LEONICENO, NICOLò

(b. Vicenza, Italy, 1428; d. Ferrara, Italy, 9 June 1524),

medicine, philology. For the original article on Leoniceno see DSB, vol. 8.

In 1991, the catalogue of Nicolò Leoniceno’s library was brought to light, something that renewed interest in Leoniceno’s activity. Compared with earlier work, this new research emphasized epistemology, which opened new avenues for fresh research.

Leoniceno received in his youth a classical education that deeply influenced his activity, because of the emphasis put on philological rigor and a practical orientation: reading of classical texts aimed at knowing the things (res) referred to by the words, rather than the words themselves (verba).

In his collection of more than 300 volumes (manuscripts and printed), he had dictionaries, lexica, and philological works for a right understanding of texts, as well as ancient and medieval philosophical, medical (particularly Galen) and mathematical texts (above all, in Greek). The driving force behind the library was not collectionism or antiquarianism, but the attempt to renew science and knowledge, mainly by bringing to light previously unknown texts. To this end, Leoniceno collaborated actively with the printing activity of Aldo Manuzio in Venice by lending his manuscripts as models for printed editions and participating in the emendatio of texts. This he did with Aristotle (published in five volumes, 1495–1498), Dioscorides (1499), and Galen (published after his death, in 1525).

The epistemological and scientific principles underpinning Leoniceno’s teaching, scientific production and editorial activity were explicitly stated in his 1492 booklet De Plinii aliorumque in medicina erroribus. As the introductory letter by Angelo Poliziano suggests, Leoniceno’s principles were inspired by the method used by humanist-philologists to restore ancient texts. Best represented by Poliziano’s Centuriae, this method consisted of identifying the most ancient version of literary texts, correcting the mistakes resulting from hand-copying by means of a careful philological scrutiny and analysis, and eliminating all other possible transformations and additions introduced into the texts in successive accretions. Leoniceno transferred and adapted the method to scientific texts: On the basis of a comparison of classical Latin texts (mainly the books of Pliny’s Natural History devoted to botany and pharmacology), Salernitan and post-salernitan translations of Arabic medical works (especially pharmacological treatises), and classical Greek medico-pharmaceutical texts (particularly Dioscorides’ De materia medica), he concluded that the former two descended from the latter and thus could be omitted, all the more because they often contained mistakes, mainly incorrect translations and interpretations of plant and disease names. Such mistakes were of particular concern at Leoniceno’s time, as they exposed patients to medical mistakes (for example, confusions of plants to be administered as medicines or wrong diagnosis of medical conditions). Consequently, Leoniceno proposed abandoning the Latin and Arabic pharmacological and scientific literature as later epiphenomena of an earlier textual body, thus returning to Greek science. Since even Greek texts were corrupted because of manual reproduction, he suggested submitting them to a rigorous philological examination aimed at restoring them in their purity.

Leoniceno’s attack against Pliny provoked a harsh polemic, as it seemed to undermine the scientific authority and the role played by the Natural History in teaching and science during the Middle Ages. To overcome the opposition and to show the validity of his methodological proposals and scientific enterprise, Leoniceno collaborated in the publication of Dioscorides’ De materia medica in Greek by Aldo Manuzio in 1499 by lending one of his manuscript copies of the text and probably also by establishing the text. Such editing made it possible to systematically compare Dioscorides’ and Pliny’s works and to recognize the best value of the Greek work.

Over time, Leoniceno’s method became more of an epistemological nature. After the opposition to his De Plinii ceased, he published four other works in which he gradually exposed his theory of knowledge. Again, he insisted very much on the exigence of using exact terms of an unambiguous nature, that is, words (verba) allowing an unequivocal identification of the thing referred to (res). But, at the end of this group of works and of his personal evolution, he arrived at the conclusion that the words used (verba) had no importance provided that the things referred to (res) were properly known. Though apparently

logical, such a conclusion was paradoxical, for it was anti-lexical and maybe also anti-philological, and put more emphasis on the knowledge itself than on the discourse aimed at communicating it.

Leoniceno’s scientific and epistemological method— including the shift in the focus—had a deep impact on contemporary science, not only because it led to the production of several printed editions of important scientific texts (many of which were previously unknown, not even in Latin translations), but also—if not more—because it stressed the primacy of Greek scientific literature and, as a consequence, required understanding it correctly and translating it in an unambiguous way. Such a method required time before producing its effects, as is shown by the fact that no botanical work depending on classical sources was published until 1532 with Brunfels’s Herbarum vivae eicones. Furthermore, it could not be equally applied to all fields. Although a pupil of Leoniceno, Antonius Musa Brasavola, made a systematic inventory of all medicines then used in pharmacies in order to submit them to examination, the natural substances described and prescribed in ancient texts were not properly identified and known until late sixteenth century, thanks to the Republic of Botanists and the travelers to the Eastern Mediterranean. Whereas Leoniceno was right in considering from a philological viewpoint that Latin and Arabic translations of Greek texts did not reproduce ad litteramthe original and, as a consequence, he did not take into consideration the scientific nature of the differences in the texts. Apart from containing obvious mistakes resulting from textual tradition, they were in many cases adaptations of the texts to the context of the societies in which they were received, translated and used, specifically different natural resources and epidemiological conditions. Returning to Greek texts for philological reasons would have required eliminating all the new data and updates introduced into ancient texts up to Leoniceno’s time. This was probably impossible to implement and, in any case, might have put at risk the population’s health. Traditional (that is, medieval) handbooks of therapeutics and the traditional practice of pharmaceutical therapy thus continued to be used until late in the sixteenth century.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORK BY LEONICENO

De Plinii in medicina erroribus. A cura di Loris Premuda. Milano, Italy: Edizione de Il Giardino di Esculapio, 1958. On the controversy on Pliny.

