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William Holme, medicus 83
cases of Paralisis and shaking of the limbs, the text suggests the following
order of healing: rst, give a digestive medicine (the recipe follows); then, the
patient should be purged (another recipe for pea-sized pills, ve to seven to be
taken before sleep); after, make sure the patient continues to take a drink made
up of various prescribed herbs, turned into a paste and stirred into beer; wash
the patient’s hands with a herbal lotion; make up an electuary from named
compound medicines; and nally, anoint the patient with a combination of
oils, the most powerful of which is oil of juniper. is course of treatment is
elaborate, not just a single prescription. Sometimes it makes a dierence to
the outcome what order of treatment is followed, as in cases of Stranguria
(slow and painful passing of urine). First comes a herbal bath, then anoint
with oils, afterwards apply a plaster, then take a medicinal drink and nally
give the patient an enema made of several dierent waters and oils. Recipes
are given for each prescription. In prescribing medicines, Holme evidently
also attached importance to the season of the year, weather and the age of the
moon. Treating the chronic condition of Gutta arthetica (an arthritic ailment
involving ‘deuxion’ of the humours), Holme wanted to administer medicines
in the middle of the months of September and November, on a clear rather
than cloudy day, and not at a new moon or a full moon. is was also the right
time for bloodletting, and blood can be taken from the joints without harm.
Holme’s practice was in step with calendrical medicine as suggested by the
works of his fellow friars and contemporaries, John Somer (a Franciscan) and
Nicholas Lynn (a Carmelite).
21
As we will see, Holme compiled an important text on the virtues of simple
medicines; and, as might be expected, his remedies in the Tabula medicine
make use of herbal, animal and mineral simples. But he also included named
compound medicines, familiar from the antidotaries or dispensary parts of
texts on practical medicine. No fewer than ve of these are listed one after
the other in a remedy for Paralisis by Holme (the electuaries Dianthus,
Diamargariton, Diatrion, Diagalanga and Diacastoreum).22 Holme might have
21
For background, see R. K. French, ‘Astrology in Medical Practice’, in Practical Med-
icine from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. L. García-Ballester, R. French, J. Arriz-
abalaga and A. Cunningham (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 30–59; L. R. Mooney, e
‘Kalendarium’ of John Somer (Athens, 1998); e Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn, ed.
S. Eisner (London, 1980). See also Chapter 4.
22
ese ve are listed in the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (Oxford,
1975–2013), s.v Dia-., and in Norri, Dictionary, s.v. Dia-. ey are prescribed in texts
on practical medicine like those by Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendium Medicine; John
Gaddesden, Rosa Anglica; and Bernard de Gordon, Lilium Medicine. ese were stand-
ard works of reference on practical medicine in late medieval England, often quoted by
the authors of the Tabula Medicine and, no doubt, well known to Holme himself. e
84 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
got these electuaries from apothecaries in London. University physicians
claimed, with limited success, to supervise the making of such medicines by
the apothecaries. ey might not have been the only source of compound
remedies for healers like Holme. From 1381, the Dominican friars of S. Maria
Novella in Florence were selling medicines made up in the convent to the
public at large.23 It is not impossible that some mendicant houses in England
were doing the same, though no evidence has so far come to light.
Extraordinary remedies
Some features of Holme’s practice were less predictable. William Holme had a
distinct preference for distilling medicines. He favoured distilling ingredients
used in the treatment of skin diseases (namely Alboras, Morphea or morphew,
with discoloration, and Scabies). Alboras, or Al-baras (to give its Arabic name)
was dened as a kind of leprosy. Holme suggests the following: take balls of
wine lees (poma tartari), burn these and then douse the remains with water.
Distil that water and then strain it with a lter before washing the remaining
deposit with it and leave overnight until it turns into an oil. Use the oil to anoint
the aected areas of skin. Distil two dierent waters to treat morphew, one
herbal, one with sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride), and then blend the two
together to treat the patient two or three times a day. is remedy is credited
to Holme and another friar, Castell. Scabies, a disease often found in enclosed
communities, was also best treated with a distilled remedy, according to Holme.
