Chapter 14 - Reading the Sciences

Summary

Most creative activity in medicine in the “long twelfth century” (c. 1075 to c. 1225) was centered in southern Italy, specifically Monte Cassino and Salerno. Old medical texts were newly edited, while others, originally composed in Greek or Arabic, were newly translated. From this foundation, in turn, new synthetic works were composed. Based on a survey of several hundred extant books and inventories from the period, this chapter argues that what defined the “medical book” in the twelfth century was this new learning. While content became more uniform, however, form did not: because there was no centralized locus of production of medical books, no common codicological format developed, not even a habit of incorporating illustrations.