Medieval Medical Recipes : Compilation of medical texts

Medieval Medical Recipes

By the end of the twelfth century, medical education in Europe came to be defined almost entirely by books and ideas produced in one city: the port of Salerno in Italy. Physicians and natural philosophers in Salerno, and at the monastery of Monte Cassino, produced hundreds of medical treatises in the High Middle Ages, which were eagerly copied around Europe into 'Salernitan' medical collections. Trinity College, MS O.7.37 is one such collection, containing multiple practical and theoretical texts associated with medical authorities from Salerno. The volume provides detailed instructions on medical care through dietetics, herbal therapies, and surgery, all unified by the Galenic humoural theory which anchored the learned medicine of Salerno. The codex is composed of three originally separate volumes (of 114, 32, and 16 folios, respectively), written in England or France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Parts 2 and 3 (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(239);return false;'>115-146</a> and ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(303);return false;'>147-162</a>) are older, written in the middle to late twelfth century, and were bound together relatively early, perhaps in the thirteenth century. Part 1 (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(11);return false;'>1-114</a>) was copied later in the thirteenth century. The whole collection, in the single codex we see today, was owned by Westminster Abbey in the later Middle Ages. The first page is inscribed 'Ecclesie Petri Westm[onasterii] / R. Tedyngton monachus': that is, Richard Tedyngton, who was a monk of the Church of St. Peter's in Westminster c. 1431-1487. The oldest part of the collection is a practica (Part 2, ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(239);return false;'>115-127</a>), or a collection of recipes organized by human body parts from head to foot. They range from treatments for migraine and hair loss on the head to gout in the foot, followed by conditions of the whole body like fever and epilepsy. This practica was used extensively and the margins are filled with additional recipes and comments in other hands from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, in both Latin and French. Other twelfth-century scribes added more remedies, less clearly organized, on ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(265);return false;'>128-138</a>, and ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(287);return false;'>139-146</a> were left blank. Various later medieval hands added other medical recipes and notes on these blank pages, including a lengthy charm in French on f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(300);return false;'>145v</a>. Part 3 (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(303);return false;'>147-162</a>) is also from the twelfth century and is the most explicitly Salernitan section of the volume. It includes a short book of antidotes with an introduction to humoral theory on ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(303);return false;'>147r-155r</a>. The explicit of the work (f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(319);return false;'>155r</a>) calls it the Liber Melancolie, but it is usually known as the Flores Dietarum and attributed to Johannes de Sancto Paulo, a twelfth-century master of medicine in Salerno. This work is followed by the Experiments (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(319);return false;'>155-162</a>): that is, proven remedies attributed to Alfanus, Archbishop of Salerno (d. 1085). Alfanus was credited with initiating the medical renaissance in Salerno, through his patronage of the monk-translator Constantinus Africanus at Montecassino, whose works came to form the core of Salernitan medicine. Part 1 is the longest and most recent section of the volume, featuring the Chirurgia, or surgical textbook, written by Master Roger Frugardi of Salerno c. 1180 (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(157);return false;'>74-114</a>), preceded by a detailed commentary on the Chirurgia (ff. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(11);return false;'>1-74</a>) by Roger's student Roland of Parma (written ca. 1250). The commentary places the surgical work firmly in the Salernitan tradition by invoking the authority of Constantine the African and explaining surgery in terms of humoural theory. Dr Winston Black Gatto Chair in Christian Studies St. Francis Xavier University, Canada