Part 10

During the second half of the fifteenth century, a perfect mania for the study of astrology infected Italy and penetrated equally into the Court, the Church, and the Academy. The profession of Medicine was far from immune, and at the University of Bologna, where a chair of Astrology had long been established,[170] the study was pursued with ardour and enthusiasm. Here Manfredi early devoted himself to that will-o’-the-wisp, the pursuit of which absorbed and sterilized many of the best intellects of his day. By the year 1469 he was already regarded as an authority on the vainest of studies,[171] and as the years went on he seems to have devoted himself to it ever more and more. The generally credulous character of Manfredi’s astrological ideas may be gathered from the page of his _Prognosticon ad annum 1479_ which we here reproduce (Fig. 10).

The history of Manfredi’s connexion with the University of Bologna may be briefly told. He appears for the first time on the professorial roll in 1462, when we find him giving the ‘extraordinary’ lectures on Philosophy, a subject then regarded as under especial charge of the physicians. In 1465 he was conducting the ‘ordinary’ course in Philosophy, and at the same time giving occasional lectures on Medicine. In the following year he was called to the chair of Theoretical Medicine, and in 1469 he helped the Faculty out of a difficulty by giving lectures on ‘Astronomia’ in place of the aged professor Giovanni de Fundis. The latter died in 1474, and from that date onward Manfredi assumed responsibility for the course on ‘Astronomia’. Among the colleagues who joined him were Gabriele de Gerbi, who became lecturer on Logic in 1476, Filippo Beroaldo, who became lecturer on Rhetoric and Poetry in 1479, and Alessandro Achillini, who became lecturer on Logic in 1484.[172]

Such was the regard for Manfredi’s powers of astrological prediction that to all the University announcements of his course of lectures on Astronomy is added ‘cum hoc quod faciat iudicium et tachuinum’.[173] In spite of his proficiency in the science, however, he was unable to foretell his own death. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola writes of him thus derisively:

‘quo anno [1493] obiit omnimoda[m] uite incolumitate[m] fuerat pollicitus Hieronymus manfredus astrologus nostra aetate singularis: a quo tamen nihil mirandum minus praeuisam aliorum mortem: qui nec suam ipse praeuiderit: nam cum proxima estate uita sit functus: in istius tame[n] anni publico uaticinio qui s[cilicet] ei fuit fatalis: multa & mira sequenti anno dicturum se non semel pollicebatur. Qui nescio oppignoratam fidem quomodo reluet: nisi forte de caelo uerius nunc terrena despiciat q[uam] de terra oli[m] caelestia suspiciebat.’[174]

Manfredi died in 1493 and was buried in the church of Santa Margarita in Bologna. This church no longer exists, but it contained in the eighteenth century a tomb bearing the inscription:

HIERON. MANFREDO BONON. PHILOSOPHO AC MEDICO SVAE AETATIS NEMINI SECVNDO ASTRONOMORVMQVE CITRA INVIDIAM FACILE PRIMARIO. POSVIT SVPERSTES IOAN. FILIVS SVISQVE POSTERIS. VALE ATQVE ILLVM VALERE OPTA.[175]

Manfredi left a widow, Anna, who was still living in 1496 with a household of ten persons in the Via S. Margarita.[176] The houses on one side of this street backed on the very walls of the buildings belonging to the ‘University of Medicine’,[177] and we may suppose that Hieronymo Manfredi had resided here on that account. His surviving son, Giovanni, lived hard by in the Via S. Antonio di Padoa.