But distillation was not restricted to skin conditions. Distilled remedies were
used to treat ailments of the joints – paralysis, say, or severe pain in the limb – as
under Dolor [pain], and Gutta arthetica. For cold gout, Holme gave instructions
for distilling a ‘meat water’ (aqua carnis) made from pork and a variety of herbs,
to be kept in a glass vessel and warmed up when needed for treatment. He also
recommends distillate of the saps of spurge and houseleek (anabulle et tuthimalli)
for a laxative. A friar could do the distilling within the convent or household.
English friars were early adopters of distilled medicines.
Besides these distilled medicines for treating particular ailments, William
Holme championed the use of balsam as a ‘wonder-drug’ or panacea for use
24
ingredients include owers of rosemary (dianthos), ground up pearls (diamargariton),
three kinds of pepper (diatrion), galingale (diagalanga) and castor (diacastoreum).
23
S. T. Strocchia, ‘e Nun Apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: Marketing Med-
icines in the Convent’, Renaissance History 25 (2011), 627–47 (p. 629).
24
On surgeons and distillation, see M. R. McVaugh, e Rational Surgery of the Mid-
dle Ages, Micrologus’ Library 15 (Florence, 2006), pp. 191–208. For friars and distillation in England, see Jones, ‘e Survival’.
William Holme, medicus 85
against a gamut of illnesses.25 Natural balsam was one of the rarest and most
expensive spices traded from East to West in the Middle Ages. Learned men
thought it came from the one single grove of balsam trees at Matariyya or
Matera, north of Cairo; its export was under the control of the sultans of Egypt.
Balsam was a small shrub with long pale leaves and growing to a height of
about 1.5 m. It had a two-layered bark, red on the exterior and green on the
interior. A number of precious products were derived from the plant. Most
valuable was the oleo-resin (opobalsamum or ‘balsam oil’), collected by scoring
into the bark. Other, less valuable, liquids were produced by boiling the berries
(carpobalsamum) and the branches (xilobalsamum), while ash from burning the
branches (lachobalsamum) was also collected and sold. e nest ‘oil’ was a pale
yellow liquid, astringent and aromatic with a smell which is likened in some
sources to lemon and cardamom.
26
Balsam’s value was enhanced by the legend that the Holy Family stopped
at Matariyya during the ight to Egypt. Joseph’s sta was broken by Christ
and planted in the ground – this was supposed to be the origin of the balsam
grove.27 Balsam was an ingredient in the most expensive remedies available, for
instance in theriac. So-called ‘articial’ balsams oered an alternative to this
extraordinarily scarce natural balsam. William Holme proposed two dierent
recipes for articial balsam, one distilled and one not. e undistilled version
of articial balsam involves eight ingredients, including frankincense, myrrh,
mastic from Chios and gum arabic. e ingredients were mixed successively
into heated, but never boiling, oil. e spices needed meant that though this
articial balsam was not as expensive or hard to obtain as natural balsam, it
was by no means as cheap as ‘the common and o-the-shelf (venale) balsam’
also described under the entry for Balsamum in the Tabula medicine.
William Holme’s distilled form of articial balsam is yet more complex
than the undistilled kind. It required small quantities of xilobalsamum and
carpobalsamum, as well as twenty-ve other ingredients. e ingredients must
be mixed and pulped in a mortar before distillation. e rst distillation
produces a clear water and is called ‘mother of balsam’; a second distillation
25
F. B. Brévart, ‘Between Medicine, Magic and Religion: Wonder Drugs in German
Medico-Pharmaceutical Treatises of the irteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries’,
Speculum 83 (2008), 1–57.
26
M. Milwright, ‘Balsam in the Mediaeval Mediterranean: A Case Study of In-
formation and Commodity Exchange’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 14
(2001), 3–23 (p. 5); E. R. Truitt, ‘e Virtues of Balm in Late Medieval Literature’,
Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009), 711–36.
