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The Medical Culture of Friars 153
powers or faculties in the body, for instance, digestion. e last two canons
of the Nicholas of Lynn calendar explaining the application of astronomical
information to such medical procedures as bloodletting and prescribing
laxatives seem to have attracted especial attention. ere are four copies of
the Kalendarium in which only these canons were copied.96 e friars’ new
calendars also tended to attract additional texts on bloodletting or uroscopy
and even paper instruments like volvelles, which enabled simple astrological
calculation. In six manuscripts, the text of the Nicholas of Lynn calendar has
been translated into Middle English.
What may be a preliminary working copy of the Nicholas of Lynn
calendar, written soon after initial compilation in c. 1386, survives in a
manuscript (MS 522) at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the early fteenth
century, it was in the ownership of the Dominican house at etford. e
colophon which appears at the conclusion of the prose prologue and canons
is unique and refers to the calendar as novum calendarium compositum a
fratre Nicholao de Lennia (‘the new calendar compiled by brother Nicholas
of Lynn’). Manuscripts of the Kalendarium can be divided into two groups,
depending on whether they use approximate or more exact calculations for
shadow lengths for low solar altitudes; the Chapel Hill manuscript uniquely
has approximate gures for January to July but exact for August to December,
suggesting that both sets of gures may have originated with Nicholas
himself. is division of the calculations into two halves of the year hints at
a copy of a work still in transition from its ‘old’ to its ‘new’ state. e canon
governing the prescription of laxatives is given a title picked out in red, unlike
any of the others, suggesting it was considered of particular importance. e
remainder of Chapel Hill MS 522 consists of mathematical, astronomical
and calendar texts, including William Rede’s canons for tables calculated for
the meridian of Oxford. Most striking is the presence of various astronomical
notes and calculations associated with the name of Brother John Gnatsale,
who was probably one of the etford Dominicans.97 Some of the notes are
tacketed (sewn) into the manuscript and so attached to existing leaves. Many
of the astrological texts are corrected or glossed. is manuscript and its notes
96
Kalendarium, ed. Eisner, pp. 28–9.
97
Chapel Hill, MS 522, 143r in pencil foliation: Tabula equacionis.8. spere quam
composuit frater Johannes Gnatesale scribitur alibi in magno folio (Table of the
equation of the 8th sphere which brother John Gnatesale compiled, and it is written
elsewhere on a large leaf). On fol. 161r is a note in the same hand recording Arch-
bishop Arundel’s visitation of the diocese of Norwich in 1411, and on fol. 161v
references to calculations by Bacon and Grosseteste.
154 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
are the clearest evidence that its owners the Dominicans shared an interest in
these subjects with the Franciscans and Carmelites.
98
Many of these medical calendars are known to have been owned by
other mendicant houses, including the Austin friars of York and the
Franciscans of Coventry.99 John Somer’s calendar was adapted for York
use by the Augustinian friar Richard de orpe, c. 1385, accompanied in
one manuscript by illustrations of a zodiac man, a bloodletting man and
a diagram of the concentric astronomical spheres.
100
At the same York
convent, the chaplain and scribe John de Foxton compiled in 1408 his Liber
cosmographiae, also making use of Somer’s calendar as adapted by orpe.
101
Somer’s calendar was of great interest to later students of astrology. Laure
Miolo has analysed the notebook of the late fteenth century astrologer
and Doctor of Medicine Lewis of Caerleon, and it seems from several notes
made in this book that Lewis had access to an autograph copy of a calendar
with astronomical tables by John Somer.
102
One remarkable feature of these late medieval English medical calendars
was the production of a number in folded rather than codex form. ese
were made by stitching together at one end leaves of parchment which were
folded. Each leaf could be unfolded to reveal one part of the calendar. e
leaf was folded once vertically and twice horizontally. Typically, there might
be eight or ten such leaves in one gathered and stitched folded calendar. ey
would have been suitable for carrying in a pouch at the belt. e John Somer
and Nicholas of Lynn calendars provided the textual and illustrated content
for such folded calendars. A vein man exhibiting bloodletting points, and a
wheel of urine glasses, accentuated the medical character of the calendars.
