Gentile da Foligno

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Title page to Gentile da Foligno's commentary on the Canon des Avicenna, Venice 1520

Gentile da Foligno ( Latin Gentilis Fulgineus, G. Fulginas, G. de Fulgineo, G. de Gentilibus; nickname: Speculator; * 1280/1290 in Foligno ? † June 18 or 28, 1348 in Foligno) was an Italian doctor and natural philosopher . Alongside Taddeo Alderotti, he was one of the most famous doctors in Italy during his lifetime and, as a commentator on the Canon of Avicenna , which was fundamental for late medieval medicine, also influenced the centuries that followed.

Life

origin

Family ties, after Lugano (1908)

The most important contemporary sources for the knowledge of Gentile's family origin are two notarial deeds from the year of his death in 1348: a codicil of June 14, 1348 from San Giovanni Profiamma near Foligno, in which Gentile supplemented one during his plague a few weeks before his death earlier, not preserved will of 14 September 1341 decreed the foundation of a chapel, and to which in a copy of the 17th century (by Lodovico Iacobilli, 1598–1669) brief contents from four other documents are added; also a deed of foundation dated August 2, 1348 from Foligno, in which Gentile's son Francesco, a few weeks after the death of his father, as his heir and executor in the presence of three other relatives, carried out the foundation of the chapel as prescribed in the codicil.

In the Codicill Gentiles this is referred to as " egregius medicinae doctor mag (ister) Gentilis q (uo) n (dam) mag (istri) Gentilis de Fulgineo ", with a similar patronymic used in other documents , from which it follows that Gentile's father was also called Gentile (here therefore differentiated as I. and II. According to the succession of generations), also held the title of Magister, which, if it was not a mere honorary title but an academic degree , was a graduate of an artist faculty , but could also designate a master's degree in theology, jurisprudence or medicine. The father is also marked as deceased by the addition quondam , as in a similar form in two documents dated February 6 and 18, 1342, and the addition de Fulgineo indicates that the son and probably also the father or their family of origin came from Foligno or was resident there, even if this does not necessarily mean something about the place of birth.

In the closing formulas of Francesco's deed of foundation, three 'closest blood relatives' of Francesco are also listed who attended the deed and gave their consent, namely the widow Gentiles (II.) And Francesco's mother with the name Jacoba (" domna Iacoba matre ipsius et uxore olim supradicti magistri Gentilis "), also a Gentile di Giovanni di Maestro Gentile ( Gentilis domni Iohannis magistri Gentilis ) and finally a Pietro di Manillo Bonfigli ( Petrus Mannilli Bonfilgli ). A brief summary report by Rossi (1876) from archives in Perugia, the original of which has not been found or used by researchers since then, and which apparently also included a will from Francesco, is known about Gentile's (II) widow Jacoba that she was the daughter of a Giovanni Bonimani (Iacopa di Giovanni Bonimani), had four sons with her husband named Iacopo, Ugolino, Francesco and Roberto, and was still alive in 1373 as the beneficiary of a legacy of her son Francesco. Iacobilli, who at his time still had important archival material in Foligno, indicated in his unpublished Cronache della città di Foligno as the patronymic of Gentiles' wife " di Boncambio Benintesi " and there also the judge and doctor Niccolao di Mattioli di Gerardone, the as trustee Gentiles was involved in his last wills and in the foundation act of Francesco, referred to as Gentiles' son-in-law, so that Gentiles may also have a daughter. About the sons of Gentile, Rossi reports that father had considered these four in his will and that they had already died in 1373, Iacopo, Ugolino and Roberto without leaving any children, but Francesco, apparently the last of the four to die in 1373, leaving one behind Wife. Iacobilli, on the other hand, stated in the appendix to his copy of Gentile's Codicill from other archives in Foligno that in Gentile's testament of September 14, 1341 the sons " Jacobus et Franciscus " had been given special consideration - Ugolino and Roberto are not and are not mentioned by Iacobilli also otherwise not proven except by Rossi - further that Iacopo on June 23, 1348, shortly after his father's codicil , in his own codicil " eger corpore " (physically ill) a legacy of 1000 Peruvian pounds for use for charitable purposes and this will was executed by an executor on July 22, 1348, so that he fell ill with the plague in the same weeks as his father in 1348, then died before July 22 and therefore on August 2 in Francesco's deed of foundation no longer appears among relatives present as witnesses. Of these relatives, the third named Petrus Mannilli Bonfilgli is not otherwise known: Lugano (1908) suspected him to be the husband of an unreported daughter Gentiles (II.), Sensi (1984), on the other hand, to be a brother of his mother, whose name was not known. Of the second named Gentilis domni Iohannis magistri Gentilis , on the other hand, his father Giovanni is documented as d (ominus) Iohannes M (agistri) Gentilis together with Gentile (II.) On April 27, 1325 as a witness to a deed in Foligno. Iacobilli later referred to him in his Cronache as a doctor and brother of Gentiles (II.) And Lugano (1908) also has Giovanni in his family tree as the son of Gentile I and brother of Gentile II and in the deed of foundation of 1348 Son Giovannis Gentile (III.) named as a witness as the nephew of Gentile II.

