his master at Bologna, Bertrucci, made a larger number of dissections
scarcely more than thirty years after the supposed Papal decree of
prohibition, he returned to Montpelier to become the professor of
surgery there, and introduced the Italian methods of investigation
into the famous old university.

At this time the Popes were at Avignon, not far distant from
Montpelier. From them Guy received every encouragement in his
scientific work. He insisted that no one could practice surgery with
any hope of success unless he devoted himself to careful dissection of
the human body. If we were to believe some of the things that have
been said with regard to the Popes forbidding dissection, this should
have been enough to keep the French surgeon from the favor of the
Popes, but it did not. On the contrary, he was the intimate friend and
consultant medical attendant of two of the Avignon Popes, and was the
chamberlain to one of them. The good influence of Chauliac on the
minds of the Popes is reflected in their interest in the medical
department of the University of Montpelier. About this time Pope Urban
VI. founded the College of Twelve Physicians at Montpelier. He was an
alumnus of the university, and had been appealed to to enlarge the
opportunities of his Alma Mater. He did so in the manner just related.

One of the Papal Physicians of the Avignon times was unfortunate. This
was the ill-fated Cecco di Ascolo, who was distinguished as a poet and
a philosopher as well as a physician. But for his sad end, one might
be tempted to say, that he had so many irons in the fire {212} that it
was scarce to be wondered at that he suffered the fate of many another
tender of too many irons, and eventually got his fingers burnt. He was
body physician of Pope John XXII. during a good part of the long
pontificate of that strenuous old man, who became Pope when over
seventy, lived to be ninety, yet accomplished important work in every
year of his career. After leaving Avignon Cecco went to Italy and
became the Professor of Astrology at Bologna. The term astrology had
none of the unfortunate or derisory signification that it has at the
present time. It was, as the etymology of the word implies, the
science of the stars, though it was cultivated with due reference to
the influence of these heavenly bodies on human fate and human
constitutions. Hence a physician's interest in it. This continued to
be a characteristic of astrology down to the t