More than forty of them have survived, almost all produced in England.
Portability and an impressive display of gilded lettering and diagrams seem
98
As discovered by M. P. Kuczynski, ‘A New Manuscript of Nicholas of Lynn’s ‘Kal-
endarium’: MS Chapel Hill 522, fols. 159r–202r’, Traditio 43 (1987), 299–319.
For contents of the manuscript, see the description at https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/
catalog/UNCb9547333, accessed 17 April 2023.
99
C. O’Boyle, ‘Astrology and Medicine in Later Medieval England: e Calendars of
John Somer and Nicholas of Lynn’, Sudhos Archiv 89 (2005), 1–22 (pp. 14–15).
100
J. B. Friedman, ‘Richard de orpe’s Astronomical Kalendar and the Luxury Book
Trade of York’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 7 (1985), 137–60.
101
Now TCC, MS R.15.21. See Friedman, ‘orpe’, p. 153.
102
‘de copia manus proprie Ffratris Sommer’ (CUL, MS Ee.3.61, fol. 152r). See L.
Miolo, ‘An Astronomer’s Personal Notebook: Lewis of Caerleon & CUL MS
Ee.3.61 (Part 1)’, https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=21223/, accessed
17 April 2023, with a bibliography of Lewis of Caerleon.
The Medical Culture of Friars 155
Fig. . Zodiac man from a folding calendar, based on the Kalendarium by John Somer
OFM, th cent. British Library, MS Harley , section F. On either side of the zodiacal
gure are medical warnings about cutting various parts of the body in each sign.
to have been the purpose of such calendars.
103
Nothing is known about the
commissioners or owners of such objects. Charles Talbot, the rst modern
historian to write about these calendars, described his exemplar in the
Wellcome Library as a ‘medieval physician’s vade mecum’, and this has been
repeated by others since, but there is no compelling reason to suppose that
university-trained physicians were the intended or usual owners. Admittedly
103
On folded calendars, see L. R. Mooney, ‘English Almanacks from Script to
Print’, in Texts and Contexts: Papers from the Early Book Society, ed. J. Scattergood
and J. Boey (Dublin, 1997), pp. 11–25 (p. 17); H. M. Carey, ‘What is the Folded
Almanac: e Form and Function of a Key Manuscript Source for Astro-medical
Practice in Later Medieval England’, Social History of Medicine 16 (2003), 481–
501; H. M. Carey, ‘Astrological Medicine and the Medieval English Folded
Almanac’, Social History of Medicine 17 (2004), 345–63; P. R. Robinson, ‘A ‘very
curious Almanack’: the Gift of Sir Robert Moray FRS, 1668’, Notes & Records of
the Royal Society 62 (2008), 301–14 (p. 309); J. P. Gumbert, Bat Books: A Catalogue
of Folded Manuscripts Containing Almanacs or Other Texts (Turnhout, 2016).
156 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
the text of the folded calendars was in Latin but university physicians did
not have a monopoly on Latin.
104
e simplied nature of these calendars,
with no emphasis on learning or originality, and sometimes mistakes in the
text or tables, rather argue in the opposite direction. e owners were quite
likely to have been itinerant, given the portable character of the calendar,
and might therefore have been friars.
105
Besides the new calendar, with its bias towards medical prognosis and
astrology, there is other evidence for the practice of astrology on the part of
106
friars.
