Galen in Giorgio Valla’s encyclopedia

Abstract

Galen plays an important role for Giorgio Valla, who owned Galen's manuscripts and translated his works. If Hippocrates is for Valla the auctoritas medica par excellence, Galen interpres of Hippocrates is the medical author to draw on, also integrated with Arabic authors. In De expetendis et fugiendis rebus, Galen is the main source for the medical part of the encyclopedia, but more often he is mediated by Byzantine authors; Valla works on treatises which we now know to be pseudo-galenic and which were widely used since they were easy. In Giorgio Valla's encyclopedia Galen is, therefore, more a Byzantine and a medieval Galen. This is a little-known document of the history of Galenism in Humanism.