It cannot be said that Manfredi’s printed works suggest great scientific attainments. All are permeated by the same astrological obsession. They comprise the following:

(_a_) The _editio princeps_ of Ptolemy’s _Cosmographia_ and _Tabulae Cosmographiae_, the best-known printed work to which Manfredi’s name is attached. He was associated in its production with the famous scholar Filippo Beroaldo, and the finely produced volume was published at Bologna in 1472 (?),[178] and dedicated to the memory of Pope Alexander V (died 1410). It is interesting as containing the first printed map of England (Fig. 9). At the end of the work we read:

‘Accedit mirifica imprimendi tales tabulas ratio. Cuius inuentoris laus nihil illorum laude inferior. Qui primi litterarum imprimendarum artem pepererunt in admirationem sui studiosissimum quemque facillime conuertere potest. Opus utrumque summa adhibita diligentia duo Astrologiae peritissimi castigaueru[n]t Hieronimus Mamfredus & Petrus bonus. Nec minus curiose correxerunt summa eruditione prediti Galeottus Martius & Colla montanus. Extremam emendationis manum imposuit philippus b[e]roaldus.’

(_b_) _Liber de homine: cuius su[n]t libri duo. Primus liber de conservatione sanitatis_.... [Liber secundus de causis in homine circa compositione[m] eius], Bologna, 1474. The work is in Italian, and consists of a number of paragraphs, each beginning with the word ‘perchè’. There is a servile dedicatory epistle in Latin addressed to Giovanni Bentivoglio. The first book is concerned with diet, and occupies two-thirds of the volume. The second book answers questions on the subject of physiognomy and bears resemblance in many passages to the _Anatomy_. It is taken in the main from the pseudo-Aristotelian _Problemata_. The book is without pagination or figures. It is well printed, and illuminated examples are not infrequently encountered.

This work was very popular. In 1478, during the lifetime of its author, it was audaciously pirated at Naples with the following _incipit_: ‘Incomenza el Libro chiamato della uita costumi natura & om[n]e altra cosa pertine[n]te tanto alla conservatione della sanita dellomo quanto alle cause et cose humane. Co[m]posto per _Alberto Magno_ filosofo excellentissimo.’

In 1497, after Manfredi’s death, the work appeared in black-letter folio at Bologna, with its author’s original dedication slightly altered. The text in this edition commences, ‘Perchel sophio nele cose che noi viuemo: & lo indebito modo del viuere nostro: induce in noi egritudine’.

In 1507 it appeared at Venice in small black-letter quarto as _Opera noua intitulata Il perche utilissima ad intendere la cagione de molte cose_. By this title, _Il Perchè_, the work, which ran through numerous editions, has usually been known. It continued to be reprinted as late as 1668.

(_c_) A treatise on the Plague: _Tractate degno & utile de la pestile[n]tia co[m]posto p[er] el famosissimo philosopho medico & astrologo maestro Hieronymo di manfredi da Bologna_, Bologna, 1478. This was translated into Latin by the author himself in the same year. The work owes much to Avicenna, but contains some original clinical observations, and shows a certain independence of the prevailing spirit of the age by quoting opinions of contemporary as well as of ancient physicians. The remedies are similar to those recommended by John of Bourdeaux in his widely distributed tract on the plague, and are probably derived ultimately from the _Regimen Sanitatis Salerni_.

(_d_) _Prognosticon ad annum 1479_, Bologna, 1478. We reproduce the terminal page of this work (Fig. 10).

(_e_) _Prognosticon anni 1481_, in which is embodied _Oratio contra turcos & hostes Christianorum_, s. 1. Jan. 1481.

(_f_) _Centilogium de medicis et infirmis_, Bologna, 1488. With a dedication to Bentivoglio. This short work is wholly astrological, and consists of one hundred precepts concerning the relationship of the stars to various diseases and conditions. Reprinted Venice, 1500, and Nuremberg, 1530.

The following three works are attributed to Manfredi, but are not mentioned in Hain, Copinger, or Reichling’s lists of Incunabula; we have not seen any of them and their existence is doubtful.

(_g_) _Ephemerides astrologicae operationes medicas spectantes_, mentioned in the _Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Aerzte_ of E. Gurlt and A. Hirsch. Possibly it represents another edition of (_e_).

(_h_) _Quaestiones subtilissimae super librum aphorismorum_, Bologna, 1480 (?), mentioned by Haller.[179] Possibly it represents another edition of (_b_).

