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Friars Practising Medicine 53
Georey Launde is the second Dominican healer identied by name in
the Tabula medicine. Under the heading Stomacus, Launde is reported to have
tested one successful remedy many times in the city of London.47 A London
base for Launde is also suggested by his association with one patient, John
Prophete (c. 1350–1416), a highly successful clerical administrator who
nished his career as dean of York. Prophete was a notary public who served
William Courtenay when the latter was bishop of London and then archbishop
of Canterbury. Prophete was seconded by Courtenay to the household of
Richard II in 1386, and served there, ultimately becoming secretary to the
Council, until dismissed by Richard in 1395. He was recalled to the Council
in 1399, serving Henry IV, and became keeper of the Privy Seal from 1406 to
1415. He made his will in London in 1416.48 Four times the Tabula medicine
mentions Prophete as Launde’s patient.49 Launde possibly served Prophete as
confessor as well as healer, just as in the case of the duke of Aumale.
e other patient named in connection with Launde was John Trussell.
e Trussells of Billesley in Warwickshire were a prominent gentry family,
who probably kept a household in London. Sir Alfred Trussell and his wife
were treated by William Holme OFM (see Chapter 3), but John Trussell is
only mentioned as a patient of Georey Launde. is ‘lord John Trussell’ was
most likely Sir John Trussell (1349–1424), brother of the Sir Alfred treated by
William Holme, and reckoned as one of the ‘Lollard knights’ (although there
is no evidence for his having Lollard religious aliations). His own estates
acquired by marriage were in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. He was
see P. M. Jones, ‘William Holme, medicus, O.F.M. (. 1380–1415)’, in Testimony,
Narrative and Image: Studies in Medieval and Franciscan History, Hagiography and Art
in Memory of Rosalind B. Brooke, ed. M. F. Cusato and M. J. P. Robson (Leiden, 2022),
pp. 204–28; R. Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland
before 1540 (Turnhout, 1997), p. 777; and further in Chapter 2 of this book.
47
University College, MS Lat. 11, fol. 274v: multis vicibus probatum in cive londonie
per laud.
48
R. G. Davies, ‘Prophete, John (c. 1350–1416), dean of York and administrator’,
ODNB, 23 September 2004, accessed 14 April 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/
ref:odnb/37868. Prophete’s will is printed at Testamenta Eboracensia: A Selection of
Wills from the Registry of York, ed. J. Raine, 6 vols. (London, 1836–1902), III, pp.
53–5, with a note on his career.
49
His family connections may have brought Prophete to Launde. Alexander Bache
OP was a kinsman of John Prophete, and became a royal confessor and bishop of St
Asaph 1390–4; see Palmer, ‘e King’s Confessors’ (1891), pp. 24–6; Röhrkasten,
‘Dominicans’, pp. 61–2.
54 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
the victim of a well-recorded case of assault in a London church in 1417.50
Again there is the possibility that Launde may have been his confessor in
London, but he was certainly his medicus on at least one occasion.
Launde’s repute as a healer of distinguished patients must have been one
factor behind his appearance in the Tabula medicine. His association with the
Franciscan William Holme in connection with both the noble Aumale/York
and gentry Trussell family households seems to explain the knowledge of his
cases displayed in the Tabula medicine. e text of Tabula medicine also includes
an electuary for treating artetic gout (Gutta arthetica) that is credited to both
Holme and Launde.51 ey were collaborators rather than rival healers from
dierent orders of friars. e Tabula medicine emphasises Launde’s expertise as
a healer. He is cited under nine dierent headings.52 is is still not really a
sucient basis to judge the scope of his healing activities, in the absence of other
evidence. None of his cases had to do with the treatment of women, nor did
any of them involve surgery, but we cannot conclude that these were not things
he did. He does refer to bloodletting in the remedy for artetic gout he shared
with William Holme. is last complaint was a kind of arthritis aecting many
dierent joints, perhaps what we now call rheumatoid arthritis; it was dened as
dierent from gout restricted to hands or feet, and from sciatica. e electuary
recommended by the two friars was made with several gums and resins, pepper
and autumn crocus, all mixed with sugar, and then oered to the patient with
one spoonful of the powdered electuary to seven of ale. ey oered it seasonally
in spring, and in the middle of the months of September and November. e
day should not be cloudy and neither too warm nor too cold (die claro non
nebuloso et temperato). It should not be given at the new moon or the full moon,
so that bloodletting from the joints can take place without discomfort or trouble
(molestia).53 It was part of a regimen of seasonal bloodletting and avoided days
when the moon might be particularly powerful in its eect on the ow of blood
from the joints. Seasonal bloodletting of this kind had a particularly prominent
role in the customaries of regular orders like the friars.
