David ben Yom Tov

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

David ben Yom Tov, also David Bonjorn del Barri, was a

Cotlliure in Catalonia in around 1300, and to have died in Barcelona, probably before 1361.[1]

In the past some scholars, including the nineteenth century scholar Moritz Steinschneider, have identified ben Yom Tov with the Portuguese Jewish scholar David ben Yom Tov ibn Bilia; this is now considered unlikely.[2]

Life

Sobrequés estimates that David ben Yom Tov was born at Cotlliure in about 1300.[3] He was also called David Bonjorn, Bonjorn being a literal Catalan translation of the Hebrew Yom Tov, i.e. "good day".

His father was Bonjorn del Barri, a wealthy merchant of the province of

Joseph Caspi.[4]

Ben Yom Tov himself had first married a Jewish woman from the town of Arles, in Provence. The marriage was dissolved without being consummated, because the wife was declared mad.[5]

In 1332

Beth Din at Perpignan; but then sought to cancel various clauses of the court's decision, presumably those relating to the dowry. David called in legal experts from the king of Majorca to try to sway the court; in response the authorities of Esther's home town, Girona, weighed in on her side. A long and noisy debate ensued, as rabbis from both sides of the Pyrenees came forward to have their say. Several documented reviews of the case survive; but eventually the original decision was upheld.[6]

Documents place David as still living in Perpignan in 1340; and again in 1352, when the king of Aragon, Peter IV, sent him a terse message to chase up some "astrolabe tables", complaining about their late delivery.[7]

The Jewish scholar and traveller

astronomical tables at Perpignan in 1361 that were translated and re-translated. The conjecture is not certain however: Jacob himself had a son David, that Mosconi might have been referring to; although if the date of 1362 is correct he would have been at most only a boy, not a famous astronomer. The suggestion has also been made that since it was Jacob, rather than David, whose name was attached to the tables in 1361, then this could be a sign that David was already dead.[10]

Astrology and medicine

One work of David ben Yom Tov that survives is the Kelal Qatan ("Concise summary", or in Latin Compendio breve), a short summary of the application of astrology to medicine, based primarily on the astrological position of the moon, running to eleven pages in a modern English translation. Five surviving manuscripts are known: four in Hebrew from the fifteenth century, and one in Latin translation written in Catalonia before 1446.[11]

According to the author, the book was composed at the request of a "distinguished friend", "one of the medical experts of our time", to be a "concise summary of astrology which a physician needs every day for the administration of

vomitives" (§8).[12]

A knowledge of astrology, he writes, is part of what a complete doctor should know, so he can allow for the effects of the heavenly bodies in diagnosis and prognosis; while a knowledge of medicine is part of what a complete astrologer should know, so he can best prepare his subject for the influence of external forces, or best repel them. But, the writer adds, in the words of Hippocrates, that art is long, but life is short; it is "better for every human being to be the master of one science, than to know a little bit of this and a little bit of that", so thus the request from his friend the distinguished practitioner for a brief summary. He had not wanted to turn his friend down, and damage his own reputation, so compiled the summary to the best of his ability, "from the books composed on the subject", without adding anything of his own (§§ 2–10).[13]

The author then goes on to give a brief glossary of astrological and astronomical terms, before outlining various rules for good and bad times for particular medical interventions, such as blood-lettings, purgatives and emetics; astrological indications for "critical days" in the course of an illness; and even an astrological indication that the patient would best benefit by choosing another physician. But such indications can only be general, he concludes; the patient is also subject to influences such as their birth horoscopes, and of course ultimately to the will of God.[14]

Of the unnamed "books on the subject" claimed by David ben Yom Tov for his sources, the recent academic editors of Kelal Qatan identify several passages that show a clear debt to the

Ahmad ibn Yusuf al-Misri (d. 912); and also the Sefer ha-Me'orot (1148), a work specifically on medical astrology by the celebrated Jewish scholar Abraham ibn Ezra, whom the author also acknowledges at one point.[15]

The overall theoretical framework described by ben Yom Tov is very much in line with these two sources.

astronomical almanacs. A copy of such a set of tables of astrological properties, that ben Yom Tov says (§18) he will provide with the work, survive in the back of the Latin manuscript from Barcelona, and do indeed parallel tables of astrological properties that have been found appended to a later copy of astronomical tables by Abraham bar Hiyya (d. 1145), the table of astrological properties closely corresponding to a summary of information from Ibn Ezra's general introduction to practical astrology, Reshit Hokhmah ("The Beginning of Wisdom").[16]

According to the editors, astrology at most only ever had a marginal role in Jewish medical practice at the time; but they see David ben Yom Tob's Kelal Qatan as part of an uptick of interest in the subject in Catalonia and Southern France in the 14th century, which can be detected also in Hebrew works by

Arnau of Villanova.[17]

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ Mauro Zonta, Review of Bos et al. (2005) Archived 2012-03-20 at the Wayback Machine, Aestimatio, 3, 114–118
  2. Jewish Encyclopedia
    , 1906.
    Langermann in Bos et al. (2005), p.15
  3. ^ Chabas i Bergon et al. (1992) p.40, citing Sobrequés (1975), p.163
  4. ^ Chabas i Bergon et al. (1992), pp.39–40
  5. ^ Chabas i Bergon et al. (1992), p.40
  6. ^
    Jewish Encyclopedia
    , 1906.
  7. ^ Chabas i Bergon et al. (1992), p.41. "We greatly wonder whether you have finished and sent the astrolabe tables we required made. We expressly require that you finish and send us the said tables without delay. And do not fail to know that if you delay in this there will be serious consequences."
  8. Judah Mosconi, supercommentary on Ibn Ezra
    .
  9. ^ Chabas i Bergon et al. (1992), p.41
  10. ^ Chabas i Bergon et al. (1992), p.44
  11. ^ Langermann, in Bos et al. (2005), p. 16
  12. ^ Bos et al. (2005), p.84
  13. ^ Bos et al. (2005), pp.83–84
  14. ^ Bos et al. (2005), pp.85–93; Langermann in Bos et al. (2005), p.18
  15. ^ a b Langermann in Bos et al. (2005), pp.12–15
  16. ^ Bos et al. (2005), pp. 74–81; Burnett in Bos et al. (2005), p. 63; Langermann in Bos et al. (2005), pp.17–18
  17. ^ Langermann in Bos et al. (2005), p.26
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