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The Legacy of Friars’ Medicine 233
Forman’s additions to the Tabula medicine fall into two categories. e rst
is the copying out of extensive extracts from the printed Breviary of Helthe
by Andrew Boorde, rst published in 1547, and organised alphabetically
like the Tabula medicine.42 is meant that Forman could supplement
the disease headings of Tabula medicine with other remedies copied from
Andrew Boorde and a few in addition from a later book by Philip Barrough.
Boorde was not a university doctor but an ex-Carthusian monk, with a
similar pragmatic and empirical perspective on healing to that of the friars.
His work would have been scorned by the London physicians if they had
identied it in Forman’s book. Barrough, author of e methode of phisicke
(1583), was a Cambridge MA but had no qualication in medicine and
was thus not regarded as an authority by the physicians despite (or perhaps
because of) the success of his book. e other category of additions to
the Tabula medicine text are remedies, case notes and astrological guidance
attributable to Simon Forman himself – for example, two long recipes for
‘the jaundes’ near where the John Cokkys plaster for jaundice is cited in
Tabula medicine.43 He drew a crude zodiac man on one interleaved page, and
his astrological notes nearby were in the tradition of the calendar medicine
of the friars. e added entries reect his personal experiences, some
recollected and some added at the time. He recorded letting blood from a
John Waller in 1579, some ve years after he acquired the manuscript. e
last dated entry in the manuscript is 13 May 1600.
If Cambridge, King’s College, MS 16 was Forman’s medical vade-mecum,
most of his writing reects a kind of astrological practice which was not so
evidently modelled on the work of the friars. Despite the evidence of occasional
writing of nativities (chiey by the Franciscan Michael Dawnay, see Chapter
4, pp. 156–7), there is little to suggest that the friars had ever attempted
systematically to make casebooks based on astrological judgements. For
Simon Forman and his disciple Richard Napier, the writing down of nativities
and decumbitures (gures erected by the astrologer at the time the patient
took to his sickbed) was the bedrock of their astrological medical practice.
With this life event data, they constructed an astrological chart for each client,
plotting the positions of the ve known planets and the sun and moon within
the twelve celestial houses. en the astrologers judged the inuences of the
celestial bodies on the lives of men and women. ese casebooks are now to
be found in sixty-six volumes of the Elias Ashmole collection of manuscripts
42
is use of Boorde was rst observed by Edmond, ‘Simon Forman’s’.
43
Jones, ‘Tabula medicine’, p. 73. irteen cases of jaundice were recorded as having
been treated by Richard Napier in his casebooks: Casebooks of Simon Forman, ed.
Kassell.
234 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
at the Bodleian Library in Oxford; Ashmole acquired them from the Napier
family. Richard Napier (1559–1634) was taught astrological physic by Forman
and went on to practise medicine, while an Anglican priest, for many years after
Forman’s death. Napier inherited Forman’s casebooks and created a long series
of imitative casebooks of his own. In turn, his nephew Sir Richard Napier
(1607–76) took over the materials from his uncle and wrote down cases of his
own. In total, some 80,000 cases were recorded. e deliberate recording of
cases as a source of guidance for future practice by both Forman and the two
Napiers reveals their commitment to judicial astrology, and thus to the date
and timing of individual life events.44 But 90% of their cases were medical,
and their patients came in hope of cures as well as diagnosis. Forman seems to
have kept a separate notebook, now lost, of treatments and payments; Napier
and his associates may have done the same. Although we have lost crucial
recorded evidence for the kinds of treatment Forman and Napier provided
to their patients, the casebooks still contain enough data about recipes and
procedures to show that their therapeutics were as eclectic as those included in
the Tabula medicine. e treatments annotated in the casebooks demonstrate
the use of herbal, animal and mineral recipes, compound medicines, purging
and bloodletting, and alchemica, as well as sigils, rings and blessings. We know
that among the sources for these remedies were other healers and patients
themselves, as well as medical handbooks like King’s College MS 16.
45
On the properties of things
In a previous chapter, we saw that the mendicant compilation De
proprietatibus rerum circulated widely as a source of medical advice and
information (Chapter 3). is thirteenth-century encyclopedia by the
Franciscan Bartholomaeus Anglicus continued to be immensely popular in
the fteenth and sixteenth centuries in England. Its fortunes illustrate how
what was originally valued as a mendicant aid to preachers and educators was
repurposed to provide practical information to householders and eectively
purged of its association with the medieval friars. Crucial to this repurposing
was translation into English. John Trevisa (c. 1342–1402) made his Middle
English translation of the text in 1398 (n.s.1399). 46 It stays very close to the
44
Casebooks of Simon Forman, ed. Kassell: https://casebooks.lib.cam.ac.uk/read-
ing-the-casebooks/what-are-the-casebooks/, accessed 19 April 2023.
