Danielle Jacquart, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (eds), La scuola medica salernitana: gli autori e i testi , Florence, Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007, pp. xiv, 592, €68.00 (paperback 978-88-8450-232-2).

The articles gathered here represent the proceedings of the 2004 International Conference at Salerno and bring to light the major significance of the Salernitan textual tradition in western medical culture. For the historian of medicine, going to Salerno is a veritable “pilgrimage”, one which commemorates the establishment of rational medicine (p. vii): namely the practica of the magister Salernus, an expert empirical practice founded on the theoretical precepts of ancient Greek natural philosophy. At the crossroads of Greco-Roman and Arabic medical thought, Salerno did indeed occupy a unique position in the history of European medicine. It was here that, at the start of the first millenium, empirical practice, Hippocratic medicine, and natural philosophy were blended into teachings that ultimately found their way into cathedral schools, monasteries, and universities throughout medieval Europe. This brief review cannot do justice to the wealth of erudition and critical commentary brought together in this collection. From the codicological biographies of the famous Liber iste to those of the Regimen sanitatis salernitanum, or the Circa instans, ubiquitous in later medieval and early modern Europe, nineteen careful papers reveal the breadth and depth of the rich Salernitan textual tradition, testifying to the existence of an intellectual and professional medical milieu in the south of the Italian peninsula at least as early as the eleventh century. The majority of these studies are based on philological analysis of sources, tracing trajectories of important texts and often-contested authorship. Appended recensions of extant manuscripts together with scrutiny of style and content are useful aids for specific research. More importantly, the contributors grapple with fundamental questions still to be answered about the “School of Salerno”. Was this school merely a local, geographic entity, or did it rather embody a school of thought? Was Salernitan medicine the reflection of a particular philosophy, a movement characterizing a type of medical practice? Where and when did this “School of Salerno” take root, and how did it end—and was there truly a “Beccarian” difference between pre-Salernitan, Salernitan, and scholastic medicine (p. ix)? Was the university of Salerno in fact the prototype for the early medieval university? Given the widespread diffusion of Salernitan medical literature and its importance in later medieval academic curricula, what was the role of Salerno in establishing medicine’s position in the early medieval academy—notwithstanding Frederick II’s later magisterial licensing decrees? What was the position of female students, teachers, and practitioners in Salerno? The following are a few examples of the papers included. The first by Mireille Ausecache delineates the important work of father and son Platearius, exploring the presumptive compiler-authorship of the Liber iste and of the canonical Book of simple medicines, and tracing the context and lineage of extant manuscripts. The next (by Corina Bottiglieri) contributes valuable notes toward a future critical edition of Mattheus Silvaticus’s important Pandectae. This is followed by Charles Burnett’s study outlining possible Hippocratic sources in the Pantegni. Faith Wallis’s discussion of Bartholomaeus’s commentaries on the Articella highlights the innovative role of this famous twelfth-century Salernitan in the diffusion of one of the most important medieval medical textbooks. This paper also explores Bartholomaeus’s contribution to the elevation of medicine to a true scientia, thus laying some of the groundwork for the full integration of medical curricula within the burgeoning academic institutions of the time. The final example by Monica Green painstakingly reconstructs the story of the legendary Trota and her oeuvre that bear such important witness to the only known female writer at Salerno. The prolific works of the enigmatic “dame de Salerne” and of her students attest to the far-reaching impact of Salernitan teachings. Indeed, the wide dissemination of Trota’s writings documents the existence of a “market” for Salernitan medicine, which by the twelfth century had already reached English and Norman consumers. This valuable book is intended for the expert scholar, not for the novice medievalist or medical historian. Elaborate appendices, indices, and text excerpts supplement the collection. A more detailed introductory synopsis would make the material more accessible to students. None the less, scholars wishing to delve into the medical culture of Salerno and its labyrinth of manuscripts, now have—in addition to the classic studies of Salvatore de Renzi and Paul Oskar Kristeller—a new beacon to help them “navigate this immense sea made up by the Salernitan texts” (p. viii). We join in the editors’ hope that these studies may inaugurate a renaissance of the history of Salernitan medicine; and that they may, “under the scalpel of philological and codicological analysis” (p. xiv), shed renewed light on a fascinating intellectual milieu, which combined the empiric traditions of local lay practitioners with the basic elements of Greco-Roman, Arabic, and Judeo-Christian scientific cultures, to give birth to the fundaments of modern western medical thought.