Western Medieval Manuscripts : Medical treatises

Western Medieval Manuscripts

Born in the south of France, likely around the end of the 13th century, Guy de Chauliac's medical studies were centred around the university at Montpellier. According to his own account of his life, he studied there under Raymond de Moleriis (who became chancellor of the medical faculty in 1335). The university's curriculum of 1309 required six years of medical study, which period (and perhaps more) Guy presumably completed before becoming 'magister in medicina', probably at some point in the 1320s. Chauliac's time at Montpellier had been preceded and was followed by periods at Toulouse and Bologna respectively. By 1344, he was practising at Lyon, and shortly thereafter entered papal service. He survived the arrival of the plague later that decade, and attended in all three popes at Avignon – Clement IV, Innocent VI and Urban V – before his death in July 1368. It is as the author of the Inventarium, more commonly known as the Chirurgia magna, that Guy is now principally remembered. This text on surgery was deeply informed by his background and training as an academic physician and it therefore challenged the conventional distinction between the spheres of the physician and of the surgeon: the former founded on rational, 'scientific' knowledge and concerned with healing the body within, and the latter on practical, manual experience that dealt with external problems. 'A surgeon ignorant of anatomy operates like a blind man on wood...taking from [the body] more than he ought or less,' he wrote. 'Learned' surgical treatises had begun to emerge in the 13th century, adopting the scholarly conventions of books on physic in order to imbue surgery with similar respectability. In keeping with this development, Guy cited around fifty medical authorities: most frequently Galen, but notably also Arabic writers such as Avicenna, Albucasis, Razes and Haly Abbas, and western surgical writers such as Lanfranc of Milan and Roland of Parma, among numerous others. His education, but also his access to the library of the papal court at Avignon, was no doubt instrumental in affording him the knowledge and access to such a wide array of texts, and he acknowledged both his masters at Montpellier, Bologna and Paris, and his colleagues at Avignon, in nourishing him through conversation, reading and working. Guy's breadth of reading is shown off in the prefatory 'capitulum singulaire', a history of the surgical discipline that mimicked similar accounts in the works of Haly Abbas and Razes, and which also gave him the opportunity to evaluate the quality of some of his predecessors' writings. In providing details of his own biography in the capitulum, Guy also positioned himself as the descendant and inheritor of these illustrious medical authors. Appropriately for such a learned treatise, the Chirurgia was written in Latin, and appears rapidly to have found a ready readership: at least 34 manuscript copies survive, including one (<a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://digi.vatlib.it/mss/detail/Pal.lat.1317'>Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. Lat. 1317</a>) whose colophon records that it was completed in Montpellier in 1373, only five years after its author's death. The Latin text was first printed in 1490 and thereafter went through numerous editions. While still circulating in manuscript, however, the text was translated into several vernacular languages, including French, Italian, Hebrew, Dutch, Provençal and – as illustrated by this manuscript – Middle English.The history of the Middle English Chirurgia has been confused partly by differing opinions on how many different versions exist, by the uneven survival (as well as disappearance and rediscovery) of manuscript witnesses, and by the piecemeal appearance of scholarly editions. It is now generally agreed, however, that we know of three Middle English translations: <ul><li>Chauliac (1): edited from the earliest surviving copy: <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://catalog.nyam.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=120276'>New York, New York Academy of Medicine, MS 12</a> (Treatise I, ed. Wallner (1964); Treatise II, ed. Wallner (1988–89); Treatise III, ed. Wallner (1976); Treatise IV, ed. Wallner (1982–84); Treatise V, ed. Wallner (1969). No edition of Treatises VI and VII) </li><li>Chauliac (2): edited from: <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc100235r?collect'>Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Angl. 25</a> (Ogden (1971); Treatise I, ed. Wallner (1964) in parallel with the above manuscript) </li><li>Chauliac (3): no edition: <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-JESUS-Q-G-00023/1'>Cambridge, Jesus College, MS Q.G.23</a></li></ul>Only the first of these survives in complete form in more than one copy, and it is this recension – without, however, its version of the capitulum singulaire – that is preserved in MS Dd.3.52 (but see below for further discussion). Also contained in the manuscript is an extract from Guy's Summa conservationis et curationis, which was first identified in 2022 by Clarck Drieshen in the preparation of a new catalogue record as part of the Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries project. The leaves at the beginning and end of the manuscript also contain a number of curative recipes, instructions for the preparation of an 'aqua mirabilia' ('miraculous water'), and ritual charms for stopping bleeding, all added by several late medieval hands.The focus of scholarship on the Middle English tradition has so far been the text of the Chirurgia: its editors have dealt only briefly with the manuscripts, their other textual contents, material characteristics and histories, and a comprehensive list of surviving manuscripts remains a desideratum. A systematic study of the manuscript witnesses could help to clear up not only any remaining ambiguity regarding which textual traditions are preserved, and where and in what form, but also extend our understanding of the provenance and readership of the Middle English text: whether known through ownership inscriptions, or inferred from an examination of the different ways in which the text was presented on the page, associated contents in the manuscripts, or annotations and other signs of use. Such analysis could provide valuable contextual information for manuscripts - like MS Dd.3.52 - that lack any evidence of medieval provenance. Close examination of the material characteristics of a manuscript can often reveal the processes by which a book was brought into being. However – as in the case of MS Dd.3.52 – this evidence is not always unambiguous and can resist the construction of a simple, linear narrative. The