Galen's Return to the West

This chapter reconstructs the Latin tradition of Galen and its development from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century, especially from the eleventh century, when Galen’s return to the West started. Galen’s medical and philosophical works became famous immediately and were mentioned by Greek and Latin authors of the third century, then they were summarized by Byzantine physicians since the fourth century, and used in pedagogic contexts in Greek Alexandria between the fifth and the seventh centuries, and also in sixth-century Latin Ravenna. Later on, Galen’s system survived in the Byzantine Empire, and developed in the Arabic world, whereas the West went through a period of political, economic, and cultural decadence. Only in the eleventh-twelfth centuries were Galen’s works rediscovered and translated into Latin from Greek and especially from Arabic, together with Arabic encyclopedias, and henceforth they dominated medical studies of all European universities until the fifteenth century. The chapter treats in detail Galen’s translators from Arabic (Constantine the African, Gerard of Cremona, Mark of Toledo, and Arnold of Villanova) and from Greek (Burgundio of Pisa, Sthephen of Messina, William of Morbeke, and Nicholas of Reggio), their output and impact on academic medicine through the collection of the Articella and the New Galen.