Dorothea Heitsch

At the crossroads of translation, cultural exchange, humanistic rhetoric, the medical schools of Italy and France, printing, and transnational conversations, Opera Mesuae represents a paradigm of Renaissance medical anthropology. In comparing a number of entries by Giovanni Manardo and Jacques Dubois (Sylvius), I propose to situate this work in the quarrel of the simples aimed at reassessing the contributions of the Arab world to early modern science and medicine. Au carrefour de la traduction, de l’echange culturel, de la rhetorique humaniste, des facultes de medecine en Italie et en France, de l’imprimerie et des conversations transnationales, Opera Mesuae represente un paradigme de l’anthropologie medicale de la Renaissance. En comparant un certain nombre d’entrees de Giovanni Manardo et Jacques Dubois (Sylvius), je me propose de situer cette œuvre dans la querelle des simples visant a reevaluer les contributions du monde arabe a la science et a la medecine de la premiere modernite.

In Jean Bodin’s Colloquium Heptaplomeres seven interlocutors come together in the house of Paulus Coronaeus in Venice. They represent seven different faiths and world views: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Judaism, Islam, Deism or Naturalism, and a syncretic faith tied to philosophical skepticism. The meeting’s participants all debate religion and even whether such debate should be allowed. Bodin develops the character of Octavius Fagnola, the former Catholic converted to Islam, according to a wealth of sources including an Islamic debate tradition that is known as munāẓara. The role of Octavius has important implications for the meaning of Bodin’s work as well as for Renaissance dialogue in general.

At the crossroads of translation, cultural exchange, humanistic rhetoric, the medical schools of Italy and France, printing, and transnational conversations, Opera Mesuae represents a paradigm of Renaissance medical anthropology. In comparing a number of entries by Giovanni Manardo and Jacques Dubois (Sylvius), I propose to situate this work in the quarrel of the simples aimed at reassessing the contributions of the Arab world to early modern science and medicine.

René Descartes (1596-1650) insisted on a heat and light theory to explain cardiac movement, and used concepts such as distillation of the vital spirits, fermentation in the digestive process, and fermentation in the circulation of the blood. I argue that his theory of the body as a heat-exchange system was based on alchemical and natural philosophical notions of fire and light expounded by precursors and contemporaries who included Jean D'Espagnet, Jean Fernel, Jan Baptist van Helmont, and Andreas Libavius. Descartes endeavoured to mechanise their approaches, creating a theory in which fire and heat, a legacy from thermal explanations of physiology, were transformed into alchemical fire, and then into mechanistic or physicalist heat.

The Essays contain a number of well-known gems with regard to early modern medical knowledge (II, 37), healthy living (III, 13), and death and dying (I, 20). That Montaigne treats notions concerning health, sickness, and potential cures as interpretable opinions and considers all medical belief as dependent on individual corporeal and mental givens has been less discussed. That these givens are grounded in notions of a material soul and a thinking body, due to a reversal of hierarchies that is prevalent in the essayist’s writing, is less known. This chapter shows how Montaigne assesses personal health and sickness and the means he suggests to preserve good health. The essayist’s interest in one particularly common medical practice–purging–is reviewed within the context of humoral theory. A discussion of death and dying, as exemplified in the passing of family members and the author’s best friend Étienne de La Boétie, ending in Montaigne’s thoughts concerning suicide, the afterlife, and his own approaching end, ensues.

In Jean Bodin’s Colloquium Heptaplomeres seven interlocutors come together in the house of Paulus Coronaeus in Venice. They represent seven different faiths and world views: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Judaism, Islam, Deism or Naturalism, and a syncretic faith tied to philosophical skepticism. The meeting’s participants all debate religion and even whether such debate should be allowed. Bodin develops the character of Octavius Fagnola, the former Catholic converted to Islam, according to a wealth of sources including an Islamic debate tradition that is known as munāẓara. The role of Octavius has important implications for the meaning of Bodin’s work as well as for Renaissance dialogue in general.

In this study, D. Heitsch examines fifteenth- to seventeenth-century French authors who treat writing as a process of medication and whose literary production effectively yields a therapeutic substance. Through reference to Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Ficino, and advocates of alternatives to Western medicine such as John Mesue and Leone Ebreo, these writers emphasize the material/gendered soul and the role of the body in cognitive functions, illustrating knowledge as a result of physical interaction.

The study explores Hélisenne de Crenne alongside the ‘pneumo-physiology’ of Galen and the ‘dolce stil novo’, Rabelaisian anatomy together with the anti-Arabist Champier, and debates among natural philosophical poets on the transmigration of souls. The author also considers Marie de Gournay in relation to Juan Huarte’s humoral theory and Jean d’Espagnet’s alchemical philosophy, as well as Michel de Montaigne’s interest in Jacques Dubois’s Arab-influenced approaches to medicine.