On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Vol. I

the times of Actuarius, once the enormity of Turkish barbarism had occupied the Byzantine kingdom, it is established that all cultivation of letters perished along with the kingdom. If you were to look at what Galen meant to the Byzantines under a single view, you would say that he reigned indeed, but not so much himself as through his satraps and their ministers, whether Greek or Arab. Yet, if they did not read his works with much zeal, they nevertheless saved them in large part from destruction by transcribing many copies, which, transported from the times of Andronicus and Actuarius to the peoples of Western Europe, inflamed physicians and philologists to a new study of the true Galen. For there, Galen had reigned not in a Greek but in a Latin habit, and in such a way that his true face could not be seen, especially from the time when the Arabs began to obtain a certain preeminence in philosophy and medicine.

For from the sixth century after the birth of Christ in Western Europe, only a few works of Galen were in use, along with a few books of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Soranus, and others, translated into Latin by the authority of Cassiodorus. He had urged the monks of the Order of Saint Benedict to read not only other monuments of antiquity but also the Greek physicians translated into Latin6, which books were spread throughout the monasteries of that same order in Italy, Britain, France, and Germany, and were applied to both learning and practicing the medical art. And after the School of Salerno began to flourish, no new method of healing was invented there; rather, supreme authority was attributed only to the ancient physicians, primarily Hippocrates and Galen, which was even later confirmed by the law of the

6) Cassiodorus, On the Instruction of Divine Letters, 31: "But if you do not have knowledge of the eloquence of Greek letters, you have primarily the Herbarium of Dioscorides, who described the herbs of the fields. After these, read Hippocrates and Galen translated into the Latin tongue, i.e., Galen’s Therapeutics destined for the philosopher Glaucon, and a certain anonymous work that is proven to be collected from various authors. Then, the medicine of Aurelius Caelius and Hippocrates on herbs and cures (food, from the emendation of V. Rose), and various other works composed on the art of healing, which I have left behind for you hidden in the recesses of our library." Cf. Teuffel, History of Roman Literature, §§ 456, 1; 457, 489 (2nd ed.).