Bronach Kane has suggested that Michael Dawnay (OFM), who had
begun his study of astrology in the Hartlepool convent in 1400, was casting
horoscopes by 1411, particularly nativities for the health and wellbeing of
his nephews and nieces. We only know by chance of his interest in astrology,
as he was a deponent in a complicated legal case in 1425 at York, when he
believed himself to be forty-nine years old, about the supposed abduction of
a nun from a convent at Wallingwells in Nottinghamshire. Dawnay recalled
the birth of Katherine Northefolke, his great-niece, in 1411 with reference
to his interest in astronomy and his precise record of her time of birth. He
testied that while at Hartlepool convent he ‘began to learn arithmetic,
domication [study of the houses of the planets] and other [subjects] which
are studied for the science of astronomy’. is enabled him to ‘calculate from
[their] births both the lives and fates of the children of his brothers and
his sisters presently to be born’. He entered these nativity horoscopes in a
quire (quaternus), and, accordingly, it was in this same manuscript that he
104
See for example the Latin writings of the craft-trained surgeon, John Arderne
(1307–c. 1380); Sharpe, Handlist, pp. 202–4.
105
C. H. Talbot, ‘A Mediaeval Physician’s Vade Mecum’, Journal of the History of
Medicine and Allied Sciences 16 (1961), 213–33; for friars as owners of astrological
manuscripts see B. Kane, ‘Return of the Native: Franciscan Education and Astrological Practice in the Medieval North of England’, in Franciscan Organisation
in the Mendicant Context: Formal and Informal Structures of the Friars’ Lives and
Ministry in the Middle Ages, ed. M. J. P. Robson and J. Röhrkasten (Berlin, 2010),
pp. 281–306 (pp. 296–7).
106
orndike, History, III, p. 213, says ‘Hardly any class or group of men in the later
middle ages were more given to astrology …than the friars’. orndike’s chapter
on ‘Petrarch and Some Friars’ draws attention to Robert Holcot (OP, d.1349) as
an astrological author (see Sharpe, Handlist, pp. 556–7, Quaestio de stellis). In 1380
Peter of Beccles OC had a scribe copy De judiciis stellarum (On judgements from
stars) for him in Oxford, now part of Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 151:
see M. B. Parkes, ‘e Provision of Books’, in HUO, II, ed. Catto and Evans, pp.
406–83 (p. 415).
The Medical Culture of Friars 157
entered the record of Katherine Northefolke’s birth.
107
It was probably the
sort of manuscript vade mecum he could carry in his pouch or scrip, rather
like the folding calendars. Dawnay left the Hartlepool Franciscan convent
to study at Cambridge in 1412, where he says he became a regent lector and
professor of theology. After his time at Cambridge, he moved back north
to the convents of Richmond and Doncaster. ere is evidence that at the
Doncaster convent, at least, there was one manuscript with astronomical
tables copied in this era.
108
At the time of the 1425 case in York, he still
carried his astrological quire with him.
Ralph Hoby of Hereford (OFM) wrote a treatise on astrological medicine
(dated 1 June 1437) devoted to questions which arise in the context of the
encounter between medical practitioner and patient. is is the Tractatus
phisice astronomice ad magnam securitatem exercitii artis medicine per solitudinem
[for solicitudinem] fratris Radulphi Hoby (treatise on astronomical physic for
making the practice of medicine safe, written through the care of brother
Ralph Hoby).
109
Astrology gives the medical practitioner a way to make his
practice more secure, because of the extra certainty supplied by this form of
prognosis. Hoby’s treatise is known to us through two surviving manuscripts,
both incomplete, and what survives was discovered and analysed in detail
by Linda E. Voigts.
110
e treatise begins with a brief prologue on the
importance of the celestial bodies to the human body, and a contents list
of sixteen questions to be resolved by astrological reckoning. Each chapter
cites authorities on the value of astrology to the question posed, and then
gives examples of astrological calculations to obtain the answer. e rst
two questions are: ‘what may be the cause of the illness and the nature of
the disease?’; the second, ‘whether or not the patient may be curable?’. e
remaining questions all address either problems of medical prognosis or how
the signs and planets aect the human body.
111
e treatise does not refer to
Hoby’s own experience in doing medical prognosis following this method
(any more than Henry Daniel’s Liber uricrisiarum reports on Daniel’s personal
107
Kane, ‘Return’, pp. 291, 294–5.