(_i_) _Chiromantia secundum naturae vires ad extra_, Padua, 1484, mentioned by Haller.[179]

IV. THE MANUSCRIPT ANATOMY OF MANFREDI

The MS. of Manfredi’s _Anatomy_ is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Canon. Ital. 237, Western 20287). It is a fairly preserved small quarto parchment, originally of forty-nine folios, of which the third and fourth are missing. The writing is in the fine Italian hand that the printed type of the period was accustomed to imitate. There are no figures or illuminations, but the titles are rubricated in burnished gold or in colours.

There is no reference to this work in any account of Manfredi, and the volume itself appears to be quite unknown. Neither the man nor his work is mentioned in Medici’s detailed history of the anatomical school at Bologna[180] nor in Martinotti’s recent study on the same topic,[181] nor is any MS. of Manfredi included in Mazzatinti’s monumental catalogue of the MSS. in the Italian libraries.[182]

Manfredi’s MS. is written in the involved Italian of the day, with sentences of inordinate length. These general characters of style are encountered also in his published works. The dedication is in Latin, of the same unpleasing quality, and is couched in the usual subservient manner. It is addressed to Giovanni Bentivoglio, and in it Manfredi relates that

‘Your illustrious lordship Johannes Bentivolus in this present year 1490 with your usual humanity condescended on one occasion to watch the dissection of a corpse.... It was then that you saw the wonderful works of Nature in the anatomy ... and you parentally urged me, Hieronymo Manfredi, to inscribe to your most noble name this work on anatomy.... I therefore extracted this work as best I might from various works of antiquity and abbreviated it. I have not followed their order, but I have so composed it that the work should be pleasing to your lordship.

‘Accept then, O great and powerful lord, this work on the anatomy of the human body inscribed to your noble name! Accept it with your customary benevolence and humanity and in a kindly and gracious spirit, for it will be pleasing to you and will delight you greatly, for it is a worthy work!’

The Giovanni Bentivoglio (Plate XXXVII), with adulation of whom Manfredi was thus accustomed to plaster his works, was the second of the name and was the son of Annibale Bentivoglio. In the year 1462 he became head of the republic of Bologna, and played there much the same rôle as did Lorenzo de’ Medici at Florence. He adorned Bologna with numerous buildings,[183] and acted as patron of the arts and the sciences. The Palazzo dei Bentivogli still stands as a memorial to him and his family. A stern and high-handed tyrant, he held his position until 1506, when he was expelled and the city reverted to the papacy. He died two years later.

It is remarkable to find a man of Bentivoglio’s eminence and position taking an interest in the practical study of anatomy. Other Italian rulers, Lorenzo de’ Medici among them, encouraged and legalized the practice of dissection, but probably Bentivoglio is the only one recorded as having patronized an ‘anatomy’ in person. The interest taken in the subject by the heads of states must have been of great value to the artists whose patrons they were.

The MS. is a unique copy, and was doubtless written for presentation to Bentivoglio. That it was never printed is perhaps due to the fact that Manfredi died within a comparatively short time of its composition. It represents the most satisfactory post-mediaeval account of the human frame until the appearance of the work of Berengario da Carpi in 1521. It is more complete than the work of William of Saliceto or of Mondino or the anatomy erroneously attributed to Richardus Anglicus; it is more natural than the book of Gabriele de Gerbi, and is far superior to the crude contemporary sketches of Hundt, Peyligk, and Achillini, while it wastes less space than Guy de Chauliac on teleology, though it has none of the charm of the work of that great surgeon. In one respect at least, viz. the spirit in which it is written, Manfredi’s _Anatomy_ is original and probably unique for its age. There is no reason to doubt the assurance of the dedication that it was composed for the edification of the tyrant of Bologna, and for the simple purpose of setting forth the wonderful structure of man’s body without thought of any medical application.

