finally drew him up with his arms twisted backwards, but he
would admit nothing. Next day, however, when threatened with a repetition
of the torture, he broke down, made the usual confession (including
intercourse with a female demon who turned into a he-goat), and denounced
twenty-​seven persons whose names and addresses are given.313 He was
condemned to be beheaded and burnt, but before his death wrote the
following letter to his daughter:
‘Many hundred thousand good-nights, my dearest daughter
Veronica! Guiltless was I taken to prison, guiltless have I been
tortured, guiltless I must die. For whoever comes here must either
be a sorcerer, or is tortured until (God pity him) he makes up a
confession of sorcery out of his head. I’ll tell you how I fared. When
I was questioned the first time, there were present Dr. Braun, Dr.
Kötzendörffer, and two strangers. Dr. Braun asked me, “Friend, how
came you hither?” I answered, “Through lies and misfortune.”
“Hear you,” said he, “you’re a sorcerer. Confess it willingly or we’ll
bring witnesses and the executioner to you.” I said, “I am no
sorcerer. I have a clear conscience on this matter, and care not for a
thousand witnesses, but am ready to hear them.” Then the
chancellor’s son, Dr. Haan, was brought out. I asked, “Herr Doctor,
what do you know of me? I never had anything to do with you, good
or bad.” He answered, “Sir, it is a judgement matter, excuse me for
witnessing against you. I saw you at the dances.” “Yes, but how?”
He did not know. Then I asked the commissioners to put him on

oath, and examine him properly. “The thing is not to be arranged as
you want it,” said Dr. Braun; “it is enough that he saw you.” I said,
“What sort of witness is that? If things are so managed, you are as
little safe as I or any other honourable person.” Next came the
chancellor and said the same as his son. He had seen me, but had
not looked carefully to see who I was. Then Elsa Hopffen. She had
seen me dancing on Haupt’s moor. Then came the executioner and
put on the thumb-​screws, my hands being tied together, so that the
blood spurted from under the nails, and I cannot use my hands these
four weeks, as you may see by this writing. Then they tied my hands
behind and drew me up. I thought heaven and earth were
disappearing. Eight times they drew me up and let me fall so that I
suffered horrible agony. All which time I was stark naked, for they
had me stripped.
‘But our Lord God helped me, and I said to them, “God forgive you
for treating an innocent man like this; you want not only to destroy
body and soul, but also to get the goods and chattels.” [At Bamberg,
two-​thirds of the property of convicted sorcerers went to the bishop,
and the rest to the inquisitors.] “You’re a rascal,” said Dr. Braun. I
replied, “I am no rascal, but as respectable as any of you; but if
things go on like this, no respectable man in Bamberg will be safe,
you as little as I or another.” The doctor said he had no dealings
with the devil. I said, “Nor have I. Your false witnesses are the
devils, your horrible tortures. You let no one go, even though he has
endured all your torments.”
‘It was Friday, 30th June, that, with God’s help, I endured these
tortures. I have ever since been unable to put my clothes on or use
my hands, besides the other pains I had to suffer innocently.
‘When the executioner took me back to prison, he said to me, “Sir,
for God’s sake confess something, whether true or not. Think a
little. You can’t stand the tortures they’ll inflict on you, and even if
you could you wouldn’t escape, though you were a count, but
they’ll go through them again and again and never leave you till you

say you are a sorcerer, as may be seen by all their judgements, for
all end alike.” Another came and said the bishop had determined to
make an example of me which would astonish people, and begged
me for God’s sake to make up something, for I should not escape
even though I were innocent, and so said Neudecker and others.
‘Then I asked to see a priest, but could not get one. . . . And then
this is my confession as follows, but all of it lies.
‘Here follows, dearest child, what I confessed that I might escape
the great torments and agonies, for I could not have endured them
any longer. This is my confession, nothing but lies, that I had to
make on threat of still greater tortures, and for which I must die.
‘“I went into my field, and sat down there in great melancholy,
when a peasant girl came to me and said, ‘Sir, what is the matter?
Why are you so sorrowful?’ I said I did not know, and then she sat
down close to me, and suddenly changed into a he-goat and said,
‘Now you know with whom you have to do.’ He took me by the
throat and said, ‘You must be mine, or I’ll kill you.’ Then I said,
‘God forbid.’ Then he vanished and came back with two women and
three men; bade me deny God, and I did so, denied God and the
heavenly host. Then he baptized me and the two women were
sponsors; gave me a ducat, which turned into a potsherd.”
‘Now I thought I had got it over, but they brought in the
executioner, and asked where I went to the witch dances. I did not
know what to say, but remembered that the chancellor and his son
and Elsa Hopffen had mentioned Haupt’s moor and other places, so
I said the same. Then I was asked whom I had seen there. Replied I
did not recognize any. “You old rascal, I must get the executioner to
you. Was the chancellor there?” Said “Yes.” “Who else?” “I
recognized none.” Then he said, “Take street by street, beginning
from the market.” Then I had to name some persons. Then Long
Street. I knew nobody; had to name eight persons. . . . Did I know
any one in the castle? I must speak out boldly whoever it was. So

they took me through all the streets till I could and would say no
more. Then they gave me to the executioner to strip, shave off my
hair, and torture me again. “The rascal knows a man in the market-​
place, goes about with him daily, and won’t name him.” They meant
Dietmeyer, so I had to name him.
‘Next they asked what evil I had done. I replied, “None.” The devil
bade me to, and beat me when I refused. “Put the rascal on the
rack.” So I said I was told to murder my children but killed a horse
instead. That wasn’t enough for them. I had also taken a sacramental
wafer and buried it. When I said this they left me in peace.
‘There, dearest child, you have all my confession, for which I must
die, and it is nothing but lies and made-up things, so God help me.
For I had to say all this for fear of the tortures threatened me,
besides all those I had gone through. For they go on torturing till
one confesses something; be he as pious as he will, he must be a
sorcerer. No one escapes, though he were a count. And if God does
not interfere, all our friends and relations will be burnt, for each has
to confess as I had.
‘Dearest child, I know you are pious as I, but you have already had
some trouble, and if I may advise, you had better take what money
there is and go on a pilgrimage for six months, or somewhere where
you can stay for a time outside the diocese till one sees what will
happen. Many honourable men and women in Bamberg go to
church and about their business, do no evil, and have clear
consciences as I hitherto, as you know, yet they come to the witch
prison, and if they have a tongue to confess, confess they must, true
or not.
‘Neudecker, the chancellor, his son, Candelgiesser, Hofmeister’s
daughter, and Elsa Hopffen all denounced me at once. I had no
chance. Many are in the same case, and many more will be, unless
God intervenes.