Sensi, on the other hand, made other assignments of this witness and his father Giovanni, with far-reaching consequences for the Gentile genealogy (II.). In 1984 (p. 109) he had initially suspected an uncle (instead of brother) Gentiles (II.) In Giovanni, so that Gentile III. as cousin (instead of nephew) Gentiles II, his father Giovanni as brother (instead of son) Gentiles I and his grandfather, Magister Gentile, as a hitherto unknown grandfather (instead of father) Gentiles II. In a later contribution (1997, p. XVII), this time with the evangelization of the witness Gentile III. († after August 2, 1348) with Gentile I, who had long since died at that time († before February 8, 1342), extrapolated from the patronymic of this witness a grandfather Gentile II with the name Giovanni, in which case the father of this Giovanni named Magister Gentile would last as great-grandfather Gentiles II. Research did not follow Sensi's interpretations, but instead has sometimes cited a Bartolo as the father of Gentile I and grandfather of Gentile II: this assumption is not documented at the time, but goes back to Lugano (1908), whose family tree is Gentile I. and his unknown wife, whose name was added " Bartholi " in brackets without justification . Insofar as a biographical career was also reported for the father Gentile (I.) in the literature, namely a birth around 1260, a move with the family to Bologna, a job there as a doctor and a date of death around 1310, this information is on it attributed to the fact that not the father Gentile (I.), but his son (II.) in the biographical tradition initially an approximate lifetime around 1310, then, while maintaining this information, an unspecified death at the age of almost 80 years in Bologna subsequent burial at the Dominicans there, and this was subsequently modified to the effect that this death in Bologna was dated to around 1310 and a birth around 1260 was inferred from this: because this information was in contradiction to the information from contemporary tradition had become known about the place and the year of his death they were rejected for Gentile (II.), but as The result of a mix-up between Gentiles and his father of the same name interpreted and therefore transferred to him.

Education and employment

For the widespread assumption that he was a student of Taddeo Alderotti († 1295) in Bologna and Pietro d'Abano († 1316) in Padua, there is no concrete evidence. Also Dino del Garbo in Siena was counted occasionally his teachers, with whom he was friends in later years, and counted his son Tommaso to his own students. However, through contemporary documents and sources, Gentile's biography is only sparsely documented from 1322 onwards. From March 1322 to October 1324 he is attested as a professor in Siena, in October 1325 he received an appointment as a medical professor for initially two years in Perugia, where he did not take up his activity until December 1325 and in the period after these two years Years then only in 1338 through a disputation and for the years from 1339 through a matriculation and several speeches at graduation ceremonies. In his Recepte super primam fen quarti Avicenne he states that he wrote it after 34 years of medical practice and ten years of teaching, from which Ceccarelli (1999) derived two alternative ways of narrowing down his activities chronologically, each based on the basic assumption that he had not yet been active in teaching before 1322: if he continued the teaching activity started in Siena and Perugia in the unoccupied years between 1327 and 1338 and during this time not only worked as a general practitioner, he could receive the receipt at the earliest 1334, so that in this case the start of his practical occupation would not be expected before 1299, while otherwise, if he did not resume teaching until 1338, the receipts would not be made before 1344 and the start of the practical work would not be expected before 1310 .

