Hieronymus Muenzer and other fifteenth century bibliophiles / [Ernst Philip Goldschmidt].

  • Goldschmidt, E. Ph. (Ernst Philip)
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hieronymus Muenzer and other fifteenth century bibliophiles / [Ernst Philip Goldschmidt]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    itself been able to withstand the upheavals of these post-war years. 1 should like to tell you a little about this Dr. Hieronymus Muenzer or Monetarius, about the books he owned, about his travels, of which he left us such an interesting record, and finally, in order to show that such a standard of culture, of learning, and of book-collecting was by no means so very exceptional, about some other German physicians of the same period whose books have survived to our day. .Muenzer was born exactly 500 years ago at the town of Feldkirch in Yorarlberg, which many of us know as the frontier and passport- control station for travellers entering Austria from Switzerland. I am precise, for it is by no means on the frontier between Austria and Switzer¬ land, since at that exact spot a strange oversight of history has spared to survive to this very day the independent principality of Lichtenstein. So when you leave Buchs in Switzerland and arrive in Feldkirch in Austria, your train has without warning and without stopping traversed the entire breadth—about four miles—of this very ancient state. Muenzer came of a good family, we may presume, for his sisters married quite eminent people, but they were poor, for he tells us in one of his extant notes that it was by the help of “pious people” that he was enabled to study. He matriculated at Leipzig University in 1464 and took his M. A. in 1470; he remained another four years as a junior lecturer in the Arts course and not only maintained himself but even managed to save 400 florins in that way. We may note that Muenzer was comparatively old at twenty-seven when he first began his university studies: at that time it was quite usual for students to enter at the age of fifteen. There is a manuscript in Muenzer’s library which proves that he had begun to turn to medicine before he left Leipzig, a folio volume on paper containing an extensive “Herbarius,” Bernardus de Gordonio’s “De ingeniis curationum” a brief “Bona Anpthomia ” and other medical texts; in the front cover he has noted : ulste liber medicinalis est met Hieronymi Monetarii de Feldkirchen artiiim et medicine doctoris quern mihi comparavi in studio lipezensi anno iqqoT It is now in the Wellcome Museum in London. However, it was at that time considered an established fact that a first rate medical training could not be obtained in the comparatively new German universities, and only the Italian M.D. degrees of Bologna, Padua, and Pavia gave a medical man the prestige that enabled him to get into the first rank. That this state of affairs was quite officially