Arnaldus was born around 1238 as child of Catalan parents in Villaneuva di JiliSca close to Daroca, a city in the south of Aragon. From the year 1260, he studied medicine and theology in Montpellier. His wife Agnes Blasi, daughter of a merchant, also originated from this city, which belonged to Catalonia at that time. Arnald’s daughter Maria became Dominican. Arnald himself took up a studium linguarum at the Dominicans and studied Arab and Latin, possibly also Hebrew, and certainly Humaniora. Soon he became a famous physician and advanced to the position of being personal physician of several rulers, like Peter III of Aragon, who in 1285 bequeathed the castle Ollers near Tarragona to him, as well as Alfonso III and James II of Aragon. To the latter, he dedicated his Regimen sanitatis, a book on health, which was passed on multiple times and finally became known all over Europe. Altogether, about 100 medical writings of Arnaldus were delivered to posterity among them numerous translations from Arab. From 1289/1291 to 1299, Arnald lectured medicine in Montpellier. There he worked at a place that established reputation not only for its highly regarded medical education institution but also since the 1290s for the attachment ofthe controversial Franciscan theologian Peter John Olivi (Petrus Johannis Olivi), whom he loved discussing.
His multitudinous theological writings (Catalan and Latin) prove that Arnald received the spirituality of mendicant orders, the Dominicans and - during the 1290s increasingly and eventually primarily - the Franciscan reformers, but he also placed his own emphasis. He died in a shipwreck near Genoa on the way from Naples to Avignon on September 6, 1311. By then, he had advanced to the personal adviser of the King of Sicily (Frederick III [II] of Aragon), and presumably had been summoned by the pope, who sought medical aid from Arnald.
World History
