Born 40 years after the death of Hippocrates, he was a follower, but with a distinctly different focus on medicine as materia as opposed to treatment as therapeutic doctrine. He did not ask himself, “How do I treat a fever?” But “How can we reduce the patient’s temperature?”
He wrote five manuscripts, each dealing with a different aspect of medicine. Ahead of his age, many considered his findings to be mystical, others heretical. Islamic scholars in later years considered his manuscripts profound, deeming the knowledge within should only be accessible to a select few. A fanatical society, known as the Ḥarāsat al- Ḥibr (The Keepers of the Ink), formed, pledging not only to protect the manuscripts and any copies throughout time but to limit any knowledge of them.
Early in the 10 th Century Brother Alcuin of Monte Aligerno, a frugal monk physician, travelled from Tuscany to Sicily with Otto the Great and his army on a mission to expel the Saracens from Sicily. Admired throughout the Army for his healing and humility, they nicknamed him The Sparrow for his humility and seeds of wisdom. During the sack and occupation of Taranto, Alcuin discovered copies or originals of Dioscorides’ work and others named De Medicina, authored by Roman named Celsus. He hid the books in his baggage and returned to the monastery in Monte Aligerno, Tuscany, with them.
Revealing the manuscripts to Abbot Aligernus, he was surprised to find that others knew about them but had hidden them from the main church. Together they recognised the need to copy the manuscripts and send them to other monasteries for safe keeping. They named themselves Custodes Arboris Vitae, Custodians of the Tree of Life. Their emblem marked every copy and original text. The group developed into an international secret order, with only the very few being admitted.
By this time, Christianity had developed as a religion, particularly through the Roman Empire, which was becoming the Holy Roman Empire and governed by powerful forces. To this faction, God was divine and responsible through his son Jesus of all healing. They declared Dioscorides’ books heretical and sought to expunge them. Thus, the Fraternitas Obscura came into being. A clandestine, Church-sanctioned order founded to silence heresy cloaked in scholarship. Their primary target? The Ordo Arbor Vitae and its dangerous pursuit of “knowledge without divine sanction.”
Their belief: “Knowledge unblessed is knowledge unbound — and what is unbound corrupts the soul.”
They fear that the healing arts, drawn from pagan, Muslim, or Jewish texts, threaten not just the Church’s authority, but the metaphysical balance of God’s creation. Their mission is to destroy both the texts and the people who use them.
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