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The Medical Culture of Friars 133
e Tabula medicine, compiled by Franciscans in England between 1416
and 1425, is the best measure of the inuence of quintessential remedies on
medical practice, and the rst English medical compilation to champion
them. e compilers did not cite Rupescissa by name but instead called for
the use of the quintessence, or of the next best thing, ‘ardent waters’, without
acknowledging their source. Quintessential remedies appeared under the
headings Cor (Heart), Demon, Facies (Face), Frenesis (Frenzy), Melancholia and
Venenum (Poison). In each case, the entry identies simple medicines that
are to be distilled and put into quintessence of wine, so as to maximise their
power against the complaint concerned. e simples are those listed under the
relevant chapter of the second book of Rupescissa’s De consideratione. Under
the heading Facies (Face), for example, the Tabula medicine instructs us wild
strawberries are a hundred times more powerful against outbreaks of pustules on
the face if administered in quintessential form, even when compared to ‘ardent
water’ (aqua ardens), thus repeating precisely the claim made by Rupescissa at
two points in his text. e distinction between quintessence and ‘ardent water’
is probably understood as a factor of the number of distillations involved. On
the other hand, there is at least one recommended use of the quintessence to
treat Frenesis (frenzy), made with rue, which is not taken from Rupescissa.
e English friars clearly had a well-established tradition of distillation, quite
apart from the use of the quintessence. Alongside distilled remedies credited
in the Tabula Medicine to the surgical authors Teodorico Borgognoni (a
Dominican) and the surgeon John Arderne, we nd distillations by brothers
William Holme, William Appulton, John Castell, Peter Russell and Robert
Wainete.29 Roger Bacon’s use of human blood as the basis for an elixir also
reverberates in the Tabula medicine. Under three dierent headings, Nervus
(nerve), Ruptura siphac (rupture of the peritoneum) and Vulnus (wound), we
nd human blood prescribed as an exceptionally eective medicine across a
variety of complaints. Most often, the blood must rst be distilled. Remedies
are attributed to two friars, Robert Winstanton (Vulnus) and William Appleton
(Ruptura siphac). Winstanton’s recipe resembles the procedure described in the
Epistola ad magistrum Jacobum de Toleto… de separatione elementorum sanguinis
humani, a short treatise attributed to Arnau de Vilanova, but which was really
a pseudonymous work, originating in Montpellier in the fourteenth century.
Confusion about authorship and attributions to Roger Bacon are dealt with in
Jones, ‘Survival’, pp. 238–9.
29
P. M. Jones, ‘Alchemical Remedies in Late Medieval England’, in Alchemy and
Medicine from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, ed. J. M. Rampling and P. M. Jones
(Abingdon, forthcoming).
134 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
Whatever the immediate sources for the friars’ attachment to the use of human
blood, Roger Bacon’s elixir is at the root of these practices.
30
Friars were often associated with alchemical transmutation of metals as
well as elixirs and the quintessence, despite the strict admonitions against
such practice in mendicant constitutions. For example, two experimenta for
making gold credited to Brother Philip, a Dominican friar, and dating from
31
the fourteenth century, are to be found in CUL, MS Ii.3.17, fol. 40.
e
Benedictine chronicler, omas Walsingham of the abbey of St Albans, recalls
the case of ‘a certain mendicant friar’ who promised William de Somerton,
prior of the St Albans cell at Binham, to multiply his moneys. e ‘false friar’
defrauded Somerton of all the assets of his cell. Due allowance must be made
here for the antipathy felt by Walsingham as a regular towards friars.32 e
‘false Canon’ of the second part of Georey Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
claims to be able to make the philosophers’ stone, a skill known only to himself
and to ‘a frere/ In Engeland’. ese glancing hits at friar-alchemists suggest
the existence of some real, if unnamed, persons behind the literary type.33.
