Volume 2 / Book 4 — CHAPTER XLVI

KIRANIDES

Question of the origin of the work—Its prefaces—Arrangement of the text—Virtues of a tree—Feats of magic—An incantation to an eagle—Alchiranus—Treatises on seven, twelve, and nineteen herbs—Belenus.

Question of the origin of the work.

The virtues, especially medicinal, of plants and animals comprise the contents of a work in Latin of uncertain date and authorship, usually called the Kiranides of Kiranus, King of Persia.[699] Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Inquiry into Vulgar Errors, included in his list of “authors who have most promoted popular conceits, ... Kiranides, which is a collection out of Harpocration the Greek and sundry Arabick writers delivering not only the Naturall but Magicall propriety of things, a work as full of vanity as variety, containing many relations, whose invention is as difficult as their beliefs, and their experiments sometime as hard as either.”[700] The work purports to be a translation from the Greek version which in its turn was from the Arabic,[701] and Berthelot affirms[702] that in antiquity Kiranides was cited by Galen and by Olympiodorus, the historian and alchemist of the early fifth century, while Kroll cites a Greek manuscript at Paris as ascribing the third book of Kiranides to Hermes Trismegistus.[703]

Its prefaces.

The preface of the medieval Latin translator is by “a lowly cleric” who addresses some ecclesiastical or scholastic superior, possibly the Chancellor at Paris.[704] He marvels that the mind of his patron, which has penetrated beyond the seven heavens to contemplate supernatural things above our sphere, should nevertheless not disdain an interest in the most lowly of terrene “experiments.” The master has asked him to translate this medical book from Greek into Latin, a task easier to ask than to execute. There are several Greek versions of it, all professedly translations from some oriental original, but the volume which his patron gave him to translate into Latin is that translated into Greek at Constantinople in 1168[705] or 1169[706] by order of the Byzantine emperor, Manuel Comnenus, whom we shall also find associated with the Letter of Prester John of which we shall treat in the next chapter. The translator speaks of the work as The Book of Natural Virtues, Complaints, and Cures, but adds that it is a compilation from two other books, namely, The Experience of the Kiranides of Kiranus, King of Persia, and The Book of Harpocration[707] of Alexandria to his Daughter. There then follows the preface of Harpocration to his daughter, which tells of a certain city and of encountering an aged sage there, of great towers and of precious writing on a column which Harpocration proceeds to transcribe. We are given to understand that the original was written in “antique archaic Syriac” and was as old as the Euphrates.

Arrangement of the text.

The text is divided into four books, each arranged alphabetically. The first book subdivides into “Elements.” For example, Elementum XII is devoted to a tree, a bird, a stone, and a fish, each of which begins with the letter M. Most, however, of the virtues and medicinal prescriptions which follow have to do with the tree or herb only. The second book treats of beasts or quadrupeds, the third of birds, and the fourth of fish.

Virtues of a tree.

Much superstition and magical procedure is found scattered through, or better, crowded into, the book. For instance, in a medicinal application of the cyme of the tree Μορέα, one is to face the southwest wind, use two fingers of the left hand to remove the cyme, then look behind one toward the east, wrap the cyme in purple or red silk (vera?), and touch the patient with it or bind it about her. In another recipe the fruit of this tree is to be compounded in varying proportions with such substances as an Indian stone and the tips of the wings of crows and is then to be stirred with a crow’s feather until the mixture is “soft and sticky.” In a third prescription a stone engraved with an image of the fish mentioned under the letter M—μόρμυρος, and enclosed in an iron box, is to be combined with the “eyes” (buds?) of the tree Morea as an amulet against certain ills.

Feats of magic.

In some cases the end sought as well as the procedure employed is magical rather than medicinal. In another chapter of the first book, for example, the reader is instructed how to make a licinium or combustible compound in whose light those present will appear to one another like flaming demons. Or in book two the reader is told that wearing the dried tongue of a weasel inside his socks will close the mouths of his enemies. The weasel’s testicles, right and left, are used as charms to stimulate and prevent conception respectively.

