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Darrera modificació: 2026-01-27
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Kaltio, Outi, The 'Pantegni, Theorica' of Constantine the African : A Text-Historical Study of the First Medical Compendium in the Latin West, Hensilki, Tesi doctoral de la Universitat de Helsinki, 2023, 77 pp.
- Resum
- The 'Pantegni' of Constantine the African (d. by 1098/9) was the first comprehensive medical textbook in Latin. The work is a translation and modification of an original Arabic text, the 'Kitāb al-malakī' by Haly Abbas (d. after 978), combined with other Arabic medical treatises. Constantine compiled the work first, it appears, in Salerno and then in the monastery of Monte Cassino in southern Italy. The Pantegni achieved a position as the central textbook at the first medical schools in Latin Christendom. The work spread widely in the following centuries and it had a significant afterlife down to the nineteenth century. There are no modern, comprehensive editions or translations of the Pantegni.
The Pantegni consists of two parts, the 'Theorica' and the 'Practica'. This study concentrates on the textual history of the first part, the Theorica. There are around eighty extant manuscripts containing the Theorica (or parts of it), of which fifty-nine are examined in this study. Two sixteenth-century printed editions of the Theorica are also consulted. Additional material is gathered and analysed from the Pantegni's Arabic original, the Kitāb al-malakī, and from its second Latin translation made in 1127, the 'Regalis dispositio'. The methodologies employed are those of textual scholarship, chiefly textual criticism and philological close-reading. Several textual extracts in different witnesses are compared, focusing on language and content. Similarities and disparities, such as additions and omissions, provide information on the Theorica's translation process, different versions, transmission, and transformation throughout the centuries.
The key manuscript is Codex E.ö.II.14, which belongs to the collections of the National Library of Finland, and which dates back to the third quarter of the twelfth century. Insertions in the manuscript's margins provide a unique and valuable set of passages for collation. This study demonstrates that Codex Eö.II.14 amalgamates three early textual versions of the Theorica.
After collation, four main stages in the Theorica's textual history emerge. The text which Constantine compiled in the monastery of Monte Cassino and which later became the standard version, was preceded by an earlier 'Ur'-version of the fifth book. The Ur-version lacks passages which Constantine added to his text at a later stage, probably only after consulting other sources besides the Kitāb al-malakī. In the first half of the twelfth century at the latest, a completely new version of the Theorica was made, in which grammatical structures were systematically revised. It appears that the anonymous redactor also collated the Theorica anew with its original Arabic text and translated and added short passages which Constantine had originally omitted for the sake of concision. With the new version, a more approachable text was pursued. Its linguistic features suggest that the revision was intended for more effective pedagogical use. The new version also influenced the Theorica's later transmission: many of its readings were merged with the readings of the standard version. I demonstrate that the first printed version of the Pantegni (Lyon, 1515) was based on such a combined version, whereas the second early printing (Basel, 1539) drew from the standard version.
In addition to three original articles, this study includes the first critical edition of Theorica's Book IV, Chapters 9–10, based on eleven manuscripts and the two early printings. The edition illustrates the text's transformation from its earliest phase all the way to the early printings, displaying the textual strata deriving from different periods.
This research illustrates the early reception and transformation of medical texts to better meet the needs of their users. It also sheds a broader light on the history of medicine and on the transmission of Arabic medical works to the Latin West in the eleventh century. It is to be hoped that this research can form the basis for a future critical edition of the Theorica.
- Matèries
- Medicina
Llatí
Crítica textual
Manuscrits
- URL
- https://helda.helsinki.fi/items/a66a1976-7a26-4107- ...
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