Les voies de la science grecque: Etudes sur la transmission des textes de l'Antiquite au dix-neuvieme siecle

The present set of nine studies is intended to illustrate the diverse ways in which Greek medicine and science were handed down to Christian and Muslim scholars in subsequent centuries. The first paper, by Béatrice Bakhouche (pp. 1–31), is a brief study of the fortuna of Plato’s Timaeus in the medieval West. Despite its esoteric language, the work soon became a popular text in the schools, accompanied by numerous commentaries. It was translated into Latin by both Cicero and Calcidius.

Nicoletta Palmieri contributes a lengthy and lively article (pp. 33–133) on the theory of medicine from the Alexandrians (5th–7th century a.d.) to the Arabs (9th–11th century). First and foremost come the commentaries to the Galenic treatises On the Sects, The Medical Art, On the Pulses for Beginners, and To Glauco On the Method of Healing. The Medical Art, of course, became the most authoritative of all Galenic writings in the Middle Ages, and indeed in the Renaissance: the commentary on it by “Alī ibn Rid.wān proved a highly influential guide to the intricacies of Galenic dogma. As for On the Sects, it too was viewed as an essential introduction to the Alexandrian canon of Galen’s works. Another important source for the history of Galenism between the Alexandrians and the Arabs are the so-called Summaria Alexandrinorum: résumés of Galenic works, edited in Arabic, or more likely translated from the Greek (p. 80).

Françoise Micheau studies (pp. 147–79) the sponsors of Galenic translations made by H.unayn ibn Ish.āq, in ninth-century Baghdad. Danielle Jacquart’s contribution to the volume she edits is a masterly analysis (pp. 241–329) of a medieval French translation of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, by Martin de Saint-Gille (1362–63). The translation cannot ever have been very popular, since it now exists in only one copy (Paris BN fr. 24246). Jacquart has occasion to criticize constantly G. Lafeuille’s edition of the French text (Geneva, 1954).

Jean-Marc Mandosio discusses the ancient sources for the classification of the sciences and arts in the Renaissance (pp. 331–90). He pays special attention to Politian’s Panepistemon (1491) and its sources, and then turns to Politian’s contemporaries: G. Savonarola (1452–98), Apologeticus de ratione poeticae artis (1492); Giorgio Valla (1447–1500), De expetendis et fugiendis rebus (Venice, 1501); and Gregor Reisch (1467?-1525), Margarita philosophica (1503). Politian’s Panepistemon had more influence than any of the others. Pride of place was given to Politian’s book by the Zürich polymath Konrad Gessner in the latter’s Pandectarum libri XXI (1548). Finally, Ramus (1515–72) breaks utterly with Aristotle, whom Politian is careful to adapt, rather than to criticize.

Brigitte Mondrain studies (pp. 391–417) the medical humanist Janus Cornarius (1500–1558), notable inter alia for his editions and translations of Hippocrates and Galen. Cornarius was also highly interested in theology (he was the first to translate all the correspondence between Basil and Gregory of Nazianzen [p. 400]). “Son oeuvre demeure sans équivalent par son ampleur” (p. 417).

Danielle Gourevitch edits the intriguing correspondence between the noted English philologist and medical historian William A. Greenhill and his French colleagues Charles Daremberg and Gustave Dugat, in connection with the Arabic version of Galen’s On Anatomical Procedures. The letters tell a tragicomic story of naked ambition, fatuous rivalry, and filial devotion. A few mistakes have crept into Gourevitch’s transcriptions of the English letters: on p. 464, “how next” should be followed by “to,” “hospitally” should be “hospitably,” and “1994” should be “1894”; on p. 465, “understanding” should be “undertaking”; on p. 466, “applied” should read “supplied...