Arnold De Villa Nova

was a famous physician, who | lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and after, studying at Paris and Montpelier, travelled through Italy and Spain. He was well acquainted with languages, and particularly with the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. He was at great pains to gratify his ardent desire after knowledge; but this passion carried him rather too far in his researches, as he endeavoured to discover future events by astrology, imagining this science to be infallible; and upon this foundation he published a prediction, that the world would come to an end in 1335 or 1345, or, according to others, in 1376. He practised physic at Paris for some time; but, having advanced some new doctrines, he drew upon himself the resentment of the university; and his friends, fearing he might be arrested, persuaded him to retire from that city. Some authors have also affirmed, that the inquisitors of the faith, assembled at Tarascon, by order of Clement V. condemned the chimerical notions of this learned physician. Upon his leaving France he retired to Sicily, where he was received by king Frederic of Arragon with the greatest marks of kindness and esteem. Some time afterwards, this prince sent him to France, to attend the same pope Clement in an illness, and Arnold was shipwrecked on the coast of Genoa, in 1309, though some say it was in 1310, and others in 1313. The works of Arnold, with his life prefixed, were printed in one volume folio, at Lyons, 1520, and at Basil, 1585, with the notes of Nicholas Tolerus. ¹