Gentile achieved great prestige and some prosperity in Perugia, as evidenced by the dispositions of his will, communicated in his son's document of 1348. In the last years of his life, according to a story by Pietro Paolo Vergerio d. Ä. Ubertino da Carrara , who was governor of Padua from 1338 until his death († 1345), was called to his doctor because of an illness and had consulted him on the scientific advancement of the youth of Padua, namely twelve on his advice to provide young men from Padua with scholarships to study at Paris University. Two pieces by Gentiles Consilia, which can not be dated more precisely , have at least proven that he was consulted by Ubertino about a bladder disease and by Ubertino's sister about a chest catarrh. On the other hand, there is no contemporary evidence that he was also the medicus of Pope John XXII. and is said to have been given great appreciation and awards by him.

death

He died in Foligno in June of the plague year 1348, the details of his death are recorded in a note from Francesco da Foligno, the son of the same name not with Gentiles, but with Francesco di maestro Filippo di maestro Matteo da Foligno, who held the chair three years later for medicine in Perugia, should be identified. According to this note, which was attached to a consilium on the treatment of the plague in Perugia , which Gentile himself had written , he is said to have fallen ill as a result of the extraordinary burdens of his involvement in the care of the sick and, after six days of sick bed, during which Francesco assisted him, in Perugia died and was then buried in the Church of the Augustinian Hermits (in Foligno). The date of the illness has been handed down in two versions. In two manuscripts in Munich ( Clm 77) and Rome ( Cpl 1264) and in the print of the Consilium each given as June 12th, which is why the older literature, as far as it followed the presentation of this note, the date of death as June 18 (or disregarding the six-day duration of the sick camp, June 12). In a manuscript from the second half of the 14th century in the Bibliteca Malatestina in Cesena, on the other hand, the day of the illness is mentioned as June 22nd and this tradition, according to which the date of death would then be set to June 28th instead of June 18th, according to Ceccarelli ( 1999) as the more reliable.

Works

Like many other physicians of his time, Gentile belonged to a highly cultured milieu that has at times been called humanistic or protohumanistic. He was interested in literature, quoted a. a. often from Apuleius , had a personal relationship with the poet Cino da Pistoia and, in his commentary on Avicenna, states that he himself wrote poems in the vernacular. Above all, however, he had, in accordance with the general direction of medicine at the northern Italian universities of his time, a pronounced interest in Aristotelian philosophy and natural philosophy, which was particularly received under the influence of the works of Averroes and Avicenna. He did not have any knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew or Greek, but was familiar with the available Latin translations and in his writings it was important to embed his own doctrinal opinion in the context of the comprehensively discussed views of his predecessors.

His main scientific work, which he edited from around 1315 until his death, is the commentary on the Canon des Avicenna, the five books of which he was the first medieval commentator to comment almost completely in all parts relevant to university teaching. The commentary or parts of it are preserved in 49 manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries; between 1476 and 1523 it was printed in whole or in part 11 times. Gentile also wrote commentaries on Hippocrates and Galen , as well as numerous Quaestiones and smaller writings, which were later printed under the collective name Questiones et Tractatus extravagantes .