Direct evidence survives for the inuence of Baconian and quintessential
alchemy on the treatment of prominent patients in fteenth-century England. is
is witnessed, for example, by the Dietarium de sanitatis custodia written for Duke
Humfrey of Gloucester in 1424, by Gilbert Kymer, his physician. e Oxfordeducated Kymer had accompanied the duke on a military expedition to the Low
Countries. Later that same year he was sworn in as rector of the newly formed
30
A. Calvet, Les oeuvres alchimiques attribuées à Arnaud de Villeneuve. Grand oeuvre,
médecine et prophétie au Moyen-Âge (Paris, 2011), pp. 91–103, and pp. 576–9, where
the Epistola is edited. See also J. F. Payne, ‘Arnold of Villa Nova on the erapeu-
tic Use of Human Blood’, Janus 8 (1903), 432–5, 477–83; H.-J. Romswinkel, De
sanguine humano destillato: medizinisch-alchemistische Texte des 14. Jahrhunderts uber
destilliertes Menschenblut (Bonn, 1974); M. Pereira, ‘Teorie dell’elixir nell’alchimia
latina medievale’, Micrologus: Natura, scienze e civiltà medievali 3 (1995), 103–48
(pp. 123–5) notes that the use of human blood as an alchemical elixir depends
ultimately on Roger Bacon’s interest in organic material as ‘rst matter’ and his call
for medicinal use of the elixir. Rupescissa also has a canon (cap. 3) in liber 1 of the
Liber de consideratione quintae essentiae describing the extraction of the quintessence
from human blood; Jones, ‘Survival’, pp. 239–42.
31
See another example in E. H. Duncan, ‘e Literature of Alchemy and Chaucer’s
Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale: Framework, eme, and Characters’, Speculum 43 (1968),
633–56 (p. 636).
32
See Chapter 6 for jealousy of friars on the part of monks.
33
ese two references to friar alchemists are quoted in Duncan, ‘Literature of Al-
chemy’, pp. 636, 640. For varieties of alchemical discourse, see E. Bentick, Litera-
tures of Alchemy in Medieval and Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2022).
The Medical Culture of Friars 135
‘commonalty’ of physicians and surgeons.34 e Dietarium presents Humfrey with
advice on diet and regimen, but chapter 24 moves into more unusual territory. If diet
and regimen fail the duke, Kymer argues, echoing Bacon, it is necessary to use the
kinds of medicine that prolong life and put o old age. He draws on the Secretum
secretorum in Bacon’s edition to introduce for this purpose a philosophers’ egg or
stone, whose nature is concealed by puzzling terms.35 In the same passage, Kymer
goes on to say that some identify this philosophers’ stone with the quintessence,
distilled from wine many times over, and called heavenly. is is clearly the
quintessence promoted by Rupescissa and the Liber de secretis naturae of pseudoLull. Having alluded to these varying paths to the elixir, Kymer goes on to quote the
De retardacione senectutis of (pseudo) Roger Bacon, which sings the praises of seven
occult remedies, simple but exotic medicines which can be combined and fermented
to give a precious and inestimable medicine.36 Kymer was fusing in this text the
alchemical medical approaches he associated with Bacon with the later pseudoLullian tradition, deployed to advise his powerful patron on prolonging his life.
Gilbert Kymer was a key gure, thirty years later, in the group of twelve
persons who petitioned King Henry VI on 31 May 1456 to be allowed to
search, using alchemical means, for ‘glorious and noteworthy medicines’ from
various animal, vegetable and mineral ingredients. Kymer had been summoned
the year before to attend the king in his incapacitating lethargy and was one of
three royal medical doctors to sign the petition. e petition he signed was the
rst addressed to the English crown to concentrate on alchemical medicines,
rst and foremost, rather than the conversion of base to precious metals. e
prize the petition identied was
a most precious medicine, which some of the philosophers have called the
mother and Empress of medicines; others have named it the inestimable
glory; others, indeed have named it the quintessence, the philosophers’
stone and the elixir of life.
Here again we can see a blending of language and concepts drawn from Roger
Bacon and the Secretum secretorum with that of the pseudo-Lullian tradition,
34
See above, p. 24; R. ompson, ‘Gilbert Kymer: Rector of the First Conjoint Med-
ical College’, Journal of Medical Biography 29 (2021), 23–9.
35
Williams, Secret of Secrets, p. 236.
