Histoire, CIHAM-UMR 5648

This index of medical medieval texts is the first result of a collective work started in the 60s. It is deliberately limited to medical works (to the exclusion of veterinary art, alchemy, and natural philosophy) and to texts composed before 1500 ; it includes almost 2300 headwords, divided among anonymous (about 740) and authors (about 1540),and this total reflects the examination of more than 500 manuscripts.

ABSTRACT Aesthetics and body care in latin medical treatises. During the last centuries of the Middle Ages, beauty cares seem to play an increasing part in the medical practice, and many authors of medical or chirurgical treatises pay allways more attention to the ornatus or decoratio, i. e. what we name today cosmetics or cosmetology. Yet Antiquity had left a certain knowledge in that field, traces of such a concern in the High Middle Ages are hardly to be found, and cosmetics do not feature in the medical western litterature until the late 1100's, or maybe the second half of that century. This coming out of cosmetology is first witnessed in Salerno, and this new kind of latin writings take their roots in new sources, principally Rhazes and Avicenna, recently translated in Toledo by Gerard of Cremona († 1187). The exact influence of arabic medicine in this sphere is not perfectly known yet, but beyond all doubt, after the 12th century, a huge variety of texts, religious or lay, attest that the “ornatus” seeking was widespread. The subject interested different western doctors, but cosmetics seems to be a greater concern for surgeons, that is to say practitioners specialized in manual operations. This paper considers in particular the Chirurgiae of Henri de Mondeville and Guy de Chauliac (14th century), for the large place they give to cosmetology.

Hildegarde de Bingen , considérée de longue date comme une sainte, n'a été officiellement canonisée que récemment, en octobre 2012, à la fin du pontificat de Benoit XVI. A cette occasion, on passe ici en revue les formes les plus actuelles de la postérité de la religieuse allemande, y compris cinématographiques puisque Margarethe von Trotta lui a consacré un film qui curieusement n'a pas été distribué en France.

Dans son encyclopédié naturelle composée dans les années 1150, Hildegarde de Bingen († 1179) s' attache à recenser la création, en particulier des réalités dont le sens reste caché à la plupart des hommes, comme les animaux prodigieux par leur taille et leur force. Le ...

Nikolaus Gugler ist inNurnberg zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhundertsgeboren und lebtenoch im Jahr 1560. Er ist heute als Besitzer einiger zum Bestand der Nationalbibliothek Paris gehorenden Handschriften bekannt, und zwar der Codices Lat. 6952, 7417, 7395 und 7443C, die reichanKommentaren, Randbemerkungen undLebensdaten sind.Gugler, der in Wittenberg studierte,beschaftigte sich vorwiegend mit medizinischen und astronomischen Problemen, und ist auch als Verfasser astronomischer Texte hervorgetreten.Deswegen haben ihmWissenschaftshistoriker wie Lynn Thorndike und Kurt Pilz Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Im Grunde genommen kennen wir aber Guglers Biographie nicht; doch kann man versuchen, durch die verschiedenen Marginalien, die diese Handschriften enthalten, seinen Lebenslauf und seine Studien zu rekonstruieren und sogar seine Abstammung festzustellen, da Gugler seine Eltern und Geschwister erwahnt. Eine seinerHandschriften enthalt ein interessantesPortratGuglers, das hier zum erstenMai publiziert wird.

This paper examines the case of a text led by two main intentions, to shake certain established order and to go down in history as object of study and memory, the treatise De urina non visa consisted in 1220 by William the Englishman, a physician established in Marseille. The singular treatise of medical astrology intended to make an apology of the superiority of the astrology on the medicine and suggested to the practitioners exempting of any element of clinical examination, in particular the analysis of urines, by establishing itself only on the examination of the sky. The number of manuscripts known today pleads in favour of a big fortune of this text, which was not only copied a lot and spread, but also marked down and imitated. We study here more exactly the modalities according to which William the Englishman became in certain cases a model, implicit or assumed, even as an auctoritas.

Mystique without Borders: an Overview of the Dissemination of Hagiographical and Prophetical Texts in the Feminine throughout Europe


In the late Middle Ages, more and more religious men, but also women, gifted with vision and prophecy, express themselves, and two patterns of prophetism can be observed. The first type of prophetism, called «ecclesial» by André Vauchez, tends to reform the Church with the greatest respect for the institution and is sometimes represented by great female figures such as Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena or Bridget of Sweden; the second one, the «anti establishment prophetism», more critical of the Church, is represented mostly by male figures. Between those two axes, a mystical and hagiographical literature produced by visionary and saintly living women finds its place: all those writings are at the same time rooted in a context, an area, even a language, and bound to a highly scalable reception. For an example, Bridget’s prophecies were not welcomed in France, unlike in Italy, Germany or Netherlands, were mystical literature was highly appreciated at the same period. This paper aims at touching on the issue of the fortune of some feminine spiritual figures, questioning the geographic dissemination of their image and of their writings in Europe.

RICHARD DE FOURNIVAL, the BIBLIONOMIA and science of urine in the Middle Ages


Urinalysis, or uroscopy, that is to say the art of diagnosing based on the examination of a patient’s urines, was a dominating branch of medical semiology in the XIIIth century. Richard de Fournival  (†1260) is supposed to have given to a surgeon named « Helye » a treatise on urines in french written maybe by Richard himself, and as a matter of fact, his Biblionomia  provides a list of titles of treatises on urines. This paper reconsiders first the role played by the science of urine in medicine at the time of Richard ; then, it reflects on the possibility of identifying some items listed in the Biblionomia with some manuscripts currently kept in different libraries, especially the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Résumé

L’examen des urines du patient joua longtemps un rôle important dans la sémiologie médicale. On considérait que ce fluide, également appelé « eau du corps » par euphémisme, offrait, à sa sortie de l’organisme, un enregistrement des mécanismes internes pour qui savait les lire. Parmi les critères à observer, la couleur s’imposait, par son évidence sensible. Mais ce signe n’était pas pour autant considéré par tous comme d’une fiabilité absolue, et tout au long de la période, des réserves furent émises sur le crédit à accorder à l’urine, notamment à sa couleur, et même le nombre de teintes que ce liquide pouvait revêtir fut remis en cause. Le médecin padouan Michel Savonarole qui nous retient ici est un de ceux qui exprimèrent des doutes, tout en reconnaissant le caractère nécessaire de l’examen des urines dans l’établissement d’un pronostic et d’un diagnostic.

Abstract

Examination of the patient's urine has long played an important role in medical semiology. It was considered that this fluid, also called "water of the body" by euphemism, offered, at its exit of the organism, a recording of the internal mechanisms for who knew how to read them. Among the criteria to be observed, color was the first one, by its obvious sensitivity. But this sign was not considered by all as absolutely reliable, and throughout the period, reservations were expressed on the credit to be given to the urine, including its color, and even the number of tints that this liquid could take was questioned. The Paduan physician Michel Savonarole is one of those who expressed doubts, while recognizing the necessity of the examination of the urine in the establishment of a prognosis and a diagnosis.