The Theophilus of Giorgio Valla (De expetendis et fugiendis rebus, Book XLVIII, Chapters 4-7)

Abstract

Giorgio Valla (1447-1500) was notoriously one of the most significant figures of late Humanism in recovering and spreading the ancient Greek and Byzantine scientific and medical tradition to Western culture. In this regard he was the author of an encyclopaedic work entitled De expetendis et fugiendis rebus, made up of several chapters devoted to the discussion of different arts and disciplines, among which there emerges a section called De medicina. The focus of this paper is the medical section of Book XLVIII (corresponding to Book 3 of the treatise De corporis commodis et incommodis), introduced by the opusculum De urinae significatione ex Hippocrate, Paulo Aegineta ac Theophilo, and particularly the study of chapters 4-7 dealing with uroscopic matters according to the work of the Byzantine physician Theophilus Protospatharius titled De urinis. The paper aims not only to illustrate the modes and characteristic of Valla’s translation, but also to examine whether and to what extent Theophilus’ work was the unique source of this section of Valla’s encyclopaedia. In this regard, a detailed comparison between the Valla’s Latin translation and the codex Mutinensis α.U.9.4 (gr. 61), owned by the Italian humanist, shows that the text of Mut., as demonstrated in other studies on the sources of De expt., was the model of Valla’s translation of the 4 above-mentioned uroscopic chapters. The study also shows how the materia medica that Valla draws on through the ms. Mut. is varied and complex, and does not only consist of Theophilus’ (moreover incomplete) text of De urinis, but also draws on Byzantine uroscopic excerpta from different sources: first the so-called De urinis carmen attributed to Nicephorus Blemmydes (in a version that shows points of contact with the textual tradition of the ps.-Galenic De signis ex urinis), and finally, what has all the appearance of being a fragment of the ps.-Galenic treatise De urinis (Vol. 19 ed. K.) present in a very patched-up version. The article concludes with a specimen of a short Greek-Latin lexicon by Valla, taking into account the aforementioned chapters.