"The Schola Medica Salernitana"

Discover the heritage associated with the "Schola Medica Salernitana", one of the first medical centres of the Christian West.

The Schola Medica Salernitana Project involved a national and international survey of texts and authors traditionally associated with the School of Salerno. The vastness of the context, as well as the extensive dissemination of manuscripts and codices, led to a targeted, though not exhaustive, reconnaissance, which allowed us to work on the research and retrieval of sources, held in some of the most important Italian libraries and, through the web pages, to retrieve information on some funds available in foreign libraries. In view of the difficulties involved in finding manuscripts and/or unpublished texts beyond national borders, it was deemed appropriate to investigate in greater depth at a local and national level, according to a periodization ranging from the 11th century to 1500, which, however, also involved the following centuries (with particular reference to some ancient printed editions and first-hand historical sources relating to charitable centres, hospitals, congregations, etc.). Several times in the past, the hypothesis was put forward that the only possible scriptorium, during the School's stay in Salerno, could have been that of the city's Monastery of St Benedict, where the famous, but so far still anonymous, Chronicon Salernitanum was also believed to have been composed. If, on the one hand, more recent criticism is also revisiting this latter hypothesis, in general, it must be emphasized that to date we have no manuscripts whose provenance is certainly Salerno, except from the 12th century onwards; nor have we received any mention, for the medieval centuries, of a Library (or similar structure) of the School or its scriptorium, which one would have expected within an organization within which scientific and didactic activities were carried out and regulated by royal legislation from the first decades of the 13th century. In the light of such a scattered and inconsistent beginning, the lines of march on which the investigation was carried out were essentially two: a local reconnaissance and one at the major libraries, first Italian and then foreign, that possessed material referable to the School and its doctors. These are the authors most investigated: Arnaldo Da Villanova, Costantinus Africanus, Garioponto, Giovanni Afflacio, Magister Maurus, Magister Salernum /Alfanus, Nicolaus Praepositus, Nicolaus Salernitanus, Paulli Aeginetae, Pietro Da Eboli, Plateario The Database includes a part of digitized unpublished sources and a substantial bibliography collected by analysing what is held in other libraries outside the Region. To give a few examples, among the digitized material is that of the Archive of the Hospital of S. Maria dell'Olmo and the Confraternity, now the Citizen's Charity Committee, kept at the Avallone Library in Cava. This fund, inventoried by Dr. Michela Sessa, provides not only a cross-section of Campania society between the 17th and 19th centuries, but also interesting scientific and medical notes. Similarly, at the abbey complex of Loreto, among the funds of the State Library of Montevergine, a digitization laboratory has been set up to retrieve a number of Cinquecentine of a medical nature, which have been little researched, some of which are not present in the common national OPAC. Four manuscripts from the medieval and modern periods were digitized at the Girolamini Library and Monumental Complex in Naples; this almost unpublished material will enrich the digital collection. Further research has continued at the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome, the Vallicelliana in Rome and the Medicea Laurenziana in Florence. Some of the materials identified are already online. Finally, the holdings in Europeana were investigated, followed by the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Biblioteca Nacional de España and the Library of Congress. Many of the data collected can be found in the Bibliography. The work, as mentioned at the beginning, cannot be said to be exhaustive. It is a first reconnaissance but, at the same time, it is a question of laying the foundations to continue the investigations, not only in the fonds of the National Libraries (which in Italy are well known) but in the small and large local realities, where, as it happened in Cava dei Tirreni, unpublished medical contents still emerge, very important for the construction of the history of the Medical School of Salerno. Happy browsing!