Appendix VII

WAS THE DE VENENIS ADDRESSED TO POPE JOHN XXII (1316-1334)?

In some nine printed editions which I have examined the pope addressed is denoted simply by the letter “N”; and most of the MSS do not specify the pope by name, or if they do, it is not so stated in the catalogues. Giacosa says that the treatise is dedicated in some MSS to Pope Honorius IV, but he does not specify them, and I do not know of any such. Where the pope is named, he is either John without enumeration, or John XXII. It is perhaps worth noting that there never was any John XX, and that John XXI is sometimes called John XX, and John XXII is called John XXI, but that the converse is impossible. In view of this uncertainty in the enumeration, it would also not be surprising to find either John XXI or XXII named without enumeration. Scardeone in the sixteenth century asserted that the De venenis was dedicated to John XXII, although this conflicts with his statement that Peter died in 1315. Mazzuchelli spoke of an Italian translation in which the pope is called Giacomo. There never was a pope so styled, but both Honorius IV and John XXII (called John XXI by Mazzuchelli owing to the error above noted) bore the name Giacomo before they assumed their pontifical designations. Another cogent reason for dismissing John XXI (1276-1277) from consideration is that Peter at the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven would neither have adopted the authoritative tone that he employs in the De venenis in addressing a pope who had himself, as Petrus Hispanus, been a medical writer of note, nor have failed to advert to that pope’s own medical works.

In the De venenis Peter cites the Latin translation of a treatise by Avenzoar (ʿAbd al Malik ibn Zuhr ibn ʿAbd al Malik, Abu Marwan) concerning the power of a powdered emerald as an antidote against poison. In the printed editions Avenzoar’s work is referred to as that translated for Pope Boniface. If we could only rely upon this as Peter’s original wording, it would mean that he was himself addressing some pope later than Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and so would support the other evidence that the De venenis was addressed to John XXII. But in at least one manuscript of the De venenis the work of Avenzoar is said to have been translated “for the Roman people.” Moreover, the Latin translation of Avenzoar in question is extant and in the printed version we read at the close that it was translated at Venice, August 21, 1281, from Hebrew into Latin by a master of medicine from Padua with the aid of a Jew named Jacob. The work would thus seem to have been translated long before Boniface became pope. In a Paris manuscript, however, the translator gives his name as John of Capua, a baptized Jew, of whom we know as a translator of other works from Hebrew into Latin, and addresses his present translation to the archbishop of Braga in Portugal, whom Hartwig believed to be Martin de Oliviera who held that office from 1292 to 1313. Now this John of Capua also translated the work on Diets of Maimonides, at the suggestion of William of Brescia who was Pope Boniface VIII’s physician, and Hartwig believes that he met the archbishop of Braga at Rome. But more than this, in a Vienna manuscript the translation of Avenzoar is addressed to Pope Boniface VIII himself. Apparently therefore there is justification for Peter of Abano’s speaking of the work as translated for Boniface VIII. And whether it was or not, in any case it was translated at too late a date for Peter to have cited it in his De venenis, had that treatise been addressed to Pope John XXI who died in 1277. So if we admit that the De venenis was addressed to a Pope John, it must have been addressed to John XXII who became pope on August 7, 1316.

Returning for a moment to Boniface VIII, it may be remarked that he was presumably the pope who, as Peter himself states in the Conciliator, had protected him from certain persecutors. That there was nothing strange in addressing a work on poisons to a pope of that time is shown by the fact that Ermengard Blasius (or Blasii) of Montpellier, physician of Philip the Fair of France, translated the work of Moses Maimonides on poisons for Clement V, the predecessor of John XXII, in 1307. But there is no evidence so far as I know to indicate that Peter of Abano addressed his work on poisons to Clement V, although chronologically it is possible.