Claire Burridge (University of Oslo), 'Looking for Medical Texts Outside Medical Manuscripts: New Directions in the Study of Early Medieval Medicine'
Abstract:
‘A posca for loosening the belly. Nineteen eggshell-fuls of plain water; of vinegar, three eggshell-fuls; of salt, one eggshell-ful.’ (Posca ad ventrem solvendum. Decem novem ova aqua plena, aceti ova trea, salis ovum unum.)
Although the title of this simple recipe for posca makes clear that it was intended to be used medicinally, this prescription is not found within a medical compendium. Instead of texts on health and medicine, the sixth-century manuscript in which it appears – Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS XVII (15) – contains a collection of letters by Jerome. The posca recipe, which was added to a blank page near the beginning of the codex (fol. 2r), appears to have been written several generations after the main text was composed (c. 650-750).
Such an unexpected addition – a medical recipe in a non-medical manuscript – raises many questions: why was it recorded? And why here? Who added this recipe, and to what extent can it shed light on early medieval reading practices? More broadly, how rare is this phenomenon, and what does it say about the spread of medical knowledge during this period? The present paper showcases recent findings from the MINiTEXTS project and Corpus of Early Medieval Latin Medicine (CEMLM) and illustrates that the addition of medical material to non-medical manuscripts occurred more frequently than has often been recognised. These findings offer a fresh perspective on the dissemination of medical learning in the early medieval Latin west.
Biography:
Claire Burridge is currently a Senior Researcher at the University of Oslo working on the MINiTEXTS project. Her first book, Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice, c. 775-900: New Approaches to Recipe Literature (2024), is now available open access.