Page:A litil boke the whiche traytied and reherced many gode thinges necessaries for the infirmite a grete sekeness called Pestilence.djvu/36

 summary of the events which happened during the lifetime of our author it is impossible, in the absence of certain information, to reconstruct with any degree of probability the outline of his career.

For our author's name and office we are indebted to Latin editions of this treatise printed in the fifteenth century. In these the work is described thus, with variations: " Kegimen contra pestilentiam . . . Kaminti (or Kamiti), episcopi Arusiensis civitatis, regni Dacie, medicine expertissimi professoris." The form Kaminti, or Kamiti, has long been recognized as a mistake for Kannuti, or Kanuti; but owing to the fact that "Arusiensis civitatis" was wrongly identified with Aarhuus in Denmark instead of Arosia, the Latin form of Vasteras near Stockholm in Sweden, the author could not be traced, as no bishop of Aarhuus bore a name at all resembling his. The apparent geographical difficulty connected with the expression "regni Dacie", i.e. kingdom of Denmark, explains itself on reference to the history of the two countries of Sweden and Denmark, and, indeed, by narrowing the limits of our search helps us to fix with the more certainty on Bengt Knutsson (Benedict Kanuti), who was elected bishop in 1461, as the author of this work.

Our author was a man of rank we learn from the Swedish chronicle of the bishops of Vasteras, compiled by Peder Svart, a bishop of the see who died in a. d. 1562. From the fact of his appointment to the bishopric of this