54
50
K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), pp. 152–9;
C. Kightly, ‘Lollard knights (act. c. 1380–c. 1414)’, ODNB, 23 September 2004,
accessed 14 April 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50540.
51
University College, MS Lat. 11, fol. 120v.
52
Ibid., Appetitus, Caput, Coitus, Epar, Gutta arthetica, Laxativum, Pectus, Sitis and
Stomacus.
53
Ibid., fol. 120v.
54
M. K. K. Yearl, ‘Bloodletting as Recreation in the Monasteries of Medieval Eu-
rope’, in Between Text and Patient: e Medical Enterprise in Medieval & Early Mod-
ern Europe, ed. F. E. Glaze and B. K. Nance (Florence, 2011), pp. 217–43.
Friars Practising Medicine 55
It seems that John Prophete suered from a failing appetite. e source of
appetite was supposed to lie in the stomach, the seat of the appetitive faculty in
humoural medicine. In hunger, there was ‘an appetite for the warm and the dry’;
in thirst, an ‘appetite for the cold and the moist’.55 A failure of appetite was a bad
sign, as the body would not be able to consume foods with the qualities it needed.
Georey Launde recommended two remedies to stimulate Prophete’s appetite.
A third stomach remedy, again for John Prophete, was in ointment form: oil of
mastic (resin from the mastic tree), nard-oil (from a plant of the valerian family)
and oil of wormwood were combined with spikenard, betony and sage, and
given the right consistency by propolis, bee-glue. Launde intended this to help
digestion, we must suppose, although though no clear indication is given in the
text.56 So three out of the nine remedies credited to Georey Launde are for John
Prophete’s stomach ailments. Launde’s remedy ‘against vomiting from the stomach, and coldness of the stomach and other ailments’ (contra vomitum stomachi &
frigiditatis eius & alias passiones) was apparently tried out many times in the city
of London. Georey Launde must have been in high repute in London for his
various means of applying spices and herbal remedies to the stomach.57 Another
of Launde’s experiments was ‘a ne laxative’ (pulchrum laxativum), whose chief
active ingredients were the seed pods of cassia and rhubarb.
58
Launde was not just an expert on digestion. Launde treated Sir John
Trussell not for stomach problems but for the eects of over-indulgence in
sexual activity – something more characteristic of gentry patients than clerical
administrators like John Prophete. is experiment begins: ‘if anyone should
suer depletion [pissing?] of blood because of too much sex, as a result of
the breaking of some vein in the kidneys or bladder’ (Si aliquis paciatur
minutionem [micturam?] sanguinis propter nimium coitum ex ruptura alicuis
vene in renibus vel vesica). Almost all the experiments under the heading Coitus
in the Tabula medicine work to stimulate the libido or suppress it. Control
of sexual activity was usually conceived of as a part of a regimen, as one of
the six non-naturals, and subject to moral as well as physical constraint (see
Chapter 6). Launde’s remedy is exceptional in being a treatment for a physical
consequence of sexual indulgence and was not a matter for regimen. Venereal
ailments are generally treated separately under Gonorria or Virga virilis in
the Tabula medicine, not under Coitus like Launde’s remedy for Trussell. at
remedy by Launde is also exceptional because it involves some extremely
expensive ingredients: ivory shavings, pearls, coral and emerald. Mix these
55
Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, pp. 242–3.