literature

  • Fausto Bonora / George Kern: Does anybody really know the life of Gentile da Foligno? , in: Medicina nei secoli 9 (1972), pp. 29-53
  • Chartularium Studii Senensis , Volume I (1240-1357), ed. by Giovanni Cecchini and Giulio Prunai, Siena: Università degli Studi di Siena, 1942
  • Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut:  Gentile da Foligno. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 53:  Gelati – Ghisalberti. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1999, pp. 162-167.
  • Joël Chandelier: Gentile da Foligno, médecin et universitaire du XIVe siècle , in: École nationale des chartes, Positions des thèses soutenues par les élèves de la promotion de 2002 pour obtenir le diplôme d'archiviste paleographe , Paris 2002, pp. 21–28 ( online ).
  • Joël Chandelier: Art. Gentile da Foligno , in: Thomas Glick et al. (Ed.), Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia , Routledge, New York / Milton Park (Oxfordshire), 2005, pp. 185-186
  • Roger French: Canonical Medicine. Gentile da Foligno and scholasticism. Brill, Leiden 2001, ISBN 90-04-11707-5
  • Roger French: Gentile da Foligno and the via medicorum, in: JD North / JJ Roche (eds.), The Light of Nature: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science presented to AC Crombie , Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht / Boston / Lancaster 1985, pp. 21-34
  • Giuseppe Girolami: Sopra Gentile da Foligno, medico illustrious del secolo XIV , Tipografia dell'Aquila 1844
  • Herman U. Kantorowicz: Cino da Pistoia ed il primo trattato di medicina legale , in: Archivio Storico Italiano , Series 5, Volume 37, 1906, pp. 115–128
  • Placido T. Lugano: Gentilis Fulginas Speculator e le sue ultime volontà , in: Bollettino della Regia Deputazione di storia patria per l'Umbria 14,1 (1908), pp. 195-260
  • Adamo Rossi: Documenti per la storia dell'Università di Perugia , Perugia: G. Boncompagni e C., 1876, 2 volumes
  • Carl C. Schlam: Graduation Speeches of Gentile da Foligno , in: Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978), pp. 96-119
  • Mario Sensi, Appunti d'archivio per maestro Gentile da Foligno , in: Medicina nei secoli 21 (1984), pp. 107-118
  • Mario Sensi, Notes biografica , in: Gentile da Foligno, Carmina de urinarum iudiciis et de pulsibus: un trattato trecentesco di nefrologia e cardiologia , ed. by Mario Timio and Mario Sensi, Effe, Perugia 1998, p. XIIIss.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reprinted from Sensi 1984, Appendice III, pp. 113-115
  2. ↑ Sensi 1984, Appendice III.be, pp. 115-116
  3. ↑ Printed in Lugano 1908, pp. 208–210
  4. ^ " Prudens vir magister Gentilis magistri Gentilis de Fulgineo, doctor in medicina " (Siena, August 6, 1323: Chartularium Studii Senensis , p. 284); " ante domum M. Gentilis M. Gentilis, coram M. Gentile M. Gentilis " (April 27, 1325: Mansi 1984, p. 115 note 1); " procurator sapientis viri mag. Gentilis olim mag. Gentilis de Fulgineo in medicinali scientia doctoris " (Foligno, February 6, 1642: Sensi 1984, App. I, p. 112); " procuratoribus (...) sapientis viri mag. Gentilis olim mag. Gentilis de Fulgineo scientie medicine doctoris " (Foligno, February 18, 1342: Sensi 1984, app. II, p. 113; see also " Jacobus filius mag. Gentilis mag. Gentilis de Fulgineo medicine doctor supradicti "(June 23, 1348, according to Iacobilli: Sensi 1984, App. III.c, p. 115)
