Alban Thorer

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Alban Thorer (* around 1489 in Winterthur ; † February 23, 1550 ), also called Albanus Thorinus in Latin and Albano Torino in Italian , was a doctor, philologist, rector of the University of Basel , translator and editor of various ancient medical works. He translated the work of the contemporary Andreas Vesalius "De humani corporis fabrica" ​​(On the structure of the human body) into German.

Life

Albanus Thorer or, as he is called in his later years, Alban zum Tor or Thor, was born in Winterthur in 1489. He studied in Basel , where his name was for the first time in the large register among those enrolled in the summer semester of 1516 as "Albanus Thorer ex Winterthur Constanc. dyoc. ”appears. In 1520 he became a baccalaureus and in 1522 a master's degree in liberal arts. In 1524 he became a lecturer in Latin and rhetoric. In the summer of 1527 he was a student of Paracelsus .

In 1529 Thorer decided in favor of the Reformation and stayed with the lecturers Johannes Oekolampad , Bonifacius Amerbach and Oswald Bär at the University of Basel. The university was then probably stopped from 1529 to 1532 due to the events of the Reformation and a lack of funds.

Then he left Basel and continued the studies of medicine that had already begun in Montpellier in France . In 1529 he obtained his doctorate in this science. A fellow student was Nostradamus . In 1529 Thorer discovered an Apicius manuscript on the island of Maguelone near Montpellier , which he published in Basel in 1541. The bishop of Montpellier was from that year Guillaume Pellicier II, who was also interested in manuscripts. The bishopric was then moved from Maguelonne to Montpellier in 1535.

For a while he worked again in Basel as rector at the school near St. Peter until he took over the professorship for Latin and rhetoric there in 1532 when the university there was restored. When the university reopened in 1532, the rectorate was taken over by Oswald Bär . The two theology professorships were held by Myconius and Phrygio , the law professorship by Amerbach , the medical professorship by Bär, the three philosophy professorships by Sebastian Münster for Hebrew, Simon Grynaeus for Greek and Alban Thorer for Latin, the subject of mathematics by the theologian Wolfgang Wissenburg and the dialectics by the head of the college Sulzer occupied. For the time being, the speakers for the natural sciences and the moral sciences were still missing.

In 1532 he visited Erasmus von Rotterdam in Freiburg. In 1533 he traveled to Würzburg to see Prince-Bishop Konrad II von Thüngen with the hope of becoming a court doctor, which was not fulfilled. In 1535 he was the personal physician of Margrave Ernst von Baden-Durlach . Then he returned to Basel in 1536 because of an appointment from the council and entered the medical faculty as a professor. In 1540 he is listed as professor of physics, but it seems that he only held this position for a short time, perhaps only on a temporary basis. Two years later he managed the rectorate (1542/43). From February 1541 Conrad Gessner heard his lectures.

His academic activity came to an abrupt end when he rode in 1545 without leave for a medical consultation in Mömpelgard to see Duke Christoph von Württemberg . The Basel council deposed him, although he excused his sudden departure with the haste that was necessary. His request for re-employment was rejected. Thorer then lived only a short time. He died in Basel on February 23, 1550, not, as was subsequently noted by Pantaleon in the large matriculation for 1542 , in 1549, after he made his wife Anna Rößlerin his heir on December 19, 1549 by means of his will in the “production book” of his estate.

Services

The combination of philological and medical studies, as emerged in Thorer, was not at all rare in the 16th, as it was in the 17th century. Before they could deal with their actual faculty studies, theology, law or medicine, the students first had to listen to propaedeutic lectures on the Latin language and antiquity as members of the so-called artist faculty , because without knowledge of Latin they would have the lectures held in Latin, without exception theological, legal, and medical professors cannot follow at all. As a result of his humanistic erudition, Thorer was able to offer his professional colleagues the writings of Greek doctors in Latin translations and the works of Roman healers in appropriate editions.

The merit he has earned in this way is even exceeded by the fact that he obtained a German translation of the epoch-making work of the greatest anatomist of his time, the “Fabrica humani corporis” by Andreas Vesalius, which was published in print in 1551 in Nuremberg . There is no doubt that there were close personal relationships between him and the author of the Fabrica; What is known at least is that Vesalius, then 28 years old, was enrolled in Basel in 1542, just as Thorer was rector, and there supervised the printing of his work - the same was published by Oporin in Basel in 1543 . Thorer mentions only one treatise as an independent medical text: "How to abstain from the cruel, terrible pestilent ." Basel 1539.

Edward Brandt is critical of Thorer's work on the Apicius cookbook. Thorer had changed the work into a "humanist Latin" and therefore his edition had to be viewed as a curiosity in the history of philology.

Chr. Th. Schuch writes about this: “The physician [Alban Thorer] says in the preface that he found a half-torn and barely legible Codex of Apicius in a corner of the medical school in Montpellier, but only dared to make an edition after a friend sent him the Venediger from 1503 and the students gave him no peace, although both copies (...) are extremely faulty and no Christian child is able to get out of this labyrinth. (...) Either the publisher has often given us his own inventions or, what we want to believe in his credit, the manuscript cannot always be read and created variants out of ignorance. ”P. 213 f.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Koldewey:  Torinus, Albanus . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 38, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1894, pp. 453-455.
  2. ^ Josef Rosen: Financial history of Basel in the late Middle Ages, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1989, p. 217.
  3. ^ Josef Rosen: Financial history of Basel in the late Middle Ages, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1989, p. 153.
  4. ↑ Daniel Rötzer: "Salerno and Montpellier - The Medical Faculties of the South" IZMS - Medieval Lecture Series 2006/07 - Monasteries and Universities (PDF; 169 kB)
  5. ↑ For details on studying medicine in Montpellier, see: Robert Benazra: "L'étudiant en médecine Michel de Nostredame" (1521-1533) (Contribution biographique)
  6. ↑ The humanist and reformer Simon Grynaeus (1493-1541) ( Memento from September 7, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Peter G. Bietenholz, Thomas Brian Deutscher: Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, p. 331
  8. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Conrad Gesner - Article on the exhibition in the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, 1965, p. 4 )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.scribd.com
  9. ↑ Seven digitized prints by Alban Thorer of the Munich Digitization Center
  10. ↑ Greek spirit from Basler Pressen: eleven works by Alban Thorer with a summary of the forewords
  11. ↑ Thorer, Alban: How to beware of ... Pestilence may, Basel, 1539 [VD16 T 1105] Münchner Digitization Center
  12. ^ Edward Brandt: Investigations on the Roman cookbook. In: Philologus Suppl. No. XIX, 3, 1927, p. 1.
  13. ↑ Chr. Th. Schuch, EF Wüstemann: “Sample of a new text design and translation of Apicius Coelius de opsoniis et condimentis” in “Archive for Philology and Pedagogy” By Gottfried Seebode, JC Jahn, R. Klotz, R. Dietsch Published by BG Teubner, 1853, pp. 209-228
personal data
SURNAME Thorer, Alban
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Torinus, Albanus (Latin); Torino, Albano (Italian); Alban to the gate
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss humanist
DATE OF BIRTH around 1489
PLACE OF BIRTH Winterthur
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1550
Place of death Basel