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An Edition of Richart Eudes's French Translation of Pietro da Eboli's De balneis puteolanis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Michael Hanly
Michael Hanly*
Affiliation:
Washington State University / CNRS-UMR 9963, Paris
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Extract

In the final decades of the fourteenth and first few years of the fifteenth centuries, scions of the second house of Anjou engaged in what can only be described as an obsession with the conquest of the “Kingdom of Naples and Sicily.” The story of this ultimately futile quest provides one of the more colorful chapters in late-medieval political history, cutting across national and religious boundaries in its recounting of transalpine invasions by massive armies, papal plot and counterplot, betrayal, and only momentary glory. For all the French money and lives lost in the enterprise, almost nothing remains today to remind the world of what happened in southern Italy at that time.

Type
Articles
Information
Traditio , Volume 51 , 1996 , pp. 225 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by Fordham University 

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References

1 Research for this edition was made possible by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Fulbright research grant. I would also like to thank Washington State University for providing computer equipment, and the members of research unit UMR 9963 of the Centre national de recherches scientifiques in Villejuif, France, especially Gilbert Ouy, for their generous help.Google Scholar

An abundance of scholarship from both early and recent times makes it unnecessary to repeat here the background to Pietro da Eboli and his poem. The text was completely and competently edited by Jean Marie d’Amato, “Prolegomena to a Critical Edition of the Illustrated Medieval Poem De balneis terre laboris by Peter of Eboli (Petrus de Ebulo)” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1975), but this edition [hereafter cited as d’Amato] unfortunately remains unpublished. More recently, Raymond Clark, J. discussed the textual tradition of the Latin poem in “Peter of Eboli, De Balneis Puteolanis: Manuscripts from the Aragonese Scriptorium in Naples,” Traditio 45 (1989–90): 380–88, and promised a new edition. Giorgio Rialdi and Giovanni Obinu, M. (Alcadino: “De balneis puteolanis” [XII secolo] [Pisa, 1967]) published an incomplete version of the Latin text (based on Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana Cod. 1.6 inf.) with a modern Italian translation; their edition, however, presents only a minimum of commentary, and is flawed by its attribution of the poem to “Alcadinus.” This issue had been settled definitively by Huillard, A.-Bréholles, “Notice sur le véritable auteur du poème De balneis puteolanis, et sur une traduction française inédite du même poëme,” Mémoires de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, 3rd series, 1 (1852): 334–53; he also dismisses earlier attributions to Eustachio da Matera. This misidentification took root in two early editions: Giovanni Elisio, in his Succincta instauratio de balneis totius Campaniae (Naples, 1519), presented a biography of Alcadinus that was incorporated into the large collection of works on the Neapolitan baths, De balneis omnia quae extant apud Graecos, Latinos, et Arabastam medicos quam quoscunque ceterarum artium probatos scriptores … (Venice, 1553), 43–51. D’Amato (44–45) fully documents the history of the poem's disputed authorship.Google Scholar

The abundant illuminations in 12 of the 25 extant manuscripts of the De balneis have made them the subject of a number of published facsimiles: Angela Daneu-Lattanzi, ed., Petrus de Ebulo, Nomina et virtutes balneorum seu De balneis Puteolorum et Baiarum (Codice Angelico 1474), 2 vols. [1. intro.; 2. facsimile] (Rome, 1962); Pietro da Eboli, De virtutibus balneorum: seu, De balneis Puteolorum et Baiarum [facsimile of Biblioteca Angelica Manuscript 1474] (Editions Medicina Rara, 1979); and Petrus de Ebulo, De Balneis Puteolanis (sec. XV), 2 vols. [1. Latin text, Italian and English translations; 2. facsimile of Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana Cod. 1.6 inf.] (Milan, 1987). The most thorough study of the illuminations is Claus Michael Kauffmann, The Baths of Pozzuoli; A Study of the Medieval Illuminations of Peter of Eboli's Poem (Oxford, 1959) [hereafter cited as Kauffmann].Google Scholar

