66 



sciences had scarcely found breathing-time, and 

 no sure establishment 1 . Cassiodorus is said to 

 have directed the Benedictines of the sixth century 

 to read Cselius Aurelianus, a Roman adaptor of 

 Soranus of Ephesus ; but medical lore consisted of 

 little beyond some relics of the Roman schools, 

 handed on in prose or verse compilations which the 

 teacher read to his class, and explained so far as 

 he could. It seems that medicine was not taught 

 formally until so ordered, in 805, by CKarlemagne ; 

 probably by the advice of Alcuin, the founder of 

 the learned tradition at Fulda, the founder, we may 

 almost say, of the neo-latin period, and some time 

 headmaster of my own school of St Peter at 

 York. The influence of the School of Salerno, 

 relatively excellent as it was in the domains 



1 See Baas, Geschichtliche Entwickelung des arztlichen 

 Standes, 1896, p. 128. Charlemagne journeyed in Italy where 

 some schools still existed, and where Priscian, Donatus, 

 Boetius, Cassiodorus, Augustine, even Virgil and Cicero were 

 read ; thence he called teachers to his palace schools ; 

 and to Lyons, Orleans or Tours. How Paris became the 

 centre of enlightenment in the Western world is not clear. 

 The " palace school " probably was of no place, but of the 

 royal retinue; that the School of Paris was made up of 

 those of St Genevieve, St Germain des Pres and the 

 Cathedral school seems not to be a very probable con- 

 jecture. 



