For Latin authors, the problem was always the same: harmonize Aristotle’s physiological and biological information with Galen’s, all the while according, as much as possible, the philosophical systems of the two scholars. However, the question presents itself in a new light, since at the same time were translated the Arabic interpretations, notably those of Avicenna (Canon, translated in the twelfth century by Gerard of Cremona), of‘All ibn Ridwan (commentary of Tegni translated by Gerard of Cremona) and of Averroes (Colligettranslated in 1285 byBonacosa in Padua). The assimilation of all these works in the first half of the thirteenth century leads to a period of important debates between 1270 and 1320, a period that has been called the ‘‘times of controversies” (Jacquart and Micheau 1990). The two most debated questions are the primacy of the heart as a first principle of the body, and the existence of a feminine seed. Contrary to what is often claimed, these debates are not limited to a simple controversy with the ‘‘doctors’’ on one side and the “philosophers” on the other. The double quality of many authors, notably in Italy, prevents us from a too cut-and-dried opposition between the followers of the two disciplines. Thus, Pietro Torrigiano, medical doctor active in Paris in the first decades of the fourteenth century, defends the Aristotelian position that makes the movements of the heart a simple physical process, while the majority of doctors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries go along with Aristotle’s denial of the existence of a female seed. However, beyond the diversity of views, it is possible to find a certain number of constants, particularly in some centers of teaching. In Italy, the problem is more acute because medicine and philosophy are often taught in the same faculty, and by the same person, as in the case of Iacopo da Forli (d. 1404) who teaches natural philosophy from 1384 to 1386, moral philosophy and medicine in 13921393 and 1395-1396, and finally logical and natural Philosophy in 1398-1399. The Conciliator of Pietro d’Abano, written between 1303 and 1310, must be considered an attempt to bring solutions to these debates that then stimulate the medical community. The acuity of these questions, as institutional as intellectual, doubtlessly explain in part the success obtained in Italy by the Canon, which becomes over the course of the fourteenth century the almost unique source of all medical teaching: it was the only one to give a solution allowing to conserve the benefits of Galenism and the great principles of philosophy. It is therefore not surprising that the Averroist doctor and philosopher Antonio da Parma proposes, in the first years of the fourteenth century, a solution to the problem based on Avicennian instrumentalism, by distinguishing, in accordance with Aristotle, two types of arguments: the first one, the dialectic argumentation, is the philosophers’, and is true and necessary; the second one is the rhetorical argumentation, which is ‘‘much less probably’’ (comm. Canon, I.1.6.2.): it is the doctors’.
In the following generation, Gentile da Foligno (d. 1348) deepens this distinction by trying to show, for each of the controversial questions, that the contradiction between the discourse of philosophers and doctors does not prevent the latter from acting to maintain health. He concludes that the physicians can content themselves with the assumptions of their discipline, even if they appear false. We must note, however, that Avicennian instrumentalism does not lead these authors to abandon the debates between Galen and Aristotle. On the contrary, the distinction between the doctor acting ‘‘as a doctor’’ and the doctor reflecting ‘‘as a philosopher’’ allows them to engage these questions without confusing the two disciplines, and without substantially modifying the modes of treatments left by the Galenic tradition: the theoretical questions still remain, in the first half of the fourteenth century, an essential part of medical education.
World History
