Daniel’s Sources for the Liber Uricrisiarum

“And a wise doctor ought to know many varied things…”

The sources cited most frequently in the Liber Uricrisiarum include some of the most influential and canonical authorities in medieval medicine: Hippocrates, Galen, Theophilus Protospatharius, Johannitius, Isaac Israeli, Avicenna, Constantine the African, Giles of Corbeil, Gilbert the Englishman, Thaddeus Alderotti, and several writers from the School of Salerno. Daniel might have encountered a number of these authors in the Articella, the anthology of texts required in medieval medical education. Others, though not in the core group of texts, often accompany that group in manuscripts or circulated together apart from the Articella.

In addition to these medical sources, Daniel also cites such authors and works as Aristotle, Isidore of Seville, Ptolemy, John of Sacrobosco, Albertus Magnus, Saints Augustine and Gregory, and the Bible; in the revised beta version of his treatise, he adds several more sources, including an entirely new chapter on leprosy drawn from Roger de Baron’s Practica medicine, and briefer references to Aristotle’s Ethics, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Comestor, the encyclopedist Bartholomew the Englishman, the Arabic astronomer al-Farghani, the English astronomer Richard of Wallingford, and others.

The following list gives all authors and works cited by Daniel in the alpha version, in decreasing frequency order. For authors or anonymous works cited more than once, the approximate number of citations (different manuscripts may add or subtract a few) is given in bold to the right of the author’s name and identification:

  • Gilbert the Englishman (Gilbertus Anglicus), physician and medical writer, c. 1180 – c. 1250  [42 citations]
    • Commentary on Giles of Corbeil’s Carmen de urinis
  • Isaac Israeli (Ishāq ibn Sulaymān al-Isrā’īlī), Jewish physician and philosopher, c. mid-9th to c. mid-10th century  [41 citations] 
    • Liber de urinis
    • Liber de febribus
  • Galen of Pergamon (including pseudonymous attributions), classical physician and prolific medical writer, c. 129 – 199 [28 citations]
    • Commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemic Diseases
    • Commentary on Hippocrates’ Prognostics
    • Commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms
    • (ps.-Galen) Liber anathomiarum (Book of Anatomies, Anatomies)
  • Hippocrates of Kos, classical physician and medical writer, 5th to 4th century BCE [25 citations]
    • Aphorisms
    • Prognostics
    • Epidemics
  • “The Commentor on Giles,” fl. 1200-1250 [16 citations]
    • Standard Commentary on Giles of Corbeil’s Carmen de urinis
  • Constantine the African (Constantinus Africanus), translator of Arabic medical works into Latin, d. c. 1087 [12 citations]
    • Book of Medicines (the Viaticum of ibn al-Jazzār, trans. by Constantine)
    • Antidotary
    • Book of Urines (probably Isaac Israeli’s De urinis, which was  translated by Constantine)
  • Giles of Corbeil (Gilles de Corbeil, Aegidius Corboliensis), Salerno-trained physician, professor of medicine at Montpellier and Paris, c. 1140 – d. by 1225 [9 citations]
    • Carmen de urinis
    • Carmen de pulsibus
  • Theophilus Protospatharius, Byzantine medical writer, ?7th cent. [9 citations] 
    • Liber de urinis
  • Bible (Holy Writ, Holy Scripture, Scriptures) [9 citations]
  • Aristotle, classical philosopher, 384-322 BCE [7 citations]
    • Metaphysics
    • Sophistical Refutations
    • The History of Animals
    • On the Heavens
  • Avicenna (Abū Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā), Persian physician and philosopher, 980-1037 [7 citations]
    • Canon of Medicine (not cited by name)
    • Book of Urines (from uroscopic sections of the Canon)
  • Claudius Ptolemy, classical astronomer, c. 100-170 [5 citations]
    • Almagest
  • Thaddeus Alderotti, Florentine-born physician and professor of medicine at the University of Bologna, c. 1210-1295 [4 citations]
  • Johannitius (Hunayn ibn Ishāq al-Ibādī), medical author and translator of Greek medical texts into Arabic, c. 809-873 [3 citations]
    • Isagoge in Tegni Galieni (Introduction to Galen’s Art of Medicine)
  • Isidore of Seville, early medieval encyclopedist, c. 560-636 [2 citations]
    • Etymologies
  • [Trotula of Salerno], ?11th century (misattributed to “Master Bartholomew”) [2 citations]
    • Liber geneciarum ( = Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum)
  • John of St. Paul (Johannes de Sancto Paulo), physician associated with the School of Salerno, 12th to early 13th century [2 citations]
    • Book of Physic Medicinal, ?Breviary of Medicine (Breviarium medicine)

Daniel cites each of the following authors and works only once in the alpha version of the Liber Uricrisiarum; for some of them, we have not yet identified the precise passage or work to which he is referring:

  • Albert the Great (On Precious Stones)
  • Alexander of Tralles (Alexander Trallianus)
  • Augustine of Hippo (Epistle to Jerome, an error for the treatise On Eighty-Three Various Questions)
  • Averroës
  • The Comment on the Lapidary
  • Walter Elvenden (Kalendarium)
  • Pope Gregory I (gloss on Leviticus 12)
  • Haly (Persectif)
  • Master Ferrarius of Salerno
  • “Master of the Compute” (John of Sacrobosco, De computo ecclesiastico)
  • “Master of the Mesondeu” (Petrus Musandinus)
  • Platearius of Salerno
  • “our” (i.e., Daniel’s own) Medicinary

Page header image: London, British Library, Harley MS 5311.