Published as the conference proceedings of the fourth meeting of the Societas Artistarum—an international organization dedicated to the study of the Faculties of Arts in medieval European universities—the volume Filosofia e medicina in Italia fra medioevo e prima età moderna, edited by Luca Bianchi and Luigi Campi, gathers almost all the papers delivered at the University of Milan in November 2019, and offers a model for thinking beyond disciplinary boundaries in medieval intellectual history. The twelve authors involved in this volume are all prominent scholars in the field of medieval and early modern philosophy, hailing mostly from Italian (University of Milan, University of Pavia, University of Pisa) or French institutions (École pratique des hautes études, Paris 1, Paris 8, Université de Lyon), with two representatives from Ireland (University College Dublin) and England (University of Warwick).
As the editors address in their introduction, the focus on the relationships between medical thought and philosophy in medieval universities allows for an understanding of medicine as both scientia operativa and scientia teorica, whose links with natural philosophy are at the center of the institutionalization of medicine as a scholastic discipline. These essays aim therefore at “expanding and deepening our understanding of how philosophy and medicine were studied and taught in Italy, between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries” (my translation here and throughout, 8). The debates between subalternity and complementarity run through all the essays of the volume, while the focus on Italian institutions makes clear that the situation of the Faculties of Arts in the peninsula stands out for its fruitful interdisciplinarity. In fact, as the Italian masters specialized in their own fields and engaged in distinguishing them, this specialization “allowed for contaminations and interdisciplinary exchanges” (8). Thus, for the authors of the volume, medicine and philosophy are not considered two separate categories, but disciplines whose permeable boundaries allowed for continuous engagement, both in terms of ideas and vocabulary, as well as in terms of scholastic careers and professional output. Each chapter of the collection provides invaluable case studies of the relationships between medicine and philosophy in the Italian universities of the Middle Ages, and it is impossible for the reviewer to do proper justice to the erudition and insight of the essays. Nonetheless, I have strived to provide a brief summary of each contribution, with an invitation to readers to approach them in their entirety.
If the methodological exchanges between medicine and philosophy become even more central once Avicenna’s Canon finds its way into university classrooms of the thirteenth century, in her chapter Danielle Jacquart (“Médecine et philosophie dans le commentaire à l’Ars medica de Barthélemy [XIIe siècle],” 11-28) studies how, already in the twelfth century, Master Bartholomew of Salerno demonstrates the consistency of these transdisciplinary approaches in his commentary on the Tegni. The influence of two of Galen’s works—De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, and De elementis secundum Hippocratem—bears witness to Bartholomew’s attitude toward his medical and philosophical authorities, and the openness of his perspective, which is able to approach a physiological question from multiple points of view. The boundaries between philosophy and medicine are therefore not understood as limits to the method of the master, but as an expansion into the “theological horizon” (15) of the human faculties. In this sense, the role of the brain as the hegemonikon is representative of Bartholomew’s medical and philosophical understanding of the body/soul problem. According to Jacquart, by addressing the faculties of the soul under the aegis of medical physiology, Bartholomew puts medicine in conversation with ethics and religion, underscoring the role of human free will and virtue in relation to bodily passions.
In his thorough analysis of the socio-cultural frameworks of Italian university students and masters, Jacques Verger (“Arts et médecine dans les universités italiennes au Moyen Âge: un lien nécessaire?,” 29-39) traces the institutional reasons that allowed for such “interdisciplinary porosity” (31) between fields. Masters of arts and medicine are therefore connected through their relationship of “complementarity” (31) even when they aim at methodological distinctions, because of the exchanges between students and faculty and the affinity between medicine and natural philosophy. Verger’s analysis also points to a departure of masters of arts and medicine from the faculty of jurisprudence, whose institutional weight favored a hierarchy between disciplines—a relationship that Chiara Crisciani’s following essay analyzes in depth.
While Verger focuses on the institutional imbalance between jurists and philosophers, Chiara Crisciani (“Silenzio, parole e discorsi del medico. Tra scienza ed etica, tra filosofia e retorica,” 41-64) shows how verbal communication and rhetoric offered more than one point of convergence between the two professional categories. Through their mastery of the spoken word, professionals in medicine and jurisprudence are therefore akin in their rhetorical approaches, because—just like a notary—a good doctor must adapt to different social and professional situations, while taking into account the rather malleable relationship between truth, truthfulness, and verisimilitude. Crisciani does not confine her essay to instances of orality, but also analyzes the doctors’ rhetorical versatility in multiple written genres, from scholastic commentaries, to consilia, regimina, and treatises, both in Latin and in the vernacular language.
Building on previous scholarship addressing the Italian physicians’ interest in questions of moral philosophy, Joël Chandelier (“Les médecins et la philosophie morale en Italie au XIVe siècle,” 65-81) argues that both the social context of scholastic medical education and the epistemological development of medicine favored a marked overlap between medical and ethical thought. In a vein similar to the one of the previous two essays, Chandelier notes institutional and cultural reasons for such a convergence: masters of medicine and of arts often shared not only similar career paths, but also manuscript sources, with examples taken from the curricula of several masters in Florence and Bologna, as well as library bequests. Together with socio-cultural reasons, Chandelier also focuses on the nature of the physicians’ engagement with moral philosophy. The body/soul problem thus becomes a playground in which ethics and physiology test their respective boundaries, while making medicine a sort of “essential prerequisite” (75) to moral philosophy.