27
M. Milwright, ‘e Balsam of Matariyya: An Exploration of a Medieval Panacea’,
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 66 (2003), 193–209 (p. 205).
86 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
produces a yellow ‘articial balsam’; and a third distillation produces the
nest of all, called ‘best balsam’. e rst kind can be drunk as well as used
to anoint. Taken with wine, it will work against head colds and phlegm in
the mouth of the stomach. Balsam purges the stomach of corrupt humours,
stimulates appetite, prevents an aposteme coming to the heart, and works
against cotidian (with daily attacks) and quartan fevers caused by phlegm or
black bile. If used to anoint the spine, it will prevent the exacerbation of a
fever. It cures fetid breath, strengthens and whitens teeth. It cures stulae and
cancers and wounds if used as a wash. It also works against skin diseases,
serpiginous scabies, impetigo, morphew and leprosy. A cloth soaked in it will
relieve haemorrhoids. Balsam is eective for deafness and worms in the ear,
red face, paralysis of the tongue and tremor of the head. Also, it may be used
for epilepsy, mortied nerves and spasm and twisted mouth. Finally, it works
against illnesses where the esh is corroded, including noli me tangere, jaundice
and malum mortuum. Articial balsam, like the natural version, is eectively
a panacea, which can be used to treat all sorts of illness. is second distilled
articial balsam was Holme’s elaboration of the recipe given by William of
Saliceto, physician and surgeon, in his Summa conservationis et curationis,
written in Bologna circa 1270.
28
England experienced successive outbreaks of bubonic plague from 1348
onwards. Holme gave three separate remedies to ward o pestilentia or to cure
it. One was an electuary; the second an ‘imperial powder’ (pulvis imperialis:
he shares credit for this with a certain Brother Bartholomew). e third was
a drink to be consumed for two days at a time of pestilence; once the patient
was healthy this was followed up by a powder to be taken three times a week
to ward o a further attack of the disease. Somewhat surprisingly perhaps,
given the challenge posed by pestilence to orthodox Galenic medicine, none
of these prescriptions involved multiple distillations or an articial balsam
– but then articial balsam was not identied specically as a remedy for
pestilence.29 Holme’s plague remedies were not drastic surgical interventions:
he did not deal in bloodletting or the opening of plague buboes. One of the
remedies – the ‘imperial powder’ – has the same name as a remedy given
by John of Burgundy, whose De epidemia, stimulated by the pestis secunda
of 1361–2, was the most widely read and excerpted plague tract in England
28
Guilelmus da Saliceto, Summa conservationis et curationis … (Venice, 1490), sig. P8
verso.
29
Cf. C. Crisciani and M. Pereira, ‘Black Death and Golden Remedies: Some Re-
marks on Alchemy and the Plague’, in Regulation of Evil: Social and Cultural At-
titudes to Epidemics in the Late Middle Ages, ed. A. Paravicini Bagliani and F. Santi
(Florence, 1998), pp. 1–39.
William Holme, medicus 87
from the 1370s onwards.30 It is very likely that Holme would have known
this tract, but his ‘imperial powder’ shares only a name and a few ingredients
with that of John of Burgundy. He included some of the same ingredients
(but not all the plants), in dierent quantities, and added nut of Socotra aloes,
musk, saron and myrrh to the exotic spices; zedoary, spignel, fumitory and
marigold to the plants; as well as testas ovorum, presumably meaning eggshells (testa ovorum). is was denitely not a medicine for the poor.