OTHER SOURCES

Bylebyl, Jerome J. “The School of Padua: Humanistic Medicine in the Sixteenth Century. ” In Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Charles Webster. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979. See especially pp. 339–342.

Edwards, William F. “Niccolo Leoniceno and the Origins of Humanist Discussion of Method.” In Philosophy and Humanism. Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, edited by Edward P. Mahoney. Leiden, Netherlands: E. P. Brill, 1976.

Ferrari, Giovanna. L’esperienza del passato: Alesandro Benedetti filologo e medico umanista. Biblioteca di Nuncius, XXII. Florence, Italy: L. S. Olschki, 1996. See especially pp. 256–296.

Franceschini, Adriano, ed. Nuovi documenti relativi ai docenti dello studio di Ferrara nel sec. XVI. Deputazione Provinciale Ferrarese di Storia Patria, Serie Monumenti, Vol. 6. Ferrara, Italy: Stab artistico tip. Editoriale, 1970. On Leoniceno’s teaching.

French, Roger K. “Pliny and Renaissance Medicine.” In Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, His Sources and Influence, edited by Roger French and Frank Greenaway. London: Croom Helm, 1986.

Hoffmann, Phillipe. “Un mystérieux collaborateur d’Alde Manuce: l’Anonymus Harvardianus.” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Moyen age, Temps modernes, 97 (1985): 45–143. See pp. 133–138 on the manuscripts Leoniceno asked to be copied.

———. “Autres données relatives à un mystérieux collaborateur d’Alde Manuce: l’Anonymus Harvardianus.” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Moyen age, Temps modernes 98 (1986): 673–708. See pp. 704–708 on the manuscripts Leoniceno asked to be copied.

Mani, Nikolaus. “Die griechische Editio princeps des Galenos (1525), ihre Entstehung und ihre Wirkung.” Gesnerus 13 (1956): 29–52. See p. 38 and notes 34–36 on Leoniceno’s role in the editing of ancient texts.

Mugnai Carrara, Daniela. “Fra causalità astrologica e causalità naturale. Gli interventi di Nicolo Leonico e della sua scuola sul morbo gallico.” Physis 21 (1979): 37–54.

———. “Profilo di Nicolò Leoniceno.” Interpres 2 (1979): 169–212.

———. “Una polemica umanistico-scolastica circa l’interpretazione delle tre dottrine ordinate di Galeno.” In Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di storia della scienza di Firenze, VIII (1983), pp. 31–57.

———. “La polemica ‘de cane rabido’ di Nicolò Leoniceno,Nicolò Zocca e Scipione Carteromaco: un episodio di filologia medico-umanistica.” Interpres 9 (1989): 196–236.———. La biblioteca di Nicolò Leoniceno. Tra Aristotele e Galeno, cultura e libri di un medico umanista. Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere “La Colombaria,” “Studi,” 118. Florence, Italy: L.S. Olschki, 1991. On Leoniceno’s library and his philosophico-medical interests.

———. “Nicolò Leoniceno e Giovanni Mainardi: aspetti epistemologici dell’Umanesimo medico.” In Alla Corte degli Estensi. Filosofia, arte e cultura a Ferrara nei secoli XV e XVI. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di studi, Ferrara, 5–7 marzo 1992. A cura di M. Bertozzi. Ferrara, Italy: Università degli studi, 1994.

Nutton, Vivian. “Hellenism Postponed: Some Aspects of Renaissance Medicine, 1490–1530.” Sudhoffs Archiv 81 (1997): 158–170.

———. “The Rise of Medical Humanism: Ferrara, 1464–1555.” Renaissance Studies 11 (1997): 2–19.

Premuda, Loris. Un discepolo di Leoniceno tra filologia ed empirismo: G. Mnardo e il “libero esame” dei classici della medicina in funzione di piu spregiudicati orientamenti metodologici. In Atti del Convegno Internazionale per la Celebrazione del V Centenario della nascita di Giovanni Manardo, 1462–1536, Ferrara, 8–9 dicembre 1962. Ferrara, Italy: Università degli studi di Ferrara, 1963. On the influence of Leoniceno’s teaching.

Samoggia, Luigi. Manardo e la Scuola umanistica-filologica tedesca con particolare riguardo a Loenardo Fuchs. In Atti del Convegno Internazionale per la Celebrazione del V Centenario della nascita di Giovanni Manardo, 1462–1536, Ferrara, 8–9 dicembre 1962. Ferrara, Italy: Università degli studi di Ferrara, 1963. On the influence of Leoniceno’s teaching.

———. Le ripercussioni in Germania dell’indirizzo filologicomedico Leoniceniano della scuola ferrarese per opera di Leonardo Fuchs (Quaderni di Storia della Scienza e della Medicina, IV), Ferrara, Italy: Università degli studi di Ferrara, 1964. On the influence of Leoniceno’s teaching.

Santoro, M. “La polemica pliniana fra il Leoniceno e il Collenuccio.” Filologia romanza 3 (1956): 162–205. On the controversy on Pliny.

Sicherl, Martin. Handschriftliche Vorlagen der Editio princeps des Aristoteles. Mainz, Germany: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, 1976, p. 14, note 33. (Reproduced in Martin Sicherl, Griechische Erstausgaben des Aldus Manutius. Druckvorlagen, Stellenwert, kultureller Hintergrund. Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums, Neue Folge, 1. Reihe: Monographien, 10. Band. Paderborn, Germany: F. Schöningh, 1997.) On Leoniceno’s role in the editing of ancient texts.

Streeter, Edward C. “Leoniceno and the School of Ferrara.” Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago 1 (1916): 18–22. On the controversy on Pliny.

Alain Touwaide