108
Kane, ‘Return’, p. 297. is is now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Savile 18.
109
Two manuscripts of this work have been identied by L. E. Voigts, BL, MS Harley
3542 and Wolfenbüttel, MS HAB Cod. Guelf. 51. 9. Aug. 4º.
110
L. E. Voigts, ‘Wolfenbüttel HAB Cod. Guelf. 51. 9. Aug. 4º and BL, MS Harley
3542: Complementary Witnesses to Ralph Hoby’s 1437 Treatise on Astronomical
Medicine’ Electronic British Library Journal (2008), article 10, at https://www.bl.uk/
eblj/2008articles/article10.html/, accessed 17 April 2023; Voigts, ‘Medical Astrology’, pp. 152–68.
111
Voigts, ‘Medical Astrology’, pp. 159–62.
158 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
use of uroscopy). It is worth noting, however, that Ralph Hoby cited William
the Englishman, who had claimed the superiority for prognostic purposes
of astrological reading of unseen urine samples over simple examination of
urine by the physician in his De urina non visa (On unseen urine).
112
Hoby
also cites Roger Bacon and Robert Grosseteste as authorities, as might be
expected of a Franciscan writer on astrology.
e English antiquarian and medical advisor to Sir John Fastolf, William
Botoner (better known as William Worcester), identied the Franciscans John
Somer and Ralph Hoby as his authorities on astrological matters. Bodl., MS
Laud Misc. 674, written in Worcester’s own hand, contains several writings
attributed to John Somer by Worcester, including Regule ad sciendum nati
vitam (Rules for nding out the lifespan of a newborn).
113
Worcester also
includes a colophon to Somer’s catalogue of xed stars, which ends
pro anno gratie 1440 secundum tabulas Alfonsi et erudicionem Radulphi
Hoby professoris theologie et discipulum librorum fratris Johannis Somour
ordinis minorum Videlicet utrique eorum (for the year 1440 according to
the Alfonsine tables and the learning of Ralph Hoby professor of theology
and student of the books of John Somer OFM).
114
Here Hoby is positioned as a successor to Somer. But there is no other guide
to prognosis by medical astrology written in England comparable to the
Tractatus physice astronomice of Ralph Hoby, as William Worcester would
have known.
112
is thirteenth-century work had a distinct English text tradition, but was also
cited by well-known European mendicant authors: see French, ‘Foretelling’, pp.
475–9; L. Moulinier-Brogi, Guillaume l’Anglais, le frondeur de l’uroscopie médiévale
(XIIIe siècle) (Geneva, 2011), p. 78.
113
Mooney, Somer, p. 219. In the margin of MS Laud Misc 674, fol. 24v, Worcester
has written ‘hoc receptum inveni scriptum de propria manu Johannis Somour de
ordine Minorum’ (I found this recipe written by Johannes Somer OFM in his
own hand). ere is also a horoscope gure attributed to Somer in Cambridge,
Corpus Christi College, MS 420, fol. 57 (transcribed at Mooney, Somer, pp. 223–
4). ere is a considerable literature on William Worcester. For orientation, see
K. B. McFarlane, ‘William Worcester: a Preliminary Survey’, in Studies Presented
to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J. C. Davies (London, 1957), pp. 196–221, and N.
Orme, ‘Worcester [Botoner], William (1415–1480x85), topographer and author’,
ODNB, 23 September 2004, accessed 14 April 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/
ref:odnb/29967.
114
Voigts, ‘Medical Astrology’, p. 165 reads disciplinam, following the Bodleian Quar-
to catalogue. But Mooney, Somer, pp. 211–13, reads discipulum, which ts the con-
text better.
The Medical Culture of Friars 159
Women’s medicine and procreation
ere are two related areas of medicine of particular interest to friars, which
might seem at rst sight to be at odds with their profession as religious. e
rst of these is women’s medicine. Vows of chastity were usually understood in
western monasticism (including the friars) to involve the deliberate shunning
of all contact with women other than that required for confession. is would
seem to preclude any involvement with women’s bodies for medical purposes.
