ABSTRACT
Among the numerous works of the great thirteenth-century polymath Ramon Llull is the prose romance Blanquerna, which has some claim to be considered the first novel in European vernacular literature. The tension between pope and speck of dust, between the exalted office and the frail mortal who held it, could be eased by separating the two out. Broken down by century, that proportion was probably at its highest in the twelfth century, and started to decline in the thirteenth. In 1219 Honorius III extended the scope of the prohibition from those living under a rule to a wider array of archdeacons, deacons, rural deans, and others holding benefices, and also to priests. It is hardly remarkable that leading abbots and bishops should retain doctors, or that the papal court should attract and welcome many of the most distinguished of them. Arnald of Villanova fumigated the pontiff’s mouth with smoke from heated camomile seeds and the worm dropped out.
