SALERNITANA, SCUOLA. — In Salerno, the purest classical spirit and monastic medicine took refuge in it; there monastic medicine was transformed into secular medicine, while remaining, however, untouched by magical or superstitious practices. Although it produced nothing new, the s. s. has the undisputed merit of having transmitted medical thought in its purest form and of having been the first school to flourish in the Christian West.
The earliest information dates from 904, when, according to documents, a man from Salerno was physician at the Court of France; in 984 the bishop of Verdun, Adalberone, went to Salerno for treatment. Leaving aside the legends concerning the origin of the s. s., the problem is narrowed down to the secular origin asserted by De Renzi and the monastic origin defended by Puccinotti. According to the most recent views, the Benedictines were the school’s first representatives and animators; in Salerno, more than in their other numerous monasteries, they found a medical tradition, and there they established hospices attached to the monasteries, where pilgrims were also hospitalized according to the rule. In any case, during the first period (the pre-Constantinian period), the principal names are predominantly those of ecclesiastics, beginning with Guarimpoto or Garioponto, who lived in the 11th century and was regarded by Capparoni as an ecclesiastic and called subdiaconus in the Liber Confraternit of the Confraternity of the Crusaders of Salerno. His work, Passionarius, already demonstrates its religious character in its title. Pietro Clerico was a contemporary of Guarimpoto and wrote a Practica, very similar to the preceding work. Another representative of I (v.), who died in 1085. Alongside these ecclesiastics, however, there were well-known laymen who constituted entire families, such as the Cofoni and the Plateari; nor were women devoted to the medical art lacking, among whom Trocta excelled: she devoted herself to obstetrics and left us the book De mulierum passionibus in, ante et post partum. Among the anonymous works written around the year 1000, the Speculum hominis, in verse, and the Antidotario salernitano, a codification of the prescriptions used in hospital practice, must not be forgotten. Particularly noteworthy in this period, in medical thought and in the works—none of them original—is the complete absence of magical and astrological doctrines.
The second period (the period of Constantinian splendor, 1100–1300) is characterized AFRICANO (v.), the foremost representative of the s. s., and by a moderate Arabist influence, which coincided with the spreading fame of the school and the consequent greater influx of students and teachers of distinguished reputation. It should be added that the State intervened to regulate the school, conferring upon it an official character. Federico II, in fact, established through his Constitutions of Frederick that the medical art could not be practiced without the approval of a commission of masters from Salerno; the course of study was to last five years, preceded by three years of logic; surgeons, finally, had to have attended surgical lectures for at least one year and demonstrate that they had attended anatomy lectures.
Salernitan medical doctrine, although based on the Hippocratic humoral theory, was completed by all the branches then belonging to the domain of medical practice. Particular interest was devoted to uroscopy, which studied urine in its most external aspects, quantity and color; the s. s. introduced new diagnostic interpretations, shifting uroscopy toward uromancy, a distinctly medieval science. Maestro Mauro wrote a treatise De urinis, and the masters Sacco, Ursone, Giovanni Plateario, and Pierre Gilles de Corbeil also dealt with the subject. By contrast, ophthalmology was cultivated by maestro Zaccaria and Davide Armenio, author of the Tractatus de oculis, as well as by Camanosoli, who treated ocular nosology, therapy, and surgery according to the s. s.; but Benvenuto Grasso or Grafeo excelled, in the second half of the 13th century, as author of the Ara probata oculorum.
The undisputed merit of the s. s. is that it restored anatomical thought and the study of anatomy to honor, after they had declined and been almost forgotten since the time of Galen. With the Constitutions of Frederick, however, as has been said, the study of anatomy was imposed upon all those wishing to practice surgery. But Frederick’s edict cannot prove that this concerned the anatomy of humanorum corporum or that human autopsies were performed, since the study of human anatomy was limited solely to knowledge of the Galenic texts. The best-known Salernitan work in this field remains the Anatomia porci of Cofone the Younger, who flourished at the end of the 11th century; it is a very brief treatise, limited to listing the principal organs and indicating the position of the more conspicuous ones in dissection. Among brief personal observations, it mentions the lacteal vessels of the intestine, which Gaspare Aselli would later identify with the chyliferous vessels he discovered. Maestro Mauro (c. 1170) and maestro Ursone also dealt with anatomy; the latter must be credited with a brief treatise once regarded as anonymous.
The school’s true distinction was surgery, which underwent considerable development as a result of the landing in southern Italy of wounded Crusaders returning from the Holy Land. Thus, in Salerno, surgery, which had declined and was practiced only by empirical charlatans, returned to the hands of illustrious masters. The first to rehabilitate surgery was Pietro Clerico, who lived after the year 1000 and was the author of a Practica. But its great representative was Ruggero di Frugardo, a native of Parma who lived between the 12th and 13th centuries and was the author of the work Post mundi fabricam, better known as Rogerina. Even better known was Rolando da Parma, author of a Chirurgia better known as Rolandina, a pupil of the preceding master who flourished around 1250. It was principally external surgery, but in cases of necessity it did not shrink from…