These are the slides for a paper I presented at the sessions "Words across a Corrupting Sea: New Directions in the Study of Translation in the Medieval Mediterranean," sponsored by SNAP (The Spain-North Africa Project), held at the...
moreThese are the slides for a paper I presented at the sessions "Words across a Corrupting Sea: New Directions in the Study of Translation in the Medieval Mediterranean," sponsored by SNAP (The Spain-North Africa Project), held at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds (4-7 July 2016). The paper comes out of an on-going project surveying the entire corpus of Latin medical literature in the "long 12th century," that is, c. 1075 to c. 1225. This period captures a vibrant period in new medical book production: there are not simply a lot of new books being produced, but the medical curriculum is being transformed. The most significant single contributor to this transformation was Constantinus Africanus, an immigrant from North Africa who became a monk at Monte Cassino. This paper is meant to document the impact of his work, both in showing the range of his translating and editing activity, but also how significant his long-term impact was. As I note, there are more extant copies of Constantine's translations than there are copies of the most influential Cassinese monk of all, Benedict of Nursia, founder of the Benedictine Order.
For surveys of the larger context of medicine in the long 12th century, see my essays (both also posted here on Academia.edu): Monica H. Green, “Rethinking the Manuscript Basis of Salvatore De Renzi’s Collectio Salernitana: The Corpus of Medical Writings in the ‘Long’ Twelfth Century" (2008); and Monica H. Green, "‘Medical Books," in *The European Book in the Twelfth Century* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 277-292.
On the penultimate slide, a photo credit should have been indicated to show the source of the photo from Erfurt/Gotha, Universitäts- und Forschungsbibliothek, MS Amplon. Q 184, f. 2r. The photo was taken by Francis Newton, to whom I wish to extend my thanks.
