Constantin the African

Constantin the African is an author medical of the Middle Ages and a teacher, born about 1015 and died about 1087. Its name, Africanus, come from its , birthplace Carthage to Africa. Early it was dedicated being studied of medicine and, as it was the use of time, it went on remote journeys, of which some led it as far as the Far East. It was familiarized with the Eastern languages and studied the Arab literature thoroughly. Its studies in Arab medicine taught him much from things that its Western contemporaries were unaware of. Of return to Carthage it caused among its fellow-members a great jealousy which was worth so many nuisances to him (one even says that it was shown to practice the magic) that it accepted readily the place of secretary near the Emperor Constantin Monomaque in Reggio. While it was with Salerno Constantin became a famous professor of medicine. There remained there however only a few years and renonça with the honors and the temporal goods to become Benedictine with the monastery of the Mount-Cassin. It was accommodated with open arms by the Abbot Desiderius, one of the men most educated of his time, which was to become the Pope Victor III. Constantin spent the last years of his life to the Mount-Cassin, occupying himself to write books, encouraged in that by Desiderius which was his/her best friend. Its most known work is the book named Liber Pantegni, dedicated to Desiderius, which is in fact a translation of the Khitaab el Maleki d' Ali Ben el-Abbas. He also wrote some original work, but it is so difficult to distinguish what is indeed with its hand and what was allotted to him thereafter that one has no certainty as for his original contributions in medicine.

In fact, the life itself of Constantin the African is badly known for us. The most reliable source is in a short note, “De Constantino”, inserted by the Master salernitain Matthæus Ferrarius in his comment on the Dietæ universalis of Isaac Judæus. The character emerges abruptly in the light in 1075 when it appears in Salerno and is astonished by the indigence of the medical literature of which one lays out to with it. He turns over then to Africa to collect works which he can find there then goes back to Salerno after three years. Its retirement with the Mount-Cassin does not have only the completely normal one at an age where the sight of the men obstructed them in their work; it undoubtedly found the required assistances for him read the texts for translation and to recopy them under its dictation. With Constantin starts the second time of the School Salernitaine de Médecine, particularly notable for its translation of all the great medical writings, Greeks as well as Arab and for important original work. Many the famous professors of the twelfth century in Salerno were proud to proclaim that Constantin had been their Master. Among the many editions of its work most important is that of Basle (in fol., 1536).

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