56
University College, MS Lat. 11, fol. 253v.
57
Ibid., fol. 274v.
58
Ibid., fol. 154r.
56 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
shavings of precious objects with the juice of roses and butchers’ broom and
make into a powder, Launde advises. Take a spoonful in the morning and in
the evening; at meal-times dissolve the same amount in a soup or stew.59 is
treatment must have worked in dealing with Trussell’s broken vein, though
the mode of operation of Launde’s medicine is far from clear. Presumably, the
action of precious substances did not depend on adjusting humoural balance
via the qualities of the ingredients but worked through their specic virtues.
60
e nal experiment of Georey Launde was once again for the cleric John
Prophete of London. is was a hat (cappa) to counter cold in his head. Remedies
for a cold or catarrh were usually taken orally, or made into a poultice, or involved
steaming the head over a bowl of herbal infusions. e hat Launde designed
for Prophete was made of a thin and soft leather with a ne cloth cover, and
the cost was signicant at 5s 10d. It is unusual for a price to be placed on any of
the experimenta in the Tabula medicine, and always as a remedy for the wealthy
or noble rather than for the poor. Apart from the construction of the hat itself,
Launde’s experiment took the form of an elaborate recipe, prescribing an extensive
list of herbs, spices, resins and oils on a wax base. He used these materials to
make a form of poultice which was held in place by the hat. e ingredients were
smeared as a paste directly on to the inside of the hat. e nearest equivalent to
Launde’s remedy was the sacellacio (a poultice in the form of a linen cloth bag)
prescribed by Johannes Platearius for treating catarrh.61 e ingredients of the
Platearius poultice were far less elaborate than Launde’s de luxe version. Hats
were also sometimes prescribed surgically to hold linen dressings in place on a
wounded head, but no special materials or construction were needed.
62
Georey Launde’s hat enables us to make a surprising connection between
our two Dominican confessor-healers. In the commonplace book on medicine
written by the West Country medical practitioner omas Fayreford in the
second quarter of the fteenth century, we nd a remedy he calls a favourite,
one that has proved successful many times:
A special remedy often tested. Take a hat called poshot and put it warm on
the head and do this frequently. Brother John of St Giles cured the Earl of
Gloucester this way, when he was suering from severe headache.
59
Ibid., fol. 35v.
60
Cf balsam and quintessence in Jones, ‘e Survival’, pp. 232–49.
61
For Launde’s cappa for John Prophete, see University College, MS Lat.11, fol. 24r;
cf. Plateario, ed. Muñoz, pp. 240–2.
62
Norri, Dictionary, s.v. Cap, Voluper.
63
omas Fayreford’s medical commonplace book c. 1425–50, BL, MS Harley 2558,
fol. 74v, Dolor capitis: Speciale probatum multociens / Accipiatur capellum quod
dicitur poshot & ponitur calide super capud & frequenter apponatur sic curav-
it frater j de sancto egidio comitem gloucesterem de vehementi dolore capitis.
63
Friars Practising Medicine 57
e little hat is called poshot, which must be a version of pose-hat. A pose is
a head cold in Middle English.64 It is an extraordinary coincidence that the
two Dominicans, practising 150 years apart, should both have been associated
with such an unusual remedy. Could Georey Launde have found John of St
Giles’s poshot in a medical source known to Dominicans, but also somehow
accessible to omas Fayreford? If so, Launde adapted the poshot remedy to
treat his own patient, John Prophete.