‘Dear child, keep this letter secret so that nobody sees it, or I shall
be horribly tortured and the gaoler will lose his head, so strict is the
rule against it. You may let Cousin Stamer read it quickly in private.
He will keep it secret. Dear child, give this man a thaler.
‘I have taken some days to write this. Both my hands are lamed. I
am in a sad state altogether. I entreat you by the last judgement,
keep this letter secret, and pray for me after my death as for your
martyred father . . . but take care no one hears of this letter. Tell
Anna Maria to pray for me too. You may take oath for me that I am
no sorcerer, but a martyr.
‘Good-night, for your father, John Junius, will see you never more.
24th July, 1628.’
On the margin is written:
‘Dear child, six denounced me: the chancellor, his son, Neudecker,
Zaner, Ursula Hoffmaister, and Elsa Hopffen, all falsely and on
compulsion as they all confessed. They begged my pardon for God’s
sake before they were executed. They said they knew nothing of me
but what was good and loving. They were obliged to name me, as I
should find out myself. I cannot have a priest, so take heed of what I
have written, and keep this letter secret.’
The letter is still preserved, with its crippled handwriting, in the library at
Bamberg. This case is beyond comment. It is like the trial of Faithful at
Vanity Fair, but with rack and thumb-​screw in place of a jury. Yet it is but a
moderate sample of those outrages on justice and humanity called witch
trials. Men rarely held out long, but, did space permit, we might tell stories
of many heroic women who endured ten, twenty, even fifty repetitions of
torture, till they died on the rack or in the dungeon rather than falsely
accuse themselves or their neighbours.314
For when once arrested, the victim had small hope of acquittal, and in the
most favourable cases, when there was no external evidence, and no amount
of torture could induce a ‘confession’, the accused was sent back friendless

and crippled to her home, which she was forbidden to leave, having first
sworn to have no more dealings with the devil, and to take no proceedings
against her accusers. To acquit her would imply that an innocent person had
been tortured, a thing naturally repugnant to the tender consciences of the
inquisitors.
Nor was the mania confined to any special class. Protestants vied with
Catholics, and town councils with bishops in cruelty and injustice. At
Nördlingen they had a special set of torture instruments which the
Protestant town council lent to neighbouring district authorities, with the
pious observation that ‘by these means, and more especially by the thumb-​
screw, God has often been graciously pleased to reveal the truth, if not at
first, at any rate at the last’.315
It is obvious from the above cases that the main cause of the continuance of
the witch-​burnings, and of the number of the victims, was the use of torture
to obtain denunciations. The instances in which insane persons accused
themselves or others seem to have been fewer than we might have expected.
Then, as now, there were melancholics who thought they had committed the
unpardonable sin, and in those days the unpardonable sin might be
represented by an imaginary compact with the devil. Then, as now, the
‘mania of persecution’ was a prominent symptom in some forms of insanity,
and the idea of being bewitched by some old woman corresponded to the
modern dread of detectives, electric batteries, or telephones.
Some of the supposed signs of witchcraft resemble those of mania and
melancholia. Thus maniacs sometimes collect dirt for money, and witches
often confessed that the devil’s money changed to dirt. Melancholics mutter
to themselves, look on the ground, and avoid society, all of which were
considered signs of witchcraft. But then red hair and left-​handedness were
no less infallible indications.
Insanity and crime were indeed present at the witch trials, but they were at
least as obvious in the accusers and judges as in the victims, and the first
man who was bold enough to say so was Dr. John Weyer. Though a few
feeble protests may have been made by others, it was from the medical

profession that the first determined opposition came. Mystics like
Paracelsus and Cardan might encourage the superstition; pious and able
members of the profession like Ambroise Paré and Sir Thomas Brown
might give it their sanction, but it was the physician Cornelius Agrippa who
first successfully defended a witch at the risk of his own life,316 and it was
his pupil John Weyer who first declared open war against the witch-​hunters
and invoked the vengeance of heaven upon their atrocities.
‘The feareful abounding at this time in this countrie of those
detestable slaves of the divell, the witches or enchanters hath moved
me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post the following treatise of
mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a shewe of my
learning and ingine, but only (moved of conscience to preasse
thereby) so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of manie both
that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the
instruments thereof merit most severely to be punished, against the
damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the one
called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to denie
that there can be such a thing as witchcraft and so maintains the old
error of the Sadduces in denying of spirits, the other called Wierus,
a German physition sets out a publike apologie for all these crafts-​
folks, whereby procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrayes
himself to have been of that profession.’
Thus did our ‘British Solomon’, James I, commence his Daemonologia
(1598), a work directed against the two men who alone up to that time had
made a bold and open protest against the witch mania and its abominations.
Reginald Scot in his Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) took the view of a
modern common-sense Englishman, that the whole thing is absurd, a
mixture of roguery and false accusations. Weyer, on the other hand, his
predecessor by twenty years, is a firm believer in the activity of the devil,
whose object, however, is not to get possession of the souls of crazy old
women, but by deluding them, to convert pious and learned lawyers and
theologians into torturers and murderers.

Born about 1516 at Grave in Brabant, the son of a dealer in hops and
faggots, Weyer was acquainted with the supernatural from his earliest years,
for they had a domestic ‘house cobold’ or Poltergeist, who was heard
tumbling the hop-sacks about whenever a customer was expected. At
seventeen years of age the boy was sent to study medicine as apprentice to
Cornelius Agrippa, an extraordinary man, long held to be a sorcerer, who
had recently incurred yet stronger suspicion by his heroic and successful
defence of a woman accused of witchcraft at Metz, and by his fondness for
a black dog called ‘Monsieur’ which scarcely ever left him. The young
Weyer used to take this animal out on a string, and soon became convinced,
to use his own words, that it was ‘a perfectly natural male dog’.317 He next
went to Paris and thence to Orleans, a university then famous for its
medical school, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1537. He commenced
practice in Brabant, became public medical officer at Arnheim in 1545, and
in 1550 physician to Duke William of Cleves. In 1563 he published his
great work De praestigiis daemonum et incantationibus ac veneficiis,318 the
object of which is to show that so-called witchcraft is usually due to
delusions of demons, who take advantage of the weaknesses and diseases of
women to bring about impious and absurd superstitions, hatreds, cruelties,
and a vast outpouring of innocent blood, things in which they naturally
delight.
He proposes to treat the subject under four heads corresponding to the four
faculties, theology, philosophy, medicine, and law. In the first section he
attempts to show that the Hebrew word Kasaph does not mean ‘witch’ but
‘poisoner’, or at any rate that Greek, Latin, and Rabbinical interpreters so
vary, that no reliance can be placed upon them. Moreover the law of Moses
was given to the Jews ‘for the hardness of their hearts’, and is by no means
always to be used by Christians.319 Magicians and sorcerers do indeed still
exist, as in ancient Egypt, but these are always men, and usually rogues and
swindlers, such as was Faust, of whom Weyer gives us one of the earliest
and most authentic notices. Faust, he says, was once arrested by Baron
Hermann of Batoburg, and given in charge of his chaplain, J. Dursten, who
hoping to see some sign or wonder, treated him with much kindness, giving