Gabriella Zuccolini’s essay (“In un concepto varïati effetti. Dante and Cecco d’Ascoli on Embryology, Astrology and the Nobility of Offspring,” 83-103) is a much-needed addition to the relationship between medicine and philosophy, as it takes into account not only the theoretical concerns of the masters, but also the development of such debates in vernacular literature. The author contextualizes Cecco d’Ascoli’s Acerba and Dante Alighieri’s Convivio in relation to the question of nobility, pointing out how twins provide a stimulating example of the relationships between embryology and ethics.
Focusing on the body/soul problem, Aurélien Robert (“Filosofia e medicina in Taddeo Alderotti. I rapporti tra l’anima e il corpo,” 105-130) zeroes in on Taddeo Alderotti’s commentary on the Isagoge Johannitii and contextualizes the text within Alderotti’s scholastic output, with the aim of assessing his relationship to Averroistic positions—a point that has characterized scholarly debates on the subject since the work of Ernest Renan, Martin Grabmann, and Bruno Nardi. Robert follows the careful historiographical reassessment of Latin Averroism of the past few decades (represented, for instance, in the scholarship of Luca Bianchi, Alain de Libera, and Jean-Baptiste Brenet), to look at Alderotti’s relationship with these concepts, and with Averroes’s authority in matters of philosophy. Alderotti’s take on psychology distinguishes between ontological status and functions of the soul, in an interpretation that “does not defend a reductionist position” (122), and makes the master in fact at times closer to Avicenna. Alderotti’s relationship with Church dogmatism is a question that further distances his position from those of the Latin Averroists, to the point that he does not seem to “claim a certain philosophical freedom from religious authority” (129).
The following two essays focus on Antonio Pelacani da Parma and his commentary production between natural philosophy and medicine, and can be read in dialogue with one another. Gianfranco Fioravanti (“Antonio da Parma tra filosofia e medicina. Il commento al Canon di Avicenna, le Questiones super De generatione e Super libro Metheorologicorum,” 131-150) argues that Antonio’s commentaries on Avicenna and Aristotle show several methodological connections, addressing questions of natural philosophy and medicine with similar intentions, as in the case of the mixtum, the disciplinary differences between philosophy and medicine, the interpretation of authoritative texts, the placement of faculties in the brain, and the ontology of the soul. Dragos Calma (“L’homme sans pensée. L’averroïsme d’Antoine de Parme et la Questio de Budapest,” 151-199) proposes an articulated interpretive essay and critical edition of the Budapest Questio de unitate intellectus, focusing on Antonio’s relationship with the Latin Averroists (especially the Parisian masters), and the contested authorship of the questio provided in appendix (175-199). In contrast to Fioravanti’s more prudent position, Calma also argues for Antonio’s authorship, which could date back to his years of teaching in Padua.
The final two chapters shift the focus to sixteenth-century relationships and debates between philosophy and medicine. David A. Lines (“Philosophy Teaching and Filiations of Learning in Sixteenth-Century Bologna: Ludovico Boccadiferro’s Early De Anima Lectures,” 201-237) analyzes a series of reportationes on Aristotle’s De anima, which date back to Ludovico Boccadiferro’s early teaching in Bologna (1535/36), preserved in Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 1958. By contextualizing Boccadiferro’s series of lectures and those from subsequent years, Lines provides further insight into the evolution of the master’s approach to the Aristotelian text, his relationship with other philosophers (Benedetto Varchi, Alessandro Achillini, and Pietro Pomponazzi), his position toward religious authority, and the pedagogical approaches of his teaching.
Lastly, Elisa Andretta (“Della natura delle acque. Filosofia e medicina nel trattato Del Tevere di Andrea Bacci (1576),” 239-255) extends the discussion on the relationships between medicine and philosophy in the early modern era, by analyzing Andrea Bacci’s treatise Del Tevere (1576). As a topic that interested Bacci in several of his writings, hydrology is defined as a legitimate field of research in order to address the physician’s relationship with philosophical and medical authorities—especially Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen—, and their empirical verification. Andretta contextualizes Bacci’s treatise in the debate on water access in sixteenth-century Rome, and within the newly rediscovered interest in the Hippocratic treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places, that focuses on the environmental causes for health and sickness.
The amplitude of insights that this collection of essays provides makes it an essential reference point for any discussion of medicine and philosophy in the Italian Middle Ages, with a thematic throughline that explicitly and implicitly address questions of subalternity versus complementarity, the institutional porosity of Italian university, and the body/soul problem. The quality of research, and the sustained dialogue with up-to-date bibliography, confirm the authors of the volume and its editors as among the most authoritative voices in the field. Filosofia e medicina in Italia fra medioevo e prima età moderna is thus a valuable addition to the libraries of scholars working in European intellectual history, the history of medicine and philosophy, and medieval and early modern studies at large.