Both John of St Giles and Georey Launde were evidently exceptional
in acting as healers and confessors in noble households. Few other English
Dominicans, if any, can have emulated them in acquiring medical training
(although some royal confessors, and no doubt other private confessors,
were called on to serve in attendance on the sick or the pregnant, as we have
seen).65 A handful of other friar practitioners in the Order have so far been
identied in various sources. Two, Henry Sutton and John Castell, are named
in the Tabula medicine, alongside Georey Launde. In a fteenth-century
Cambridge manuscript, one master Robert Moyne is credited with a ‘green
water’ for eyes – this might be Robert Le Moigne OP (.1311–45) as identied
in University of Oxford records.66 William Deyncourt OP is mentioned by
omas Fayreford in his commonplace book.67 In the mid-fteenth century,
the compiler omas Multon OP seems also to have practised medicine (see
further Chapter 7).68 On the other hand, the best-known Dominican writer
on medicine Henry Daniel (. 1379), author of the Liber uricrisiarum and
of a Herbal, does not seem to have practised medicine.69 Other anonymous
Dominicans were credited with remedies in Peterhouse MS 222 and in the
Tabula medicine. Unfortunately, Emden’s Survey of Dominicans in England does
not contain helpful data.70 Because of the scarcity of administrative records for
e manuscript is digitised at https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx-
?ref=Harley_MS_2558/, accessed 20 April 2023.
64
Norri, Dictionary, s.v. Pose.
65
See p. 46 above.
66
CUL, MS Dd.11.45, fol. 133r; BRUO, II, p. 1130.
67
BL, MS Harley 2558, fol. 77v.
68
F. M. Getz, ‘Charity, Translation, and the Language of Medical Learning in Me-
dieval England’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64 (1990), 1–17 (pp. 10–12); G.
R. Keiser, ‘Two Medieval Plague Treatises and eir Afterlife in Early Modern
England’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 58 (2003), 292–324.
69
J. Harvey, ‘Daniel, Henry (. 1379), Dominican friar and horticulturist’, ODNB, 23
September 2004, accessed 14 April 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/7116;
Henry Daniel, Liber Uricrisiarum: A Reading Edition, ed. E. R. Harvey and M. T.
Tavormina, with S. Star, J. Henderson and C. E. M. Henderson (Toronto, 2020).
70
Companion, ed. Giraud and Linde, does not contain any reference to Dominicans
practising or writing about medicine.
58 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
the friars caused by the dissolution and the Reformation, sources for the lives
and activities of the English Dominicans are very scanty in any case. Records
for the books they owned have fared little better.71 Yet the survival of the
Tabula medicine does point to the existence of a textual community of friars in
which such a compilation could be produced as a collective project, and then
circulated in mendicant houses.72 is suggests a demand for experimenta and
remedies which could be of use to those practising as healers within the orders
of friars. In the Tabula medicine, those experimenta attributed to John of St
Giles and Georey Launde gained in prestige because of their reputation as
healers and confessors, and the high status of their patients.
A Franciscan remedy book
Some medical practitioners in late medieval England compiled and wrote
their own handbooks of practice. Whether written in Latin or in English,
these bring us as close as we are likely to get to the practice of medicine by
individuals. e practitioners who did this range from royal physicians like
John Bray and John Argentein, to local learned healers like omas Fayreford
and Richard Trewythian, and to those who were more comfortable working
in English than Latin, like John Crophill and Nicholas Neesbett.73 Some, like
Fayreford and Argentein, were clearly inuenced by the Tabula medicine, and
copied its open-ended method of accruing remedies as well as citing remedies
71
But J. Stadolnik, ‘Guitar Lessons at Blackfriars: Vernacular Medicine and Preach-
er’s Style in Henry Daniel’s Liber Uricrisiarum’, in Literary eory and Criticism in
the Later Middle Ages: Interpretation, Invention, Imagination, ed. A. Buttereld, I.