Holme’s two other plague remedies are less complicated to make than the
‘imperial powder’. e rst is an electuary – or rather, a blend of electuaries
– one of which is the same Dianthos (based on owers of rosemary) he
prescribed in cases of Paralisis. e second electuary included is pliris. is is a
complex electuary with about thirty separate ingredients: spices, herbs, gums,
burnt silk, syrup of roses, etc. Both these electuaries are suited to the wealthy,
according to John of Burgundy.31 e second one, pliris, is not really a remedy
but a preventative. is is the drink he recommends in time of pestilence,
which has precious Armenian and Lemnian medicinal earths powdered and
then mixed into liquid form with white wine or vinegar, and camphor added.
is is followed up with another powder to be taken by the healthy three
times a week in times of plague. e powder contains aloes from the island
of Socotra, o the horn of Africa, and myrrh. It is claimed in the Tabula
medicine that ‘parchment cannot tell the praises this medicine deserves’. 32 All
the plague medicines thus extravagantly credited to William Holme, if not
properly speaking panaceas or ‘golden remedies’, contain scarce and expensive
ingredients suggesting an exclusive clientele rather than everyman.
30
L. M. Matheson, ‘John of Burgundy: Treatises on Plague’, in Sex, Aging and Death
in a Medieval Compendium: Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52. Its Texts, Lan-
guage and Scribe, ed. M. T. Tavormina, 2 vols. (Tempe, 2006), II, pp. 569–606 (n. 35
deals with ‘imperial powder’). For the circulation of De epidemia in England, see L.
M. Matheson, ‘Médecin sans Frontières?: e European Dissemination of John of
Burgundy’s Plague Treatise’, ANQ 18, issue 3 (2005), 18–30; L. Jones, ‘Unrecorded
Versions of John of Burgundy’s Plague Tract and Identifying ‘Lost’ Copies of the
Same’, Notes & Queries 65 (2018), 14–17. See also D. W. Singer, ‘Some Plague
Tractates (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries)’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of
Medicine 9 (1916), 159–212.
31
Norri, Dictionary, s.v. Pliris. For John of Burgundy, see K. Sudho, ‘Pestschriften
aus den ersten 150 Jahren nach der Epidemie des “schwarzen Todes” 1348. XVI-
II. Pestschriften aus Frankreich, Spanien und England’, Archiv für Geschichte der
Medizin 17 (1925), 12–139, p. 63.
32
University College, MS Lat. 11, fol. 221: huius medicine laudes nequit membrana
referre.
88 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
William Holme as author: Tractatus de medicinis
When we turn to William Holme’s own writings, by contrast, the emphasis is
less on noble and wealthy patients, than on what is available and aordable to
the poor. A Franciscan scribe, John Holbeche, compiled and wrote a manuscript
that included a Tractatus de medicinis fratris Willelmi Holm de Ordine Minorum,
now TCC, MS O.9.10, fols. 114–19.33 A friar named Holbeach or Holbeche
was licensed to hear confessions in the diocese of Ely on 25 May 1411.34 is
work on medicines by Holme is short. It has something of the character of a
Practica, beginning with remedies for the head and working down the body.35
Perhaps it was intended as a text useful to his brother Franciscans. ere is
one remedy among many for the head that is ‘for the head and for clearing
the voice’, mixing honey and herbs. Keeping the voice in good order was,
of course, a matter of considerable importance to the brothers in their roles
as preachers and confessors.36 William Holme may have been approached by
fellow friars who had to preach to large crowds. ere are also many remedies
for eyes suering from strain because of reading – another common complaint
in a learned preaching order.
As the text continues, it emerges that not all complaints get equal
attention. Maybe Holme began with the intention of writing a much longer
work but was frustrated by events. As the reader moves on from ailments
33
M. R. James, e Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge:
a Descriptive Catalogue (Cambridge, 1900–04), MS O.9.10: digitised at https://
mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/uv/view.php?n=O.9.10&n=O.9.10#?c=
0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-3320%2C-325%2C11174%2C6466, accessed 17
April 2023. Holbeche was also the copyist in this manuscript of a treatise on telling
fortune from the zodiac: see J. B. Friedman, ‘“Dies boni et mali, obitus, et contra hec
remedium”: Remedies for Fortune in Some Late Medieval English Manuscripts’,
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 90 (1991), 311–26.
