Mondella (Zurich, 1551)

Translated from the Greek by Enrico Prodi, University College London (2023)

To Lewis Katharios,
trimeters in the popular style
by Euboulos Gessner.[*]

An old belief of Pythagoras’ clever followers
Holds that one soul is present in many bodies
One after the other. Not very reasonable!
Who can believe that Pythagoras was once
Aethalides, then at the time of the Trojan War
Euphorbus, and then Hermotimus, and again
Pyrrhus, and afterward Pythagoras? Who 
Can believe this, if he is clever? Yet even Holy Scripture
Mentions a metempsychosis of this sort 
(More or less) when it calls John the Baptist 
Elijah, the prophet who had lived
Long before. This much is true, but the meaning
Of Scripture is different: it does not maintain that there was
A single soul in the two bodies, but that in some sense
The Precursor of the Lord was equal,
In faith and in zeal towards religion
And in every virtue, to ancient Elijah.
So it is that a proverb says a friend
Is another self because of friendship,
By an unbreakable bond that binds into unity the hearts 
Of good men, and by the virtue of what commands admiration.
So it is that man and wife who are yoked for life
In lawful covenant have in some sense 
A single soul inhabiting two tents,
In full agreement of intent and habits.
So it seems to me that Lewis Katharios^*
Shares a single soul with Galen and Hippocrates,
Those great lights of the medical art.
For not only by his clean words and teaching
Does he imitate medicine and the other sciences,
But with his manner, too,
And with his clean life, and often
With his very deeds he displays his art excellently.
The other kind of soul, the only immortal one,
The one through which we piously know Christ,
Is not at all equal to those, but stands so far
Above them as heaven does the earth.

[*] Comment by the translator E. Prodi: "Gessner Hellenizes both Mondella’s surname (Katharios, from Italian mondo = ‘clean’) and his own first name (Euboulos = ‘of good counsel’, a calque of ‘Conrad’)."

Gessner, Poem. In: Luigi Mondella, Dialogi Medicinales decem, Zurich: Froschauer, 1551, f. 117v-118r. Zentralbibliothek Zurich, signature: Md A 119. Persistent Link: https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-1351

VD 16 entry:

Mondella, Luigi. ALOISII MVN||DELLAE BRIXIANI, CLA=||RISSIMI IN ITALIA MEDICI ET || Philosophi, Dialogi Medicinales decem, nunc pri=||mum in lucem editi: in quibus multa & uaria || tum artis theoremata, tum historiae & || experimenta doctissime ex=||plicantur.|| ... Indicem || uerò in fine.||. TIGVRI APVD FROSCHOVERVM || Mense Octobri, Anno M.D.LI.||. Zürich: Froschauer, Christoph d.Ä., 1551.

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