ARNALDO da VILLANOVA. — Lay physician and theologian, prolific Catalan writer, born around the middle of the thirteenth century in the diocese of Valencia, died at Genoa on 6 September 1311. He studied medicine at Montpellier, where for six months he also attended theology lectures given by the Dominicans. He also studied Arabic and Hebrew, but distinguished himself above all in medicine, to such an extent that he became physician to the kings of Aragon and Sicily, and to Popes Boniface VIII and Clement V. missions. He used this position to propagate nebulous eschatological ideas and to promote reforming plans inspired by a false spiritualism, theories he cherished all the more because he believed he had received from divine revelation the mission of announcing to the world that the Antichrist had already been born. While serving in 1299–1301 as ambassador of James II of Aragon in Paris, he was repudiated by that university and imprisoned. He suffered the same fate in Rome under Boniface VIII and in Perugia under Benedict XI. After his death, several of his writings were condemned by the Inquisition of Tarragona (1316). He was also a protector of the Catalan «beghini» and of the Franciscan spirituals of Provence, whom he defended in his pamphlets. His good faith seems beyond doubt.
His medical writings were published in incomplete editions at Lyon (1504), Paris (1509), Venice (1514), and Basel (1585). A good collection of his theological works is found in cod. Vatic. lat. 3824, from which Finke (v. bibliografia) published several of them. Other writings are scattered here and there in manuscripts and editions. Some exist in Latin and Catalan.