  5. ↑ " Que omnia gesta et facta fuerunt per Franciscum predictum praesentibus volentibus consentientibus domna Iacoba matre ipsius Francisci et uxore olim supradicti magistri Gentilis, et Gentile domni Iohannis magistri Gentilis, et Petro Mannilli Bonfilgli proximioribus consanguineis Francisci 1908 predicti , S.
  6. ↑ a b Rossi 1876, Vol. II, p. 36 Note 3
  7. ↑ Lodovico Iacobilli: Crocache della città di Foligno , excerpt from Sensi 1984, app. IV, pp. 116-118, p. 117
  8. ↑ Sensi 1984, app. III.b, p. 115
  9. ↑ Sensi 1984, app. III.c, p. 115)
  10. ↑ Sensi 1984, app. III.e, p. 116
  11. ↑ Sensi 1984, p. 110.
  12. ↑ Lugano 1908, p. 214 Note 1
  13. ↑ Sensi 1984, p. 109
  14. ↑ " Fulginei (...) in contrata crucis, ante domum M. Gentilis M. Gentilis, coram M. Gentile M. Gentilis et d. Iohanne M. Gentilis testibus " (Sensi 1984, p. 115, note 1)
  15. ^ " Il dottor Giovanni suo fratello " (Sensi 1984, app. IV, p. 117)
  16. ↑ Lugano 1908, p. 214, cf. P. 214
  17. ↑ Lugano 1908, p. 214
  18. ^ Johannes Trithemius , Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis , Basel: Johann von Amberbach, 1494, sheet 97v
  19. ^ Giovanni Nicolò Pasquali Alidosi, Li Dottori Forestieri, Che in Bologna hanno letto Teologia, Filosofia, Medicina, & Arti Liberali , Bologna: Nicolò Tebaldini, 1623, p. 28
  20. ↑ Petrus Castellanus , Vitae illustrium medicorum quit toto orbe ad haec usque tempore floruerunt , Antwerp: Willem van Tongris, 1617, p. 150f.
  21. ^ Georg Abraham Mercklin , Lindenius renovatus , Nuremberg: Johann Georg Endter, 1686, p. 318f.
  22. ↑ See Lodovico Giacobillo, Bibliotheca Umbriae , Volume I, Foligno: Agostino Alterio, 1658, p. 125; Prospero Mandosio, ΦΕΑΤΡΟΝ in quo maximorum christiani orbis pontificum archiatros Prosper Mandosius (...) spectandos exhibet , Rome: Francesco de Lazari, 1669, pp. 85f .; Giustiniano Paglilarini, Osservazioni Istoriche , in: Federigo Frezzi, Il Quadriregio o Poema de 'quattro regni , ed. from the Accademici Rinvigoriti di Foligno, Foligno: Pompeo Campana, 1725, p. 199; Ferdinando Bassi, Delle terme Porrettane, Rome: Giovanni Zempel, 1748, p. 257ff.
  23. ↑ Chandelier 2002
  24. ↑ a b c d e Ceccarelli 1999
  25. ↑ Pietro Paolo Vergerio, Von Ubertino da Carrara, Vitae principum Carrariensium , ed. by LA Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores , Milan 1730, col. 168
  26. ↑ Lodovico Giacobillo, Bibliotheca Umbriae , Volume I, Foligno: Agostino Alterio, 1658, p. 125; Agostino Oldoini, Athenaeum augustum in quo Perusinorum scripta publice exponuntur , Perugia: Lorenzo Ciano / Francesco Desiderio, 1678, pp. 134f .; Prospero Mandosio, ΦΕΑΤΡΟΝ in quo maximorum christiani orbis pontificum archiatros Prosper Mandosius (...) spectandos exhibet , Rome: Francesco de Lazari, 1669, p. 83
  27. ↑ Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut:  Gentile da Foligno. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 53:  Gelati – Ghisalberti. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1999, pp. 162-167.
personal data
SURNAME Gentile da Foligno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gentilis fulgineus; Gentilis de Fulgineo; Gentilis Fulginas; Gentilis Speculator
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian doctor, physician and natural philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH between 1280 and 1290
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Foligno , Umbria
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1348 or June 28, 1348
Place of death Foligno