Translating Galen in the Medieval West: the Greek-Latin Translations

The essay examines the wide movement of translations of Galenic texts which, developed without interruption between the XII and the XIII century, gradually provided the Occident, no more able to read the ancient Greek texts, with a corpus of medical treatises both for personal and academic study. In the first part of this work are illustrated the forerunners and the very beginning of this movement, in Ravenna (VI century), Montecassino and Salerno (XI century); the verbum de verbo method of translation, which became the most usual from the XII century onwards, and the stylistic peculiarities of different translators; the reception of these translations, within the scholae and the fledgling universities, and the impact of this production on the development of Medicine in Occident. The second part of the essay traces the profile of the most important translators from Greek, using what has been pointed out in the most recent research and presenting new acquisitions.