Schola Medica Salernitana

A medieval medical school in Salerno, southern Italy, that grew from an early ninth-century Benedictine monastery dispensary into the most influential center of medical learning in Western Europe, reaching its height of influence in the twelfth century as the so-called Civitas Hippocratica. It synthesized Greek, Latin, Arabic and Jewish medical traditions, in part through Constantinus Africanus's Latin translations of Arabic medical texts, and produced the widely copied didactic poem the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum. Long-standing popular tradition credits its founding to four co-founders of different faiths, a story historians treat as legend rather than record. It was formally closed by Napoleonic decree in 1811 after roughly a millennium of activity.