A collection of recipes for medicinal waters and other remedies, in Latin and Langue d'Oc (Provençal)

Date:
Mid 15th century
Reference:
MS.418
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A collection of recipes for medicinal waters and other remedies, in Latin and Langue d'Oc (Provençal). Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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Description

A collection of recipes for medicinal waters and other remedies, in Latin and Langue d'Oc, on paper, France, mid 15th century.

Contents

1. f. 1r: Recipes for medicinal waters for fractures and wounds, in Latin.

f. 1r: Incipit: Ad extrahendum ossa fracta a vulnere. Recype herbam que dicitur mater silve ...; Explicit: Ad sanandum vulnus … et da de dicta aqua in potu.

2. ff. 1v-10r: Recipes for medicinal waters from plants, in Latin, preceded by an index.

The collection is similar to a French one entitled Eaux artificielles avec leurs vertus et propriétés, first printed at Vienne by Pierre Bouttellier (Schenck) about 1484 [ISTC ie00000200; GW 9165], and in several other 15th-century editions. There is also a section (ff. 240-245) in the French edition of the De proprietatibus rerum printed at Lyons by [Claude Davost], for Jean Genin le Dyamantier, in 1500 [1501?] [ISTC ib00149000; GW 3422], which seems to correspond with the present collection.

f. 1v: Index: Sequitur Rubrica aquarum sequentium. / Primo aqua aurea … Capilli veneris.

f. 2r: Incipit: Sequntur [sic] plures aque et modus quomodo debent fieri. / Et primo aqua aurea sit hoc modo / Recype duas vel tres petras auri ...

f. 10r, line 9: Explicit: … Aqua capilli veneris … collericis / Expliciunt plures aque artifficiales [sic] et ad quid valent.

3. ff. 10r-20r: Recipes for medicinal waters, including descriptions of the medicinal properties of Juniper (ff. 16v-17v) and of an Aqua ardentis (ff. 18r-20r), in Latin.

The recipes on ff. 10r-13v seem to resemble the first eight recipes listed by Thorndike in his list of 'Vatican Latin MSS. in the history of science and medicine', see Isis, 13 (1929-1930), p. 91, n. 14: Aqua pro oculis … Aqua saliue.

f. 10r, line 10: Incipit: Aqua pro occulis [sic] et l. t. rutam contentus …

f. 20r, line 11: Explicit: ... retinet saporem et odorem.

4. ff. 20r-25v: Recipes for waters and other remedies, some by notable individuals (unidentified), including recipes against verrucas and trembling hands, in Latin.

f. 20r, line 12: Recipe by the Bishop of Béziers, in Latin. Incipit: Hec est Recepta Reuerendi patris domini Episcopi Bitterrensis que est omnium Iuvamentorum pro vero / Recipe pulveris dyamargariton …

f. 20v: Incipit: Recepta de verruchia / Recipe sticadoe arabici ....

f. 23r, lines 13-15: Note: … Presens scriptura Inventa fuit in archa domini mauricii quondam Archiepiscopi Narbonensis.

f. 25r, lines 14-15: Electuary by Magister B. Cabhadelli, Incipit: Electuarium preciosissimum Magistri B. Cabhadelli / Recipe limaturam auri …

f. 25v: Explicit: … Contra gravellam …

5. ff. 26r-27v: Roger Vachon, OF, Las proprietats de la mellissa dutrament ponsirada, a treatise on the properties of the Melissa officinalis, i.e. lemon balm, in Langue d'Oc.

For Roger Vachon, see E. Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au moyen âge (Paris: Droz, 1936), p. 722.

