The Pantegni’s Progress: A Lost Encyclopedia Emerges from Fragments in the Uppsala University Library (2017) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Constantine the African and ‘Ali ibn al-’Abbas al-Magusi: The ‘Pantegni’ and Related Texts, ed. Charles Burnett and Danielle Jacquart (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 1994
Stories conflict, but it seems like the Arabic encyclopedia of medicine that the medical translator Constantine the African (d. ante 1098/99) brought with him from what is modern-day Tunisia was partially damaged in transit. In its original, the Kamil as-Sina’a at-Tibbiya (The Whole Art of Medicine) was divided into two parts, each with ten books: the theoretical part that explained the basic components of the human body, its anatomy, and the basic kinds of disorders it could suffer; the practical part addressed how to keep the body in health or, failing that, how to treat it with drugs, regimen, or surgery. Although in one Renaissance edition we find a complete Pantegni (Constantine’s Hellenized version of “the whole art”), in manuscripts from the 12th century we find only the ten-part Theorica and a two- or three-part Practica. Focusing just on Book VIII, which addresses diseases of the reproductive organs and joints, this study examines how the missing books of the Practica were “re-created,” literally reconstructed from scratch out of excerpts from other works that Constantine translated from the Arabic, other works already available in Latin, and even, for some passages, some fragments of the original Practica that seem to have survived. The essay by Mary F. Wack in this same volume makes a similar argument with regard to Book II of the Practica (on materia medica), and work by Raphael Veit in 2006 extended the argument to Book III (on fevers).
2011
No complete collection of Constantine the African’s medical works was preserved at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, where he had installed himself by 1077 and where he apparently spent the rest of his career until his death before 1098/99. Of the more than two dozen texts associated with Constantine, only eight or nine are now extant in a copy dating from before c. 1100, and of these, only two or three manuscripts can be localized at Monte Cassino. Although Constantine himself left no list of his translations, we do find, in both versions of the in-house biography of him (written in the first instance by a monk who would have probably known Constantine personally), a bibliography of 20 or 23 works that he is said to have written. Moreover, we know that that list was not complete, since at least three and possibly as many as eight additional texts can be attributed to him. This paper reconstructs Constantine’s entire oeuvre. I argue that nearly all of the texts listed in the Cassinese bio-bibliographies can be traced in manuscripts that date from the century following Constantine’s death. These manuscripts, in turn, reflect back on the milieu in which Constantine was working, for they show that his work not simply was absorbed into, but may have been in part generated by trends in medical learning already at play when he arrived in Italy in the 1070s.
This is a short post announcing the discovery of portions of *Pantegni, Practica* Books VI and VII in a mid-12th century manuscript at Pembroke College, Oxford. In an account nearly contemporary with Constantine the African (d. before 1098/99), it was reported that Constantine hadn't finished his translation of the 10-part *Practica* because portions of the original Arabic by 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi had been lost in a shipwreck. And indeed, all but one previously known MSS of the *Practica* lacked Books III-VIII. Upon its discovery, this became the earliest manuscript known to preserve these portions of the text. (A second copy of the same sections was discovered in a Berlin MS in December 2015.) For further details on the loss of the *Pantegni, Practica* and its later reconstruction from other sources, see Monica H. Green, “The Re-Creation of Pantegni, Practica, Book VIII,” in Constantine the African and ‘Ali ibn al-’Abbas al-Magusi: The ‘Pantegni’ and Related Texts, ed. Charles Burnett and Danielle Jacquart (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), pp. 121-60.
Constantinus Africanus Blog, 2018
The post on the Constantinus Africanus Blog (https://constantinusafricanus.com/) for March 2018 addresses "The Puzzle of the Practica.” The Pantegni may have been meant by Constantine to be his masterpiece. Translated from the Arabic Kitāb kāmil aṣ-Ṣināʻa aṭ-Ṭibbiyya (“The Complete Book of the Medical Art”) by ‘Alī ibn al-‘Abbās al-Majūsī, the Pantegni was intended to have two parts: the first, the Theorica, covered basic physiology, anatomy, and disease description; the second, the Practica, covered all aspects of regimen (staying healthy) and therapeutics. Each part, in the Arabic original, had 10 books. But while the Theorica was translated in full, only portions of the Practica were translated. This short essay explains why that initial incomplete translation turned, by the 2nd quarter of the 13th century, into a full 10-book Practica.
Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation , 2009
Included in the original publication are translations of the following texts: I. Biography of Constantine the African by Peter the Deacon (12th cent.) II. Trota (?), obstetrical excerpts from the Salernitan Compendium, On the Treatment of Diseases (12th cent.) III. Mattheus Platearius (attributed), Circa instans (12th cent.; excerpts) IV. Copho (attributed), Anatomy of the Pig (12th cent.) V. Medical Licenses from the Kingdom of Naples a) License for Bernard of Casale Santa Maria (1330) b) License to practice surgery for Maria Incarnata (1343)