2 I pursue these matters at greater length in an essay now in circulation, “Courtiers and Poets: An International Network of Literary Exchange in Late-Fourteenth-Century Europe.”Google Scholar

3 Previous studies have mainly concentrated upon the iconographical significance of the manuscript's abundant and remarkable unfinished illuminations. See most notably Kauffmann, 75–78 and plates 43–46, and Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der italienische Zeichnungen 1300–1450, Teil I, Süd- und Mittelitalien (Berlin, 1968), 174. Comments on the paintings in an unpublished study, Elisabeth Remak, M., “An Edition of the Illustrated French Translation of Peter of Eboli's De Balneis (Paris, BNF MS. fr. 1313)” (M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1977), mainly follow Kauffmann. Remak's transcription of the French text, which is usually accurate, came to my attention after I had completed my decipherment and edition.Google Scholar

4 The most complete and authoritative account is in Noël Valois, La France et le grand schisme de l’Occident, 4 vols. (Paris, 1896; reprint Hildesheim, 1967), 2:167–74. See also Michele Manfredi, ed., I Diurnali del Duca di Monteleone, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores new series 21.5 (Bologna, 1958), 58–62. The episode is discussed as well by Francesco Sabatini, Napoli angioina: Cultura e Società (Naples, 1965), 201–202, in the context of contacts between French and Italian culture at the Angevin court of Naples.Google Scholar

5 Léopold Delisle (Le Cabinet des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impériale, 2 vols. [Paris, 1868], 1:55, n. 11) observes that “Le no. 1313 du fonds français est un manuscrit inachevé qui renferme la traduction d'un traité sur les bains faite pour Louis II.” Apparently misreading this entry, Alfred Coville (“Les princes angevins,” chap. 1 in La vie intellectuelle dans les domaines d’Anjou-Provence, 1380–1435 [Paris, 1941], 33–34) claims that the manuscrit was among the books in Louis II's private collection, which would have been contained in the “petit conptouer” that served as the library mentioned in the French translation of Boccaccio's Il Filostrato by Beauvau (see Michael Hanly, Boccaccio, Beauvau, and Chaucer: “Troilus and Criseyde”: Four Perspectives on Influence [Norman, Okla., 1990], 136 n.). Delisle does indeed mention three other manuscripts belonging to Louis II, but in the note refers to fr. 1313 as a copy of a poem made for Louis II, nowhere claiming that this particular copy had been part of the duke's collection.Google Scholar

6 Wickersheimer, Ernest, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au moyen âge, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1979), 2:700, provides a brief but well-documented biographical entry on Richart Eudes.Google Scholar

7 Denifle, H. and Chatelain, E., Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894), 3:265.Google Scholar

8 Paris, BNF fr. 5015, Journal of Jean le Fèvre, fol. 49v (ed. Moranvillé, H., Journal de Jean le Fèvre, évêque de Chartres et chancelier des rois de Sicile Louis I et II d’Anjou, 1380–1388 [Paris, 1887], 97): “Ce jour arriva maistre Richart Eudes maistre en medecine que Madame avoit mande pour estre en ce voiage avec elle.”Google Scholar

9 BNF fr. 5015, Journal of Jean le Fèvre, fol. 108r (ed. Moranvillé, 247): “Ce jour je baillé à maistre Richard le medicin du mien L francs pour Madame, ainssi comme promis li avoie. Et le vendredi ensuivant il parti pour aler soi faire maistrier en medecine à Montpellier.”Google Scholar

10 Vat., Archivio Segreto, Registrum supplicationum 96 (Benedict XIII), fol. 2r (16 October 1403): Eudes, already a canon at the cathedral of St.-Laud in Angers, seeks a better benefice in Le Mans. My thanks to Dr. Gabriella Parussa for this information.Google Scholar

11 The De balneis describes the baths as being able to cure gout, infertility, kidney stones, various skin diseases and digestive disorders, as well as maladies of the eyes, lungs, spleen, and liver. For a general discussion of medieval balneological treatments, the scientific value of Pietro da Eboli's pronouncements, medieval textual sources for his medical knowledge, and specific analyses of the poem's presentation of diverse illnesses, see d’Amato, 1–15 and 77–119.Google Scholar

