Metafore e traduzioni latine medievali di Ippocrate e di Galeno

Hippocrates and Galen’s works were translated from both Arabic and Greek into Latin between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries. These Latin translations gave an essential contribution to the development of medicine into a theoretical and academic discipline. Translators from Arabic were Constantine the African and Gerard of Cremona, while translators from Greek were Burgundio of Pisa, Bartholomew of Messina, Stephen of Messina, Peter of Abano, and Nicholas of Reggio. Metaphors were widespread in the original texts of Greek medicine. Did they also have a role in these Latin translations? Which one and how significant was it? The present article aims to answer such questions by analyzing both methaphorical terms and contexts, in particular the names of diseases, and the similiarity of medical learning and plants breeding in the Latin translation of the Hippocratic Law by Bartholomew of Messina. The results are interesting for at least two goals: 1) to reconstruct the culture of the translators and their milieu through the names of diseases, which change and multiply over time; 2) to identify typical features of the translators in metaphorical contexts, which do not have the technical and canonical language of medicine.