Arnold of Villanova

ARNOLD of VILLANOVA. - Lay physician and theologian, prolific Catalan writer, b. around the middle of the 13th century, in the diocese of Valencia, d. at Genoa on 6 September 1311. He studied medicine at Montpellier, where for six months he also attended theology lectures at the Dominicans. He also studied Arabic and Hebrew, but he distinguished himself above all in medicine, so much so that he was physician to the kings of Aragon and of Sicily, and to Popes Boniface VIII and Clement V. He taught medicine for some years at Montpellier and was also entrusted with diplomatic missions. He took advantage of this position of his to propagate nebulous eschatological ideas and to promote reform plans inspired by a false spiritualism, theories all the more cherished in that he believed he had received by divine revelation the mission of announcing to the world the already accomplished birth of the Antichrist. Being in 1299-1301 ambassador of James II of Aragon in Paris, that university repudiated his theories and had him imprisoned. The same fate befell him 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 undoubted.

His medical writings were published in incomplete editions at Lyon (1504), Paris (1509), Venice (1514) and Basel (1585). A good collection of the theological works is found in cod. Vatic. lat. 3824, from which Finke (v. bibliography) published several of them. Other writings are scattered here and there in codices and in editions. Some exist in Latin and in Catalan.

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