12 The poor condition of this binding in 1994 (fol. “0” attached by a single stitch) challenges Kauffmann's observation (75) that the manuscript was last rebound in 1941.Google Scholar

13 D’Amato provides extended commentaries only for the Prologue (459–71) and the baths Sudatoria and Foris Cripte (see nn. 17 and 27 below).Google Scholar

14 In ancient times terra laboris was used alongside the geographical name Campania. See d’Amato, 6, for the history of this name.Google Scholar

15 See the reiteration of this theme in Eudes's conclusion (XXXIV.57–63), as well as in the Prologue, lines 26–30.Google Scholar

16 I.e., Pouzzoles (Pozzuoli).Google Scholar

17 This ancient sweating bath is the “Stufe di San Germano” at Agnano; the site has been identified with that of the modern Terme di Agnano. See d’Amato's extended discussion (471–500). Information on the names of the baths given in these notes comes from Kauffmann, 15–18, unless otherwise specified.Google Scholar

18 The scribe here clearly has bonte, which makes no sense and ignores the possible rhyme with degoute. This is one of only two poems in the collection (the other being the Prologue) which is not in rhymed couplets, and even here the emendation to boute (se bouter: to push, throw oneself; see X.14 for another use of the verb) violates the “abab” or “rime croisée” scheme that has been observed up to this point. But since a similar “abba” or “rime embrassée” quatrain occurs at 1.9–12 as well, it seems clear that the scribe has erred and that the emendation is acceptable.Google Scholar

19 An extremely elongated horizontal “s” here covers up what appears to be an erasure.Google Scholar

20 Situated at the foot of the Mons Solfatara. A number of gynecological diseases are listed in this poem, which accounts for the fact that the bathers in the manuscript illuminations to this folio are exclusively female.Google Scholar

21 Pour is inserted above in the original hand, with a caret below the line.Google Scholar

22 Near the volcanic Mons Bulla.Google Scholar

23 Situated near the crater bearing that name.Google Scholar

24 The name is derived from the rushes (iunci) that surrounded it.Google Scholar

25 “Balneum Plagae sive Balneolum”: the name may be identified with the modern Bagnoli.Google Scholar

26 A sign above the “r” in tritici indicates a comment, in the same hand, that appears in right margin. D’Amato (395) points out that the same marginal note appears in another manuscript, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library Cod. Glazier 74 (olim St. Gallen, Library of Mettler, A.-Bener, no. 2497, the designation used by Kauffmann).Google Scholar

27 This bath was near the exit of the Posillipo Grotto, and the name derives from the tunnels (cryptae) which were cut through Monte Posillipo. Extended discussion in d’Amato, 503–14.Google Scholar

28 An eruption of Monte Olibano may have left a large amount of broken stone lying on the sand, which could account for the name; the site is still called La Pietra, and has a modern bath.Google Scholar

29 Translates petrosos, “those afflicted with stones.”Google Scholar

30 The name is derived from the nearby Monte di Calatura.Google Scholar

31 A modern bathing establishment is found on this site, about a half mile from Pozzuoli.Google Scholar

32 The name is supposed to refer to an ancient chapel dedicated to this saint. Charles Dubois (Pouzzoles antique [histoire et topographie] [Paris, 1907], 343) claimed to have seen some vestiges of the chapel, but Kauffmann (15) says they are no longer discernible.Google Scholar

33 The name was derived from the cup-like shape of the fountain that provided the water for the bath (Greek κάνθαρος, Latin cantharus). See Erasmo Percopo's edition of the early Neapolitan translation of the De balneis (I Bagni di Pozzuoli: poemetto napolitano del sec. XIV [Naples, 1887]), 652 n.Google Scholar

34 la is inserted, above a caret, in the original hand.Google Scholar

35 Balneum Ciceronis seu Prati: that bath was thought to have been situated in the garden of Cicero's villa near Lake Lucrino.Google Scholar

