recommended by Cassiodorus (sixth century), and in the
original mother abbey of Monte Cassino medicine was studied, though
there was probably not what could be called a medical school there;
nor had this foundation any connection (as has been supposed) with the
famous school of Salerno."

A review of some of the interesting features of the early history of
medical education will serve to show that, not only was there no
ecclesiastical interference with the new developing science, but, on
the contrary, {226} without the personal aid and the intelligent
patronage of ecclesiastics of all degree, and especially of
archbishops and Popes, the development of medical teaching that took
place at Salerno would probably not have had the significance in
history that it now enjoys. While there was no institutional
connection between the medical school of Salerno and the Benedictine
Monastery at Monte Cassino, it is known that at the end of the seventh
century there was a branch Benedictine monastery at Salerno, and some
of the prelates and higher clergy occupied posts as teachers in the
school, and even became distinguished for medical acquirements.

Though the Salernitan medical school proper was a secular institution,
there is no doubt that the Benedictines had great influence in it and
had fostered its formation. How close the monks of Monte Cassino were
allied to the Popes, everyone knows. The Benedictines considered
themselves the special wards of the Papacy, and a number of the Abbots
of Monte Cassino, or monks belonging to the community, and of men who
had been educated in the monastery, had been raised to the Papacy
during the Middle Ages. The origin of modern medical teaching is thus
closely associated not only with the Benedictines, but through them
with the Popes, without whose encouragement and sanction the work
would not have flourished as it did.

In advance of the formal establishment of medical schools, in the
modern sense of the word, two Popes were distinguished before their
elevation to the Papacy for their attainments in all the sciences, and
especially in medicine, one of whom actually founded an important
school of thought in medicine, while the other was a professor at
Salerno. The first of these is the famous {227} Gerbert, who, under
the name of Sylvester II., was Pope at the end of the millenium and
carried Christianity over what was supposed to be the perilous period
of the completion of the first thous