Nicholas of Poland

Who was Nicholas of Poland?

Nicholas of Poland, also known as Nicholas of Montpellier, was a medieval Polish-German friar and healer of Silesian origin. A member of the Dominican Order, around 1250 he moved to Montpellier, where he taught in the Dominican school. Around 1270, he returned to Silesia and entered the Dominican convent at Kraków, where he provided medical as well as spiritual care to the people.

A popular and charismatic healer, Nicholas was the focus of an ‘alternative’ medical movement that flourished in Upper Silesia in the late-thirteenth century. He was also a favorite in the court of Leszek the Black, the duke of Sieradz. Nicholas’s methods were extremely unorthodox. Urging a return to ‘natural’ methods of healing, he attributed extraordinary virtues to toads, scorpions, and lizards. His favorite remedy was serpents’ flesh prepared according to detailed instructions contained in his treatise, Experimenta magistri Nicolai, a compilation of his medicaments. He urged all people, "of whatever station, to eat serpents whenever it is possible to get them." Evidently impressed by Nicholas’s doctrine, Leszek ordered that serpents, lizards, and frogs be served at his court.