But there is evidence that English friars were interested in women’s medicine,
especially insofar as it related to human generation, from conception to the
care of the newborn. is is particularly clear in the Tabula medicine text,
where the active mission of friars to women is attested. At the beginning of
one manuscript of the work, an owner has scribbled ‘for woman look at these
headings’ (pro muliere quere hec capita).
116
e headings in alphabetical order as
they occur in the text are Aborsus, Conceptio, Coitus, Fetus, Impregnare, Matrix
(Womb), Menstrua, Mulier (Woman), Partus (Birth), Pregnans, Puer (Child),
Secundina (Afterbirth), Sterilitas and Vulva. In fact, this user leaves out two
other headings that would have tted in here too, Lac (Milk) and Mamille
(Breasts). Clearly this user of the manuscript found the gynaecological material
in Tabula medicine to be very helpful. When we look at these entries in detail,
we nd two friars are singled out for their expertise in women’s medicine.
William Holme OFM is the clear leader – see Chapter 2 above. For example,
under the heading Matrix we nd
115
secundum fratrem W. Holm sedeat mulier in sella perforata & supponatur
olla terrea in qua sint carbones vivi & aspergatur stercus bovium vel ovium
in parva frustra divisum … (according to brother William Holme the
woman should sit on a perforated stool and live coals scattered with the
dung of cows or sheep should be employed as a fumigant).
117
Holme was also the compiler of a text on medicinal simples, De simplicibus
medicinis, which has a massive entry for Matrix dealing with complaints
of the womb, and there he lists 212 dierent simples to be employed in
treating them.
118
e other friar mentioned as having peculiar expertise in
women’s medicine is Georey Launde, the Dominican, who is the source
115
Angela Montford drew attention to Dominican chapter legislation: ‘Dangers and
disorders may frequently occur when brothers involve themselves with medical
matters’, in Montford, ‘Dangers’, p. 169.
116
University College, MS Lat. 11, fol. 2v.
117
Ibid, fol. 181v.
118
Jones, ‘William Holme’, p. 225.
160 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
for a remedy for menstrual problems. He is also cited for his experience
in treating ‘dominus John Trussell’ under the heading of Coitus. Sir John
Trussell, his patient, who suered, we are told, from an overow of blood
after too much coitus, was a prominent landowner in Northamptonshire and
MP for the county from 1404.
119
e second related area of interest is human procreation, and this too is very
prominent in the Tabula medicine. Headings for Conceptio, Coitus, Impregnare,
Libido, Pregnans, Puer and Sterilitas speak for themselves. e heading for
Mulier is devoted largely to testing for virginity, so important to ensuring
patrilineal succession. Delivering the woman successfully of her child is
central to Partus, Puer and Secundina. Prognostic tests for determining the sex
of ospring are included in several entries. ese concerns are characteristic of
the kind of ‘masculine gynaecology’ which Monica Green has taught us to see
as ourishing in the later Middle Ages across Europe.
120
e other major medical work by a friar is Henry Daniel’s Liber
uricrisiarum, written c. 1375–82, and this too devotes ample space to
detecting pregnancy through the examination of urine, and experimental
pregnancy tests.
121
Two such experimenta are used by Daniel in relation to
conception. He introduces them by saying: ‘Now for to knowen & weten
[nd out] when woman hath conceyuede & when noght, auctoures techen
meny expermentez…’.
122
Before discussing the two experiments, Daniel sets
out the signs of pregnancy as generally agreed among medical authors (he
cites Gilbertus Anglicus), and visible after physical examination. e rst of
his experimenta is taken from Hippocrates and involves giving the woman
mellicratum to drink and seeing if she feels pain.