45
Casebooks of Simon Forman, ed. Kassell: https://casebooks.lib.cam.ac.uk/read-
ing-the-casebooks/what-treatments-did-they-prescribe/, accessed 19 April 2023.
46
A. S. G. Edwards, ‘John Trevisa’, in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A. S.
G. Edwards (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 117–26; D. Fowler, e Life and Times of John
The Legacy of Friars’ Medicine 235
Latin De proprietatibus rerum, even preserving the Latin of Bartholomaeus
Anglicus in its book and chapter titles, its source citations and some technical
terminology. Trevisa’s privileging of Latin terminology suggests that his
target audience were relatively well-educated Latinate readers who read
De proprietatibus rerum for information, as well as for literary enjoyment,
or because they could only read English.47 Trevisa’s own immersion in
De proprietatibus rerum began long before the date of his translation into
English; he cites it frequently, for example, in his 1387 translation of Ranulph
Higden’s Polichronicon. Natural history, the human body and medicine are
some of the most frequently cited subjects in the Polichronicon translation.48
Trevisa’s translation of both works had been commissioned by his patron,
Sir omas Berkeley. Seven of the eight surviving manuscripts of Trevisa’s
translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus suggest wealthy patronage. e
circulation of this translation was at rst restricted largely to these noble or
gentry patrons.49 In fact, Latin manuscripts of De proprietatibus rerum may
have been more readily available to readers in fteenth-century England
than the Middle English translation.
50
One of the de luxe manuscripts of Trevisa’s translation, New York, Columbia
University, Butler Library, MS Plimpton 263 (London or Westminster, c.
1440–9), was the principal copy text for Wynkyn de Worde’s rst printed
edition (1495; STC 1536). e printing was commissioned by the London
cloth merchant Roger orney. With an elegant typeface and nineteen pages
of woodcut illustrations, it was the rst book printed in England on paper
made in England. It retained the Latin headings and citations of the Trevisa
manuscripts. e woodcuts are particularly vivid where they emphasise the
anatomy of the human body and picture medical or alchemical procedures
Trevisa, Medieval Scholar (Seattle, 1995).
47
M. W. Twomey, ‘Middle English Translations of Medieval Encyclopedias’, Litera-
ture Compass 3 (2006), 331–40 (p. 334).
48
E. Steiner, ‘Compendious Genres: Higden, Trevisa, and the Medieval Encyclope-
dia’, Exemplaria 27 (2015), 73–92.
49
On the Properties of ings: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De
proprietatibus rerum; A Critical Text, ed. M. C. Seymour et al., 3 vols. (Oxford,
1975–88); A. S. G. Edwards, ‘e Text of John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholo-
maeus Anglicus’ De proprietatibus rerum’, Text: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textu-
al Studies 15 (2002), 83–96.
50
Plenty of copies are cited in the booklists of monastic houses and Oxford and
Cambridge colleges for instance. See MLGB3, at http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/,
accessed 19 April 2023; S. E. Holbrook, ‘A Medieval Scientic Encyclopedia ‘Re-
newed By Goodly Printing’: Wynkyn De Worde’s English De Proprietatibus Re-
rum’, Early Science and Medicine 3 (1998), 119–55 (pp. 124–8).
236 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
(in the headings of books ve to seven, and nineteen).51 De Worde’s text,
corrected against a Latin exemplar, became the basis of omas Berthelet’s
London edition of 1535 (STC 1537), which in turn became the basis for
Stephen Batman or Bateman’s edition of 1582, the famous Batman uppon
Bartholome … (STC 1538).52 Berthelet published other medical reference
guides for the layman, including the Regimen sanitatis salerni (Regimen of
health of Salerno, 1528) and De morbo gallico (On the French disease, 1533),
and it is probable that his edition of On the properties of things was aimed at
the same market. He skirted religious diculties by leaving out the chapters
of Book 1 in the text of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, replacing them with a
passage called De trinitate condensed from the rst two chapters of the book.53
Furthermore Batman’s edition of 1582 added a glossary of archaic words
and inserted new material from sixteenth-century sources in alternate fonts
to make clear its departure from the original. ese included such authors
of natural philosophy and medicine as Conrad Gesner (called ‘Physition’),
Leonhardt Fuchs, Mattioli, eophrastus, Paracelsus and Dodoens. Batman
mentions Andrew Boorde and his Breviary of Helthe approvingly. He also
modernised the English language of the Berthelet text and expanded
biblical extracts while relating them carefully to context. Robert Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) cited the 1582 edition.54 It might be thought
unlikely that a work by a thirteenth-century Franciscan should ourish in
Protestant England, but John Leland the antiquary seems to have been
responsible for the mistaken belief that Bartholomaeus Anglicus was no less
than Bartholomew Glanville (or de Glanvilla), a fourteenth-century scion of
a noble Suolk family, who spent some of his youth as a friar.55 In this way,
the association of this valued text with a banned religious order could be
weakened to the point of irrelevance.
