Flourished 1065-1085
Medical Scholar

After learning that Italian cities and monasteries had no medical texts, the man known only as Constantine the African took a 'I set of Arabic medical manuscripts to the medical school at Salerno, where he translated them into Latin. Born in Carthage (in present-day Tunisia), where he had been a merchant, Constantine settled at the monastery of Montecassino soon after his arrival in Italy. Becoming a Benedictine monk, he continued to introduce Arabic and classical medical knowledge into Europe. While he did bring works by Hippocrates and Galen, he apparently was primarily interested in passing on Arab medical ideas, which were significantly more advanced than European ones at the time. Many of the translations are so heavily augmented by Constantine's own practical information that he effectively became an important author in his own right. He was concerned with both theory and...