| This dissertation examines the production, transmission and interpretation of medical literature in Western Europe from the ninth through twelfth centuries, based upon an analysis of select manuscripts and contemporary library catalogues. It delineates the reception of medical texts from late antiquity, explores patterns of bibliophilic exchange among the Carolingian monastic elite, exposes the pit-falls of Latin medical texts with their Greek technical terminology, illuminates episodes of medical scholasticism, and details the twelfth century dissemination of South Italy's newer texts into Northern Europe's monastic libraries. As such, it presents a clear picture of the changing shape of monastic medical libraries from the very beginning of monastic literary dominance, through their eclipse as the foremost centers of learning in the twelfth century.;The strengths of this study rest upon the examination of early medical manuscripts; through them, it explores issues of medical literacy, scribal training, reader-text interaction and incipient scholarly text manipulation. The author presents fresh evidence of the permutations of medical scholasticism in her identification of the Epistula peri hereseon, of Richer of Rheims' probable autograph manuscript, and of the early scholarly use of Gariopontus, of Salerno's Passionarius. |