51
Holbrook, ‘Medieval Scientic’, pp. 139–55.
52
Batman’s version was used by Edmund Spenser, the poet, and probably by William
Shakespeare.
53
E. Keen, e Journey of a Book: Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of
ings (Canberra, 2007), pp. 128–30.
54
On the Batman edition, see Keen, Journey of a Book, pp. 133–60; Steiner, John Tre-
visa, pp. 210–27.
55
Keen, Journey of a Book, pp. 130–1.
The Legacy of Friars’ Medicine 237
Conclusion:
Friars’ Medicine in the Early Modern Medical Landscape
e ways in which friars’ medicine survived the dissolution of friaries and
dispersal of the friars had a lot to do, rstly, with the ways in which it
inltrated other medical discourses, and, secondly, with the disconnect by
which it was able to lose its association with discredited ‘popish’ friars in
Protestant England. Many elements of friars’ medicine had been taken up
by university physicians and others before 1537–9, assimilated into the
notebooks of practitioners like omas Fayreford and John Argentine.
e Tabula medicine itself was not readily identiable as the work of friars,
particularly once the remedies added in its blank spaces included those
of famous physicians like Gilbert Kymer, omas Duncan and William
Hatteclye. e Tabula medicine continued as a source of remedies for
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medical users who had no reason to
concern themselves with its original compilers, the friars. As an example,
Henry Dyneley or Dingley of co. Worcester compiled his own handbook
of medical practice in the rst decades of the seventeenth century (now
Wellc., MS 244), and included under the heading Sanativum the Sanativum
Punchardon recipe he copied from the Tabula medicine, including the detail
that a knight of that name paid 100 shillings for it. Dyneley did not
mention the name of William Holme OFM, the originator of the remedy,
or its source in the Tabula medicine.56 e same indierence to origins was
true of those who annotated the works of Henry Daniel in early modern
England. Daniel’s identity as a Dominican friar was of no interest to those
individual practitioners who were proud to put their names to annotations
of his Liber uricrisiarum.
Sixteenth-century publishers and printers could make it appear that
is is the myrrour or glasse of helth, a work compiled in part by a fteenthcentury Dominican, omas Multon or Moulton, was wholly the work of
a sixteenth-century author of the same name with no religious aliation.
In this way, the reading public could assume the work was hot o the press
from a contemporary author. e great English encyclopedia of the era,
and source of much of its common medical knowledge, On the Properties
of ings, could be re-edited and re-translated by Berthelet and Batman,
and attributed to a certain Bartholomew Glanville, with no reference to its
original Franciscan compiler. Print made possible a much wider distribution
of the medical knowledge originating with the friars than had ever been
56
See pp. 77–8 above for Holme and the Sanativum punchardon in the Tabula medi-
cine. Dyneley’s copy of the remedy is on p. 77 of Wellcome MS 244.
238 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
possible in the manuscript era, as multiple editions in hundreds of copies
each found a new readership.
e casebooks of Simon Forman at the end of the sixteenth century
exemplify the medicine of the friars thriving among practitioners who did
not have the approval of the College of Physicians. inking that the medical
vade-mecum he constructed around a copy of the Tabula medicine was based
originally on the work of a learned physician John Cokkys, Forman was bold
enough to tell the censors of the college that he was as well-grounded in
physic as they. Simon Forman’s voluminous casebooks combined the medicine
of the Tabula medicine with his astrological, alchemical and magical interests,
which certainly would never win approval from the academic physicians. In
fact, his occult interests were more akin to those the friars had developed
themselves, by following Roger Bacon’s programme for special sciences than
Forman would ever have realised.
