One of the features of the early biographies of St Francis of Assisi is the amount of attention accorded to the medical profession, particularly in the closing years of his life. The Compilatio Assisiensis, for instance, speaks of the unnamed doctor who cauterised the saint’s eyes at Fonte Colombo near Rieti. On one occasion a doctor, perhaps the same one, ate with the friars at Fonte Colombo. Francis was receiving medical attention when he spent some days in the bishop of Rieti’s palace. On his return to Assisi, he was nursed in the vescovado before being carried to Santa Maria degli Angeli to embrace Sister Death. A doctor known as Good John from Arezzo was presented as his friend. When pressed for details of the saint’s death, he predicted an approximate date. Francis was a luminary whose direct interpretation of the Gospel drew men of all ages and backgrounds to his humble fraternity, which was committed to the propagation of the Gospel by word and example. Tradesmen, merchants, monarchs, farmers, lawyers, cooks, abbots, merchants, masters from the universities and students were among those who took the Franciscan habit. The Franciscan vocation prided itself on the extent of its outreach. Among those drawn to the fraternity were some doctors. The Compilatio Assisiensis provides detail of at least one friar who was a doctor present at the Portiuncula. He ministered to Francis in his last illness, but nothing further is known of him or his activities as a friar. The earliest extant constitutions of the Franciscans reflected the order’s interest in attracting recruits from the universities, especially those who had studied logic, medicine, law and theology. The letters of Adam Marsh provide evidence of friars afflicted by various maladies and his efforts to ensure that they obtained the necessary treatment. The figure of Adam Bechesoveres is mentioned in different letters. He was, for instance, sent to Oxford to restore the health of John of Reading. Among the doctors drawn to the Franciscan order was Crescentius da Iesi, minister general of the order (1244–7), before his election as bishop of Assisi and the Iesi.
The friars’ ministry of healing in mind and body has now been illuminated by Peter Murray Jones, a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, who in seven chapters (‘Friars practising medicine’; ‘William Holme, medicus’; ‘Writing medicine differently’; ‘The medical culture of friars’; ‘Souls and bodies’; ‘Creeping into homes’; and ‘The legacy of friars’ medicine’) addresses the medical work undertaken by members of the four orders (Austin Friars, Dominicans, Carmelites and Franciscans). The Austin Friars and the Carmelites seem to have been less active than the other two orders. None the less, some friars in those orders compiled their own manuscripts, such as Richard Tenet, a Carmelite. Richard de Thorpe, an Austin Friar, was an author or compiler. Despite the loss of the ample mendicant archives and rich libraries at the Dissolution of the friaries in 1538/39, Murray Jones has assembled a fine array of information from numerous sources to illuminate the healing ministry of the friars. The research for this attractive volume was undertaken largely in English archives and libraries, but there is information drawn from friars in the Mediterranean world. The volume has two appendices, the first of which identifies friars who practised medicine and the second lists friars writing on medicine and compiling texts. Friars wrote or compiled books about medicine, many of which survive.
John of St Giles was an English master of theology at Paris, when he dramatically entered the Dominicans at St Jacques in Paris during a sermon on evangelical poverty in 1230. He interrupted his homily to don a friar’s habit. In the later 1230s he was present in the household of Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln (1235–53), to assist him in the administration of the largest diocese in medieval England. He was present at the deathbed of Lincolniensis on 9 October 1253 at Buckden, Huntingdonshire. He was credited with a number of cures. Matthew Paris, the monastic chronicler of St Albans, described him as a skilled physician. In 1258 he treated Richard de Clare, the sixth earl of Gloucester, who had been poisoned. Two manuscripts contain cures attributed to John (Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Bodleian 786, fos 170r –171v, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, ms 222, fos 142–3). Some friars with medical knowledge found themselves invited to the homes of the aristocracy and even the crown. The kings of England during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were inclined to appoint Dominicans as their confessors, while their wives favoured the spiritual ministrations of the Franciscans. John of Darlington, for instance, was the confessor to Henry iii before becoming archbishop of Dublin. Royal accounts attest that Walter of Winterbourne, confessor to Edward i, and his socius received payment for attending one of the king’s pages. Another Dominican author or compiler was Henry Daniel, who produced a massive work on diagnosis, the Liber uricrisiarum and a herbal, both written in English during the 1370s. The name of Geoffrey Launde, a Dominican, occurs in the register of Raymond of Capua, master of the Dominicans. Launde lectured on the Sentences of Master Peter Lombard for the degree of doctor of divinity at Cambridge towards the end of the fourteenth century. He seems to have been based in London when he treated John Prophete, dean of York, who was seconded to the household of Richard ii. Another patient of Launde was John Trussell, a landowner and member of parliament between 1399 and 1407.
