Gilles de Corbeil
Gilles de Corbeil (Latin: Egidius de Corbolio; also Aegidius) was a French royal physician, teacher, and poet who lived in the late 12th century and died in the early 13th century. Born around 1140 in Corbeil-Essonnes, he studied at the Schola Medica Salernitana and later became a teacher there. In a long poem of about 1194, De laudibus et virtutibus compositorum medicaminum, he praises his teachers Romuald Guarna and Peter Musandinus and describes Salernitan drug therapy. He also laments the school’s decline after Salerno was sacked in 1194 and criticizes the granting of medical degrees to unlearned youths.
Corbeil returned to Paris sometime between 1180 and 1194, becoming a canon and the court physician to King Philip II of France. He presented himself as a pioneer of academic medicine in France and defended Salernitan medicine against rivals such as Montpellier and the empiric Rigord. The epilogue to his De urinis attacks Montpellier and its disputes.
He is the best-known teacher from the University of Paris, where he became a magister in the late 12th century. He wrote three short didactic poems and one longer satire to aid his students: De urinis (352 verses on uroscopy) and De pulsibus (380 verses on Galenic pulsology) were meant as mnemonic guides. His most famous long satire, Ierapigra ad purgandos prelatos (Laxative for Purging Prelates), runs to about 5,929 verses in nine books and targets ecclesiastical abuses, beginning with a prologue that invokes a pope in the hope of a cure for morally ill prelates.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 10:20 (CET).