him the best of wine. But all he got out of him was a magic ointment to
enable him to shave without a razor, containing arsenic, and so strong that it
brought not only the hair but the skin from the reverend gentleman’s
cheeks. ‘The which he has told me more than once with much
indignation.’320
Weyer, however, firmly believes that the devil may assist sorcerers, such as
Faust, in some of their feats, though he does this chiefly by deluding the
eyes of the spectators. He may also delude women into the belief that they
have been at witch dances and caused thunder-​storms, &c., but his greatest
deception is to make men believe in the reality of witchcraft and so torture
and murder the innocent.321 Women are more liable to his deceptions owing
to their greater instability both of mind and body, and the delusion may be
favoured by the use of drugs and ointments, especially those containing
belladonna, lolium, henbane, opium, and even more by herbs recently
introduced from east and west, such as Indian hemp, datura, ‘and the plant
called by the Indians “tabacco”, by the Portuguese “peto”, and by the
French “nicotiana”’.322
As for the supposed compact with the devil, it is an absurdity only
surpassed by the belief in sexual intercourse with demons. This delusion,
Weyer points out, may be explained medically by the phenomena of
nightmare and the effects of certain drugs, and is not sanctioned by
Scripture. For, though holy men such as Lactantius, Justin Martyr, and
Tertullian have maintained that the ‘sons of God’ mentioned in Genesis vi.
2 were spirits, this interpretation is opposed by still more eminent
theologians, such as Saints Jerome, Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom,
though he is obliged to admit that St. Augustine believed in incubi and
succubae,323 and that distinguished living theologians hold that Luther’s
father was literally the devil. This, however, says Weyer, is an unfair and
prejudiced way of attacking the Lutheran heresy.324
People who fancy themselves bewitched are really possessed or assaulted
by the devil, as were Job and the demoniacs of the New Testament. If these
demoniacs had lived in our days, he remarks, they would probably have

each cost the lives of numerous old women.325 The strange objects vomited
by such persons are either deceptions or put into the person’s mouth by the
devil, as is shown by there being no admixture of food, and the absence of
pain or injury in spite of the size of the objects.326
A girl near Cleves fell into convulsions with clenched hands and teeth
which, according to her father, could only be opened by making the sign of
the cross. She also complained of pains for which it was necessary to buy a
bottle of holy water from a priest at Amersfort, on drinking which she
proceeded to vomit pins, needles, scraps of iron, and pieces of cloth. She
spoke in an altered boyish voice, intended for that of a demon, and declared
the whole was caused by an ‘in my opinion honest matron’, who was
imprisoned with her mother and two other women.
Weyer undertook the case, ‘whereupon she said in her boy’s voice she
would have nothing to do with me, and that I was a cunning fellow. “Look
what sharp eyes he has.”’ Weyer opened her hands and mouth, without
making the sign of the cross, ‘not that I would in any way speak irreverently
thereof’. He also showed that the objects produced, even soon after eating,
were free from admixture of food, and had therefore never been farther than
the mouth; and he thus obtained the release of the four women after a
month’s imprisonment.327
As for the stories of men changed into animals, they are partly poetic and
moral allegories, as the sailors of Ulysses, and partly a form of insanity long
recognized by physicians, and termed lycanthropy.328
Many think they are possessed when they are only melancholic, and others
pretend to be so to excite interest and obtain money. Those who fancy
themselves attacked by devils should, instead of accusing their neighbours,
take to themselves the armour of God as described by St. Paul.
Unfortunately, spiritual pastors, in their ignorance and greed, teach that not
only diabolical possession, but even ordinary diseases are to be cured by
charms, incantations, palm branches, consecrated candles, and an execrable
abuse of scriptural words. Cures are, indeed, sometimes so produced, but
are really due to the imagination.

Persons supposed to be possessed should first be taken to an intelligent
physician, who should investigate and treat any bodily disorder. Should
spiritual disorders be also present he may then send the patient to a pious
minister of the Church, but this will often be unnecessary. The devil is
especially fond of attacking nuns, who should be separated from the rest,
and, if possible, sent home to their relations.329
Here Weyer inserts several instances in his own experience.
Philip Wesselich, a monk of Knechtenstein near Cologne, an honest,
simple-​minded man, was miserably afflicted by a spirit about the year 1550.
Sometimes he was carried up to the roof, at others thrust in among the
beams of the belfry, often carried unexpectedly through the wall (plerumque
per murum transferebatur inopinato) and knocked about generally. At
length the spirit declared he was Matthew Duren, a former abbot,
condemned to penance for having paid an artist insufficiently for a painting
of the Blessed Virgin, so that the poor man went bankrupt and committed
suicide, ‘which was true’. He could only be released if the monk went to
Trèves and Aix and recited three masses in the respective cathedrals. The
theological faculty of Cologne advised that he should do so, but the abbot
Gerard, a man of firmness and intelligence, told the possessed man that he
was a victim of diabolical deceptions, and that unless he put his trust in
God, and pulled himself together, he should be publicly whipped.
Whereupon the monk did so, and the devil left him and went elsewhere.330
A similar case was that of a young woman known to Weyer, who had
convulsions in church whenever the ‘Gloria in excelsis’ was sung in
German, and said she was possessed. It was observed, however, that she
looked about for a soft place to fall on. She was therefore sent for by
Weyer’s friend the Countess Anna of Virmont, who said she was about to
sing the chant, and that if the demon attacked her she would soon drive him
out. The young woman fell in the usual fit, on which the countess, prudens
et cordata matrona, with the aid of her daughter pulled up her dress and
gave her a good whipping. ‘She confessed to me afterwards that it
completely cured her.’ Extreme diseases, adds Weyer, require, according to