Johnson, and A. Kraebel (Cambridge, 2023), pp. 116–36 (p. 123), draws attention
to the donations of medical books to the London Blackfriars by friars Nicholas of
Worcester and John Dille (1421), now BL, Royal MS 12. G. VI (Nicholas), Bodl.,
MS Laud Misc. 728, and TCC, MS O. 2 .50 ( John). See also Zutshi and Ombres,
‘Dominicans’, p. 319; M. J. P. Robson, ‘e Growth of the Libraries of the Greyfriars in England (1224–1539)’, Il Santo 43 (2003), 493–521; repr. in M. J. P. Robson,
e Greyfriars of England (1224–1539): Collected Papers (Padua, 2012), pp. 355–80;
e Friars’ Libraries, ed. K. W. Humphreys (London, 1990); K. W. Humphreys, e
Book Provisions of the Mediaeval Friars, 1215–1400 (Amsterdam, 1964).
72
P. M. Jones, ‘Mediating Collective Experience: e Tabula Medicine (1416–1425)
as a Handbook for Medical Practice’, in Between Text and Patient: e Medical En-
terprise in Medieval & Early Modern Europe, ed. F. E. Glaze and B. K. Nance (Florence, 2011), pp. 279–307.
73
See Jones, ‘Witnesses’, for Crophill, Fayreford and Trewythian; Talbot and Ham-
mond, Medical Practitioners, p. 125 ( John Bray); S. Page, ‘Richard Trewythian and
the Uses of Astrology in Late Medieval England’, Journal of the Warburg and Cour-
tauld Institutes 64 (2001), 193–228; Reynolds, ‘Nicholas Neesbett’.
Friars Practising Medicine 59
from that text.74 For all these practitioner handbooks, we are lucky enough to
be able to attach names to them, and so to know something about who the
compilers were, when they practised, and even the names of some of their
patients. But what of those manuscripts which do not have names attached,
but which seem to be close to medical practice?
One such is Wellcome Library MS 550, a manuscript datable to the second
75
quarter of the fteenth century.
e language of the manuscript is Latin, with
a very few passages cited in Middle English and Anglo-Norman, and occasional
glossing of Latin terms with Middle English equivalents. e Wellcome
Library catalogue identies the anonymous parts of the manuscript as having
been written by an English physician, possibly of London. ere are also texts
in the manuscript attributed to various authors ( John of Burgundy,76 John of
Toledo,77 Henri de Mondeville78 and the so-called Trotula79) presumed to have
been copied out by this London practitioner. e compiler mentions several
cases treated in London (on fols. 47v, 53v, 83v, and 192v), though the text at
these places does not say that the London cases were treated by the compiler
himself. Instead, it mentions ‘an unknown someone’ who eected the cures. In
one case of a stulated sore on the leg (fol. 83v), the case resembles closely one
described by the surgeon John Arderne, c. 1370. It becomes apparent, looking
at the manuscript more closely, that it is better understood as a remedy book
interpolated by material copied from various authors, named and unnamed.
ese interpolations cover topics like plague, regimen, surgery and women’s
74
See further Chap. 7 below, ‘Physicians and the Tabula medicine’.
75
S. A. J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the
Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 3 vols (London, 1962–73), I, pp. 417–19. e
manuscript is digitised at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/htndqk24/items/,
accessed 20 April 2023. A longer discussion of its contents and ownership is provided in P. M. Jones, ‘Latin Recipes in Medical Practitioner Handbooks’, in Recipes
and Book Culture in England 1350–1600, ed. C. Grin and H. Ryley (Liverpool,
forthcoming).
76
John of Burgundy’s plague tract in Wellcome MS 550 is compared with other cop-
ies in L. Jones, ‘Itineraries and Transformations: John of Burgundy’s Plague Treatise’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 95 (2021), 277–314. On pp. 290–1 she points
to shared features between a late fourteenth-century manuscript from a Franciscan
house in Fribourg, Couvent des Cordeliers MS 63, and two fteenth-century English manuscripts, Wellcome, MS 550 and Bodl., MS e Mus 146.