36
e text Kymer quotes has been edited by A. G. Little and E. Withington, De
retardatione accidentium senectutis cum aliis opusculis de rebus medicinalibus (Oxford,
1928); a Middle English translation with introduction is provided in Everest, ‘On
Tarrying’. For discussion of authorship and context, Paravicini Bagliani, ‘Il mito’,
and A. Paravicini Bagliani, e Pope’s Body, trans. D. S. Peterson (Chicago, 2000),
pp. 199–211. e English context is outlined by Getz, ‘To Prolong Life’.
136 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
but this time addressed to the highest power in the land, and with the king’s own
health at stake. ree of the petitioners were subsequently granted permission
to pursue the prize of this supreme alchemical medicine.37 After the successful
petition of 1456 there were no similar subsequent petitions to the crown for
permission to practise medicinal alchemy. e kinds of Baconian and pseudoLullian text which interested Gilbert Kymer, and the other royal physicians,
continued, however, to be of interest to university-trained men and medical
practitioners of the second half of the fteenth century. ese were well-known
clerics like Roger Marchall and John Argentine (another royal physician) in
Cambridge, and John Cokkys in Oxford. ey were primarily interested in
the remedies found in alchemical texts rather than in experimentation with
creating an elixir. All three were linked by their making use of the Tabula
medicine as a starting-point for their collection of such remedies. In the case
of John Argentine, the rare survival of a handbook to medical practice in his
own hand, shows that he did indeed apply alchemical remedies to his patients.
As his patients included the young sons of Edward IV (Argentine was the
last man to see them alive), and Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII, it is
possible that these royal patients too were treated alchemically.
38
Scientia experimentalis
Roger Bacon had argued in his De erroribus medicorum that when it came
to the use of medicines, scholastic physicians valued controversy and logicchopping instead of the test of experience. What Bacon called scientia
experimentalis involved the application of methods of testing to experience
and observation, and sometimes the use of instruments to achieve this, but
also the creation and manufacture of medicines (as well as weapons and tools).
Bacon was keen to promote a burning mirror to be employed as a weapon
against Tartars and Saracens, on which he claims he worked for three years,
and which Petrus Peregrinus (Pierre de Maricourt) had constructed at Paris.39
e manufacture of extraordinary medical remedies specied above (p. 130)
37
See D. Geoghegan, ‘A Licence of Henry VI to Practise Alchemy’, Ambix 6 (1957),
10–17. Ralley, ‘Clerical Physician’, pp. 107–11; M. Pereira, ‘Mater Medicinarum:
English Physicians and the Alchemical Elixir in the Fifteenth Century’, in Med-
icine from the Black Death to the French Disease, ed. R. French, A. Cunningham,
J. Arrizabalaga and L. García-Ballester (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 26–52; Rampling,
Experimental Fire, pp. 69–72; Jones, ‘Alchemical Remedies’, (forthcoming).
38
Jones, ‘Alchemical Remedies’; Jones, ‘Argentine, John’; for more on Argentine’s use
of the Tabula medicine see Chapter 6, pp. 219–20.
39
J. Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon on Scientia experimentalis’, in Roger Bacon, ed. Hackett,
pp. 277–315.
The Medical Culture of Friars 137
as products of Bacon’s medicinal alchemy also falls within the ambit of scientia
experimentalis. It seems that the English friars were inspired by Bacon’s
programme to place a high value on such experimenta and to circulate them in
writing. As early as the thirteenth century English friars were showing a clear
interest in discovering and collecting experimenta.40 e Dominican John of St
Giles left behind two separate texts containing experimenta in manuscripts, as
41
we have seen.
A friar called Nicholas de Badele, who must have ourished
in the thirteenth century, gave a manuscript to an unknown recipient, possibly
his convent, which is now CUL, MS Ee.2.20. Alongside a variety of texts
by Ricardus Anglicus on diagnostics and therapeutics, and anonymous texts
on urines and herbs, is a collection of Experimenta credited to an otherwise
unidentied Cancellarius (on fols. 28v–41r).42 Amongst these experimenta are
pills of the kings of England used to clarify vision, an experimentum against
scrophula credited to a peasant (rusticus), a maturative plaster against pleurisy
by master Lucian (two other experimenta are also credited to him) and a
powder of master Andrew against lientery, a form of diarrhoea. Sometimes,
we nd in manuscripts a particular experimentum authorised by a friar. is
is the case with another thirteenth-century manuscript, Bodl., MS Digby 79,
fol. 212, where we nd an experimentum cuiusdam magistri fratris predicatoris
contra quartanum (an experiment of a Dominican master against quartan
fever), written in an English hand.