Hippocrates, extreme remedies, but care should be taken to distinguish
suitable cases.331
The last and most important section of the book treats of the punishment of
witches, who are to be carefully distinguished from poisoners and
magicians, such as Faust, who are often wealthy men and spend much
money in travel, books, &c., to learn diabolic arts; or deceivers, such as the
mason who buried wolves’ dung in a cattle stall, and when the animals
showed great excitement, said they were bewitched, and offered to cure
them for a consideration. Such men, when proved to have done serious
harm, are to be severely punished. The less guilty should be admonished,
and among them are those who spread superstitious practices and persuade
sick people that they are bewitched by some old woman.
This is all that the laws of Church or State require, and is a very different
thing from seizing poor women possessed by diabolic delusions, or on the
malicious accusations or foolish suspicions of the ignorant vulgar, and
casting them into horrible dungeons, whence they are dragged to be torn
and crushed by every imaginable instrument of torture, till, however
guiltless they are, they confess to sorcery, since it is better to give their
souls to God in innocence, even through flame, than longer endure the
hideous torments of bloodthirsty tyrants. And should they die under torture
or in prison, the accusers and judges cry out triumphantly that they have
committed suicide, or that the devil has broken their necks.
Here follows a burst of indignant eloquence which would have cost Weyer
dear had he fallen into the clutches of the witch-​hunters, and which may be
given in the terse vigour of the original:
‘Sed ubi tandem is apparuerit quem nihil latet, Scrutator cordium et
renum, ipsius abstrusissimae etiam veritatis Cognitor et Iudex, vestri
actus palam fient, O vos praefracti tyranni, O iudices sanguinarii,
hominem exuti et caecitate ab omni misericordia procul remoti. Ad
ipsius extremi iudicii tribunal iustissimum vos provoco, qui inter
vos et me decernet ubi sepulta et culcata Veritas resurget vobisque in
faciem resistet latrociniorum ultionem exactura.’332

Their credulity almost equals their cruelty, as shown by the belief that a
certain old woman caused the excessive cold of the preceding winter, and
by the absurd swimming test. What effect can denial of faith, evil
intentions, or a corrupt fantasy have upon a person’s specific gravity, on
which floating depends? Moreover, women usually float, since their
specific gravity is less than that of men, as Hippocrates pointed out.333 But
nothing is too absurd for a witch inquisitor. Some fishermen at Rotterdam
drew up their nets full of stones but fishless. This was clearly witchcraft, so
they seized an unfortunate woman who confessed in her terror that she had
flown out of the window through a hole the size of a finger-end, dived
under the sea in a mussel-shell,334 and there terrified the fishes and put
stones in the nets. The woman, says Weyer, was evidently mad or deluded
by the devil, but they burnt her all the same. Treachery and cruelty go
together. A priest, having failed to make a witch confess, promised that if
she would admit some small act of sorcery, he would see that she was
released after some slight penance. Thereupon she confessed and was burnt
alive.335
In contrast to this, Weyer describes the method of dealing with witchcraft in
the duchy of Cleves. In 1563 a farmer, finding his cows gave less milk than
usual, consulted a witch-​finder, who told him that one of his own daughters
had bewitched them. The girl, deluded by the devil, admitted this and
accused sixteen other women of being her accomplices. The magistrate
wrote to the duke proposing to imprison them all, but the latter, probably at
Weyer’s instigation, replied that the witch-​finder was to be imprisoned, the
girl to be instructed by a priest and warned against the delusions of demons,
and the sixteen women in no way to be molested.336
An old woman of eighty was arrested at Mons on charge of witchcraft, the
chief evidence being that her mother had long ago been tortured to death on
a similar charge. To make her confess they poured boiling oil over her legs,
which produced blisters and ulcers, and her son hearing of it sent her a roll
of lint to put round them. This was supposed to make magic bandages by
the aid of which the woman might escape, and the son was promptly
arrested. The mother was to be burnt in a few days, and her son would

probably have followed, when Weyer, by permission of the Duke of Cleves,
visited Count William of Mons and explained his views on witchcraft. He
also examined the old woman, who was so broken down that she fainted
several times, and finally obtained the release of both.337
Theologians (says Weyer in conclusion) may object that he is only a
physician and bid him keep to his last. He can only reply that St. Luke was
a physician, and that he is one of those who hope by the mercy of God and
grace of Christ to attain that royal priesthood of which St. Paul and St. John
speak. Finally he is ready to submit all he has said to the judgement of the
Church, and to recant any errors of which he may be convicted.
The Church answered by putting his name on the Index as an auctor primae
classis, that is, one whose opinions are so dangerous that none of his works
may be read by the faithful without special permission, while his book was
solemnly burnt by the Protestant University of Marburg.338 The Duke of
Alva, then engaged in his notorious work in the Netherlands, used his
influence to get Weyer removed from his position at the court of Cleves. In
this he was aided by the duke’s increasing melancholia and ill health, which
were considered by many a judgement upon him for his protection of Weyer
and neglect of witch-​burning. In 1578 Weyer resigned his post to his son
Galen, and in 1581 witch-​hunting commenced in the duchy of Cleves.
Weyer, however, as befitted the chivalrous defender of outraged
womanhood, enjoyed the friendship and protection of Countess Anna of
Techlenburg, at whose residence he died, 1588, aged seventy-two.
The work on The Deceptions of Demons has been aptly compared to a torch
thrown out into the darkness, which for a moment brightly illumes a small
space and then disappears. It made a temporary sensation, and was
welcomed by a few of the more enlightened spirits of the time; it saved the
lives of some unfortunate women (being successfully quoted the very year
after publication in defence of a young woman at Frankfort, who confessed
she had flown through the air and had intercourse with the devil), and it
marks the beginning of an open and persistent opposition to the witch
mania. Spee also has a curious story showing the influence of Weyer’s
book:

‘A great prince invited two priests to his table, both men of learning
and piety. He asked one of them whether he thought it right to arrest
and torture persons on the evidence of 10 or 12 witches. Might not
the devil have deceived them in order to make rulers shed innocent
blood, as certain learned men had lately argued, “thereby causing us
pangs of conscience”? The priest stoutly maintained that these
pangs were needless, for God would never allow the devil to bring
innocent men to a shameful and horrible death in this way; and so
he (the prince) might continue the witch trials as usual. He persisted
in this, till the prince said, “I am sorry, my father, you have
condemned yourself and cannot complain were I to order your
immediate arrest, for no less than 15 persons have sworn you were
with them at the witch dances”, and he produced the records of their
trials in proof. Then the good man stood like butter in the sun in the
dog-days, and had nothing more to say for himself.’339
But it had little effect on the superstition itself, which reached its height
during the following half-​century; and the author is compelled by his
religious beliefs to admit so much that his position is hardly tenable.
Indeed, his premisses had already been granted by the witch-​hunters
themselves. The jurist Molitor, for instance, admits that much witchcraft is
imaginary and due to the deceptions of demons, but while the physician
argues that these deceptions are rendered possible by disease, and are
themselves largely of the nature of disease, so that the victims deserve pity
and medical treatment rather than burning, the lawyer asserts that a person
can only be so deceived by his free will, and therefore a woman who
believes she has made a compact or had intercourse with the devil is as
deserving of punishment as if she had actually done so.340
Just over a century after the appearance of Weyer’s book (1664)
‘Sir Thomas Brown of Norwich, the famous physician of his time,
was desired by my Lord Chief Baron [Hale] to give his judgement
[in a case of witchcraft]. And he declared that he was clearly of
opinion That the Fits were natural, but heightened by the devil co-
operating with the malice of the witches at whose instance he did

