In Italy the study of grammar, with all that it included, was established
in tradition, and also was regarded as a necessary preparation for the
study both of law and medicine. Even in the eleventh century these
professions were followed by men who were “grammarians,” a term to be
taken to mean for the early Middle Ages the profession of letters. In the
eleventh century, a lawyer or notary in Italy (where there were always
such, and some study of law and legal forms) needed education in a
Latinity different from the vulgar Latin which was turning into Italian. A
little later, Irnerius, the founder of the Bologna school, was a teacher
of “grammar” before he became a teacher of law.[299] As for medicine, that
appears always to have been cultivated at least in southern Italy; and a
knowledge of grammar, even of logic, was required for its study.[300]
The survival of medical knowledge in Italy did not, in means and manner,
differ from the survival of the rest of the antique culture. Some
acquaintance had continued with the works of Galen and other ancient
physicians; but more use was made of compendia, the matter of which may
have been taken from Galen, but was larded with current superstitions
regarding disease. Such compendia began to appear in the fifth century,
and through these and other channels a considerable medical knowledge
found its way to a congenial home in Salerno. There are references to this
town as a medical community as early as the ninth century. By the
eleventh, it was famous for its medicine. About the year 1060 a certain
Constantine seems to have brought there novel and stimulating medical
knowledge which he had gained in Africa from Arabian (ultimately Greek)
sources. Nevertheless, translations from the Arabic seem scarcely to have
exerted much influence upon medicine for yet another hundred years.[301]
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