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177 E P I L O G U E I I The Angel and the Doctor While William of Paris and William of Nogaret were concerning themselves with the documentary record of the trial, other men were reacting to these events in different ways. Among the most interesting is Arnau of Vilanova, a controversial doctor, professor, theologian, reformer , and advisor to kings and popes. He enters into the concluding moments of this story because one of the last works in his prolific career was a brief treatise intended for Guiard of Cressonessart’s followers entitled (in one manuscript) the Epistola ad gerentes zonam pelliceam, or “Letter to Those Wearing the Leather Belt” (Appendix C gives an English translation).1 This text has only recently been identified by scholarship and now stands as an exciting demonstration of how reports of Guiard’s group were circulating in the South of France.2 Arnau of Vilanova and His Career Arnau was born around 1238 and grew up in Valencia.3 He arrived at the University of Montpellier around 1255, where he studied the liberal arts and then earned the title master of medicine by 1270. He was by this time proficient in both Arabic and Latin, as well as married with a daughter. He never obtained a university degree in theology or trained as a priest (though he later claimed to have studied theology with the Dominicans for six months), but his status as a member of the university meant that he was in fact a cleric in minor orders. By 1281 Arnau was court physician to King Peter III of Aragon and studying Hebrew with the Dominican Raimon Martí. After 1290 he was professor of medicine at Montpellier, while still serving James II of Aragon (r. 1291–1327) and authoring numerous medical treatises.4 But by the 1290s Arnau was also developing his interests in eschatology and theology. Like Guiard of Cressonessart, he was influenced by the ideas of Joachim of Fiore, as shown most readily by the fact that one of his earliest theological works (1292) was the “Introduction to Joachim’s Book On the Seed of Scripture” (though, in fact, the De semine Scripturam was falsely attributed to Joachim).5 His eschatological treatises, however, built upon a loosely Joachite framework to develop their own unique predictions of when and how the time of Antichrist would arrive. As early as 1287 Arnau had started working on the treatise that would eventually land him in trouble, “On the Time of Antichrist’s Advent” (De tempore adventus Antichristi) in which he calculated that Antichrist would arrive in 1366 (or at least by 1376). When he found himself in Paris in late summer 1300 on diplomatic business for James II, he spoke with Parisian theologians about his book and gave a copy to the chancellor of the university (Peter of Saint-Omer), perhaps in September .6 A few masters of theology, incensed at his audacity and novel interpretive principles, denounced him.7 Arnau later claimed that he had offered to make changes if the theologians would explain what offended them; instead he was arrested by the official of Paris around the first week of October. He was released the next day when several figures close to Philip IV, including William of Nogaret and Gilles Aycelin , intervened and posted a bond.8 A few days later, however, the theologians cited him before the bishop of Paris, who condemned a list of propositions that the hostile theologians had extracted from his book. Arnau was forced to recant these statements, and although they were labeled “rash” rather than explicitly heretical, his book was nevertheless burned.9 Arnau, however, was not the man to take such a rebuke lying down. Before leaving Paris he renounced his recantation, formally appealed to Pope Boniface VIII, and wrote a letter to Philip IV protesting his treatment .10 But when he arrived in Rome in 1301, Arnau was again detained and his book again burned. At this point one would have expected ei178 THE BEGUINE, THE ANGEL, AND THE INQUISITOR ther that Arnau would have had to abjure his errors more sincerely or that he would have faced punishment as a relapsed heretic. Instead, Boniface VIII made him his personal physician in the hope that he could cure him of his painful kidney stones! Arnau took advantage of this situation to submit a second treatise, “On the Mystery of the Bells of the Church” (De mysterio cymbalorum ecclesiae), to Boniface in 1301...

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