Pseudo-Galenic Texts in the Editions of Galen (1490-1689)

Abstract

  When Galen was still living, pseudo-Galenic texts were sold in Rome under his name, as Galen himself tells us in the initial passage of his bio-bibliographical work De libris propris. In Late Anquity and the Early Middle Ages, there were more Pseudo-Galenic texts available in Latin than Galenic works, as Klaus-Dietrich Fischer showed in a seminal article published in this journal in 2013. Later on, Pseudo-Galenic texts continued to be added to the Galenicum Corpus, which increased over time until the 17th century. This paper examines the Pseudo-Galenic texts in the twenty-five complete editions of Galen published in Latin, in Greek and in Greek-Latin from 1490 to 1689, particularly how their number, their identity, the way they were defined and considered, and whether they have been the subject of philological investigation.