An incantation to an eagle.

Incantations are employed in connection with the eagle, the first of forty-four birds taken up in the third book. Catch one, collect the dung it makes during the first day and night of its captivity, then bind its feet and beak and whisper in its ear, “Oh, eagle, friend of man, I am about to slay you for the cure of every infirmity. I conjure you by the God of earth and sky and by the four elements that you efficaciously work each and every cure for which you are oblated.” The eagle is then decapitated with a sword composed entirely of iron, all its blood is carefully caught in a bowl, its heart and entrails are removed and placed in wine, and other directions observed. The discussion of the virtues of fish in the fourth and last book is essentially identical in character with the examples already given for plants, birds, and beasts.

Alchiranus.

In a sixteenth century manuscript at Venice[708] is a Latin version which would seem to be translated from the Arabic since it gives the author’s name as Alchiranus, although some scholiast has interpolated and added to the words of this author and of Harpocration. As described by Valentinelli the arrangement into books is the same as that which we have noted. Valentinelli also was impressed by the fact that “medical substances are used to produce not merely physical but moral effects, such as prescience of the future, dispelling demons and evil phantoms, avoiding shipwreck by binding the heart of a foca to the mast of the vessel; discovering what sort of life a woman has led, becoming invisible, averting storms, perils, wild beasts, robbers.” And further that “the efficacy of the medicaments is dependent upon their mode of preparation or application, at the rising or setting of the sun, at the waning or waxing of the moon, by uttering certain words or engraving stones.”[709]

Treatises on seven, twelve, and nineteen herbs.

The Latin translator of the Kiranides says that it should be preceded by the book of Alexander the Great concerning seven herbs and the seven planets, and by the Mystery of Thessalus to Hermes about twelve herbs for the twelve signs of the zodiac and seven herbs for the seven stars. And in what is left of the preface to the latter treatise in an Erfurt manuscript we are told that after discovering the volumes of the Kyranides the writer found also in the city of Troy the present treatise enclosed in a monument along with the bones of the first king named Kyrannis.[710] The first treatise on seven herbs, however, seems to be more often ascribed in the manuscripts to an Alexius Affricus[711] or Flaccus Africanus[712] than to Alexander the Great.[713] Alexius or Flaccus seems to address his work to a Claudius or Glandiger of Athens. The work of Thessalus, whose name is sometimes corrupted to Tesalus or Texilus, and whose work is variously styled of twelve or of nineteen herbs, usually is found with the other treatise in the manuscripts.[714] It was one of the authorities acknowledged by Jacobus de Dondis in his Aggregatio Medicamentorum, written in 1355.[715] The treatise on seven herbs of Alexander or Flaccus Africanus closes with the direction that the herbs should be gathered from the twenty-first to twenty-seventh day of the moon, with Mercury rising during the entire first hour of the day. As they are plucked, the passion of our Lord should be mentioned, and they should be preserved in barley or wheat. But one manuscript adds, “But do not put credulity in them beyond due measure.”[716] We have, of course, already met with similar treatises ascribed to Enoch and Hermes.[717]

Belenus.

The Belenus, as whose disciple Flaccus Africanus is represented, is also the reputed author of a work on astrological images found in several manuscripts of the British Museum.[718] Albertus Magnus in the Speculum astronomiae attributed to Belenus two reprehensible books of necromantic images.[719] The Turba philosophorum, a medieval work of alchemy consisting in large measure of Latin re-translation of Arabic versions from Greek alchemists, also cites a Belus or Belinus. The name is believed to be a corruption from Apollonius of Tyana, with whom Apollonius of Perga, the mathematician, is perhaps also confused.[720] One of the Incipits of the tracts listed in the Speculum astronomiae is, “Said Belenus who is also called Apollo.” However, many medieval Latin manuscripts attribute works to Apollonius under that name, as in the case of a work on the Notory Art which we shall mention in another chapter.[721]