36 Here, as in I.13 (as in note 19 above), the scribe has completed the word with an exaggerated horizontal stroke representing “s”; here, however, the move is inexplicable, there being no apparent evidence of erasure. The abbreviation in the next word (p[ro]ffite) seems curious, if the purpose of the long “s” was to fill a space.Google Scholar

37 Tripergula was a large village where the Angevin Charles II founded a hospital in 1298/1299. The name comes from the shape of the bath, tres pergulae. The titulus at Tripergula indicates that this and eight other baths in the region of Lake Avernus were buried or destroyed in the eruption of Monte Nuovo on September 29, 1538. See Giulio Cesare Capaccio, La vera antichità di Pozzuolo (Rome, 1652), 164. Lake Avernus was the most popular location for the entrance to the underworld in classical literature (e.g. Aeneid 6.237–63); the tradition survived into the Middle Ages, and Christ is sometimes described as entering Limbo at Lake Avernus. See Kroll, J., Gott und Hölle, der Mythos vom Descensuskampfe, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 20 (Leipzig, 1932), 141–44. Cited in Kauffmann, 52.Google Scholar

38 This marginal comment is in a tiny and very untidy contemporary (or nearly contemporary) hand; I am grateful to Gilbert Ouy for help in this decipherment, which is in part conjectural.Google Scholar

39 Capaccio (La vera antichità, 164) believed the name was derived from the shape of the bath, but Kauffmann (16) feels this derivation could apply to most of the baths, and that the name could be connected with the Arco Felice between Cuma and Lake Avernus.Google Scholar

40 This bath, just next to Arcus, was destroyed along with it in the eruption of 1538.Google Scholar

41 The word aquas ends with an elongated “s,” as in note 19.Google Scholar

42 Balneum de Ferri: the name is most likely connected with the high levels of iron in the water. The bath has been identified with the Acqua di Capone, which was still in use in the eighteenth century. The text describes an impressive ruin — probably the building known in the Renaissance as the Temple of Apollo — near the house of the Sibyl on Lake Avernus; the house also appears in the accompanying miniature.Google Scholar

43 A sign over et in ephetat indicates the comment, in the same hand, that appears in right margin. D’Amato (426) notes it as occurring at this place in the margins of three other manuscripts: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library Cod. Glazier 74; BNF lat. 8161; and Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana I.6 inf.Google Scholar

44 This bath was located at the foot of the Sudatorium Trituli (see note 46 below).Google Scholar

45 The bath was situated between the Sudatorium Trituli and Baia.Google Scholar

46 Pietro da Eboli's poem about the Sudatorium Trituli was either ignored by Eudes or missing in his source manuscript. This was perhaps the largest of the baths, and was in use up to the nineteenth century. Kauffmann (17) notes that earlier writers described a Balneum Trituli just next to the Sudatorium Trituli. The one mentioned here is clearly a bath and not a sudatorium, however, since the poem claims its waters heal every day (9–10), as contrasted with the annual miracle at the pool of Bethesda (Bessayda; Vulgate Betsaida) in Jerusalem (John 5:2–5).Google Scholar

47 In some manuscripts this bath is known as Balneum Sanctae Mariae. Google Scholar

48 A sign above the “c” in corpore refers to the comment, in the same hand, that appears in the right margin.Google Scholar

49 The manuscript is damaged here and very difficult to decipher even under UV light, but the first letter of the word is most likely “m” and the adverb mie[x] (“better”) is required by the Latin context (pauot = triste papauer aqua) as well as the previous rhyme.Google Scholar

50 As the poem informs us, the bath was named for the many doves that nested there.Google Scholar

51 This bath is the last in a group between Lake Lucrino and the Sudatorium Trituli. Google Scholar

52 Kauffmann (17) observes that “For this name Capaccio [n. 37 above, 182] produces what must surely be his most far-fetched derivation, from a corruption of the Greek κατὰ (underground).”Google Scholar

53 The bath was said to yield water containing petroleum.Google Scholar

54 Also known as Balneum imperatoris, probably because the sun and moon play an important role in imperial iconography (see Kauffmann, 53–54).Google Scholar