43
e Tabula medicine text is our most comprehensive guide as to how the
friars understood therapeutics. e compilers seem to have had considerable
respect for the authority of what they call experimenta in the text, evidence
40
On experimenta see C. Crisciani, ‘Per una ricerca su ‘experimentum’-‘experimenta’:
riessione epistemologica e tradizione medica (secoli XIII–XV)’, in Presenza del
lessico greco e latino nelle lingue contemporanee, ed. P. Janni and I. Mazzini (Macerata,
1990), pp. 9–49; for the evidence of personal experience, see Expertus sum: l’expéri-
ence par les sens dans la philosophie naturelle médiévale: actes du colloque international
de Pont-à-Mousson, 5–7 février 2009, ed. T. Bénatouïl and I. Draelants (Florence,
2011); P. M. Jones and L. T. Olsan, ‘Takamiya MS 61: A Book of Experiments’,
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies 73 (2010), 87–107; P.
M. Jones, ‘Experimenta, Compilation and Construction in Two Medieval Books’,
Poetica 91 & 92, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (2019), pp. 61–80.
41
Chapter 1, pp. 47–9.
42
CUL, MS Ee.2.20 is described in Catalogue of the Manuscripts preserved in the
Library of the University of Cambridge, ed. H. R. Luard (Cambridge, 1857), II.
ere is also an unpublished description by M. R. James, available in CUL. Nich-
olas de Badele is not so far identied elsewhere.
43
W. D. Macray, Bodleian Library Quarto Catalogues IX: Digby Manuscripts, repr. with
addenda by R. W. Hunt and A. G. Watson (Oxford, 1999), p. 42.
138 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
based on the case histories of practitioners well known to the friars. e
authorities were not always prestigious scholars: a remedy for Fistula was said
to be ‘tested by an old woman and other men of religion’.44 e entire Tabula
medicine text is a collection of experimental remedies, some drawn from other
texts, some from word of mouth or the records of experience of the friars
themselves. One Franciscan is described as quidam frater minor experimentator
(a Franciscan experimenter) as a result of his successful treatment of a case of
migraine (Emigranea). We also meet with ‘country folk’ or peasants.45 ose in
this last category are not sources whose names we know, but their expertise
and experience are not disparaged. ey are credited with experimenta
when the warrant of authority is local knowledge and the test of exposure
to sick patients. ese experimenta sometimes include charms and amulets
or prognostics based on experimental tests, and these are also found in the
manuscript of magical experiments written by John Bruyl (OFM), discussed
below. Probatum est, ‘this has been tested …’, is a very common phrase in these
remedies collected in the Tabula medicine.46 e implication is that there is
certainly an added value to remedies which have met this test of experience.
Many of the remedies of the Franciscan Tabula medicine were based on
earlier works of practica, usually cited by name as textual authorities. Most
often cited is the Canon of Avicenna, followed the Summa of Roger de Barone,
also known as the Rogerina (13c), the Lilium of Bernard de Gordon, then by
works by English authorities like Gilbertus Anglicus, John Gaddesden and the
surgeon John Arderne. As with all these practica texts, therapy relied usually
on ‘cure by contraries’, following the rules of diagnosing complexions. e
degrees and the qualities (hot, cold, dry, wet) assigned to medicinal simples
determined which were to be deployed against illnesses. However, the Tabula
medicine normally gave priority to proven ecacy over explanations of the
rationale behind a particular therapy. One manuscript of the Tabula medicine
(Cambridge, Jesus College, MS Q.G.12) distinguished under each illness
heading what it called doctrina (that is denition of an illness, causes, signs
and prognosis) from the recipes for remedies used in treatment (experimenta).
e doctrina part was usually cursory, even perfunctory, compared to the
lengthy section on remedies. ere was a trend towards this pragmatic or
instrumentalist view of therapeutics in fourteenth- and fteenth-century
44
‘Probatum est per vetulam et alios religiosos’, see Jones, ‘Mediating’, p. 295.
