De spermate: the Site

The Latin-language pseudo-Galenic treatise variously entitled De spermate, Microtegni etc., is transmitted in 48 mss. between the twelfth and late fifteenth centuries, as well as prints until 1638. The text is first attested c. 1150, attributed to Galen at the end of the twelfth century and reaches its (almost) maximum length c. 1250, when it comprises a long embryological section followed by a long astro-medical one. Its popularity is not immediately affected by the translation of the authentic Περι σπέρματος, De semine, by Nicholas of Rhegium c. 1320. It is an advanced-level text book at universities between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and also seems to have been used by practitioners. The text circulates with authentic Galenic ones in great Galenic compendia c. 1250-1350 and in manuscript and print, with considerable popularity, until the seventeenth century.

De spermate is probably no translation from the Greek but a medieval Latin-language compilation, since no Ancient text has been identified that could qualify as its model. There are elements pointing to third-century doctrines from the Neo-Platonic circuit in Alexandria; influence from Arabic medical tradition may also be identified. De spermate contains some original theories such as an extremely detailed chrono-biological system permitting to predict characteristics, including illnesses, of the individuals according to the hours of birth not only of the baby and its parents but also of its grand-parents, as well as the rare doctrine of the seven-celled uterus.


Basle, ULB, D III 8 f. 355v
Project duration
-
Core fields of research
Languages, culture and society
Research areas
Discourses, identities and mobilities
Media, communication and emergent technologies
Language, literacies and learning​
Co-operation
Päivi Pahta, University of Tampere; Dominique Longrée, Université de Liège; Academy of Finland and JYU project Tralmar no. 267518 (2013-2017, PI Outi Merisalo); Stefania Fortuna, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona

Project description

The Latin-language pseudo-Galenic treatise variously entitled De spermate, Microtegni (other titles attested being Liber spermatis;  Liber de spermate, Liber de XII portis,  Liber de XII signis, De humana natura, Liber microtegni Galieni l. de spermate, Liber de XII signis uel elementis,  Liber de XII portis uel migrotegni Galieni, De corporis et anime armonia conseruanda, Libellus de generacione embrionis, Compositio hominis et cetera, Macrobius) is  transmitted in 48 mss. from the period between the twelfth and late fifteenth centuries, as well as prints until 1638.  The text is first attested c. 1150, attributed to Galen at the end of the twelfth century and reaches its (almost) maximum length c. 1250, when it comprises a long embryological section followed by a long astro-medical one. Its popularity is not immediately affected by the translation of the authentic Περι σπέρματος, De semine, by Nicholas of Rhegium c. 1320.   It is an advanced-level text book at universities between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and also seems to have been used by practitioners.  The text circulates with authentic Galenic ones in great Galenic compendia c. 1250-1350 and in manuscript and print, with considerable popularity, until the seventeenth century. As a matter of fact, the list of owners of manuscript witnesses reads as a Late Medieval Who's Who of rulers, medical practitioners and interested laymen.

De spermate is probably no translation from the Greek but a medieval Latin-language compilation, since no Ancient text has been identified that could qualify as its model. There are elements pointing to third-century doctrines from the Neo-Platonic circuit in Alexandria; influence from Arabic medical tradition may also be identified. De spermate contains some original theories such as an extremely detailed chrono-biological system permitting to predict characteristics, including illnesses, of the individuals according to the hours of birth not only of the baby and its parents but also of its grand-parents, as well as the rare doctrine of the seven-celled uterus. 

Typically, the transmission shows a Hellenising terminology easily corrupted, e.g. in the case of a hot and moist substance originating in blood:

London, BL, Cotton Galba E IV (lines 123-124): ita sanguis u(er)tit(ur) in-stotore siron

Paris, BNF, lat. 15114: i(n)-stothore-si+gro(n) 

Paris, BNF, lat. 6988: istetores iron 

Berlin, SBB-PK,  lat. fol. 638 : in sturore-siro(n)

Since the element i(g)ron most probably goes back to the Greek noun ὑγρόν ‘moisture’, sto/et(h)ores is most likely an adjective.  

Secondly, palaeographical problems often explain the variants that have a considerable impact on the sense of the passage:

London, BL, Cotton Galba E IV, line 127: q(uod) sp(er)ma descendit á-capite

Paris, BNF, lat. 6988: (et) sp(er)ma dein(de) asce(n)d(it) ad caput

Basle, ULB,  D III 8: q(uod) dein(de) descendit ad cap(ut) 

Berlin, SBB-PK, lat.fol. 638: q(uod) d(i)c(tu)m asc(e)ndit ad-capud

The manuscript tradition

De spermate is at present known to survive in 48 Latin-language manuscripts, some of them containing only fragments of the text, and in several sixteenth- and seventeenth-century prints. The attribution of the treatise to Galen at the end of the twelfth century most probably ensured its success during the Galenic revolution of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. While the attribution to Constantine the African as translator is dropped after the middle of the thirteenth century, Galen's name as author persists well into the fifteenth century.   De spermate figures among other authentic and pseudo-Galenic treatises (the so-called New Galen, consisting of translations made after the end of the twelfth century) in the large omnibus volumes for advanced students which were produced in university circles both in the North (N. France, England) and in the South (N. Italy, maybe S. France).  The treatise was first printed in the 1502 edition of Latin translations of Galen by Girolamo Suriano and then, although severely criticised for errors and considered spurious, reprinted several times with the Latin Galen in the sixteenth century, often as the third book of Galen's de semine.  The treatise was still included in the spuria section of the Giunta edition of Galen's works printed in 1625.  In 1638 René Chartier, while denouncing de spermate as his precedessors had, still published it as the third book of Galen's de semine but in a linguistically partly classicized version.

Apparently there is only one mediaeval translation of the text into a European vernacular: a Middle English translation survives in a unique copy in the fifteenth-century Cambridge, Trinity College R.14.52, edited by P. Pahta.  

Project team

Project leaders

Outi Merisalo
Outi Merisalo
Professor