55 A sign links the word in the text to a marginal comment in the same hand.Google Scholar

56 Capaccio (La vera antichità, 207) explains the name as deriving from the bath's curative power over gout, from which bishops (whose otiose lifestyle is here mildly lampooned) were known to suffer. Paciaudi, P. M. (De sacris Christianorum balneis [Rome, 1758], 49–50) observes that this bath was mainly for the use of bishops.Google Scholar

57 The poet makes no attempt to explain the name of this bath; it could derive from a diminutive of Latin bracchium, “arm.”Google Scholar

58 The shape of the bath apparently gives it its name: from the Latin gibbus (“hump”).Google Scholar

59 Latin for “cave” or “cavern.”Google Scholar

60 Here the author refers to the three poems he has written Ce saris ad laudem: the Carmen de motibus siculis, an account of the conflict between Henry VI and Tancred (ed. Ettore Rota, De rebus siculis carmen, Rerum Italicarum scriptores 31.1 [Citta di Castello, 1904]), the Mira Frederici gesta, apparently a lost collection of the deeds of Frederick Barbarossa (and not Frederick II: see d’Amato, 49); and the De balneis puteolanis. Google Scholar

61 This bath was situated on the shore of Lake Avernus, near the great bath known as the Temple of Apollo.Google Scholar

62 The sense is unclear; if the very clear macron over the “u” is a mistake, the reading purement is possible.Google Scholar

63 Kauffmann (16–17), citing Bellucci, P. A., “Conquiste idroliche nei Campi Flegrei e in altre zone d'Italia dall'avento del christianesimo, e le Terme Subveni Homini a Pozzuoli,” Atti del XIX Congresso … (Naples, 1927), 87, notes that the Balneum Crucis — like the Fons Episcopi — had been thought to be a liturgical bath used before the vigils of the great Church festivals in the early Christian period.Google Scholar

64 Although a comment in the Prologue proclaiming the baths available to all free of charge — “Vos igitur, quibus est nullius gutta metalli, / Querite, que gratis auxiliantur, aquas” — suggests a contrast with the fees doctors charged for healing, the Latin text does not mentions the avarice of doctors or, specifically, the wicked physicians of Salerno. Eudes, however, takes pains to recount the whole story here in his excipit. Giovanni Antonio Summonte, Historia della città e regno di Napoli … (Naples, 1675), 2:543, presents a document prepared by the notary Dionisio de Sarno 3 Feb. 1409, claiming that Ladislas (the prince who had chased Louis II of Anjou from Naples ten years before) owned a block of marble found at Pozzuoli at the place called Le tre colonne that bore an inscription in Latin telling of three doctors being lost at sea after having obliterated the inscriptions giving medical information on the baths:Google Scholar

Ser Antonius Sulimelia, Ser Philippus

Capograssus, Ser Hector de Procita

Famosissimi medici Salernitati supra

Parvam navim ab ipsa civitate

Salerni Puteolos transfretaverunt cum

Ferreis instrumentis, inscriptiones

balneorum virtutes [indicantes] deleverunt

et cum reverterentur, fuerunt

Cum navi miraculose summersi.

Gervase of Tilbury (ca. 1190) mentions these tituli and recounts the legend of the punishment of the physicians in Otia imperiala, ad Ottonem IV imperatorem, cap. 15, in Leibniz, G. W., ed., Scriptores rerum brunsvicensium, 1:965. Petrarch (Epistola de rebus familiaribus 5.4) displays his awareness of the celebrity of the baths, their tituli and accompanying statues, as well as the incident of the Salernitan doctors: “Post medicorum invidia, ut memorant, confusa balnea … Vidi … perforatos montes atque suspensos testudinibus marmoreis eximio candore fulgentibus, et insculptas imagines quis latex, cui corporis faveat, manu apposita designantes….” For details see Huillard-Bréholles (349–50), d’Amato (97–103, 468–71), and Kauffmann (59–62).Google Scholar