Simone Simoni: Stefan Batory’s ‘vita medica’

Simone Simoni (1532–1602) was an Italian philosopher interested primarily in early modern Aristotelianism and court physician to King Stefan Batory of Poland. After the king's sudden death at Grodno on 12 December 1586, Simoni was accused of having made serious mistakes while attending his royal patient. In a bitter dispute with his rival, Niccolo Bucello, he came up with a spirited defence of his diagnosis and the adequacy of the treatment in view of the circumstances which played a crucial role in the last days of his patient. This article examines Simoni's argument concerning the king’s health, diseases and death, entitled Divi Stephani Primi Polonorum Regis Magnique Lithuanorum Ducis etc. sanitas, vita medica, aegritudo, mors (Nyssa 1587). Simoni fleshes out his polemic with a wide range of rhetorical devices, including many forms of irony and arguments ad personam. He also brings into it the larger context of interrelations between medicine and early modern philosophy, especially natural philosophy, summed up in the adage ubi desinit physicus, ibi medicus incipit (where the philosopher finishes, there the physician begins). Basically a vita medica of the king in his last days, it is also a fascinating portrait of a monarch with a passion for game hunting.