34
CUL, Ely Diocesan Records G/1/3, fol. 260r. I owe this reference and information
about John Holbeche to Dr Michael Robson. Holbeche is known also to have writ-
ten in the second half of the fourteenth century a copy of the Postills on the Old
Testament of Nicholas of Lyre (another Franciscan). See omson, Peterhouse, MS
85 (p. 47 and Fig. 78). For sermons probably by John Holbeche, see the references
in B. Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent
(Leiden, 2004), p. 105, n. 272.
35
For the Practica genre, see Demaitre, Medieval Medicine; L. Loviconi, ‘Les Prac-
ticae: un révélateur de la structuration et de l’élaboration des savoirs théoriques et
pratiques médicaux’, in Écritures médicales: Discours et genres de la tradition antique
à l’époque moderne, ed. L. Moulinier-Brogi and M. Nicoud (Lyon-Avignon, 2019),
pp. 73–99.
36
TCC, MS O.9.10, fol. 114v.
William Holme, medicus 89
of the head, eyes, ears and teeth, the remedies suggested are shorter, and
the head-to-toe order typical of a Practica begins to break down. e text,
known only in this one manuscript, may have been transcribed for Holme by
an amanuensis (Holbeche himself?) and abandoned before the project was
complete. However, the De medicinis makes a good t with the other texts in
the manuscript Holbeche copied. e focus is practical medicine. Holme’s De
medicinis is preceded by a text of Macer, De viribus herbarum, and of Marbode,
De lapidibus; these standard texts on herbs and stones for medicinal use make
good partners to the Holme text.
One of the rst remedies in De medicinis is a purgative of the head ‘of
Hippocrates’. It is good for all head complaints including headache, giddiness,
dim vision and epilepsy, as well as cleansing eyes and ears. Principal ingredients
are opium from ebes in Egypt, the herb stavesacre, gum from spurge and ve
oriental spices; these are rubbed on the palate three or four times early in the
morning. Holme says that ‘I have tested this on myself at a time when I almost
despaired of the health of my head’.37 is is the only time Holme mentions
trying out a medicine on himself in the De medicinis, although he does refer
elsewhere to his having tried out several remedies out in his practice on others.
ere is, for example, a stomach medicine used by ‘King Charles’ (probably
Charles VI of France, father-in-law to Richard II) and which expelled all bad
humours. Holme says that he tested this medicine – an electuary containing
spices – on his patients, and that at any hour of the day it would ‘miraculously’
discharge evil humours and relieve all pain.
38
One other purgative Holme recommends he calls the ‘pills of Brother
Peter Sara’. One pill will act within eighteen hours; but if two are taken, it
will act immediately. e pills contain rhubarb and various spices, and he
gives elaborate instructions for keeping them in the shade for two days after
manufacture, and then storing them in a sealed glass jar. Brother Peter Sara
was presumably a fellow Franciscan, but not so far identied in England. As
well as this reminder that Holme wrote as a Franciscan, another medicine for
purging the head employs ‘priests’ salt’ (sal sacerdotale), was so-called ‘because
priests used to eat it with all their food at the time of Elisha the prophet, and
so stayed healthy and ready to serve God’.39 e remedies for head, eyes and
stomach are the most elaborate of those Holme prescribes and take up many
lines of writing discussing their uses and ingredients.
37
Ibid, fol. 114v–15r.
38
Ibid, fol. 117v.
39
Ibid. fol. 114v: vocatur sal sacerdotale quia sacerdotes commederunt in diebus Elye
prophete cum omni cibo et fuerint sani et bene dispositi ad ministrandum deo. See
II Kings. 2.
90 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
As De medicinis goes further, however, the remedies prescribed get simpler.
Even amongst the eye remedies at the beginning, some are very simple indeed.