The treatise is similar to the entry on the 'Eaue de melice' in the French collection entitled Eaux artificielles avec leurs vertus et propriétés, first printed at Vienne in about 1484 (see above no. 2), as noted by Wickersheimer.

f. 26r: Incipit: Siegon si las proprietats de la mellissa dutrament ponsirada et cetera / pernnerament da questa Erba …

f. 27v: Explicit: … et en bonn memoria / [Underlined in red] A questa perfiecha determinacion es estada bayllada per i. maystre Reuerent moyne. ffrayre Rogier [Vachon] excellent maystre en medicina Suss las proprietats de la mellissa, dutrament appellada ponsirada.

6. ff. 28r-30v: Twenty-nine recipes for medicinal waters, in Langue d'Oc.

f. 28r: Incipit: Ayga de flor de lis blanc es bona per far lo visage blanc …

f. 30v, lines 9-10: Explicit: … Ayga composta mereuilhosa per los huelhs ... Car sapias que aysse es ayga / mot cordial.

7. ff. 30v-31v: Seven recipes (against freckles, for the eyes, and a laxative) and a description of the healing properties of gentian, in Latin.

f. 30v, line 11: Incipit: Ad Restringendum lentigines faciey [sic] Recipe semen malue …

f. 31v: Explicit: … Virtutes seu proprietates / herbe gensiane ... omni corpori qui ea vsus / fuerit mirabiliter dat Sanitatem.

Publication/Creation

Mid 15th century

Physical description

1 volume

On paper; watermark: bull's head, with eyes and nostrils (height: c. 38 mm; width: c. 25 mm; distance between chain-lines: 38 mm): similar to Briquet nos 14970 (height: 42 mm; width: 27 mm; distance between chain-lines: 38 mm; Toulouse 1454-1458, Aix-en-Provence 1457, Fribourg 1458, Marburg 1461) and 14975 (height: 40 mm; width: 32 mm; distance between chain-lines: 35 mm; Sion 1475).

31 leaves of originally 32 (wanting first leaf); old foliation '116-<146>' in brown ink in upper margin, faint; modern foliation '1-31' in pencil. 204 x 140 mm; written area 150/171 x 90/100 mm, in single column, 26-36 written lines to a page; no ruling.

Collation: 118-1 (wanting i), 214; without quire signatures or catchwords.

Secundo folio: Sequntur plures.

Written by two hands (ff. 1r-25v and 26r-31v respectively) in a French cursive book-hand (Gothic Batârde).

Decoration: Four- to six-line initials at the beginning of works, and two-line paragraph-initials throughout, all in black ink. Explicit to Roger Vachon's Las proprietats de la mellissa underlined in red and with marginal penflourished decoration in blue in the margin (f. 27v).

Marginal annotations (ff. 3r, 9r), nota signs in the form of maniculae (passim) and a decorated bracket (f. 21r) added in brown ink by the same hand of similar maniculae in MS. 523 (passim).

Binding: Modern limp parchment binding made of a leaf from a manuscript copy of Henricus de Segusio (c. 1200-1271), Summa super tituli Decretalium, Book II, in Gothic bookhand, with running title, paragraph marks and marginal chapter numbers in alternating red and blue, and marginal notes framed in red, measuring c. 334 x 236 mm, written space c. 305 x 160 mm, in two columns, 56 written lines per column (ruling not visible), Southern France, 14th century.

Upper margin of last leaf damaged, stained throughout.

Arrangement

The papers are available subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking.

Acquisition note

Purchased in 1933.

Finding aids

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973), vol. 1, pp. 283-284.

Language note

Provençal

Ownership note

The manuscript was formerly bound as last in a composite volume together with MSS 523 [Miscellanea Alchemica XX] and 707 [Rupescissa] (in this order), as suggested by the list of contents at the beginning of the miscellany (f. 1r of MS. 523), and confirmed by the old foliation in a 16th-century hand running consecutive in the upper margin of rectos in all three manuscripts (faint in MS. 707 and the present one).

The manuscripts were separated into three volumes some time in the late 19th or early 20th century, and bound in wrappers made of parchment leaves from different medieval manuscripts.

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Identifiers

Accession number

  • 66038