45
‘Rusticos’: Jones, ‘Mediating’, p. 295.
46
P. M. Jones, ‘Ut dicunt fratres minores…: Language of Witness in Late Medieval
Medical Compilations’, in Parlare la medicina: fra lingue e culture, nello spazio e nel
tempo. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Università di Parma, 5–7 Settembre 2016,
ed. N. Reggiani and F. Bertonazzi (Milan, 2018), pp. 313–27.
The Medical Culture of Friars 139
medicine in the universities too, but it is more marked in the Tabula medicine
of the friars.47 ere are clear indications that the text was put together as a
compilation of remedies based on written authorities and proven experimenta,
with no attempt made to organise the remedies using scholastic hierarchies or
distinctions between kinds.
ere is a distinct sense of experimenta which privileges occult medicines
or secrets whose rationale can only be tested by successful experience. English
friars were partial to the use of divination, charms and amulets in healing.
It might seem at rst glance that since elsewhere in Europe friars acted as
inquisitors, attempting to stamp out doubtful magical practices as well as heresy,
they might have been discouraged from such practices in medicine. Moreover,
Roger Bacon was convinced that magic and charms were deceptions practised
by wicked men, or by demons. But Bacon also introduced the idea of a natural
secret, understood not as unknowable but as something not yet unveiled by
experience. ese secrets can be investigated by means of deploying the scientia
experimentalis.48 He is thus able to give a naturalistic account of, for example,
the virtus verborum (power of words), allowing that if the intention of the
user of these words, the faith of the one to be healed and the disposition of
the air as medium were rightly aligned, then incantations might have healing
eects.49 ese subtleties of justication were dispensed with elsewhere. e
Liber de retardatione accidentium senectutis (book on delaying the symptoms
of old age), attributed usually but wrongly to Roger Bacon, lists a number of
‘occult medicines’ reputed to have miraculous eects in prolonging youth and
repairing the ravages of age. One, lying in the bowels of the earth, is evidently
47
On medical instrumentalism, see M. R. McVaugh, ‘e Nature and Limits of
Medical Certitude at Early Fourteenth-Century Montpellier’, Osiris 6 (1990),
62–84; and for its later practice, D. Jacquart, ‘eory, Everyday Practice, and ree
Fifteenth-Century Physicians’, Osiris 6 (1990), 140–60.
48
N. Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au moyen âge et à la renaissance: Spéculations
intellectuelles et pratiques magiques (XIIe–XVe siècle) (Paris, 2002), pp. 316–38; N.
Weill-Parot, ‘Encadrement et dévoilement: L’occulte et le secret dans la nature chez
Albert le Grand et Roger Bacon’, Micrologus: Natura, scienze e civiltà medievali 14
(2006), 151–70 (pp. 166–8); M. Pereira, ‘Roger Bacon on Nature’, in e Philosophy
and Science of Roger Bacon: Studies in Honour of Jeremiah Hackett, ed. N. Polloni and
Y. Kedar (London, 2021), pp. 17–35 (pp. 31–5).
49
See chap. 4 of B. Delaurenti, La puissance des mots, virtus verborum: Débats doc-
trinaux sur le pouvoir des incantations au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2007). ese Baconian
doctrines were circulated through the Opus maius, Opus tertius and the Epistola de
secretis operibus et de nullitate magiae (in Bacon, Opera Quædam Hactenus Inedita,
ed. J. S. Brewer (London, 1859), I, pp. 523–51). e argument for the last being a
genuine work by Bacon is made in Allen, Roger Bacon, Appendix C.
140 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
gold. A second is from the sea and is probably ambergris. A third is viper’s
esh, a fourth the plant rosemary, a fth is probably human blood, a sixth
the ‘bone’ found in the stag’s heart and the seventh is lignum aloes.50 Sophie
Page has demonstrated in her book Magic in the Cloister that friars as well as
other monastics took a considerable interest in various branches of magic in
medieval England.
