| Summary |
This thesis details the rise and growth of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris during the middle ages. It also reveals the origins and authorship of the many manuscripts contained in libraries and other depositories in Paris at that time. The comparative scarsity of scholarly studies concerning this subject furnishes a good reason for this study. The libraries of the medical faculty were filled with ancient, Muslim, and Italian works which came mostly from Salerno and Bologna. Some of these treatises may also have been transported to Paris directly, copied from manuscripts in the Beauvais episcopal library, and a few were perhaps brought from Montpellier. The main figures in the utilizing of the Italian sources in Paris were Odo of Meung and Aegidius de Corbeil in the twelfth century. It appears that Aegidius brought his personal collection of manuscripts from Salerno and drew from them to write his books in Paris. Prior to 1100 the medical courses taught in the Paris schools were based on texts preserved by the monasteries during the early Middle Ages. Errors and changes inserted in copying hindered medical teaching. Then in southern Italy the school of Salerno improved its texts with insertions stemming from its own observations. At the same time Montpellier assimilated Muslim medicine. During the twelfth and early thirteenth century three medical schools formed in Paris, teaching separate courses until they united in 1270 to form the Faculty of Medicine. They assimilated the Salernitan information and amalgamated it with the ancient sources by applying scholastic methods. At the same time the surgeons established their own college, the College de St. Come, and took the surgical leadership in northern Europe by teaching new techniques of the Bolognese doctors. A third author probably brought manuscripts from Bologna to Paris during the thirteenth century. He was Lanfranc of Milan. Lanfranc became the outstanding teacher of surgery in the College de St. Come. This master and others taught the many French, German, and Spanish students who in time contributed their own works to the library shelves. By the beginning of the fourteenth century Italian exiles and Italian-trained masters, led by Lanfranc, dominated Paris's two schools for physicians and surgeons. Thus by 1320 the Paris libraries were among the leading sources for medical knowledge. |
