Translating Medical “Secrets” from Italy to Lebanon: A Translation of Domenico Auda’s Marvellous Secrets
Conference paper > Summary Text · 2026
Authors: Kadir ÇELİK
Scientiae (Annual Conference) 2026: Nantes, 9-12 June, France, Nantes, International, Verbal, Summary Text, 2026-2026, pp 17-17
Summary
<p>The rising popularity of new books of secrets in Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century has been well studied by William Eamon and several scholars. A new Italian book of secrets entitled Breve Compendio di Maravigliosi Secreti was published in 1652. The work was attributed to an apothecary of Rome, Fr. Domenico Auda, who became a head-apothecary of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit. Central to this study, the book played an intriguing role in the exchange of medical knowledge between Italy and Lebanon. As recent scholarship has mainly concentrated on the books of secrets in Europe, their reception and reflection in the Islamic East have, to date, remained largely unexplored. This study offers a unique example of this gap, with a particular case of an Arabic-Garshūnī translation of Auda’s work, by examining a late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscript belonging to the Maronites in Lebanon. This paper seeks to shed light on the exchange of medical knowledge—particularly within the books of secrets publications—between the West and the East. It focuses on a manuscript that constitutes a unique extant instance of a translation of books of secrets in the Levant.</p>