For inammation of the eye Holme says: ‘cook the roots of rose and fennel
with oil and well water in equal proportions, until the water is gone, and then
anoint the eye with it’.40 e herbal content of the remedies dominates later
in the text of De medicinis, with less reliance on spices. e remedies seem
more aordable and suitable for patients (or brethren) of lower status. ere
is enough evidence in De medicinis to suggest that Holme targeted it at his
brethren in the Order. e change in the character of the text as it goes on, the
remedy to improve voice production, the fact that the De medicinis was written
by a Franciscan scribe, and that it is not known in any other manuscript: all
these suggest that it may have been written or dictated by William Holme to
a scribe with members of his own order in mind.
William Holme: De simplicibus medicinis
e other much longer text attributed to William Holme is very dierent in
character, although similar in title, De simplicibus medicinis. e explicit to the
complete text on fol. 331 verso reads:
here ends the best treatise on simple medicines for particular sicknesses of the
body, by Brother William Holme medicus of the order of Friars minor about
the year of our Lord 1415, excerpted from 12 doctors of medicine [their names
follow, see below p. 92] and others, compiled excellently into alphabetical
order, rst of simple medicines and then of the particular illnesses.
41
is text survives in two manuscripts, one written in Oxford in 1435 by William
Bedmyster, fellow of New College.42 e second manuscript dates from
towards the end of the fteenth century and was owned by omas Deynman
(d.1501), medicus and fellow, later Master, of Peterhouse, Cambridge. So,
instead of a Franciscan scribe and context, as with De medicinis, we have a text
known only through university men at Oxford and Cambridge. Compiling
40
Ibid, fol. 115r.
41
Cambridge, Peterhouse, MS 168, fol. 331v. Latin text of explicit in omson, Pe-
terhouse, p. 99. ere is an entry for this text under the name of William Holme
OFM in Sharpe, Handlist. See also P. M. Jones, ‘Henry Daniel and his Medical
Contemporaries in England’, in Henry Daniel and the Rise of English Medical Writ-
ing, ed. S. Star (Toronto, 2022), pp. 63–83 (pp. 75–8), for a comparison of Holme’s
De simplicibus medicinis with Henry Daniel’s Herbal.
42
Bodl., MS Bodley 795. A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts,
c. 435–1600 in Oxford Libraries, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1984), I, no. 114. William Bed-
myster or Bedminster, see BRUO, I, p. 147.
William Holme, medicus 91
De simplicibus medicinis was straightforward in plan but must have presented
Holme with considerable problems in execution. e alphabetical headings
of illnesses are quite like those used in the Tabula medicine, though, since the
Tabula medicine was compiled (1416–25) after De simplicibus medicinis, Holme
was the pioneer. As it happens, none of the content of De simplicibus medicinis
is repeated in the Tabula medicine.
ere are 214 headings for illnesses in De simplicibus medicinis, though
strictly speaking some headings refer not to illnesses but to things that
medicines can do. For example, there is a heading for Atrahere, which means
drawing things like thorns to the surface. Aqua citrina refers to expelling a
uid, and the entry ends with a cross reference to Ydropisis (dropsy). Similarly,
Humor is for humours which need to be purged, although not itself an illness.
Other headings deal with parts of the body like Auris (ear) and Lingua
(tongue), and remedies for illnesses aicting these parts. Under each of the
headings, there is a further alphabetisation of the various medicinal simples
which work to treat that illness. Simples appear in the manuscripts under
sub-headings, and the number varies from as few as ve, in the very rst entry,
Abhominatio (nausea), to more than two hundred (see the discussion of Matrix
below). Extracting this material on simples from various texts, and then
organising it under headings in alphabetical order, must have been laborious
and complicated. Holme probably constructed a le system to organise his
entries before compiling the text. While De simplicibus medicinis is the only
medical work of this elaborate kind compiled in England, it employs the
methods of the study aids for biblical and theological students compiled by
Franciscans.43 e purpose was to save the reader searching through many
distinct authoritative texts to nd the passages required for insertion in a
sermon or homily. Holme’s readers would have used De simplicibus medicinis
in the same way to see at a glance the dierent medicinal simples available for
use for a particular illness.
