Beschreibung:

Galen, Ars medicinalis in the translation of Johannitus (Hunayn ibn Ishaq) with commentary, here in Catalan translation, decorated manuscript on paper [Spain (Catalonia, probably Barcelona), c. 1475] 26 leaves (plus an original paper endleaf at each end, and including 2 blank leaves at end of main text), complete, collation: i-ii12, catchword, double column of 32 lines in an angular Iberian gothic bookhand, the uppermost lines with elongated ascenders, Johannitus commentary set in margins in main hand, openings of each section in angular capitals with some ascenders touched in red, paragraph marks and rubrics in bright red (some rubrics with calligraphic penstrokes), simple blue initials on frontispiece with black penwork, spaces left for remaining initials (with tiny guide letters), small spots in places, else excellent condition, 290 by 204mm.; contemporary limp parchment binding with flap and leather ties on flap and front board, stains and cockling, overall in good condition, in fitted red morocco slipcase The only known copy of this rare translation of Galens works in private hands, in outstanding condition and still in its original binding Provenance: 1. Written for a medical practitioner in Catalonia c. 1475; with a mostly erased contemporary inscription on the front cover reading Adam … A[…]tarius probably in the same hand as that of the near-contemporary additions at the end of the volume. 2. Joan Gili i Serra (1907-1998), Anglo-Catalan antiquarian bookdealer of Dolphin Bookshop off the Charing Cross Road, London, and later Oxford, as well as an important Catalan publisher and translator. Text: Johannitus, or more correctly Hunayn ibn Ishaq, was a Christian born near Baghdad in the opening years of the ninth century. He made full use of his medical studies in the intellectual capital of the Abbasid caliphate, and having mastered Syriac, Latin and Greek in addition to his native Arabic, he turned his hand to translation, producing Syriac and Arabic translations of crucial Greek medical texts. A collection of these texts, named the Articella, was perhaps translated into Latin by Constantinus Africanus in the eleventh century and certainly was in use in the famous Salerno medical school a century later. This produced the first major medical textbook in the West, the Isagoge Johanniti, which included the Galenic Tegni (in fact his Ars Medica). This spread outwards from northern Italy in the fourteenth century, and in the University of Montpellier it entered the collective knowledge of educated Catalan society. Montpellier was part of the territory of the crown of Aragon, and under the influence of the kings of Mallorca from 1276, and operated as a meeting point for educated Catalans and Italians. It became the second most important site for the study of medicine in the West in the Middle Ages, after Guilhem VIII established a medical scholarly milieu there by declaring in 1180 that anyone could teach the subject within the walls of the city, and teaching by physician-monks of the various religious communities there was augmented by Arabic and Jewish doctors. On 17 August 1220 the professors resident in the city founded a Univeratas Medicorum and immediately thereafter Cardinal Conrad von Urach, legate of Pope Honorius III (11481227), granted the school its charter. By 1240 the school was placed under the control of the bishop of Maguelonne, but teaching continued along the model of Arabic medical schools, and some sections of the learned Christian population there are recorded as being able to speak Arabic. With the collapse of the Salerno school in the mid-thirteenth century, Montpellier received an influx of teachers and rose to being the centre of medical learning in Europe. The Isagoge Johanniti was one of only sixteen prescribed medical works for all students in Montpellier. That culturally mixed and linguistically complex environment is the almost certain site of this translation of the work. It was made before 139