Girolamo Fracastoro
Hiro HIRAI
Ficin,
Fernel et Fracastor
autour du concept de semence :
aspects platoniciens de seminaria ?
in
Alessandro Pastore
& Enrico Peruzzi (eds),
Girolamo Fracastoro fra medicina, filosofia e scienze
della natura :
atti del convegno
internazionale di studi in occasione del 450° anniversario della morte,
(Florence: Olschki,
2005), pp. 245-260.
The
Veronese doctor Girolamo Fracastoro (ca. 1478-1553) is known in the History of
Renaissance medicine primarily by his contagion theory. His idea of the "seeds" (semina) of diseases, already seen in his verse Syphilis sive morbus
gallicus (Verona, 1530), was largely transformed
into the concept of the "seedbed of contagions" (seminaria contagionum) in his treatise De contagione (Venice,
1546). Since the influential article of the Singers (1917), it is widely
believed that Fracastorian theory is based on Lecretius’ idea of the "seeds of things" (semina rerum). However, if we turn to the etiological theories of
his time (around 1520-1550), we can find several authors who developed the
concept of seeds independently from Fracastoro. The French doctor Jean Fernel
(1497-1558) and the Suisse doctor Paracelsus (ca. 1493-1541) are good examples.
Recent studies have shown that the ideas derived from seeds were amply
discussed at that time not only in medicine but also in natural philosophy in
general. The origin of such Renaissance concepts of seeds can be found in the
metaphysical cosmology of the Florentine Neoplatonist
Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499). The present study focuses on Ficinian connection
in the base of Fracastorian notion of seminaria.
1. Introduction
2. Marsile Ficin et son concept de semence
3. Jean Fernel et sa réception des seminaria
ficiniens
4. Les notions des seminaria et
du spiritus chez Fracastor