123
e second experimentum
is to establish whose fault it is in a couple that the woman cannot conceive
and is taken from the Liber de sinthomatis mulierum (Book on the symptoms
of women) in the Trotula. e man and the woman piss in dierent pots
of bran; the pots are left for a week or two, and the party at fault will be
known by the presence of worms and a foul stink.
124
While Daniel is happy
to encourage the use of these experimenta for questions of fertility, he is
cautious elsewhere in the Liber uricrisiarum about the use of urine to identify
119
For Launde and Trussell, see Chap. 1, pp. 53–4.
120
Green, Making.
121
See Harvey, ‘Textual Layers’, pp. 101–5.
122
Daniel, Liber Uricrisiarum, 3.16.238–9.
123
Daniel, Liber Uricrisiarum, 3.16.286–98.
124
Misattributed by Daniel to ‘Maistre Bartholome’: Daniel, Liber Uricrisiarum,
3.16.362–7; 2.3.653–8. Cf Green, Trotula, p. 95. omas Fayreford has similar experiments in BL, MS Harley 2558, fol. 168v.
The Medical Culture of Friars 161
the father of a child, or to predict the sex or colour of a calf. He hits out
at those swindlers who pretend to be able to tell more from urine than is
authorised by true learning, the ‘vnwise leches – þat in þise dayes ar callede
dogg-leches os þise entremetoures [meddlers] & þise bolde braggers þat
stonde in chateryng & in clatering & noght in connyng, and þat onely for
mony wynnyng.’
125
is suspicion of quacks also emerges in the Latin verse
epilogue to the entire Liber uricrisiarum. After some lines devoted to the
usual topoi of apology for what is missing or wrong in the text and the hope
that more learned readers will correct mistakes, he launches suddenly into an
attack on those who claim to be able to tell whether a foetus is the ospring
of a priest or a soldier, or whether a calf will be black, red or spotted.
126
Even
more than in the case of the Tabula medicine, Daniel’s interest in the health
of women’s bodies is inected by concern for generation.
Conclusion: Baconian bias in friars’ medicine
e medical culture of English friars can best be understood by looking
at the manuscript texts and books they compiled, or that circulated in the
hands of individual friars and ended up in the libraries of their houses.
is evidence does not indicate a radical split between friars and university
physicians in medical culture, but a common acceptance of the same basic
framework of humours, complexion and cure by contraries inherited from
Greek, Roman and Islamicate authorities. However, this does not mean that
there were not strands of medical thinking which, though sometimes shared
with secular physicians, were given particular emphasis by the friars. As in
the case of the forms of medical writing studied in the last chapter, these
areas of emphasis owed much to the inspiration of Roger Bacon. His belief
that certain special sciences, if properly studied, would do much to restore
human life and health to its original and natural state (since corrupted and
weakened) directed English friars in their attitude to medicine. ree of these
sciences, alchemy, astrology and scientia experimentalis, gained traction with
the friars. Bacon himself might have been wary of some of the uses to which
these sciences were put, and to which his name was attached. His successors
were less inhibited than he when it came to promoting the eectiveness
of the alchemical quintessence; or in practising forms of judicial astrology;
or experimenting with natural magic, incantations and divination, all of
which were promoted for health reasons and had their adherents among the
English friars. is is not to claim that the medical culture of the friars was
125
Daniel, Liber Uricrisiarum, 2.12.59–62.
126
English translation in Daniel, Liber Uricrisiarum, App. 3, 299.
162 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
inherently transgressive. Medicines made by distillations, prognostic tests
and a more accurate understanding of the interplay of heavenly and human
bodies, for example, were readily accepted by Church authorities, imitated
by secular healers and welcomed by their patients. One other feature of
friars’ medicine (not inherited from Roger Bacon), its interest in women’s
medicine and human procreation, seems also to have been widely accepted
despite its apparent conict with vows of chastity. is was probably a matter
of the access to homes, and thus to women and their ailments, aorded to
friars more readily than to others.
127
127
For more on friars’ access to homes, see the case of Eryk de Vedica in Chapter 1
above, and Chapter 6 below.