the villanies. And he added, That in Denmark there had been lately a
great Discovery of Witches, who used the very same way of
afflicting persons by conveying pins into them.’
The jury ‘having Sir Thomas Brown’s Declaration about Denmark for their
encouragement, in half an hour brought them in guilty. . . . They were
hanged maintaining their innocence.’341
Had Brown been better acquainted with The Deceptions of Demons he
might have hesitated to make that ‘Declaration about Denmark’, but
Weyer’s early opponent, Bishop Binsfeld, has no difficulties. Quoting
Origen (in Matt. xvii. 15) he exclaims, ‘Physicians may say what they like,
we who believe the Gospel hold that devils cause lunacy’ and many other
diseases.342 But for a demon to cause disease or do other harm, two things
are requisite, the permission of God and the free will of some malicious
person, witch, or sorcerer. The physician, Weyer, has denied the possibility
of a compact with the devil, but is easily refuted by Scripture and Church
authority. Did not the devil try to make a compact with Christ Himself?343
Similarly he has no difficulty in showing that the Hebrew word for witch
means much more than ‘poisoner’, and, given the almost universal beliefs
of the age, it must be admitted that Brown and the bishop have the best of
the argument.
In the opening chapter of his well-known work on rationalism, Lecky says
that the decline of the belief in witchcraft ‘presents a spectacle not of
argument and conflict, but of silent evanescence and decay’; it was
‘unargumentative and insensible’. Scot’s work ‘exercised no appreciable
influence’, and, so far as the result was concerned, he, Weyer, and their like
might as well have kept quiet and waited for the change to be effected by
‘what is called the spirit of the age’, that is, ‘a gradual insensible yet
profound modification of the habits of thought’ due to ‘the progress of
civilization’. This theory has been ably criticized elsewhere.344 The truth it
contains seems to be that argument would not have sufficed to change
public opinion about witchcraft, without the aid of changes in other matters,
and especially the development and success of scientific investigation. Such

discoveries as the motion of the earth and circulation of the blood, when
generally accepted (which was not till late in the seventeenth century),
showed that the learned as well as the vulgar might be utterly mistaken in
important beliefs supported by apparently good evidence, and that scientific
methods of attaining truth differed widely from those of the witch-​hunters.
The progress of civilization by practically abolishing the use of torture
would alone have immensely diminished the number of victims, and of
those ‘confessions’ on which the belief was fed. To use military language,
the witch mania was an ugly and formidable redoubt connected with other
forts and entrenchments. It suffered somewhat from the bombardment by
Weyer and Scot, but could only be finally demolished by a general advance
of the forces of science and civilization. But if every one had trusted to ‘the
spirit of the age’ rather than disturb his neighbours’ beliefs, we might still
be burning our grandmothers.
Though born in what is now Holland and educated in France, German
writers claim Weyer as their countryman and compare him with Martin
Luther. The monk of Wittenberg is indeed a fine figure with his ‘Here stand
I; I cannot otherwise, God help me!’ But he had half Germany behind him;
both princes and populace were ready to protect him. Weyer stood
practically alone, and if he escaped being burnt by jurists and theologians,
had a fair chance of being lynched by an enraged mob as a sorcerer and
protector of witches. There was little to save him from torture and death but
the strength of mind of Duke William of Cleves, who came of an insane
family and already showed signs of melancholia.
Weyer was happily spared such a trial of his fortitude, but none the less
does he deserve our admiration as the chivalrous champion of womanhood,
who first, with vizor up and lance in rest, greeted, alas! not, like the knights
of legend, by prayers and blessings but by threats and imprecations, went
forth to do open battle with the hideous monster which had so long tortured
and slain the innocent and helpless.

Plate XLI. THE BODLEIAN MANUSCRIPT
MS. MARSH 379 fo. 73

THE ‘TRACTATUS DE CAUSIS ET INDICIIS
MORBORUM’
‫كتاب االسباب والعالمات‬
ATTRIBUTED TO MAIMONIDES
By Reuben Levy
Among modern authorities on Arabian medicine, the opinion has been
widely held that the position of Maimonides as a medical writer must
depend mainly upon an unpublished work from his hand, known as the
Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum.345 It is here sought to
demonstrate that the Bodleian MS. (Marsh 379), hitherto regarded as
containing this work, is in reality by another author, while the Paris MS.
(Bibliothèque Nationale, Ancien Fonds 411),346 the only other alleged copy
of the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum, contains in fact no such
work. Moreover, evidence will be adduced showing that it is not probable
that Maimonides composed a treatise of this scope.
For their information concerning the Tractatus, the modern bibliographers
evidently rely entirely on entries in the catalogues of the respective
libraries. The 1739 Catalogue of Arabic and Hebrew MSS. in the
Bibliothèque Nationale contains the following entry:347 ‘Codex
bombycinus, Aleppo in bibliothecam Colbertinam anno 1673 illatus, quo
continetur R. Mosis Maemonidae de morborum causis et illorum curatione
tractatus, Arabice, charactere Hebraico.’ Careful examination of the
manuscript disclosed the fact that it contained no fewer than four works of
Maimonides, viz. on Poisons,348 on Asthma,349 the Tractatus de Regimine
Sanitatis,350 and the Tractatus de Morbo Regis Aegypti,351 all bound together

in confusion.352 All these are known to be by Maimonides, and there is
nothing besides them in the volume.
There has always been a good deal of confusion about the works de
Regimine Sanitatis and de Morbo Regis Aegypti. The former is variously
known as de Regimine Sanitatis, de Cibo et Alimento, de Dietetica, ‘the
letter to the Sultan’, or as ‘the Consultation concerning (the Sultan) Al
Afḍal’.353 The latter also has a number of titles, such as de Causis
Accidentium,354 de Morborum Causis et Curatione, and Responsum ad
Regem Raqqa, in addition to its title of de Morbo Regis Aegypti. In 1514, in
Venice the two treatises were printed together in Latin as one work.355
Leclerc356 has made confusion worse confounded by saying that ‘ce que
l’on a désigné sous les titres, De Morbo Regis Aegypti, De Causis
Accidentium, De Causis et Indiciis Morborum, De Cibo et Alimento, ne sont
autre chose que tout ou partie du même ouvrage’.357 No doubt he was led
into making this statement partly by the fact that Wüstenfeld358 gives the
title of de Causis et Indiciis Morborum both to the Bibliothèque Nationale
MS. (which Leclerc knew as de Causis Accidentium) and to the Bodley MS.
The entry concerning the latter in Uri’s Bodleian Catalogue of 1787359 reads
as follows:
‘Codex bombycinus, anno Hegirae 765, Christi 1363 exaratus, folia
116 implens. Comprehendit succinctum de omnium corporis humani
morborum causis, signis et remediis tractatum ab Ibn Hobaish
Hierosolymitano ex Hebraica lingua in Arabicam conversum, cui
sectiones sex supra centum sunt. Initium fit a morbis capitis; finis in
elephantiasi. Composuit Musa Ben Maimun Alcortubi, Israelita.
[Marsh 379.]’
The MS. bears upon one of its pages the title