Conclusion
his book has been about the interaction of religion and medicine, seen
T
from a particular and hitherto unfamiliar standpoint. Other studies
have focussed on Christus medicus, medicine and theology, clerical physicians,
hospitals and healing miracles, for example, but these important themes
have only been glanced at here. e agency of religious in healing, and their
contribution to medical literature in the medieval era, with which this book
deals, have not, by comparison, been the subject of much historical attention.
e focus of the various chapters of the book has been on the orders of friars
and medicine in England from their rst arrival to their dispersal in 1536–8,
with a nal look at the survival of friars’ medicine in the later sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. e agency of the English friars in healing and writing
medicine has been recovered from the evidence supplied by manuscripts they
compiled and owned, still surviving in scattered fashion in (mostly) English
libraries. One chapter of the book, however, has tried to see the friars’ activities
in this ‘secular’ sphere through the eyes of others, mostly unsympathetic, rather
than those of the friars themselves.
e result of this attempt at recovering the agency of the English friars
emphasises the extent to which their healing practice did not dier widely
from that of non-religious healers. e scope of the friars’ practice took in
all the areas of diagnosis, prognosis, regimen and therapeutics taught in
universities and practised for prot by secular healers. is is surprising insofar
as there were canonical prohibitions and regulations of the friars themselves
that would seem to have rendered certain areas of medicine out of bounds to
them. Yet there is plentiful evidence that friars did practise surgery, let blood,
take women patients and heal female disorders, and dabble in prognostic and
therapeutic methods which had been condemned by religious authorities. e
friars treated their own brethren, but also practised both charitable and forprot medicine, just like the seculars. ey took fees and might even be sued
in court for failing to deliver on their contracts with patients. To all intents and
purposes it would seem that friars as healers were practising as an integral part
of the medical economy of late medieval England – something missed out of
general studies of the period.
Friars were confessors and preachers before they were healers. e Fourth
Lateran Council of 1215 was clear that the role of the confessor at the bedside
or deathbed should take precedence over that of the medical practitioner.
240 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
Yet many friars were able to reconcile these competing demands in person,
evidenced most clearly by those who were employed in the households of
the royal family, magnates or bishops. ey could prescribe penance or give
medicines, as need arose. Salvation of the soul and healing of the body were
in any case not straightforwardly in opposition. Confessors needed to weigh
the temperament of their confessants in diagnosing their sins and prescribing
penance, and control of the passions was an important part of preserving the
body in health. Bodily and spiritual regimen might be included within the
same text, when it came to advice for princes, or even for ordinary lay readers.
But this overlapping of roles was not without peril. William Langland set the
friar as confessor and healer at the centre of his great poem, Piers Plowman,
and explored the dangers this dual role posed both to the spiritual and physical
health of the friar himself, and to the salvation and healing of the gathered
English church of believers.
Friars were also authors and compilers of medical texts. is dimension
too has been missed out in scholarship on late medieval English medicine.
From the work of encyclopedists like friar Bartholomaeus Anglicus, especially
inuential in England as a source of medical information and knowledge
about the natural world, to the authorial texts of Roger Bacon, Henry Daniel
and William Holme, friars carried great weight as medical authorities. ey
were pre-eminently purveyors of experimenta more than sources of learned
medical doctrina. ey collected and circulated prognostics, remedies, charms
and secrets. One text, the collectively authored Tabula medicine (1416–25),
stood at the apex of this kind of pragmatic and experimental medicine. ere
was a ready readership for such texts among all those interested in health,
that is to say, everybody. e friars pioneered new forms of medical writing in
England, diering from those most characteristic of universities. In this, they
took their lead from Roger Bacon, who despised scholastic medicine, and who
deliberately addressed in his polemical writings a dierent audience at the
papal court and amongst his own brethren. e genres of writing developed in
the context of preaching and teaching on religious matters could be adapted
for medical writing as an alternative to scholastic forms. Translations into
English from Latin enabled further reach into the lay community.
Friars did not depart, however, from the basic tenets of Galenic humoural
medicine and its idealisation of the balanced temperament. eirs was not
a Paracelsian assault on medical orthodoxy. Henry Daniel explored at more
length than any other medical writer the issues raised by attempts to diagnose
illness from the colours and contents of urine. In doing so, he called on
earlier authors in the Islamicate and Salernitan traditions, acting as a learned
commentator. However, he ventured beyond their tight focus on diagnostic
Conclusion 241
distinctions and took detours into other medical matters of interest to him,
as well as introducing experimenta culled from other texts and practical trials.
And he wrote in English, seeking out a new readership for his Herbal as well
as his Liber uricrisiarum. But there were also texts compiled by friars which
courted the kinds of ‘special science’ championed by Roger Bacon as a means
of broadening the scope of orthodox Galenic medicine. ey countenanced
alchemy, astrology and what Bacon called ‘experimental science’, even magic,
as instruments of healing. English readers were keen to absorb the medicinal
alchemy of the quintessence, as it was brought to them from southern France
and Spain in the later fourteenth century, and friars were at the forefront of
this movement. Prolonging human life beyond the limited span consequent
on the Fall of man was at the centre of a peculiarly English phenomenon, the
short pseudo-Baconian texts on this subject which enjoyed such a vogue in
the fteenth century. Taking all this into account, there is a compelling case
for exploring the medicine of the friars as both a domain of practice and of
textual production.
