Abstract
Like many other writers in the Quattrocento, the physician-historian Michele Savonarola wrote a Libellus to praise the history, merits, monuments, and beauties of his town, which in his case was Padua. Among the accolades for its most distinguished citizens, who contributed to different fields, he lists famous physicians who adorned Padua with their contributions to medicine. The last physician in the list is Antonio Cermisone, but his disciple and colleague, Bartolomeo da Montagnana, does not appear. Perhaps Savonarola thought that Montagnana’s fame had not yet been fully confirmed. Or perhaps Savonarola’s very high praise of Cermisone indicates he considered Cermisone the pinnacle of the Paduan studium and its medical learning. Regardless, Montagnana’s studies and his whole academic career, along with his life as a practitioner and his fame, developed entirely within the town of Padua until his death in 1452. Montagnana is a prime example of how, in the fifteenth century, there is a growing tendency for teachers in main Italian Universities to remain in the same place, and for descendants of physicians to occupy the same professional and teaching positions. Indeed, Montagnana’s father (Giacomo) was a surgeon, and at least one of his children became a physician trained and subsequently practicing in Padua.
For Nancy the “queen”, with gratitude and all my best wishes.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
See Micca 1941, 26–34.
- 4.
See Pesenti 2003.
- 5.
Avicenna, Liber canonis, I, fen I, doctrina prima. A book entitled Practica is ascribed to him, though it was not written by him but more likely by his great-grandson Bartolomeo da Montagnana junior. See Ms Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Marc.lat. VII, 66 (=9684).
- 6.
- 7.
De aspectu, situ, minera, virtutibus et operationibus balneorum in comitatu Patavino repertorum. This work has been published many times -either alone or together with the Consilia- and is inserted in the collection, De balneis omnia quae extant.
- 8.
- 9.
I am using here Bartolomeo da Montagnana, Consilia, 1525.
- 10.
See his ‘prefatory epistle’, which introduces the edition of 1525 of the collection of Montagnana’s Consilia.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
Further indications of this relationship, and, more generally, about the role of consilium in various medieval contexts can be found in Casagrande et al. 2004.
- 15.
- 16.
We must point out that this characterization better describes the consilia written between the end of the fourteenth century and the fifteenth century, and does not suit equally well the previous and early consilia: for example, Alderotti’s Consilia do not have hints of letters between physicians, while on the contrary, they present a number of clues which suggest actual visits and consultations at the patient’s bedside.
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
See Rather 1968; Garcia Ballester 1993. The six res non naturales (climate, food and drink, rest, exercise, evacuation, passion) are conditions which are not properly parts of the organism, even though the organism cannot exist without them; they differ from res naturales (the natural components of the organism: elements, members, etc.) and from res contra naturam (diseases and their causes). Res non naturales constitute the only domain where patients can really choose how to behave and physicians can give good advice, which oftens overlaps with ethical suggestions. The Consilium is intended exactly to orient the choice about what has to be done. On this aspect, see Aquinas 1964, 476, 134: “Omne autem consilium est questio, idest inquisitio quaedam, etsi non ommnis quaestio, idest inquisitio, sit consilium…Sola enim inquisitio de operbilibus est consilium.”
- 20.
As is for instance remarked by Henri de Mondeville, the typically Italian practice of the written consilium in absentia is strongly refuted in Paris and in France. On the contrary, Mondeville himself, in his Cyrurgia, 1982, gives plenty of useful instructions and rules of etiquette about the correct behaviour of physicians and surgeons during direct consultations. In addition, see Crisciani 2004a, “Ethique de la consultation.”
- 21.
Alderotti 1937.
- 22.
Ferrari de Gradi 1501.
- 23.
Baviera 1489.
- 24.
- 25.
Gentile da Foligno 1498, f.66rb–va, for example, expressed his concern about possibly misinterpreted strange medical words (perhaps wrongly translated) in the following way: “Licet hic error sit solum in vocabulo non tamen est parvum, quia ex ipso forsitan resultavit maximus error in opere.”
- 26.
It is worth mentioning some titles of Montagnana’s Consilia: Disceptatio theoricalis de disposicione capitis et nasi; consilium theoricum de fetore in ore. Moreover, he often divided his consilia in pars theorica and pars practica.
- 27.
It may be remembered that, in any case and from an epistemological Aristotelian point of view, medicine is part of naturalistic science, which, as is well known, deals with phenomena and rules related to what happens most of the time. However, it is also legitimate to connect this ‘probabilistic’ trend in later Consilia with the probabilistic currents of natural philosophy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and with the contemporary debates concerning the ‘method’ in medicine and the values of certitude and truth here obtainable. On this, see McVaugh 1990; and Siraisi, “Views on the Certitude of Medical Science Among Late Medieval Writers”, a paper presented at the Conference “Science and technology in the Middle Ages” held at Barnard College, New York, 1983.
- 28.
For example, Montagnana 1525, ff. 11vab, 15va, 17rb, 21rb, 21vab, 24vb, 25rab, 28va.
- 29.
Ibid., ff. 8va, 27va, 28rab, 28vb, 81vb, 84va 196rab, 319ra.
- 30.
- 31.
For example, Montagnana 1525, ff. 20va, 21vab–ra, 195vb.
- 32.
See here, 10–11.
- 33.
For example, Montagnana 1525, ff. 12ra, 15vb, 25ra, 30rb and passim.
- 34.
Ibid., f.130a: “Oblata est mihi dispositio que multum diligenti consideratione indiget quia rarus satis et pergrinus est eventus eius.”
- 35.
Ibid., for example, ff. 4ra, 6va, 8va, 9ra, 17rb, 27rb–27va, 29va, 33rb,87va, 91rb, 93vb, 94vb, 97ra, 195rb.
- 36.
- 37.
I do not take into account here the Consilia on the plague, and those at the opening of the collection, devoted to impersonal regimina: they are obviously more extended.
- 38.
For an institutional point of view, Lines 2001.
- 39.
- 40.
Crisciani 2004b, “‘Consilia’, responsi, consulti.”
- 41.
See, among others, Crisciani and Zuccolin 2011; Park 1985; Nutton 1990; Pesenti 2003; Crisciani 2003; Naso 2000; Rotzoll 2000; Cuomo 1987; De’Reguardati 1977; Deffenu 1955; and Pedralli 1996. See also various essays in I saperi nelle corti 2008 and the very recent and comprehensive book by Nicoud 2014.
- 42.
Montagnana 1525, ff. 33rb–33va.
- 43.
Op. cit. n. 35 and Montagnana 1525, ff. 20ra, 26rb.
- 44.
Ibid., f. 12ra.
- 45.
Ibid., f. 95rb; also Antonio Cermisone, 1498, f. 34vb, praised the theorical highness of medicine in these terms: “Medicinalis scientia et ars summe speculativa omnibus aliis scientiis et artibus totius universi difficilior.”
- 46.
- 47.
About this image, see Carlino 1988, esp. 38–39.
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Crisciani, C. (2017). Medicine as Queen: The Consilia of Bartolomeo da Montagnana. In: Manning, G., Klestinec, C. (eds) Professors, Physicians and Practices in the History of Medicine. Archimedes, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56514-9_5
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