The Latin tradition of Galen’s Capacities of Simple Drugs and Capacities of Foods from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance

Abstract

Galen’s Capacities of Simple Drugs and Capacities of Foods were both known by Latin authors in Late Antiquity, as Gargilius Martialis shows, and the Capacities of Simple Drugs seem to have got a Latin translation at that time or a little later. They were not included in the Alexandrian Canon of Galen’s sixteen works, and in the Middle Ages it is not surprising that they were entirely translated into Latin from Greek rather late: the Capacities of Foods by William of Moerbecke in Viterbo in 1277, the Capacities of Simple Drugs by Nicholas of Reggio in Naples in the early fourteenth century. Before, the first five or six books of the Capacities of Simple Drugs were partly translated into Latin from Arabic by Gerard of Cremona: the translation of the sixth book, which is incomplete, is transmitted anonymously in few manuscripts, and has been attributed to Gerard based on the style. The Capacities of Foods have no Latin translation from Arabic, but there is a Latin translation of what seems to be a compendium of this work, which was done by Accursius of Pistoia in 1200, in Bologna, and is transmitted under the title of De dissolutione continua. These medieval Latin translations were replaced by new ones in the 1530s, the translation of the Capacities of Simple Drugs by Thodore Gerard of Ghent, and those of the Capacities of Foods by Joachim Martins of Ghent and by Martin Grégoire of Tours. In this article I shall present the Latin translations of both Galen’s Capacities of Simple Drugs and Capacities of Foods from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, and reconstruct some aspects of their reception.