77
John of Toledo, Dietarium. See Regimen sanitatis ad regem Aragonum, Arnaldi de
Villanova Opera Omnia X.1, ed. P. Gil-Sotres (Barcelona, 1996), pp. 517–20.
78
Henri de Mondeville, Chirurgia, Liber 5, Antidotarium.
79
e Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. and transl. M. H.
Green (Philadelphia, 2001). See there the text De curis mulierum.
60 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
ailments. e authorial texts are abbreviated from the originals, but also with
extra material inserted within. We conclude that the compiler of Wellc., MS 550
was happy to copy parts of works by medical authors where they seemed to t in
with his overall remedy book project, but equally happy to insert remedies from
other sources into his abbreviated transcript of these author texts.
e compiler shows a fondness for illustrative stories as well as remedies,
diagnostic signs, prognostics and charms. At the end of a section on lepra (fol.
94v) there is a story about a countess of Flanders who cures her husband the
count from leprosy with the aid of the herb ebulus. e story is introduced by
the phrase ‘Patet per exemplum’, that is to say, ‘revealed in an exemplum’. e
exemplum is the kind of story told in a sermon. is one resembles but is not
identical with one told in the popular Franciscan preachers’ handbook, the
Fasciculus morum.80 What other clues are there to the discourse community
within which this remedy book ourished? At the end of the manuscript
in a later (but probably still fteenth-century) hand is an index, completed
on seven unnumbered leaves. At the end of the index is an inscription
in the hand of the indexer, ‘Ff[rater] W. Ffrothyngham hanc contrafecit
transcriptionem’ (Brother W. Frothyngham or Fotheryngham completed
this copy).81 At the beginning of his index, Brother William has put the
sacred monogram ‘IHS’ and ‘Maria’ at the top of the page on left and right
respectively. is kind of inscription is often found in Franciscan copies
of religious or secular texts. It is highly likely then that the remedy book
was indexed in a Franciscan house by Brother William Frothyngham.82 His
index is alphabetical by the rst letter only, and covers the names of illnesses
and remedies, with some grouping under parts of the body. It includes
topics occurring in the author texts within the remedy book, as well as in
the general remedy book sections, and makes no distinction between them.
All entries are keyed to the original compiler foliation.
e Franciscan connection may go back not just to an owner but to the
compiler himself. ere are two references in the text of the remedy book
to Franciscans. One is in the context of a plaster for squinantia (quinsy,
80
Fasciculus morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. S. Wenzel (Univer-
sity Park, 1989), pp. 463–5.
81
See M. H. Green, ‘A Handlist of the Latin and Vernacular Manuscripts of the So-
Called Trotula Texts. Part I: e Latin Manuscripts’, Scriptorium 50 (1996), 137–75
(p. 154). Green reads Brothyngham.
82
Dr Michael Robson kindly informs me that a Franciscan William Fronyngham
was ordained subdeacon on 30 March 1426 at Canterbury Cathedral. Canterbury
and London are friaries in the same custody.
Friars Practising Medicine 61
inammation or swelling of the throat) made of cumin and olive leaves, which
is usually applied to the throat:
positum super mamillam fratris minoris qui ibi habeat ventositatem ibi
dolorem facientem propter immobilitatem et stricturam loci unde feci ei
predictum emplastrum et deo dante convaluit etc (I made the aforesaid
plaster for a Franciscan and put it on his breast. He had a windiness there
causing him pain because of the immobility and tightness of the place. God
granted that he recovered)
is story, using the rst person singular feci, is found under the heading
Squinantia in the Tabula medicine, and evidently this was the source for the
reference in Wellc., MS 550.83 It is not clear from the Tabula medicine who the
practitioner administering the plaster was. e other reference to a Franciscan
in Wellc., MS 550 is to the minister provincial of the order in England:
Alium potus egregius teste ministro fratrum minorum at cicera de pomis
bonis (the minister provincial of the Franciscans swears by another excellent
drink of cider).
