and the translation of which at least had been made under
his direction. It is quite clear that he did not do all the translating
himself, and that he probably must have organized a school of medical
translators at Monte Cassino. Then just how the various works would be
looked at is very dubious. Undoubtedly many of the translations were
done after his death, or certainly finished after his time, and at last
attributed to him, because he was the moving spirit and had probably
selected the books that should be translated, and made suggestions with
regard to them. For all of his monks he was, as masters have ever been
for disciples, much more important, and rightly so, than those writers
to whom he referred them.

The whole question of plagiarism in these medieval times, as I have
pointed out elsewhere, is entirely different from that of the present
time. Now a writer may consciously or unconsciously claim another
writing as his own. We have come to a time when men think much of their
individual reputations. It was no uncommon thing, however, in the Middle
Ages, and even later in the Renaissance, for a writer to attribute what
he had written to some distinguished literary man of the preceding time,
and sign that writer's name to his own work. The idea of the later
author was to secure an audience for his thoughts. He seemed to be quite
indifferent whether people ever knew just who the writer was, but he
wanted to influence humanity by his writings. He thought much more of
this than of any possible reputation that might come to him. Of course,
there was no question of money. There never has been any question of
money-making whenever the things written have been really worth while.
Literature that has deeply influenced mankind has never paid.
Publications that have paid are insignificant works that have touched
superficially a whole lot of people. To think of Constantine as a
plagiarist in our modern sense of the word, as trying to take the credit
for someone else's writings, is to misunderstand entirely the times in
which he lived, and to ignore the real problem of plagiarism at that
time.

With the accumulation of information with regard to the history of
medicine in his time, Constantine's reputation has been constantly
enhanced. It is not so long since he was considered scarcely more than a
monkish chronicler, who happened to have taken medicine rather than
history for his field of work. Gradually we have come to appr