From the outset a number of Franciscans displayed a keen interest in the medical world. Bartholomew the Englishman was the author of the best-selling De proprietatibus rerum, a volume which contained references to medical cures. The Tabula medicine, which was compiled between 1416 and 1425 by a team of Franciscans interested in healing, identifies some cures associated with William of Appleton in the later fourteenth century. William was executed alongside Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury, on 14 June 1381 at Tower Hill during the Peasants’ Revolt, an assassination which was recorded by numerous chroniclers at the end of the fourteenth century. William had been active medically in the household of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Collections of correspondence reveal something about the maladies which afflicted friars and the steps taken to obtain appropriate treatment. The appearance of doctors in the friaries should not occasion surprise because the order’s policy regarding admissions resembled that of the monks. By the fourteenth century the larger friaries had infirmaries with chapels attached to them. Polemical exchanges touched on the provision of medical care in some friaries. Stung by the accusation that they gave insufficient care to the sick, the friars protested that their medical care was second to none.
The Tabula medicine includes references to the cures of John of St Giles and Geoffrey Launde. It is an anthology of treatments, many prescribed largely by Franciscans. This collection survives in a number of manuscripts. The friars recorded the effectiveness of remedies tried out by their colleagues. And in some cases they supplied the names of those whom treated successfully. William Holme’s name appears more than one hundred times in the Tabula medicine. He is given the credit for healing an ulcer on the foot of the duke of York and treated Nicholas Fakenham, minister provincial (1395–1402), for colic. He compiled a Tractatus de medicinis which survives in a single manuscript; this may have been the copy which survived from Holme’s own friary. He was also the compiler of another text, De simplicibus medicinis, a digest of twelve doctors of medicine arranged alphabetically under various illnesses. The second chapter was devoted to Holme’s work. Holme and Launde evidently knew each other and may have collaborated to some extent. The Dominican treated Sir Alfred Trussell for stomach ailments and his wife was treated by the Franciscans. The author points out that the evidence for individual practitioners is limited and scattered. Wellcome Institute, London, ms 550 was transcribed by Frater W[illiam] Ffrothyngham, who placed the sacred monogram at the beginning of the folios. Its Franciscan origin is confirmed by the names of Jesus, Mary and John at the top of the folio in Jesus College, Cambridge, ms.Q.G.12, fo. 1r. The author is inclined to believe that William compiled the index based on the alphabet by the first letter only. He found little evidence of friars studying medicine at the universities with the exception of graduates who later became mendicants. He formed the view that, while the friars ministered to members of the aristocracy and received stipends, they worked among the less privileged members of medieval society without charge.
This attractive volume is a veritable treasure trove. It draws together the different aspects of the friars’ roles in acting as medical practitioners and traces those who compiled books of recommended cures. Although medical doctors were represented thinly among the four major mendicant orders in England, Murray-Jones is to be warmly commended for extracting so much information about the friars and their interest in the world of healing. His meticulous research highlights this hitherto under-researched aspect of mendicant history in medieval England. This is an impressive volume which unearths a great deal about the friars of the four principal orders and it will be warmly welcomed by students of mendicant history as well as medicine. The volume is enhanced by a substantial index.