43
Literature on the medieval development of study aids is now conveniently listed in
A. Kosto, ‘Statim Invenire Ante: Finding Aids and Research Tools in Pre-Scholastic
Legal and Administrative Documents’, Scriptorium 70 (2016), 285–309. Although
Kosto pushes the development of study aids further back in time to pre-scholastic
legal and administrative records, he acknowledges the fundamental work done on this
development by the Rouses and others (for instance, essays in M. A. Rouse and R. H.
Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame,
1991)). ese Rouse essays highlight the role of the friars in promoting study aids. See
also, with reference to friars, J. Hamesse, ‘Les instruments de travail philosophiques et
théologiques, témoins de l’enseignement et de l’inuence des ordres mendiants à l’épo-
que de la papauté d’Avignon’, in Philosophy and eology in the Studia of the Religious
Orders and at Papal and Royal Courts, ed. E. Kent et al. (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 601–28.
92 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
At the end of each sub-heading for a simple, Holme gives the name of
the authority for his information. e list of authors named in the explicit to
the entire text is: ‘Avicenna, Almasor, Bartholomeus, Constantinus, Girardus,
Macer, Mesue, Petrus Perybonensis, Platearius, Serapion, Willelmus de
Placencia, and Ysaac, and others’.44 e twelve named are leading authorities
on the use of simple medicines, some being Islamicate authors translated into
45
Latin (pseudo-Mesue pretends to be this
), the others western authors like
the Salernitan Matthaeus Platearius, Odo de Meung (Macer) writing in verse,
the Franciscan encyclopedist Bartholomew the Englishman, or scholastics like
Gerard of Berry and the surgeon William of Saliceto (or Piacenza). I have
checked Holme’s citations from all the authors listed, and they are carefully and
accurately transcribed from the source texts. ey do not represent the most
recent writers on medicine, but those whose works on medicinal simples were
already in circulation around 1300 – a century or so before Holme compiled
his text. Petrus Hispanus, who later briey became Pope John XXI, was known
to Holme and to the compilers of the Tabula medicine as Petrus Perybonensis,
a name not found elsewhere to my knowledge.46 But his esaurus pauperum is
a well-known thirteenth-century handbook of compound medicines, for the
use of those unable to aord expensive drugs.47 Its appearance in De simplicibus
medicinis is anomalous because the esaurus Pauperum is not a quarry of
medicinal simples and their uses, like the other authorities. While the shortest
entries in Holme’s text claim only that a certain medicinal simple is eective
in cases of a particular illness, those taken from Petrus Hispanus are more
discursive and suggest the combining of simples to make compound medicines.
e esaurus Pauperum is also cited as an authority in the Tabula medicine, but
there is no direct copying of one mendicant compilation into the other: both
44
Peterhouse, MS 168, fol. 331v: ‘Avicenna. Almasor. Bartholomeo. Constantino.
Gerardo. Macer. Mesue. Petro perybonensi. Plateario. Serapione. Willelmus de placencia. et Ysaac et aliis.’ e works referred to are as follows: Avicenna, Liber can-
onis, lib. 2 De simplicibus medicine; Liber Rasis ad almansorem, lib. 3; Bartholomaeus
Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, lib. 17; Constantine the African, Pantegni, Prac-
tica lib. 2; Girardus Bituricensis, Glossae super viaticum Constantini Africani; Mac-
er, De viribus herbarum; pseudo-Mesue, De simplicibus medicine; Petrus Hispanus,
esaurus pauperum; Mattheus Platearius, Circa instans; Liber Serapionis agregatus in
medicinis simplicibus; William of Saliceto, Summa conservationis et curationis, lib. 4;
Isaac, Dietae particulares, lib. 1.
45
See P. De Vos, ‘e ‘Prince of Medicine’: Yūhannā ibn Māsawayh and the Founda-
tions of the Western Pharmaceutical Tradition’, Isis 104 (2013), 667–712.
46
I thank Iolanda Ventura for her help in identifying this source.
47
Petrus Hispanus, Obras médicas, ed. M. H. da Rocha Pereira (Coimbra, 1973).