The sources of the MS. are obvious. It is in the main a rearranged and on the whole improved Mondino, but amplified by reference to translations from Galen, Rhazes, Haly Abbas, and Avicenna. Guy de Chauliac has perhaps also been used. The work gives a general impression of being the product of a practical dissector, and it provides us with a good example of early Renaissance anatomy as taught in the Italian schools before the reforms of Vesalius. It is perhaps the first complete treatise on its subject written originally in the vernacular.[184] It exhibits, however, no other original features nor any considerable departures from its sources, and it may be taken to represent, with but little modification, the tradition of Mondino as developed at his own University of Bologna at the end of the fifteenth century.

Manfredi’s work, however, if not original is at least eclectic, and the variety of its sources indicates a dawning consciousness of the unwisdom of trusting to the infallibility of any one writer. The work is thus in a sense intermediate between the early printed versions of Mondino, such as that of 1478, and the edition published in 1528 by Berengario da Carpi with its frank commentary of the master. All represent stages towards the freedom of the later Renaissance investigators.

We reproduce the text in full, and the passages on the head, on the eye, and on the heart, are rendered into English. All are similar to the accounts of Mondino. We are able to illustrate them by figures from contemporary works, and thus to give an idea of the limits of the anatomical knowledge of the day.

V. TRANSLATION OF SELECTED PASSAGES FROM THE ANATOMY, WITH COMMENTARY

(_a_) THE HEAD

Tractate i, Chapter 2

(folio 5 verso) There are ten layers of the head.

The _first_ is the _hair_ made by nature for the better protection of the head from external things, and also for beauty.

The _second_ part is the _skin_, which has here to be very thick, so that the hair may be firmly embedded, having its roots thick and long; and also to be a better shield and covering for the bone and brain, since there is no muscular part here.

The _third_ part is the _flesh_, developed only on the face, the temples, and about the jaws, not on the other parts.

The _fourth_ part is an external membrane called _almochatim_ [Arabian term for cranial periosteum] which, when the skin is raised, appears to be continuous and covers the whole cranium. And nature made this membrane firstly so that the skin which is soft should not come into contact with the hard bone, secondly that the bone of the head should have sensation through it, and thirdly that the internal membrane of the head, called _dura mater_, should, by means of this membrane, be attached to the bone of the cranium by certain nerves and ligaments. These, issuing through the commissures of the bones, have thus their origin in the aforesaid internal membrane, while on emerging through the bone, they weave themselves into or rather compose the external membrane called _almochatim_.

The _fifth_ part is the _skull_. This is a bone like a cap, inside the cavity of which is located the brain. In the skull are four bones sutured together. Nature made the skull not of one but of many pieces, firstly, so that if harm should fall on one part it might not spread to the others; secondly, so that by their joints or rather sutures [Italian _cusiture_=sewings], the humours of the brain might be the better exhaled; and thirdly, so that when there is need of applying medicines, these might the better penetrate to the parts within.

Hence it is that four pieces of bone are sutured and joined together by nature in a denticulate fashion, so that they might be the firmer and stronger. Nor are they bound with ligaments as are the joints, for these would not have been so strong, and furthermore the bones of the head do not need to move.

These sutures are five in number, three being true and two false. The true sutures are those which pass right through the bone, while the false do not. Of the true sutures one is in the anterior part and is called _coronal_; it is made like the letter C, and stretches from right to left of the head, the two wings of the C being directed towards the forehead. The second true suture extends along the length of the head, beginning from the coronal and reaching the back part of the head. It is like a shaft or rather arrow that goes backwards from the brow, wherefore it is called _sagittal_ ----(. The third true suture is in the posterior part and is called laudal, for it is made like a Λ, the letter called by the Greeks _lauda_. The sagittal suture extends from the coronal to the lauda ❯----(.

The false sutures are two, one on each side. They are called _cortical_ because they do not penetrate.

Now if we consider these five sutures we shall see that there are four bones articulated together. One is the forehead bone [frontal] which begins at the coronal and ends below at another suture, which itself begins as a branch of the coronal suture and proceeds by way of the eyebrow to the corresponding branch [of the other side] Ɑ.

A second bone is behind and terminates at the laudal suture. There are two other bones which form the temples. These terminate at the false sutures which themselves begin at the laudal and end at the coronal suture.