51
One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for friars’ interest in magic
is the manuscript owned and written by John Bruyl (OFM) at the beginning
of the fteenth century, now Bodl., MS Digby 153. Bruyl was a friar at the
Canterbury convent, and in 1397–8 was warden of the London convent. He
had become chaplain to Pope Boniface IX in 1396, and was elected bishop
of Annadown, but never left for Ireland. He was later active in many roles
in the York archdiocese.52 In 1403, Bruyl was still resident in London. He
copied a number of texts into his manuscript: ps-Albertus Magnus, Summa
naturalium,53 an introduction to Aristotle’s natural philosophy; Simon
Tunsted (OFM)’s commentary on Aristotle, Meteora; Urso of Calabria,
Liber aphorismorum;54 a ‘Felix qui poterit …’ commentary on the ps-Aristotle
Problemata, attributed to Walter Burley;55 Secreta philosophorum, an anonymous
50
Everest, ‘On Tarrying’, pp. 138–41; Allen, Roger Bacon, pp. 130–2.
51
S. Page, Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to
the Medieval Universe (University Park, 2013). An Oxford Franciscan of the late
thirteenth century, John of Pershore, wrote a treatise De libris licitis et illicitis, which
does not survive, but the title suggests an interest in delimiting what kinds of magic
text were permissible (p. 28). He was also the author of canons on an astronomical
calendar (BL, MS Additional 17368, fols. 36r–51v).
52
For Bruyl, also known as Joannes Brytt or Bryll, see references under Joannes Brytt
in Roest, ‘Franciscan authors’, https://applejack.science.ru.nl/franciscanauthors/,
accessed 17 April 2023; Page, Magic, p. 180. Michael Robson has compiled records
about Bruyl/Brytt from York diocesan records and other sources, and I am very
grateful for his allowing me to consult these.
53
B. Geyer, Die Albert dem Großen zugeschriebene Summa Naturalium (Philosophia
Pauperum). Texte und Untersuchungen, BGPTM 35 (Münster, 1938), pp. 63*–82*.
54
M. Van der Lugt, ‘e Learned Physician as a Charismatic Healer: Urso of Salerno
(Flourished End of Twelfth Century) on Incantations in Medicine, Magic, and
Religion’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 87 (2013), 307–46. Bruyl refers to in-
cantations from this text in his manuscript at several points (e.g. at MS Digby 153,
fols. 82, 174r).
55
e Problemata was often regarded as a medical text in the later Middle Ages. See
M. Van der Lugt, ‘Aristotle’s Problems in the West. A Contribution to the Study
of the Medieval Latin Tradition’, in Aristotle’s Problemata in Dierent Times and
Tongues, ed. P. De Leemans and M. Goyens (Leuven, 2006), pp. 69–110 (p. 85
The Medical Culture of Friars 141
compilation of magical tricks, illusions and craft secrets;56 and a variety of
experiments, charms and alchemical recipes for distillations and making
colours compiled by Bruyl himself. At the end of the ps-Albertus Magnus text,
Bruyl added in a ‘Sphere of life and death’, for divining outcomes of illness
or trials by assigning numerical values to the letters in the subject’s name.57
e commentary on the ps-Aristotle Problemata comes with an alphabetical
index of topics devised by John Bruyl himself, and he also compiled tables to
the Tunsted and Urso of Calabria texts.58 e texts included in the manuscript
must reect Bruyl’s own fascination for medicine and natural magic where it
shades into experiments, charms, wonders and divination. On folio 99r, Bruyl
has copied an experimentum from book seven of the Compendium of Gilbertus
Anglicus designed to make a woman conceive. is involves collecting a plant
at a particular time while saying the Lord’s Prayer and writing some magic
words on a parchment leaf which must be hung around the woman’s neck.
59
e Tabula medicine also makes use of charms to treat medical complaints.
ree dierent charms for stopping the ow of blood are taken from the
surgeon John Arderne under the heading Sanguis. Other charms, amulets or
prayers are recommended for Dentes (teeth), Fetus mortuus (fetus born dead),
Guttur (throat), Menstruum ux (ow of menses), Partus dicilis (dicult
birth), Spasmus (cramp), Squinancia (quinsy) and Timor (dread). Some of
the charms take the form of Christian rituals or prayers. For Guttur, say a
prayer to Christ, together with three Pater Nosters, and put a candle to St
Blaise on the neck of the patient. We are told that one man was cured just
this way by the Holy Roman Emperor’s doctor. On the other hand, some
for this manuscript). Two other copies of this text at least were owned by English
Franciscans.