‫هذا كتاب االسباب والعالمات الحكيم‬
‘‎‫موسى بن ميمون القرطبي االسرايلي‬

‘This is the book of the causes and symptoms, by the Doctor Mûsa ibn
Maimûn the Cordovan, the Israelite.’ (Plate xli.)
As a matter of fact it is no such thing. This title, together with an extra title-
page and colophon in the same hand, is a much later addition to the MS.,
which also has a fragment of some other medical work—at present
unidentified—bound up with it. The folios of the MS. which deal with the
Tractatus have been bound together in extreme disorder, but examination of
them has shown that they really form a fragment of the second book of
‫الطّب‬ ‫قي‬ ‫المختار‬‎, the Delectus de Medicina, by
‫مهذب الدين ابو الحسن على بن احهد البغدادي‬‎, Muhaḏḏib ed Din
Abu’l Hasan Ali Ibn Aḥmad of Bagdad.360
Ibn Abi ‛Uṣaibia (1203–1269)361 gives a life of this writer and a list of his
works, which includes the Delectus de Medicina. According to him,
Muhaḏḏib ed Din was born at Bagdad in a.h. 515 (= a.d. 1121), and after
studying medicine and philosophy settled at Mosul. Later he became the
physician of the Shah Arman, chieftain of Khalāt on Lake Van in Armenia,
in whose service he amassed great wealth. He completed the Delectus at
Mosul in the year a.h. 560 (= a.d. 1164), and died there in a.h. 610 (= a.d.
1213), with the reputation of being first physician of his time.
Another fragment of the same work of Muhaḏḏib ed Din, which includes
most of the contents of the Bodleian MS., besides a good deal of material
which has been lost from the latter, exists in the British Museum.362 The
Leyden Library contains a unique copy of the work in three books. This is
claimed to be complete by the Catalogue of the library,363 although Bar
Hebraeus [1226–1286]—Catholicus of the Jacobite (Monophysite)
Church364—says that the work ran into four parts.365 The three books of the
Leyden MS. treat (i) of generalities (i.e. Anatomy, Physiology, and the
general causes of disease), (ii) of medicaments, and (iii) of particular
diseases and their treatment.
The Bodleian and British Museum MSS. contain part of the third book,
which was probably in general use by itself as a dictionary of medicine. The
British Museum copy has only lost the earlier chapters of this third part, but

the Bodleian MS., although possessing a few more chapters at the
beginning, is far less complete in the other portions.366
Wüstenfeld and the bibliographers that followed him have evidently derived
their information concerning these MSS. from the catalogues of the
Bodleian Library and of the Bibliothèque Nationale. No mediaeval
bibliographer has up to the present been found who mentions this book of
Maimonides.367 Wüstenfeld’s usual authority for his statements is the great
thirteenth-​century medical biographer, Ibn Abi ‘Uṣaibia. But, though the
latter gives a life of the Hebrew physician and a list of his writings,368 he
makes no mention of the Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum.
Moreover, this Tractatus has no place in Haji Khalfa’s admirable
bibliography of Arabic works, which contains notices of four books bearing
the title De Causis et Indiciis Morborum, not one of which is by
Maimonides. Lastly, neither the historian Al Qifty in his Classes
philosophorum et astronomorum et medicorum,369 nor Bar Hebraeus, who is
said to have plagiarized him,370 notice the work in their sketches of the
physician’s life.
The Bodleian MS. alleged to contain the Tractatus is one of a collection of
over seven hundred volumes bequeathed to the library on his death,
November 2, 1713, by Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop successively of
Cashel, Dublin, and Armagh. Most of his Oriental MSS. had been procured
for him either in the East by Robert Huntington, Bishop of Raphoe and
chaplain to the English merchants at Aleppo, or at the sale of Golius’s
library at Leyden in October 1696.371 Golius was a Dutch orientalist, born at
Leyden in 1596. He studied medicine and Oriental languages at the
University of Leyden, and after leaving it he accompanied a French
embassy to Morocco in 1622. He remained in Morocco for two years, and
while there collected various MSS. On his return in 1624 he was appointed
to the Chair of Arabic at Leyden, but was allowed a period of leave for
travel in the East before taking up his appointment. He took with him a
grant of money for the purchase of MSS., and these to the number of over
two hundred are now deposited in the University Library at Leyden. On
several occasions during his travels in Arabia attempts were made by Arab

chiefs to detain him for his medical knowledge, but he returned safely and
later wrote a number of works mainly concerned with Arabic. He died in
1667.
Among the MSS. which Golius himself procured for the Leyden Library
was that of the Delectus. It is at least unlikely therefore that such a profound
Arabist, who was also a medical man, would have bought the Bodley
fragment for a genuine work of Maimonides; the primary responsibility for
the error thus probably rests with Huntington. However that may be, it was
Uri, in his catalogue of the Bodleian MSS., who first published the error,
and from him it was passed on to the modern bibliographers.
John Uri was a Hungarian who had studied Oriental literature under
Schultens at Leyden, and was recommended to Archbishop Secker for the
purpose of cataloguing the Bodleian Oriental MSS., by Sir Joseph Yorke,
then ambassador in the Netherlands.372 Many years were occupied in the
preparation of the work, which appears to have commenced in 1766 and
was not completed till 1787. In spite of the length of time which Uri
occupied in his task, his successor, Pusey, found sufficient errors in it to fill
sixty closely printed pages. In his preface to the second volume of the
Catalogue, issued in 1835,373 Pusey complains ‘Urius vero MSS. haud raro
negligenter exscripsit’, and says that on re-examination of Uri’s work he
discovered, ‘besides the errors which Uri himself would have admitted, that
nearly all the purchasers of these books, Pocock alone excepted, had had
spurious works foisted on them by wily Orientals. He therefore looked
through all the books which Uri had enumerated, excepting the more
common ones, to see if they corresponded to their titles or not. By doing
this he discovered various irregularities. In some cases the titles had been
covered over with paper or obliterated with ink, or practically erased with a
knife. In others, by slight changes in the authors’ names, more famous
people were indicated as responsible for the works. Lastly, by changing the
pagination in some of the volumes fragments were represented as complete
works, and a few pages of one work were even occasionally sewn on at the
beginning of another.’374

