Hieronymus Muenzer and other fifteenth century bibliophiles / [Ernst Philip Goldschmidt].

  • Ernst Philip Goldschmidt
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hieronymus Muenzer and other fifteenth century bibliophiles / [Ernst Philip Goldschmidt]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    494 THE BULLETIN fifteen or twenty that fall in this period. There is an Avicenna “Canon”, 1473, a Saliceto of 1476, two works of his teacher Guainerius: “De Febribnsand “De Matricibus” 1474, the “Pandecta Medicinae” of Svivaticus. The “ Antidot avium” of Falcutius, bound with the Albucasis, both printed by Jenson in 1471, are now in the Boston Medical Library. But even then Muenzer did not by any means confine himself to medical books. 1 here are his Juvenal of 1474, with extremely amusing marginal notes, now in the Yale University Library; a Lucan; a Quintilian; a Diogenes Laertius; a Sallust; the “Cosmography” of Aeneas Sylvius. His first book of all, perhaps, is the Aristotle, uDe AmmalibusVenice 1476,011 which he made this vivid entry recording its acquisition: “In the year of the Lord 1476, in the last days of December, when we celebrate the birth of our Saviour and indulge in all sorts of games and pastimes, I obtained this very fine book at cards and dice. By the kindness of certain noble students of the German nation who were then studying in the faculty of Civil Law in the famous University of Pavia, at the time when Galeazzo Maria, Duke of Milan, the fifth to hold the tyranny in that principality, was killed by the dagger of a poor devil at Milan.*' Immediately after leaving Pavia, the newly promoted M.D., again no doubt through the influence of his pupil, Tetzel, obtained permission to settle and practise at Nuernberg, and the appointment as one of the “Physici” of the city of Nuernberg, which I suppose corresponded to something we in England call, “Medical Officer of Health.” \\ e happen to have one of Muenzer’s official reports to the City Council, made within a year of his establishment, when he gave his opinion on their enquiry whether the practise of using sulphur to clarify wine was detrimental and whether it should be prohibited. Muenzer’s consilium, dated 27 October 1479, makes a great display of quotations from two dozen authorities, from Galenus and Avicenna to Gordonius and Arnoldus de Villanova, and leaves the question open. It has been preserved for us through the zeal of his friend, Hartmann Schedel (of whom more anon) in a Munich manuscript, codex latvnus monacensis 456. In 1480, Muenzer got married, and his only child, his daughter Dorothea, in 1499 became the wife of that Hieronymus Holzschuher whose honest face is familiar to so many people, because his portrait by Albrecht Durer is one of the best known pictures in the world. In 1483, a serious outbreak of the plague overwhelmed Nuernberg,