The Mediating Spirit in Salernitan Reflections on the Body-Soul Nexus

Scholars have long considered the twelfth century a crucial moment in the formation of a new Christian discourse on the body-soul nexus, in which the compound notion of spirit (spiritus) played a key function. The translation of dozens of medical textbooks from the Greek and the Arabic between 1080 and 1180 prompted the systematization of medical learning as a philosophical discipline. Conjointly, discussion of the humors, powers (virtutes), and spirits