Uri’s errors will be the more readily condoned when it is remembered that
he did not specialize on the Arabic MSS. alone, and that his work seeks to
catalogue, for the first time, a two hundred years’ accumulation of Oriental
MSS., including Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Aethiopic, Arabic, Persian,
Turkish, and Coptic writings. Nevertheless, Uri’s entry with reference to the
present MS. deserves some of Pusey’s criticism. The MS. has three parts,
each written in a different hand, the first and most important part being the
supposed Tractatus de Causis et Indiciis Morborum, which covers folios 2–
87. The second part is a fragment of some as yet unidentified medical work
(folios 88–115); and the third, consisting of the first and last folios, gives us
an introduction and an end piece to the first part.
The alleged author and translator are named on the first page:

‫هذا كتاب موسى ابن ميمون الفه‬
‫للعموم قاطبا وقد نقله التميمي‬
‫الشيخ سليمان الحبشى المكنا بابن حبيش‬
‫في مملكة القدس الشريغة‬
‫تم‬
‘This is the book of Mûsa ibn Maimûn which he put together as a
compilation for general use. Al Tamimi, the sheikh Sulaiman the
Abyssinian, known as Ibn Ḥubaish,375 translated it in the noble city
of Jerusalem. Finis.’
On the next page there is an introduction to the book which commences:

‫بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم‬
‫قال موسى ابن ميمون القرطبى االسرايلي‬
‫الخ‬
‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
So says Mûsa ibn Maimûn, the Cordovan, the Israelite,’ &c.
The whole of the passage is an extract from chapter vi of the Aphorisms of
Maimonides, adapted as a kind of introduction, and runs as follows:

‫قد علمت في قولي هذا في قوة النفسيه والقوة‬
‫الحيوانيه والقوة‬
‫الطبيعيه ولنسم االن في هذا االصطالح جميع افعال‬
‫البدنيه‬
‫لالنسان قول ان اشرف االفعال التنفس وبعده‬
‫النبط واالحساس‬
‫واشرف االحواس البصر ثم السمع وبعده االحساس‬
‫شهوة الطعام‬
‫والشراب وبعد ذلك الكالم وبعد ذلك التمييز اعني‬
‫الذي بها التفل)‪sic‬‏(‬

‫والفكر وبعد ذلك الحالفه لساير االعضاء علي‬
‫المعتادة وهذه الرتبة‬
‫في شرف انما هي بحسب ضرورية الحيوة او‬
‫صالحية فتعلم ان‬
‫الطبيعة اسم مشترك يقال علي معنى كثيرة كالقوة‬
‫المدبرة )‪(sic‬‏الحيوان‬
‫ايضا طبيعية وما هو اشرف وتمسكت لالشرف في‬
‫االشراف وهذه‬
‫االسباب الذي قد رايناها ورتبناها وهو االبتداء في‬
‫النزالت الزكاميه‬
‫من الراس‬
‫‪Trans. ‘I teach in this discourse of mine concerning the animal‬‬
‫‪power, the vital power, and the natural power, but we will here call‬‬
‫‪all man’s bodily functions by one name. There is a saying that the‬‬
‫‪noblest of the functions is breathing, next the pulse, and lastly the‬‬
‫‪senses. Of the senses, the noblest is sight, which is followed by‬‬
‫‪hearing. Following on the senses is the appetite for food and drink,‬‬
‫‪after it being speech and then the mind; I mean that which contains‬‬
‫‪the reason and the intellect. Next comes the [?] allocation of [the‬‬
‫‪various powers to] the other parts of the body according to the‬‬

‫‪customary manner. This arrangement in order of nobility is only‬‬
‫‪according to the requirements of life or [?] health.‬‬
‫‪‘You will recognize that “nature” is an equivocal term which can be‬‬
‫‪used in many meanings. [One of these meanings,] for example, is‬‬
‫‪“the motive power of animals”. So, too, is “natural”.‬‬
‫‪[? ? . . .] ‘and that which is nobler. And you will retain the noblest‬‬
‫‪of the noble [functions]. And these causes which we have noticed‬‬
‫‪we have set down in their order; and the beginning is concerning‬‬
‫’‪catarrhal discharges from the head.‬‬
‫‪Compare with this the real text of Maimonides:376‬‬

‫קד עלמת קול אלאטבא קוי׳ נפסאניה קוי׳ חיואניה וקוי׳‬
‫טביעיה‪.‬‬
‫ולנפס אנא אלאן פי הדה אלאצטלאח גמיע אפעאל בדן‬
‫אלאנסאן אלאפעאל‬
‫אלבדניה [ואשרף אלאפעאל אלתנפש ובעדה אלנבט‪]377‬‬
‫ובעדה אל אחסאס‪.‬‬
‫ואשרף אלחואס אלבצר‪ .‬תם אלסמע ובעד אלאחסאס שהוה‬
‫אלטעאם‬
‫ואלׁשראב‪ .‬ובעד דאלך אלכלאם‪ .‬ובעד דאלך אלתמייז‪ .‬אעני‬
‫בה אלתכייל‬
‫ואלפכר ובעד דאלך חרכה סאיר אלאעצא עלי מעתאדהא‬
‫והדה אלרטבה‪sic) 378‬‏(‬
‫פי אלשרף אנמא הי בחסב צרוריה אלחיאה או צלאחיה‬
‫אסתמראהא״‬
‫ובעד הדה אלמקדמה פלתעלם אן אלטביעה אסם משתרך‬
‫יקאל עלי‬
‫מעאני כתירת ומן גמלה תלך אלמעאני אלקוה אלמדברה לבדן‬
‫אלחיואן‬
‫פאנהא אלאטבא יסמונהא איצי טביעה והדה אלקוה הי‬
‫איצי ‪. . . . . .‬‬
‫פאן גלבת ען דלך בדלת מא הוא אשרף ותמסכת באלשרף‬

‫פאלאשרף‬
.‫ובחסב הדה אלתרתיב יעלם אלמרץ אלח׳‬
‘Thou knowest the opinion of the physicians [concerning] animal
power, vital power, and natural power. But it is my intention here to
call all the functions of man’s body by the one name of “bodily
functions”. [The noblest of the functions is breathing, next the
pulse,377] and lastly the senses. Of the senses, the noblest is sight,
which is followed by hearing. Following on the senses is the
appetite for food and drink, after it being speech and then the mind,
by which I mean the thoughts and the intellect. Next comes the
motion of the other parts of the body according to their customary
manner. This arrangement in order of nobility is only according to
the requirements of life or the health of its faculties.
‘From this preface you will recognize that “nature” is an equivocal
term which can be used in many meanings. One of these meanings
[for example] is “the motive power in the bodies of animals” which
the physicians call “nature” too. . . . And if you discover this, you
will exchange that which is nobler and retain that which is noblest.
By means of this process of arrangement, a disease can be
recognized,’ &c.
This introduction was added when the folios stood in a state of disorder
different from their present one. The catchword at the bottom of the page
[‫وهذا‬‎, = and this] points forward to the title already mentioned,379 which
appears on folio thirty-​nine of the present arrangement. The text below this
title is part of the chapter on discharges and catarrh, so that the folio once
followed immediately on the introduction, being then, too, out of its proper
place.
The last page, written in the same hand as the introduction, bears a piece of
some unidentified work and a colophon which reads:

