Peter De Abano's Biography(Books)(Photos)

Pietro d'Abano also known as Petrus De Apono or Aponensis
(c. 1250 – c. 1316) was an Italian philosopher, astrologer

and professor of medicine in Padua. He was born in the
Italian town from which he takes his name, now Abano Terme.

In his writings he expounds and advocates the medical and

He gained fame by writing Conciliator Differentiarum, qua
inter Philosophos et Medicos Versantur. He was eventually

philosophical systems of Averroes and other Arabian writers.
His best known works are the Conciliator differentiarum quae

accused of heresy and atheism, and came before the
Inquisition. He died in prison before the end of his trial.

inter philosophos et medicos versantur (Mantua, 1472;
Venice, 1476), and De venenis eorumque remediis (1472), of

He studied a long time at Paris, where he was promoted to

which a French translation was published at Lyon in 1593.
The former was an attempt to reconcile Arab medicine and

the degrees of doctor in philosophy and medicine, in the
practice of which he was very successful, but his fees were

Greek natural philosophy. It was considered authoritative as
late as the sixteenth century.

remarkably high. In Paris he became known as "the Great
Lombard". He settled at Padua, where he gained a reputation

It has been alleged that Abano also wrote a grimoire called

as a physician. Also an astrologer, he was charged with
practising magic: the specific accusations being that he got

the Heptameron, a concise book of ritual magical rites
concerned with conjuring specific angels for the seven days

back, by the aid of the devil, all the money he paid away,
and that he possessed the philosopher's stone.

of the week (hence the title). It should not be confused
with the Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre.

Gabriel Naude, in his Antiquitate Schola Medica Parisiensis,

gives the following account of him:

He was twice brought to trial by the Inquisition; on the

Let us next produce Peter de Apona, or Peter de Abano,
called the Reconciler, on account of the famous book which

first occasion he was acquitted, and he died before the
second trial was completed. He was found guilty, however,

he published during his residence in your university. It is
certain that physic lay buried in Italy, scarce known to any

and his body was ordered to be exhumed and burned; but a
friend had secretly removed it, and the Inquisition had

one, uncultivated and unadorned, till its tutelar genius, a
villager of Apona, destined to free Italy from its barbarism

therefore to content itself with the public proclamation of
its sentence and the burning of Abano in effigy.

and ignorance, as Camillus once freed Rome from the siege of
the Gauls, made diligent enquiry in what part of the world

The general opinion of almost all authors is, that he

polite literature was most happily cultivated, philosophy
most subtilly handled, and physic taught with the greatest

was the greatest magician of his time; that by means of
seven spirits, familiar, which he kept inclosed in chrystal,

solidity and purity; and being assured that Paris alone laid
claim to this honour, thither he presently flies; giving

he had acquired the knowledge of the seven liberal arts, and
that he had the art of causing the money he had made use of

himself up wholly to her tutelage, he applied himself
diligently to the mysteries of philosophy and medicine;

to return again into his pocket. He was accused of magic in
the eightieth year of his age, and that dying in the year

obtained a degree and the laurel in both; and afterwards
taught them both with great applause: and after a stay of

1305, before his trial was over, he was condemned (as
Castellan reports) to the fire; and that a bundle of straw,

many years, loaden with the wealth acquired among you, arid,
after having become the most famous philosopher, astrologer,

or osier, representing his person, was publicly burnt at
Padua; that by so rigorous an example, and by the fear of

physician, and mathematician of his time, returns to his own
country, where, in the opinion of the judicious Scardeon, he

incurring a like penalty, they might suppress the reading of
three books which he had composed on this subject: the first

was the first restorer of true philosophy and physic.
Gratitude, therefore, calls upon you to acknowledge your

of which is the noted Heptameron, or Magical Elements of
Peter de Abano, Philosopher, now extant, and printed at the

obligations due to Michel Angelus Blondus, a physician of
Rome, who in the last century undertaking to publish the

end of Agrippa's works; the second, that which Trithemius
calls Elucidarium Necromanticum Petri de Abano; and a third,

Conciliationes Physiognomic? of your Aponensian doctor, and
finding they had been composed at Paris, and in your

called by the same author Liber experimentorum mirabilium de
Annulis secundem, 28 Mansiom Luna.

university, chose to publish them in the name, and under the
patronage, of your society.

Barrett (p. 157) refers to the opinion that it was not on

He carried his enquiries so far into the occult sciences of

the score of magic that the Inquisition sentenced Pietro to
death, but because he endeavoured to account for the

abstruse and hidden nature, that, after having given most
ample proofs, by his writings concerning physiognomy,

wonderful effects in nature by the influences of the
celestial bodies, not attributing them to angels or demons;

geomancy, and chiromancy, he moved on to the study of
philosophy, physics, and astrology; which studies proved so

so that heresy, instead of magic, in the form of opposition
to the doctrine of spiritual beings, seems to have led to

advantageous to him, that, not to speak of the two first,
which introduced him to all the popes of his time, and

his persecution.

acquired him a reputation among learned men, it is certain
that he was a great master in the latter, which appears not

His body, being privately taken out of his grave by his
friends, escaped the vigilance of the Inquisitors, who would

only by the astronomical figures which he caused to be
painted in the great hall of the palace at Padua, and the

have condemned it to be burnt. He was removed from place to
place, and at last deposited in St. Augustin's Church,

translations he made of the books of the most learned rabbi
Abraham Aben Ezra, added to those which he himself composed

without epitaph, or any other mark of honor. His accusers
ascribed inconsistent opinions to him; they charged him with

on critical days, and the improvement of astronomy, but by
the testimony of the renowned mathematician Regiomontanus,

being a magician, and yet with denying the existence of
spirits. He had such an antipathy to milk, that seeing

who made a fine panegyric on him, in quality of an
astrologer, in the oration which he delivered publicly at

anyone take it made him vomit. He died about the year 1316
in the sixty-sixth year of his age.