Aristotle vs Galen: Medieval Reception of Ancient Embryology - Medieval Medicine and the 13th Century Controversy over Plurality/Unicity of Substantial Form -

Chung, Hyun Sok

Abstract

In their embryology, Aristotle and Galen greatly disagreed on the role of human derived materials like menstrual blood and vaginal secretion (called by them female sperm or semen). This gap made those two ancients also disagree on their understanding of mother's role in the generation of the human body in her womb. During the Middle Ages, especially during the thirteenth century, the scholastics drew on those two ancient thoughts for some rational underpinnings of their philosophical and theological doctrines. However, the manners of adoption and assimilation were varied. For example, Albert the Great strived to reconcile the two in the image of Avicenna, one of the main and the most important sources of Galenist medicine in the thirteenth Century. By contrast, those scholastics who played an important role in the controversy over plurality/unicity of the substantial form, drew on their disagreements. For example, pluralists like Bonaventure, William of la Mare, and Duns Scotus appealed to Galenist medical perspective to underpin their positions and paved ways to decorate Virgin Mary's motherhood and her active contribution to the Virgin birth and to the manhood of her Holy Son. in contrast a unicist like Thomas Aquinas advanced his theory in line with Aristotelian model that Mary's role in her Son's birth and manhood was passive and material. Giles, another unicist, while repudiating Galenist embryology with the support of Averroes's medical work called Colliget, alluded to some theologically crucial impieties with which might be associated some pluralists' Mariology based on the Roman physician's model. In this processus historiae, we can see not only the intertwining of medieval medicine, philosophy, and theology, but some critical moments where medicine provided, side by side with philosophy, natural settings and explanations for religious marvels or miracles such as the Virgin birth, the motherhood of Mary, the manhood of Christ, etc. Likewise, we can observe two medieval maxims coincide and resonate: "philosophia ancilla theologiae" and "philosophia et medicina duae sorores sunt."