‫وقد تم هذا الكتاب الشريف تاليف موسى ابن‬
‫ميمون القرطبى‬

‫االسرايلى رحمه الله مما الف وجرب هذا الكتاب‬
‫المبارك وعدد فصوله‬
‫(‏ امراض البدن مما رتبه‬sic)‫مائة وست فصول للجميع‬
‫على اوضاعه‬
‫‏ سبع مالة و وخمسة‬٦٥٢٧(sic) ‫تم الكتاب فى سنة‬
‫وستين‬
‘This noble book is finished; the composition of Mûsa ibn Maimûn
the Cordovan, the Israelite, to whom God be gracious. This blessed
book is part of that which he composed and tested. The number of
its chapters is 106, dealing with all the diseases of the body, which
he arranged in their proper order.
‘The book was completed in the year 765.’380
The number 106, which according to the colophon is the number of
chapters in the book, is really the number of titles in the MS. written in
large hand. Fragments of many chapters whose titles are lost still remain in
it however, while many of the chapters that have preserved their titles are
no longer complete.
Again it may be pointed out that all the known medical works of
Maimonides were written in Arabic and therefore did not need to be
translated into that language as the Bodleian MS. claims to have been. The
spurious title-page thus further betrays itself by saying that this work was
translated from Hebrew.
Finally, the identification of the real contents of the Paris MS. disposes of
the last foundation of the idea that Maimonides wrote any compendium of
medicine known as ‫كتاب االسباب والعالمات‬‎ (Tractatus de Causis et
Indiciis Morborum), and clears up the confusion caused by the faulty
entries in the Paris and Bodleian catalogues.

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY AND LOGICAL
PROOF
By F. C. S. Schiller
§ 1. Among the obstacles to scientific progress a high place must certainly
be assigned to the analysis of scientific procedure which Logic has
provided. This analysis has not only been inadequate in itself, but has set
itself a mistaken aim. It has not tried to describe the methods by which the
sciences have actually advanced, and to extract from their experience the
logical rules which might be used to regulate scientific progress, but has
treated scientific discoveries almost entirely as illustrations of a
preconceived ideal of proof, and so has freely rearranged the actual
procedure in accordance with its prejudices. For the order of discovery
there has been substituted an order of ‘proof’, and this substitution has been
justified by the assumption that if discovery had taken the ideally best
course, it would have coincided with the process of proof. It followed, of
course, that the same logic would do for both, and that this logic was
already in existence.
The damage thus inflicted upon Science was twofold. Not only were the
logicians given a plausible excuse for persisting in their profound
misapprehension of scientific inquiry and rendered incapable of giving any
help or guidance in the solution of actual problems, but, what was much
worse, the scientists themselves were misled about the nature of their
operations.
The precise value of the service which a correct logical analysis of its
procedure might have rendered to Science is perhaps open to dispute,
though it must surely be beneficial to operate consciously, and with a full
understanding of their nature, the methods which have been hit upon
empirically; but even if logicians have commonly been too unfamiliar with

the details of scientific problems to offer much practical advice, it would be
difficult to overrate the mischiefs which must have resulted from referring
scientists to an incorrect analysis of their actual procedures. For the attempt
to justify by such a false ideal what they had actually done was bound to
divert their attention from the methods that were actually effective and
fruitful to others which were impracticable and sterile, to waste energy upon
false aims and impossible ideals, and so to hamper scientists fatally in the
exercise of their scientific rights and powers.
Hence it is not too much to say that the more deference men of science have
paid to Logic, the worse it has been for the scientific value of their
reasoning, while the less they have troubled to know about the theory of
Science, the better it has been for their practice.
Fortunately for the world, however, the great men of science have usually
been kept in salutary ignorance of the logical tradition and left to their own
devices, by the accident that the historical organization of academic studies
nearly everywhere confined ‘logic’ to the literary curriculum. Nevertheless,
the moral of this situation is not that it is right for science to neglect logic
and for logic to despise science, but that science should appeal from logic
as it is to logic as it ought to be, and should insist on being provided with a
reformed logic. For surely if a scientific education is to be more than a
narrow and technical specialty, and is to exert a ‘liberalizing’ and
broadening effect on the mind, it ought to include a study of scientific
method in its generality and a certain understanding of the intellectual
instruments by which all others are operated and constructed.
The whole evidence for these contentions it will not, of course, be possible
to marshal within the limits of this essay, but the systematic criticism to
which the whole traditional logic has been subjected in my Formal Logic381
may perhaps absolve me from the duty of substantiating them exhaustively.
It may suffice to indicate the extent of the scientific grievance against
‘logic’ by drawing up a list of problems in the logic of science which the
traditional logic has misconceived, and then to select for fuller treatment a
palmary example of the radical discrepancy between the two.

The traditional logic may be convicted of having gravely misrepresented,
(1) the value of classification and the formation of classes, scientific
processes of which the real logic was only revealed by the Darwinian
theory, (2) the function of definition, (3) the importance of analogy, (4) of
hypothesis and (5) of fictions, (6) the incomplete dependence of scientific
results on the ‘principles’ by which they are (apparently) obtained, (7) the
formation of scientific ‘law’ and its relation to its ‘cases’, (8) the nature of
causal analysis. Other important features of scientific procedure cannot be
said to have been recognized at all, e.g. (9) the problem of determining
what is relevant to an inquiry and what practically must be, and safely may
be, excluded, (10) the methods and justification of selection, (11) the
essentially experimental nature of all thought and consequent inevitableness
of risk, (12) the necessity of so conceiving ‘truth’ and ‘error’ that it is
possible to discriminate between them, and (13) the need for an inquiry into
meaning and into the conditions of its communication.

I
§ 2. The most instructive, however, of the discrepancies between ‘logic’ and
scientific procedure will appear if we compare the logical notion of proof
with the scientific process of discovery, and examine how far it can afford
any means of regulating, stimulating, or even apprehending the latter. We
shall find that the logical theory of ‘proof’ has no bearing on the scientific
process of discovery, is not related to what the sciences call proof, and can
only have a paralysing influence on any scientific activities which try to
model themselves upon it. On the other hand, the study of the process of
discovery will point to an important correction in the notion of logic.
§ 3. The scientific uselessness of the traditional logic should not, however,
excite surprise. For what reason was there to expect that the theory of proof
should turn out to be adequate, or even relevant, to scientific procedure? It
had sprung from a totally different interest, proceeded on different
assumptions, and aimed at different ends. It did not spring from interest in
the exploration of nature, and did not aim at its prediction and control. Nor
did it presuppose an incomplete system of knowledge which it was desired