Appendix 2 - Friars as medical authors and compilers

Summary

This listing of works by friars is in order of date, though in many cases dates of writing are approximate or can only be estimated. It includes texts of medicine and those of related sciences like astrology and alchemy. It does not include collections of experimenta (i.e. those of John of St Giles, OP), or individual experiments and remedies attributed to friars in manuscripts (i.e. those of Richard Tenet, OC), nor a Franciscan remedy book (London, Wellcome MS 550).

The list leaves out two texts, probably the work of continental friars, which achieved a notable circulation in England from the late fourteenth-century onwards, the Liber de consideratione quintae essentiae of John of Rupescissa, and pseudo-Lull, De secretis nature.

The list does not include the wealth of works doubtfully or falsely ascribed to Roger Bacon. Examples from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries can be found in D. W. Singer and A. Anderson, Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland Dating from Before the XVI century, 3 vols. (Brussels, 1928–31), and are described in Dorothea Singer, ‘Alchemical writings attributed to Roger Bacon’, Speculum 7 (1932), 80–86. A. G. Little, ‘Roger Bacon's Works with References to the Mss. and Printed Editions’, in Little, ed., Roger Bacon Essays (Oxford, 1914), pp. 375–419, is still useful for both genuine and spuriously attributed writings.

Further detail on editions of the texts included in this list will be found within individual chapters of The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England . They can be looked up in the Index under author names or titles. In order of date, known or approximate.

Bartholomaeus Anglicus OFM, De proprietatibus rerum, c. 1240

John of St Giles OP, Experimenta, c. 1250

Roger Bacon OFM, Opus maius, 1266–7

Roger Bacon OFM, Opus minus, 1266–8

Roger Bacon OFM, Opus tertium, 1266–8

Roger Bacon OFM, Antidotarius, after 1267

Roger Bacon OFM, De erroribus medicorum, after 1267

Roger Bacon OFM, Secretum secretorum cum glossis et notulis, c. 1275–80

Roger Bacon OFM, Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de nullitate magiae, ?1280s