Pascalis Romanus was a 12th-century priest, medical expert, and dream theorist, noted especially for his Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 translations of Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 texts on theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

, oneirocritics, and related subjects. An Italian working in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

, he served as a Latin interpreter for Emperor Manuel I Komnenos

Manuel I Komnenos

Manuel I Komnenos was a Byzantine Emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean....

.

Oneirocriticism

Pascalis compiled the Liber thesauri occulti, a Latin book on dream interpretation, in 1165, but appears not to have completed it himself. The second book and the first part of the third were translated or adapted from the Oneirocriticon of Achmet

Achmet (oneiromancer)

Achmet, son of Seirim , the author of a work on the interpretation of dreams, the Oneirocriticon of Achmet, is probably the same person as Abu Bekr Mohammed Ben Sirin, whose work on the same subject is still extant in Arabic in the Royal Library at Paris, and who was born AH 33 and died AH 110...

 and the classical treatise of Artemidoros

Artemidorus

Artemidorus Daldianus or Ephesius was a professional diviner who lived in the 2nd century. He is known from an extant five-volume Greek work the Oneirocritica, .-Life and work:...

. His are the earliest known Latin translations of excerpts from Artemidoros. In the first part of the work, Pascalis also draws on Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, quoting from what he refers to as the liber de naturis animalium

History of Animals

History of Animals is a zoological natural history text by Aristotle.-Arabic translation:The Arabic translation of Historia Animalium comprises treatises 1-10 of the Kitāb al-Hayawān .-See also:...

.

Pascalis works within the dream classification system of Macrobius:

• somnium, a dream requiring interpretation;
• visio, a vision that comes true;
• oraculum, prophetic dream mediated by authority;
• insomnium, false or misleading dream caused by bodily disturbance;
• visum, nightmare with supernatural contact.

Elaborating on the three "true" types, Pascalis distinguishes each by the degree to which the soul achieves liberty from the body, and by literary mode. In the somnium, the soul perceives the future allegorically

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

; in the visio, historically

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

; and in the oraculum, prophetically

Revelation

In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...

. The future can sometimes be revealed directly, but often dreams rely on integument, allegory, and figure

Figure of speech

A figure of speech is the use of a word or words diverging from its usual meaning. It can also be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it, as in idiom, metaphor, simile,...

. Pascalis quotes the Solomon of the occult tradition as saying:
What Solomon means, Pascalis goes on to explain, is not that we should avoid the interpretation of dreams, but rather that we should recognize that littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat ("The letter kills, but the spirit brings to life"). Reason allows us to investigate the truth that is symbolized.

Steven Kruger has discussed the dream theory of Pascalis in the context of medical discourse, or "somatization

Somatization

Somatization is currently defined as "a tendency to experience and communicate somatic distress in response to psychosocial stress and to seek medical help for it".This can be, but not always, related to a psychological condition:...

," resulting from the introduction of new medical and scientific texts to Europe. While the Liber thesauri occulti draws on the tradition of humors

Humorism

Humorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers, positing that an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily fluids in a person directly influences their temperament and health...

, Pascalis goes beyond the connection Macrobius makes between insomnium and hunger or thirst to offer an elaborate psychosomatics. Where Macrobius had explained the visum in terms of an incubus

Incubus

An incubus is a male demon that has sexual intercourse with sleeping women.Incubus may also refer to:- Film :* Incubus , a film in Esperanto starring William Shatner* Incubus , a horror film starring Tara Reid...

, Pascalis offers a complex medical explanation involving blood circulation, the bodily position of the sleeper, and humoral disposition.

Other translations

In 1169, Pascalis translated the Cyranides

Cyranides

The Cyranides is a compilation of Hermetic magico-medical works in Greek first put together in the 4th century. A Latin translation also exists. It has been described as a "farrago" and a texte vivant, owing to the complexities of its transmission: it has been abridged, rearranged, and supplemented...

, a Hermetic

Hermeticism

Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...

 magico-medical compilation. In his preface, he summarized his method:
Other Latin translations from Greek by Pascalis include the Ystoria Beate Virginis Marie by the 8th–9th-century priest and monk Epiphanios

Epiphanius the Monk

Epiphanius the Monk was a monk and priest in the Kallistratos monastery in Constantinople and author of several extant works including a life of the Virgin Mary and a life of St. Andrew of Crete ....

 and the Disputatio contra Judaeos attributed (with difficulties of chronology) to Anastasios of Sinai

Anastasius Sinaita

Saint Anastasius Sinaïta or Anastasius of Sinai, also called Anastasios of Sinai, was a prolific and important seventh century Greek ecclesiastical writer, priest, monk, and abbot of Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mt. Sinai....

.

Editions

• Collin-Roset, S. "Le Liber thesauri occulti de Pascalis Romanus (Un traité d'interprétation des songes du XIIe siècle)." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littérraire du Moyen Age 30 (1963) 111–198.

Selected bibliography

• The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Edited by Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva: La Pomme d'or, 2006. Limited preview online.