Andrew Boorde
Andrew Boorde was a notable figure from the late 15th to mid-16th century, born in 1490 in Sussex, England. Initially a member of the Carthusian order, he was appointed Suffragan Bishop of Chichester but was dismissed in 1521 due to accusations related to his interactions with women. Following this, he pursued medical studies across Europe, earning his degree in medicine. Boorde became an explorer and spy, undertaking significant travel throughout Europe, including a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. His literary contributions included "Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge," regarded as the first English guidebook to the continent, and "Dyetary of Helth," an early household medical guide that emphasized the importance of laughter in health. Despite a reputation for humor, he faced legal troubles, including imprisonment in 1547, and he passed away in 1549. His works have gained recognition for their influence on medical understanding and literature, particularly among laypeople.
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Andrew Boorde
Traveler
- Born: c. 1490
- Birthplace: Borde Hill, Cuckfield, Sussex, England
- Died: April 1, 1549
- Place of death: Fleet Prison, London, England
Biography
Andrew Boorde was born in 1490 at Borde Hill, near Cuckfield in Sussex, and was brought up in Oxford. He was admitted to the Carthusian order at the London Charterhouse in 1515, and he became Suffragan Bishop of Chichester but was dismissed in 1521 for being “conversant with women.” He was subsequently sent abroad to study medicine in France at Orléans, Toulouse, and Montpellier—where he obtained his degree—and in Wittenberg,, Germany.
Boorde became an inveterate traveler, visiting Scandinavia and eventually making a tour to Jerusalem by way of Antwerp, Venice, and Rhodes, from which he returned via Naples and Rome. His experience led to his being co-opted into the burgeoning vocation of espionage, carrying out missions for Thomas Cromwell in France and Spain. Cromwell first had to obtain Boorde’s release from “thraldom” in the Charterhouse; Boorde was released from his vows in 1529. He wrote an “Itinerary of Europe” describing his own journeys, which apparently was lost by Cromwell, although an Itinerary of England survived to be printed in 1735.
While he was in Britain, Boorde practiced medicine in various places, including Glasgow in the mid-1530’s and Winchester in the 1540’s. He settled briefly in Montpellier to reconstruct the lost “Itinerary of Europe” as the first guidebook to the continent in English, Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge; it includes a good deal of parodic verse as well as terse descriptive prose and is also notable for containing the first brief record of the language of the Roma (gypsies).
Boorde’s best-known works were attempts to extend learning among the laity. His Dyetary of Helth is the first known guide to household medicine, and it was reprinted at frequent intervals. His Brevyary of Helth is also a primitive medical textbook. The significance of these works was not generally appreciated until the eighteenth century, by which time Boorde had acquired a reputation as a humorist that may not have been entirely deserved, although his observation that “Myrth is one of the chiefest thynges in physicke” was translated into the modern dictum that “laughter is the best medicine.” He certainly showed an uncommon tendency to forthright mockery; he liked to describe himself as “Andreas Perforatus” (punning on his surname, which can be heard as “bored”). There is no evidence that he wrote the various anonymous jest-books sometimes ascribed to him, but if he really did write The Merrie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham—whose earliest known edition dates from eighty years after his death—then he must be considered all the more important as a literary pioneer. He is more reliably credited with a treatise on medical astrology, The Pryncyples of Astronamye the Whiche Diligently Perscutyd Is in Maners Pronosticacyon to the Worldes End.
In 1547, Boorde was sent to the Fleet Prison, having been convicted of “keeping three loose women” in his house, but whether he was actually supervising a brothel is open to doubt; he was also reported in contemporary documents to be an eccentric, given to wearing a hair shirt and fasting, although such behavior would not be entirely incompatible with being “conversant with women.” He died in the Fleet in 1549.