The School of Salerno

A travelling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate of theCollege.

There, that is my gauntlet, my banner, my shield,Hung up as a challenge to all the field!One hundred and twenty-five propositions,Which I will maintain with the sword of the tongueAgainst all disputants, old and young.Let us see if doctors or dialecticiansWill dare to dispute my definitions,Or attack any one of my learned theses.Here stand I; the end shall be as God pleases.I think I have proved, by profound researches,The error of all those doctrines so viciousOf the old Areopagite Dionysius,That are making such terrible work in the churches,By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East,And done into Latin by that Scottish beast,Johannes Duns Scotus, who dares to maintain,In the face of the truth, the error infernal,That the universe is and must be eternal;At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,That nothing with God can be accidental;Then asserting that God before the creationCould not have existed, because it is plainThat, had He existed, He would have created;Which is begging the question that should be debated,And moveth me less to anger than laughter.All nature, he holds, is a respirationOf the Spirit of God, who, in breathing, hereafterWill inhale it into his bosom again,So that nothing but God alone will remain.And therein he contradicteth himself;For he opens the whole discussion by stating,That God can only exist in creating.That question I think I have laid on the shelf!

I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain,That a word which is only conceived in the brainIs a type of eternal Generation;The spoken word is the Incarnation.

What do I care for the Doctor Seraphic,With all his wordy chaffer and traffic?

You make but a paltry show of resistance;Universals have no real existence!

Your words are but idle and empty chatter;Ideas are eternally joined to matter!

May the Lord have mercy on your position,You wretched, wrangling culler of herbs!

May he send your soul to eternal perdition,For your Treatise on the Irregular verbs!

Monte Cassino, then, is your College.What think you of ours here at Salern?

To tell the truth, I arrived so lately,I hardly yet have had time to discern.So much, at least, I am bound to acknowledge:The air seems healthy, the buildings stately,And on the whole I like it greatly.

Yes, the air is sweet; the Calabrian hillsSend us down puffs of mountain air;And in summer-time the sea-breeze fillsWith its coolness cloister, and court, and square.Then at every season of the yearThere are crowds of guests and travellers here;Pilgrims, and mendicant friars, and tradersFrom the Levant, with figs and wine,And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders,Coming back from Palestine.

And what are the studies you pursue?What is the course you here go through?

The first three years of the college courseAre given to Logic alone, as the sourceOf all that is noble, and wise, and true.

That seems rather strange, I must confess,In a Medical School; yet, nevertheless,You doubtless have reasons for that.

Oh yesFor none but a clever dialecticianCan hope to become a great physician;That has been settled long ago.Logic makes an important partOf the mystery of the healing art;For without it how could you hope to showThat nobody knows so much as you know?After this there are five years moreDevoted wholly to medicine,With lectures on chirurgical lore,And dissections of the bodies of swine,As likest the human form divine.

What are the books now most in vogue?

Quite an extensive catalogue;Mostly, however, books of our own;As Gariopontus' Passionarius,And the writings of Matthew Platearius;And a volume universally knownAs the Regimen of the School of Salern,For Robert of Normandy written in terseAnd very elegant Latin verse.Each of these writings has its turn.And when at length we have finished theseThen comes the struggle for degrees,Will all the oldest and ablest critics;The public thesis and disputation,Question, and answer, and explanationOf a passage out of Hippocrates,Or Aristotle's Analytics.There the triumphant Magister stands!A book is solemnly placed in his hands,On which he swears to follow the ruleAnd ancient forms of the good old School;To report if any confectionariusMingles his drugs with matters various,And to visit his patients twice a day,And once in the night, if they live in town,And if they are poor, to take no pay.Having faithfully promised these,His head is crowned with a laurel crown;A kiss on his cheek, a ring on his hand,The Magister Artium et PhysicesGoes forth from the school like a lord of the land.And now, as we have the whole morning before us,Let us go in, if you make no objection,And listen awhile to a learned prelectionOn Marcus Aurelius Cassioderus.

This is the great School of Salern!A land of wrangling and of quarrels,Of brains that seethe, and hearts that burn,Where every emulous scholar hears,In every breath that comes to his ears,The rustling of another's laurels!The air of the place is called salubrious;The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends itAu odor volcanic, that rather mends it,And the building's have an aspect lugubrious,That inspires a feeling of awe and terrorInto the heart of the beholder.And befits such an ancient homestead of error,Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder,And yearly by many hundred handsAre carried away in the zeal of youth,And sown like tares in the field of truth,To blossom and ripen in other lands.

What have we here, affixed to the gate?The challenge of some scholastic wight,Who wishes to hold a public debateOn sundry questions wrong or right!Ah, now this is my great delight!For I have often observed of lateThat such discussions end in a fight.Let us see what the learned wag maintainsWith such a prodigal waste of brains.