production of the main part of the manuscript has been dated variously to the 'latter part of the 15th century' (Wallner (1970), p. XII) or the late 15th century (Connolly (2009), p. 7). At least two hands were involved: the first writing the rubrics and text of Book One in a semi-formal style of Secretary, with some letter forms from Anglicana (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(21);return false;'>11r-28r</a>), and one or perhaps more hands writing the rest of the text in a slightly more cursive style where the letter forms are more mixed (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(57);return false;'>29r-249v</a>). There is further evidence to point to separate production. Book One is self-contained on Quires 2 and 3, which are formed of eight and ten leaves respectively. The text ends after only half a page on the last leaf, f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(55);return false;'>28</a>, and one might infer that the extra bifolium was added in order to ensure that all of the text of Book One could be accommodated. The lower half of this leaf has water damage that is not found on the next adjacent leaf, f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(57);return false;'>29</a>, indicating that they were not together when this occurred. The preparation is also different: parchment alone was used for Quires 2 and 3, whereas those that follow were made of paper with parchment for the outer and inner bifolia only. There are some commonalities in the presentation of the text: it is in a single column on pages ruled with frame and lines, supplied with plain coloured initials, and with chapter headings and marginal content markers written in red ink. It may be that scribe or scribes of one section may have sought to imitate the work of the other(s), seeking a consistent appearance across the volume, or that these were standard conventions in copies of this text that scribes followed from their exemplars. Differences remain, though: the initials were only partially completed in Quires 2 and 3, but were finished more consistently thereafter, and it is only from Quire 4 onwards that one finds frequent use of paraph marks (alternating in red and blue in the text, and in blue only against the marginal content markers).None of these details, however, enable us to establish conclusively whether the production of the second, larger portion preceded the production of the first, or vice versa, or whether the production of both proceeded more or less contemporaneously with differences in their making being merely incidental. The picture is muddied further by Quire 1. These leaves supply an incomplete copy of Guy's capitulum singulaire, not from the Chauliac (1) tradition, but from Chauliac (3). In spite of the vagaries of production in the rest of the manuscript, it seems unlikely that the makers of MS Dd.3.52 were working from an exemplar that blended these different translations, especially since the production of the capitulum is so markedly different: written by another scribe, in a fully cursive Secretary script of roughly the same period, on pages with frame ruling only and lacking any initials, rubrics or paraph marks. The temptation is to conclude that a medieval owner / reader, equipped with a copy of Guy's treatise but knowing it not to be complete, sought out or had made a copy of the capitulum singulaire and bound it with the rest. However, the material evidence suggests a more complex story. Paper from the same stock was used to make ff. 3-8 as ff. 29-254 (Books Two to Seven), and also ff. 256-265 at the very end of the manuscript, with each quire featuring parchment for the outer and inner bifolia. This suggests that all were added to the manuscript as part of the same campaign, rather than those bearing the capitulum singulaire coming later. The quire at the front and the quire at the back may have been left blank, in anticipation of further additions at a later date. Perhaps an exemplar of the capitulum was not readily to hand, and these leaves ultimately provided space for it. It was presumably started on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>3r</a> because the present f. 1 was formerly the pastedown, and f. 2 was either left blank as a protective endleaf or already had some additions that were in the way of a 'clean start'.However, the text of the capitulum is not complete, but ends abruptly on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(20);return false;'>8v</a> with the words, 'þat is mad entier by reson and professe-'. Comparison with two other surviving copies of this recension confirm that this is roughly halfway through the capitulum (see <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-JESUS-Q-G-00023/22'>Cambridge, Jesus College, MS Q.G.23</a>, f. 8v, col. 1, l. 18, and <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GONVILLE-AND-CAIUS-00336-00725/20'>Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 336/725</a>, f. 7v, l. 17). One might conclude that a quire of eight leaves has therefore been lost from the manuscript at this juncture, were it not for the same pattern of wormholes being visible across the opening of ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(20);return false;'>8v and 11r</a> (the pencil note on the losses on f. 8v of MS Dd.3.52 should be disregarded – see Additions for further elaboration). These leaves must therefore have been immediately adjacent to one another for a sustained period of time, presumably between wooden boards (whose use in bindings became less common after the end of the medieval period), as part of a binding that became badly deteriorated before its replacement (extensive worming may also be seen in the leaves at the back of the manuscript). We can only speculate as to possible explanations: perhaps the second half of the capitulum singulaire became separated from the manuscript at an early date and before it was (re-)bound; or the copyist ran out of room on leaves that were already bound into the manuscript and wrote the remainder on other, loose leaves that were never incorporated and eventually became separated. Nevertheless, it illustrates a sustained attempt on the part of the owner or owners of this manuscript to compile, evidently from different sources, as complete a copy of Guy's surgical work as possible, and thus indicates the appeal and value of the Middle English translation of the text to readers a century or more after Guy's death. Dr James Freeman Medieval Manuscripts Specialist Cambridge University LibraryBibliography<ul><li>Guigonis de Caulhiaco (Guy de Chauliac), Inventarium sive Chirurgia magna. Volume One: Text, ed. by Michael R. McVaugh, Studies in Ancient Medicine, 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1997)</li></ul>