Western Medieval Manuscripts : Compilation of medical texts

Western Medieval Manuscripts

Nine texts - all medical - form the principal contents of this manuscript, together with various notes and recipes in the margins and blank spaces. All were copied by hands of the 14th century. The longest and apparently earliest section to be produced is in the middle of the book, between ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(127);return false;'>62</a> and <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(398);return false;'>197</a> (see Part 3, below). It opens with an anonymous commentary on the Viaticum, an adaptation and translation into Latin by Constantinus Africanus (d. before 1098/1099), a Benedictine monk of Tunisian heritage at the monastery of Montecassino, of a medical text by a 10th-century Arabic physician, Ibn al-Jazzār (d. 1009). The first two quires have been copied by one scribe, and those that follow by another. Although the hands differ in appearance, they are both of the first half of the 14th century and there is suggestive evidence that they were contemporaneous, with the two scribes working in co-ordination. The first stint concludes on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(162);return false;'>79v</a>, leaving no blank space, and the second resumes without interruption on f. 80r; it seems less probable, then, that the first scribe was working from an incomplete exemplar, especially as he added a running header on f. 79v stating 'finis quarti in alio quinto', directing the reader to the 'other' part of the manuscript, where he could find the commentary on Book 5 of Constantinus's commentary.The second scribe completed the commentary, and four further texts after that. The first is another copy of the widely disseminated treatise on medical simples attributed to the 12th-century Salernitan writer, Mattheus Platearius, and commonly known by its opening words, 'Circa instans'. Simples are plant, animal or mineral substances that possess inherent medicinal properties, and Platearius's text typically lists over 250 items, given in alphabetical order. There follows the Signa of Richard the Englishman, which deals with the signs of disease that a physician would need to know in order to diagnose an illness, understand its stage and thus offer a prognosis. The identity of Richard the Englishman is obscure. Several figures are known by this name (or its Latinate equivalent, Ricardus Anglicus), all of whom died around the mid-13th century: a writer on canon law (Richard de Morins); a canon at St Paul's in London who also practised medicine and was perhaps doctor to Pope Gregory IX, one of two figures known by the name Richard of Wendover; the other Richard of Wendover, a contemporary of the first, described by Roger of Wendover as 'a man learned in liberal science'). There were also two writers on alchemy and arithmetic respectively, plus another who may be the author of a text on the conception of the Virgin Mary, about whose lives nothing is known. To this confusing picture is added the disparate circulation of a set of medical texts ascribed to a Master Richard. These were apparently sections of a single work entitled Micrologus that were nevertheless never transmitted together as one (the Signa formed the fifth and final part). This he apparently wrote at Montpellier at the commission of a Lancelinus, dean of Beauvais 1178-1190, and he may be the physician described by another English medical writer, Gilbertus Anglicus (d. c. 1250), as 'of all the doctors the most learned and experienced'. In this manuscript, the Signa is followed by a treatise on urines - another important piece of diagnostic evidence for the medieval physician - which the closing rubric also attributes to 'Master Richard'. However, the opening words do not match those of the Regula de urinis that forms the second part of the Micrologus, so this ascription remains uncertain. Indeed, in other manuscripts, this text is attributed to Gerardus Bituricensis, better known for his commentary on the Viacticum (not that presented here in Part 3) (see ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(366);return false;'>181v-185v</a>). Finally, the scribe copied part of a 'glosule' or 'short gloss' on another pharmacological work that emanated from Salerno, the Antidotarium Nicholai. Whereas the 'Circa instans' dealt with simples, the 'Liber iste' described compound medicines, which comprised two or more chemically combined ingredients. Other hands were responsible for copying the rest of the manuscript. Part 4 contains a commentary on Galen's Tegni ('Art'), written by ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān (d. c. 1068) and later translated into Latin, perhaps by Gerard of Cremona (1113/14-1187). Part 1 contains an incomplete copy of the Practica, or 'Rogerina maior' of Roger de Baron (d. c. 1280) (the first three chapters of part four of the Practica sometimes circulated separately as the 'Rogerina minor'). It was completed later by a different scribe, who added two texts by another physician of 13th-century Montpellier, Bernard de Gordon. The gap left by the scribe at the end of Part 1 suggests that he was working from an imperfect exemplar, rather than in collaboration with the scribe of Part 2, whose handwriting seems to be of a somewhat later period. Where scribal hands are all of roughly the same period, as here, it can be difficult to determine the stages in which a book was made. Annotations in a manuscript can provide valuable evidence of the reading and reception of the text(s) it contains: which passages readers found interesting or wished to highlight with 'nota', pointing hands, or marginal content markers. Here, they also illuminate the order in which the book was assembled. All of the hands wrote differing versions of an English style of cursive handwriting known today as 'Anglicana'. The hand in Part 4 contains a distinctive feature: the top of the letters b, h and l look like fish tails. These 'forked ascenders' were present in Anglicana hands from the later 13th century onwards, but disappeared by the mid-14th century, which helps us to date this hand. The copyist of Part 4 must have owned Parts 1 and 3, since we find this hand - with the same combination of forked ascenders, as well as other stylistic similarities - annotating the text throughout those sections. Their hand is not found at all in Part 2, however, lending weight to the conclusion that it was produced later, specifically for this manuscript, in order to make up the deficiency in the text.Dr James Freeman Medieval Manuscripts Specialist Cambridge University Library