(1) H. O. Taylor:
The Mediaeval Mind, 2 vols., Macmillan Co.,
New York, 1911. (New
edition, 1920.)
(2) Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 13: “Under
their action (the Christian Fathers) the peoples
of Western Europe, from the eighth to the thirteenth
century, passed through a homogeneous growth, and
evolved a spirit different from that of any other
period of history—a spirit which stood
in awe before its monitors divine and human,
and deemed that knowledge was to be drawn from the
storehouse of the past; which seemed to rely on
everything except its sin-crushed self, and trusted
everything except its senses; which in the actual
looked for the ideal, in the concrete saw the symbol,
in the earthly Church beheld the heavenly, and in fleshly
joys discerned the devil’s lures; which
lived in the unreconciled opposition between
the lust and vain-glory of earth and the attainment
of salvation; which felt life’s terror and its
pitifulness, and its eternal hope; around which
waved concrete infinitudes, and over which flamed
the terror of darkness and the Judgment Day.”
Galen died about 200 A.D.; the high-water mark of
the Renaissance, so far as medicine is concerned,
was reached in the year 1542. In order to traverse
this long interval intelligently, I will sketch certain
great movements, tracing the currents of Greek thought,
setting forth in their works the lives of certain
great leaders, until we greet the dawn of our own
day.
After flowing for more than a thousand years through
the broad plain of Greek civilization, the stream
of scientific medicine which we have been following
is apparently lost in the morass of the Middle Ages;
but, checked and blocked like the White Nile in the
Soudan, three channels may be followed through the
weeds of theological and philosophical speculation.
SOUTH ITALIAN SCHOOL
A wide stream is in Italy, where the “antique
education never stopped, antique reminiscence and
tradition never passed away, and the literary matter
of the pagan past never faded from the consciousness
of the more educated among the laity and clergy."(3)
Greek was the language of South Italy and was spoken
in some of its eastern towns until the thirteenth
century. The cathedral and monastic schools served
to keep alive the ancient learning. Monte Casino
stands pre-eminent as a great hive of students, and
to the famous Regula of St. Benedict(4) we are indebted
for the preservation of many precious manuscripts.
(3) H. O. Taylor:
The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. I, p. 251.
(4) De Renzi:
Storia Documentata della Scuola Medica di Salerno,
2d ed., Napoli, 1867,
Chap. V.
The Norman Kingdom of South Italy and Sicily was a
meeting ground of Saracens, Greeks and Lombards.
Greek, Arabic and Latin were in constant use among
the people of the capital, and Sicilian scholars of
the twelfth century translated directly from the Greek.