84
is is one of a series of mostly alcoholic drinks listed in the manuscript as being
good for purges and other health benets. Some of them are recommended
by great men like the minister provincial and Henry de Kendale, Royal
Justiciar (fol. 105r), and most of them have expensive ingredients that make
them suitable for the well-o rather than the poor. One minister provincial
of the Franciscans is mentioned by name in the Tabula medicine as a victim
of colic, Nicholas Fakenham, whose term in oce was from 1395 to 1402.85
Perhaps he is also the promoter of the virtues of the cider mentioned in the
remedy book.
is all tends to strengthen the view that the Wellcome MS 550 remedy
book circulated among (and perhaps originated in) Franciscan circles. It may
be that the compiler of Wellcome MS 550 was a friar with an interest in
medicine, possibly a practitioner himself or at least someone with the health
83
In the Tabula medicine in University College, MS Lat. 11, fol. 268v there is a refer-
ence back to the commentary of Girardus Bituricensis (Gerard of Berry) on the Vi-
aticum of Constantine the African. But this commentary dates from around 1200
before the Franciscan order was founded (and does not contain this remedy). For
the Tabula medicine, see P. M. Jones, ‘e Tabula medicine: An Evolving Encyclo-
pedia’ English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, vol. 14, Regional Manuscripts 1200–
1700, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (2008), pp. 60–85; Jones, ‘Mediating’, pp. 279–307.
84
Wellc., MS 550, fol. 106r.
85
University College, MS Lat. 11, fol. 38r.
62 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
needs of his house in mind. ere are likely to be other Latin remedy books
similarly associated with friars, which have since been lost or are awaiting
identication in manuscript collections.
e case of Eryk de Vedica
As late as c. 1477, we are granted insight into a Franciscan friar from the
London Greyfriars treating an elderly woman patient.86 is is because the
friar and the guardian of his convent, James Walle, were forced to go to law
to counter a suit for trespass to recover the fees paid to friar Eryk de Vedica
for his medical services, brought by the woman’s husband, a London vintner
called William Stede. It seems from his name that Eryk de Vedica was not
born in England, but a friar who had come to the London convent from the
continent. He had probably acquired his medical expertise abroad rather than
in England. He is described in the Petition in Chancery of the friars as
Eryk de Vedica, rere Menour, and obediencer of the same James, whiche
Eryk hath suciaunt and lawfull auctorite to occupie and exercise the
Crafte of Phisik
As an obediencer or obedientiary of the London Greyfriars, Eryk de Vedica
must have held an oce under James Walle. We cannot be sure what that
oce was, although it is possible that Eryk was inrmarer of the convent.
It was not the oce itself, however, that gave him the authority to exercise
the craft of physic. A parliamentary petition of 1421 had suggested that the
English universities should be the sole sites of legitimate medical knowledge,
and a university degree in medicine was to become the licence for practising
physic in England. A second more successful petition of 1423 to the mayor
and aldermen led to the transfer of licensing power to a ‘Comminalte’, or guild
of physicians and surgeons of London. Anyone intending to practise physic
in London was to be examined rst by the rector and surveyors of physic and
to pay a fee of 100s. In the only case determined by the ‘Comminalte’, the
matter at issue was surgical, although physicians were prominently involved
in the case, and the eventual decision was handed down, interestingly, in the
chapter house of the Greyfriars in 1424. But the ‘Comminalte’ disappears from
sight after 1424, once the mayor had removed the Guild of Barbers from the
jurisdiction of the ‘Comminalte’, and thus fatally damaged its authority. e
distinction made in the petition of 1423 between physic and surgery seems
87
86
Additional Material for the History of the Grey Friars, London, ed. C. L. Kingsford
(Manchester, 1922), pp. 71–3, 147–9.
87
Ibid., p. 147.