56
For description of this text and further references, see Jones and Olsan, ‘Takamiya
MS 61’, pp. 87–107.
57
J. Edge, ‘e ‘Sphere of Life and Death’ in Late Medieval England’, Historical
Research 87 (2014), 611–32; L. E. Voigts, ‘e Latin Verse and Middle English
Prose Texts on the Sphere of Life and Death in Harley 3719’, e Chaucer Review
21(1986), 291–305.
58
Van der Lugt, ‘Aristotle’s Problems’, pp. 84–6, notes Bruyl’s work in this manu-
script, and remarks on the way in which he shows no interest in scholastic com-
mentary but rather in the practical usefulness of the contents. One manuscript
of Henry Daniel’s Herbal (BL, MS Additional 27329) cites the ‘Vacca Platonis’
or Liber vaccae, in the entry for Baltus. For the Liber vaccae, see M. van der Lugt,
‘“Abominable Mixtures”: e Liber vaccae in the Medieval West, or e Dangers
and Attractions of Natural Magic’, Traditio 64 (2009), 229–77.
59
Jones and Olsan, ‘Performative Rituals’, pp. 412–14. Bruyl adds another charm for
stopping blood-ow at MS Digby 153, fol. 185v.
142 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
rituals invoked are not Christian, like the prognostic for Epilencia (epilepsy)
drawn from the Lilium medicine of Bernard de Gordon. ere are entries
for countering Demon and Malecium (sorcery) in the Tabula medicine. ese
are defensive amulets that will forestall the malevolent incantations of those
who use magical means to prevent a man having intercourse with his wife.
ere is another amulet of this kind recommended under the heading Coitus
(sexual intercourse). In earlier Salernitan medical texts, these same amulets
are usually found in a chapter on impotence. ose hung round the neck used
stones like adamas, haematites, jasper, jet or sardonyx or some ‘magical’ herbs
like St John’s wort. e Franciscans of the Tabula medicine do not seem to
have been too bothered by the interventions of demonic beings, despite using
the heading Demon for an ailment associated with frenesis or frenzy.60 Nor is
there any sign that English Franciscans were troubled by the hostility to the
use of incantations and amulets, displayed in the sermons of Bernardino of
Siena and other observant Franciscans.
61
An extraordinary collection of magic texts can be identied to have belonged
to the library of the York Austin friars.62 A large part of this library (306 out
of 647 books) was donated by John Erghome (or Argam), a friar and later
regent master of the York convent in 1385. e same year, he was appointed
as magister antiquus and regent at the studium generale curie, at that time in
Naples. Nothing more is known of him after that. His donation (between c.
1372 and 1385) included ve volumes, containing approximately fty texts of
magic between them. None survive, but the catalogue of the library indicates
a signicant number of image magic texts (at least twenty-four), important
ritual magic texts such as the Ars notoria (three copies) and the Liber iuratus
(two copies) and a variety of treatises for engaging with spirits, including the
‘Red book also known as the Wisdom of Necromancy’ (Liber rubeus qui aliter
dicitur sapiencia nigromancie) and a work on the demon Floron. is goes far
beyond the limits of natural magic suggested by John Bruyl’s manuscript or
the Tabula medicine. Sophie Page suggests that the occult material may have
60
See Jones, ‘Mediating’, pp. 296–7. Contrast P. Carter, ‘Frenzy in Early Modern
England, 1485–1640’ (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2021), chap. 3.
61
L. T. Olsan, ‘e ree Good Brothers Charm: Some Historical Points’, Incantatio
1 (2011), 48–78; see works on Bernardino cited in M. D. Bailey, ‘Reformers on Sor-
cery and Superstition’, in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages
and Beyond, ed. J. D. Mixson and B. Roest (Leiden, 2015), pp. 230–54. For context,
see M. D. Bailey, ‘From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions of Magic in
the Later Middle Ages’, Speculum 76 (2001), 960–90.
62
Page, Magic, pp. 29–30; Friars’ Libraries, ed. Humphreys, pp. xxv–xxxii; F. Klaassen,
e Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and
Renaissance (University Park, 2013), pp. 65–77.