Agostino Paravicini Bagliani is a household name in the history of the papacy and the history of science in the Middle Ages. The volume under review, first published in 1991 and now republished on the occasion of his 80th birthday, brings together the same two focal points of his scholarly interests. It is a collection of thirteen studies written in Italian and French, two of which were unpublished before 1991, while the others are revised versions of journal articles and book chapters that originally appeared between 1973 and 1989. The present edition differs from its predecessor in that it includes a new introduction by the author himself (VII-XXV), in which he places the studies in the context of his scholarly career and considers some of their results in the light of current scholarship.

The starting point and foundation of these studies is the author's previous research on, and in-depth knowledge of, the prosopography of the papal court in the thirteenth century. In most cases, Paravicini Bagliani focuses not on the content of the medical and natural-scientific works written, or translated into Latin, during this period and linked in some way or another to the Curia, but on an underlying network of individuals, ecclesiastical offices, geographical places, book collections, and manuscripts. It is this network that allows him to reconstruct the connections between patrons and authors, and between authors and authors, in order to better understand the possible influences and contexts that may have shaped the works in question. The unity of the volume derives from the fact that the studies in it, even if they differ in their thematic focus, refer to interrelated clusters of this network.

The first such cluster, discovered by Paravicini Bagliani in the 1970s, is what he calls the "Circolo di Viterbo", referring to the simultaneous presence of several great figures of medieval science in this city, where the papal court was stationed for a long time in the 1260s and 1270s. He recounts in the preface of 1991 (XXVII-XXXIII) that he was preparing a critical edition of last wills of thirteenth-century cardinals when, among the witnesses in one of the documents drawn up in Viterbo on 7 February 1277, he came across the name of the Silesian natural philosopher Witelo, to whom one of the earliest studies of the volume is dedicated (95-112). Witelo himself mentions his stay in Viterbo in his Perspectiva, a major work of medieval optics, but this new information made it possible to date his stay and explain his theoretical affinity with another "member" of the circle and fellow expert of medieval optics, John Peckham OFM, who taught theology at the Studium Curiae between 1276 and 1278.

In contrast to Witelo's probably short stay in Viterbo, the protagonist of another study (95-112), the mathematician and astronomer Campanus of Novara, seems to have spent most of his career there until his death in 1296. The third "member" of the circle to whom a separate study is dedicated in the volume (113-141), the great Dominican translator, William of Moerbeke, arrived in Viterbo a little later than Campanus, during the pontificate of Clement IV (1265-1268) and stayed until his appointment as Bishop of Corinth in 1278. Just like Campanus, he was first of all an officeholder of the Curia, a papal penitentiary, and even such a busy one that, based on the chronology of his dated translations, he had time for scholarly work only during periods of sede vacante.

Translation is one of the themes that connect the Viterbo Circle to the other clusters of the underlying network mentioned above. The study of Moerbeke overlaps with the final study in the volume (327-365), which concerns the provenance of the Greek manuscripts in the library of Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303). Another study (143-187) shows that, despite the general lack of Arabic speakers in the papal court, some translations from Arabic, including that of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum, can be connected to the Curia.

Physicians in the service of popes or in the familiae of cardinals feature prominently among the authors and translators of scholarly works examined in Paravicini Bagliani's book. One study (189-214) discusses the significant number of translations produced and the high concentration of physicians in these circles during Boniface VIII's papacy. Another study (3-44) catalogues all available information about physicians linked to the papal court, alongside their surviving medical recipes from Celestine III's to Benedict XI's papacy (1191-1304).

Two further thematic units in the volume are also related to medicine, or at least to the human body: the question of maintaining the integrity of the human body after death, and the problem of how to prolong human life. In discussing Boniface VIII's 1299 decretal Detestande feritatis (215-224), which prohibited the dismemberment of corpses, Paravicini Bagliani places the document in the context of burial wishes expressed in the last wills of thirteenth-century cardinals, and examines its referencing as a prohibition of autopsy despite this not being its intended purpose. Another study (263-290) links Pope Boniface's opposition to dismembering dead bodies with Roger Bacon's attempts to develop a scientific method for slowing down ageing. In a related analysis (225-261), the author demonstrates that the De retardatione accidentium senectutis was not written by Roger Bacon, but was originally composed for Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254), probably by a man known as dominus castri Gret or Goet.

The last thematic unit of the volume focuses on questions concerning the Studium Curiae. First (291-312), Paravicini Bagliani reconsiders the nature of this institution elevated to the status of studium generale by Innocent IV. He argues that it was an aggregate of several small, mostly private schools that did not offer degrees. Due to its largely private nature - with theology being the only subject taught by a papal court functionary rather than a private teacher - it has left few traces in the archives. Apart from theology, most of the available information relates to Roman law, the teaching of which appears in the sources in the form of papal dispensations from Honorius III's (1216-1227) prohibition of the study of secular law for the clergy. In a separate study, Paravicini Bagliani disputes the idea that medicine was also taught at the Studium Curiae (313-326).

The overall aim of the volume is best formulated by one of the two studies that were unpublished before the first edition (45-70). By comparing Emperor Frederick II (1220-1250) and the contemporary popes through their mutual support of various scholars, it argues that the thirteenth-century papal court was unjustly overlooked as a significant center of natural science and medicine in previous scholarship. The studies collected here do provide a thorough corrective to this perspective. Even if their point was already made in 1991, they remain highly useful for students of many areas of medieval studies due to the wealth of information they offer about the life, personal contacts and work of many leading intellectuals of the thirteenth century, thoroughly grounded in a broad array of sources, and thanks to the excellent indices appended to them (369-405).

Ottó Gecser