medicines were derived from the vegetable kingdom,
and as they were chiefly those recommended by Galen,
they were, and still are, called by his name.
Many important mineral medicines were introduced by
the Arabians, particularly mercury, antimony, iron,
etc. There were in addition scores of substances,
the parts or products of animals, some harmless, others
salutary, others again useless and disgusting.
Minor surgery was in the hands of the barbers, who
performed all the minor operations, such as bleeding;
the more important operations, few in number, were
performed by surgeons.
At this period astrology, which included astronomy,
was everywhere taught. In the “Gouernaunce
of Prynces, or Pryvete of Pryveties,” translated
by James Yonge, 1422,(26) there occurs the statement:
“As Galian the lull wies leche Saith and Isoder
the Gode clerk, hit witnessith that a man may not
perfitely can the sciens and craft of Medissin but
yef he be an astronomoure.”
(26) Early English Text
Society, Extra Series, No. LXXIV, p. 195,
1898; Secreta Secretorum,
Rawl. Ms. B., 490.
We have seen how the practice of astrology spread
from Babylonia and Greece throughout the Roman Empire.
It was carried on into the Middle Ages as an active
and aggressive cult, looked upon askance at times
by the Church, but countenanced by the courts, encouraged
at the universities, and always by the public.
In the curriculum of the mediaeval university, astronomy
made up with music, arithmetic and geometry the Quadrivium.
In the early faculties, astronomy and astrology were
not separate, and at Bologna, in the early fourteenth
century, we meet with a professorship of astrology.(27)
One of the duties of this salaried professor, was
to supply “judgements” gratis for the benefit
of enquiring students, a treacherous and delicate
assignment, as that most distinguished occupant of
the chair at Bologna, Cecco d’Ascoli, found
when he was burned at the stake in 1357, a victim of
the Florentine Inquisition.(28)
(27) Rashdall:
Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol.
I, p. 240.
(28) Rashdall, l.c.,
Vol. I, p. 244.—Rashdall also mentions
that
in the sixteenth century
at Oxford there is an instance of a
scholar admitted to
practice astrology. l.c., Vol. II, p. 458.
Roger Bacon himself was a warm believer in judicial
astrology and in the influence of the planets, stars
and comets on generation, disease and death.
