Deux traducteurs humanistes de Galien : Giovanni Bernardo Regazzola Feliciano et Jean Vassès

Abstract

This paper intends to shed some light on two minor Galenic translators from the 16th century, by studying their respective historical context and philological methods. Both Feliciano (ca 1490- ca 1552) and Vasses (1486-1550) were involved in the translation of the Greek Aldine text of Galen in neo-Latin. Bernardo Feliciano worked for the cardinal Reginald Pole and provided some typographic copies for the preparation of the Aldine. He was not only a copyist and a translator of Galen, but he also drew some anatomical plates to illustrate the surgical treatises. Jean Vasses was a French “medecin regent” of the Parisian University of medicine. He belonged to a French school of academics who kept the monopoly of the Galenic translations in France and published them in pocket-size books for the student audience. Both translators showed their philological skills by correcting the Aldine text in their translations and each endeavor reflects the rivalry between the European capitals (Venice and Padua, Paris, Basel) to be the new center of orthodox Galenism