(1) H. O. Taylor:  The Mediaeval Mind, 2 vols., Macmillan Co.,
     New York, 1911. (New edition, 1920.)

(2) Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 13:  “Under their action (the Christian Fathers) the peoples of Western Europe, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, passed through a homogeneous growth, and evolved a spirit different from that of any other period of history—­a spirit which stood in awe before its monitors divine and human, and deemed that knowledge was to be drawn from the storehouse of the past; which seemed to rely on everything except its sin-crushed self, and trusted everything except its senses; which in the actual looked for the ideal, in the concrete saw the symbol, in the earthly Church beheld the heavenly, and in fleshly joys discerned the devil’s lures; which lived in the unreconciled opposition between the lust and vain-glory of earth and the attainment of salvation; which felt life’s terror and its pitifulness, and its eternal hope; around which waved concrete infinitudes, and over which flamed the terror of darkness and the Judgment Day.”

Galen died about 200 A.D.; the high-water mark of the Renaissance, so far as medicine is concerned, was reached in the year 1542.  In order to traverse this long interval intelligently, I will sketch certain great movements, tracing the currents of Greek thought, setting forth in their works the lives of certain great leaders, until we greet the dawn of our own day.

After flowing for more than a thousand years through the broad plain of Greek civilization, the stream of scientific medicine which we have been following is apparently lost in the morass of the Middle Ages; but, checked and blocked like the White Nile in the Soudan, three channels may be followed through the weeds of theological and philosophical speculation.

SOUTH ITALIAN SCHOOL

A wide stream is in Italy, where the “antique education never stopped, antique reminiscence and tradition never passed away, and the literary matter of the pagan past never faded from the consciousness of the more educated among the laity and clergy."(3) Greek was the language of South Italy and was spoken in some of its eastern towns until the thirteenth century.  The cathedral and monastic schools served to keep alive the ancient learning.  Monte Casino stands pre-eminent as a great hive of students, and to the famous Regula of St. Benedict(4) we are indebted for the preservation of many precious manuscripts.

     (3) H. O. Taylor:  The Mediaeval Mind, Vol.  I, p. 251.

     (4) De Renzi:  Storia Documentata della Scuola Medica di Salerno,
     2d ed., Napoli, 1867, Chap.  V.

The Norman Kingdom of South Italy and Sicily was a meeting ground of Saracens, Greeks and Lombards.  Greek, Arabic and Latin were in constant use among the people of the capital, and Sicilian scholars of the twelfth century translated directly from the Greek.