Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle AgesWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Medicine, Medieval; Physicians
Just about a century later the Emperor Frederick II, the Hohenstaufen,
in the year 1240, extended this law, emphasized it, and brought it
particularly into connection with the great medical school of the Two
Sicilies, of which territory he was the ruler. This law has often been
proclaimed as due to his personality rather than to his times,--as
representing his very modern spirit and his progressive way of looking
at things. There is no doubt that certain personal elements for which he
should be given due credit are contained in the law. To understand it
properly, however, one must know the law of King Roger of the preceding
century; and then it is easy to appreciate that Frederick's regulation
is only such a development of the governmental attitude toward medical
practice as might have been expected during the century since Roger's
time. It has sometimes been suggested that this law made by the Emperor
Frederick, who was so constantly in bitter opposition to the Papacy, was
issued in despite of the Church authorities and represents a policy very
different from any which they would have encouraged. The early history
of Salerno, even briefly as we have given it, completely contradicts any
such idea. The history of medical regulation at the beginning of the
next century down at Montpellier moreover, where the civil authorities
being weak the legal ordering of the practice of medicine was
effectively taken up by the Church, and the authority for the issuance
of licenses to practise was in the hands of the bishops of the
neighborhood, shows clearly that it is not because of any knowledge of
the real medical history of the times that such remarks are made, but
from a set purpose to discredit the Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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