Pietro d'Abano, the Paduan Physician Who Became a Legendary Magus

In Padua, in the great hall of the Palazzo della Ragione, a cycle of astrological frescoes covers the walls with zodiac signs, planets and human trades. Local tradition links it to the ideas of Pietro d'Abano, a physician and philosopher born around 1257 near the city and who died about 1315. His figure hovers between two images: the respected scientist and the legendary magus.

A Physician between Constantinople, Paris and Padua

Pietro studied for a long time outside Italy: he stayed in Constantinople, where he perfected his Greek, and taught in Paris before returning to Padua at the beginning of the fourteenth century. He translated medical and philosophical texts from Greek and commented on the Problemata attributed to Aristotle. He became one of the best-known teachers of the Paduan university, contributing to the reputation the city would enjoy in medicine for centuries.

His major work is the Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et praecipue medicorum, completed in the first years of the fourteenth century. In more than two hundred questions it tries to reconcile the opinions of philosophers with those of physicians, drawing on Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna and Averroes. The book circulated widely in manuscript and appeared in numerous printed editions from 1472 onwards.

Astrology and Suspicion

Like many physicians of his time, Pietro held that the stars influenced the human body and that a doctor had to know their motions. He wrote the Lucidator, a treatise in defence of astronomy and astrology, and other reflections on the heavens. These positions, together with his combative temperament and some theses judged daring, drew the attention of the Inquisition.

The sources on the trial are fragmentary. Pietro seems to have died before the proceedings were concluded, and tradition reports that, condemned after his death, he was burned in effigy. The details of the affair were handed down mainly by later chroniclers and should be treated with caution, as is often the case with trials of the early fourteenth century.

Attributed Books and Legends

His reputation as a magus was fed by texts Pietro did not write. The best known is the Heptameron, or Elementa magica, a short text of ceremonial magic printed in the sixteenth century together with the so-called Fourth Book of occult philosophy, itself falsely attributed to Agrippa. Scholars agree that the attribution to Pietro is spurious. The text arranges its operations according to the days of the week and the angels who, in late medieval tradition, were believed to rule them.

Popular tales arose as well: it was said that he kept seven spirits shut in a crystal flask, who taught him the seven liberal arts, and that the coins he spent returned to his purse of their own accord. These are legends typical of medieval scholars suspected of magic, similar to those told of Michael Scot or of the necromancer Virgil of Neapolitan tradition.

Pietro d'Abano thus remains an exemplary case. The historian of medicine sees in him a thinker who sought to unite philosophy and clinical practice; the historian of grimoires finds a name used to lend authority to later magical texts. Separating the two images helps us understand how the genealogies of forbidden books were built in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.