Il testo e le fonti del Liber pandectarum medicinae di Matteo Silvatico

The Liber medicinae pandectarum or Pandectae of Mattheus Silvaticus, physician and medicine professor, active in Naples and Salerno 1297-1342, was dedicated to the king Robert of Anjou in 1332 and enjoyed great success all over Europe. After the editio princeps (Naples 1474), many other editions followed all over the 16th century. The Pandectae is an ample alphabetical lexicon whose entry words are names of simplicia used in medicine and alimentation, of human organs, of diseases, of pharmaceutical preparations: all these are catalogued according to their Latin, Greek or Arabic denominations. Purpose of this essay is both to illustrate the transformation of Silvaticus’ work during the different phases of transmission, from the manuscripts to the printed editions (e.g. addition of indexes, numbering of the lemmata as chapters, addition of informations inside of the lemmata) and to point out the specific problems encountered during the preliminary studies for a future critical edition, which has never been done. Among these problems, particularly complex are the identification of the sources used by Silvaticus, the evaluation of author’s contributions and the references to personal experiences.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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