page_title: Materia medica
section_title: Michael Servetus
hierarchical_section_title: Materia medica / Early modern / Michael Servetus
caption_attribution_description: English: De Materia Medica, book 6 [libri sex], published in Lugdunum, 1554 [modern-day Lyon, France] Français&#160;: De Materia Medica, livre 6 [libri sex], publié à Lugdunum, 1554 [Lyon actuel, France]
context_page_description: Materia medica is a Latin term from the history of pharmacy for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing. The term derives from the title of a work by the Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD, De materia medica, 'On medical material'. The term materia medica was used from the period of the Roman Empire until the 20th century, but has now been generally replaced in medical education contexts by the term pharmacology. The term survives in the title of the British Medical Journal's "Materia Non Medica" column.
context_section_description: According to Spanish scholar González Echeverría in several communications in the ISHM, the John M. Riddle Anonymous B (De Materia Medica of 1543) would be Michael Servetus, and that the Anonymous D (De Materia Medica of 1554 of Mattioli plus non-signed commentaries) is two commentarians, Servetus and Mattioi, being the last one hired for editing the "Lyons printers' Tribute to Michel de Villeneuve" edition.
  Michael Servetus, using the name "Michel de Villeneuve", who already had his first death sentence from the University of Paris, anonymously published a Dioscorides-De Materia Medica in 1543, printed by Jean & Francois Frellon in Lyon.  It has 277 marginalia and 20 commentaries on a De Materia Medica of Jean Ruel.  According to Gonzalez Echeverría, to be associated to an anonymous Pharmacopeia that "Michel de Villeneuve" published the same year, meant to be a single unit, which is typical when it comes to De Materia Medica-Pharmacopeia. This work had six later editions, in 1546 and 1547 by Jean Frellon, who considered Michael de Villeneuve "his friend and brother", another in 1547 by Thibaut Payen, etc.
  There is another Materia Medica with commentaries on a Ruel edition of 1537, printed by Simon de Colines. This work contains hundreds of manuscript marginaia, all along 420 out of 480 pages. The scholar Gonzalez Echeverria demonstrated in the ISHM with a graphological, historical and linguistic study that this task was carried out by Michel de Villeneuve. It also demonstrated that this document was written by the same hand that wrote the famous "Manuscript of Paris", a work also by Michel de Villeneuve, consisting of a draft for his Christianismo Restitutio. "The manuscript of the Complutense" is not just a union of the ideas of the previous works by Michel de Villeneuve, Syropum Ratio, etc., but also of the later works, Enquiridion, De Materia Medica of 1543, sharing with this last many of its 20 big commentaries, for instance.
  According to this theory, in 1554, after the immolation of Michael de Villeneuve/Servetus, the editors and printers that had worked with him would have decided to make a new De Materia Medica as a tribute to their colleague and friend. All the commentaries that could identify Michel de Villeneuve as the author disappeared, but the rest are copied from his work of 1543. It is a very strange edition because there exist four different kinds of copies with different covers, one per editor: Jean Frellon, Guillaume Rouillé, Antoine Vicent and Balthazar Arnoullet, who was also the printer of this unique edition, in Lyons. For developing a bigger work and to blur the mark of Michel de Villeneuve, they hired the expert on De Materia Medica, Pietro Andrea Mattioli.
caption: One of the four covers (Arnoullet)  of the "Lyons printers' tribute edition to Michel de Villeneuve"[24] edition of the Materia Medica. By Michel de Villeneuve & Pietro Andrea Mattioli, printed by Balthazar Arnoullet in 1554, in Lyons.
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