The _sixth_ part [of the head] consists of two membranes. One of these is called _dura mater_, and lies in contact with the cranium. The other is called _pia mater_ and is in contact with and covers the brain. And nature contrived it thus, having great solicitude for this latter member, that while close to the bone, it should yet not be touched by it. Wherefore, taking due precautions, she made the one [membrane] harder than the other. Furthermore she made two membranes, so that if harm befell one of them, it might not be communicated to the underlying brain.

In the _pia mater_ are woven certain veins by which the brain is nourished. [The brain is] everywhere covered by it except on the posterior part; because this part being dry, it has no need of this membrane, as have the anterior and middle parts. The two membranes in many places penetrate the substance of the brain, dividing it into a right and a left, a front and a back section. By this division, divers cells or rather small chambers are made therein, in which the soul (_anima_) performs its divers operations, for which reason it is necessary that these parts should be of different structure.

When the two membranes are raised, the _seventh_ part of the head, namely the brain itself, appears. The brain is wrought by nature so that the _vital spirit_ from the torrid heart should be tempered by its cold, for here it is converted into _animal spirit_, which is the beginning of the perceptive (_cognoscitiue_) and motive processes.

The brain is of a substance like marrow, white, soft, and viscous, and from it the nerves arise. The anterior part is moister, softer, and less cold than the posterior because the senses [_sentimenti_ = senses + mental processes], which are themselves moist and soft, have here their origin. In the posterior part the motor nerves arise, and it is therefore drier and firmer.

The brain is divided into three parts or ventricles. The first ventricle or anterior part is itself divided into two, right and left, and is moreover larger than any of the other ventricles, for in this first ventricle nature has placed the two faculties subservient to perception (_al cognoscere_). One of these is called _common sensation_ (_senso comune_); in it the external senses terminate as at a centre and deliver the _images_ or rather _species_ of sensible things, so that this faculty may perceive and distinguish between one sensible thing and another, and also comprehend the operations of particular senses; which two things none of these [senses of themselves can do]. The other faculty of the first ventricle is called _fantasia_ and by some _imagination_; it retains and preserves the _species_ of sensible things in the absence of the material objects themselves.

When thou examinest the first ventricle thou wilt see three things before thou comest to the second ventricle.

[_a_] The first is itself double, and is formed of the very substance of the brain, so that it forms the base of the anterior ventricle both right and left [= corpora striata].

[_b_] To the side of this is another thing like a subterranean worm, red as blood, yet tethered by certain ligaments and nervelets [= choroid plexus and taenia semicircularis]. And this worm when it lengthens itself closes these passages, and thus blocks the path between the first ventricle and the second. Nature has wrought it thus, so that when a man wills he may cease from cogitation and thought; and similarly when, on the other hand, he would think and contemplate, this worm contracts itself again and opens these passages and thus frees the way between one ventricle and another.

[_c_] The third structure is a little lower and is a _lacuna_ or rounded concavity [= infundibulum]. In the middle of this is a hole which passes down towards the palate, and this lacuna provides also a direct passage which descends from the middle ventricle to its _colature_ [= sieve-like structure, i.e. certain parts of the sphenoid bone]. And this lacuna has around it certain large round eminences which support the veins and arteries that ascend to the ventricle. This passage is wide above and narrow below, and by it the first and second ventricles purge themselves of their superfluities, but the anterior part [of the first ventricle] purges itself more by the colature of the nose [= cribriform plate]. Thus nature has made two passages to cleanse the superfluities of the brain.

When thou hast seen these three structures there will appear the second or middle ventricle which is as a passage and transit from the anterior to the posterior ventricle. Here are two faculties. One, the _estimative_, deduces [Italian _elicere_] the insensible from the sensible. The other, called the _cognitive_, comprehends both things sensible and things insensible, synthesizing and analysing them (_componendo e dividendo_). These [two] faculties in the middle ventricle minister to the intellect. Now all the other faculties described, and even the power of memory, are found in brute animals, but this [intellectual power] is encountered in man alone.