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Egerton MS 747
- Record Id:
- 032-001983805
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001983805
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000053.0x000368
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100058663072.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Egerton MS 747
- Title:
-
A collection of medical texts including Tractatus de herbis
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
ff. 1r-106v: Tractatus de herbis, here attributed to Bartholomæus Mini de Senis;
ff. 106v-109r: Images of plants;
ff. 109v-111r: An added text on forecasting (fragment) with a lunar calendar (f. 111r) in Gothic cursive of the mid-14th century;
ff. 112r-124v: Antidotarium Nicolai;
ff. 124v-125v: Nicolaus, De dosibus medicinarum;
ff. 125v-127r: A list of substitution or Quid pro quo, for use when a particular ingredient is unavailable;
ff. 127v-128v: Three texts on weights and measures (fragments);
ff. 128v-146r: Synonyms for plant names and medical ingredients;
ff. 146v-147v: A supplement to the Antidotarum Nicolai.
This is the oldest surviving copy of the Tractatus. Pacht, in 'Early Italian Nature Studies' (1950), traces the spread of the new classicizing, nature-observing treatment of plants from Northern Italy to Western Europe, stemming from this manuscript.
Decoration:
2 inhabited initials depicting doctors holding books with full borders in colours with gold at the incipits to the Tractatus and Antidotarium (ff. 1r and 112r). The style of the images has been compared to that of Jacobellus, an artist who was active in the Salerno region around 1300. The border decoration is similar in style to a group of choirbooks, Messina, Biblioteca Universitaria, Fondo Vecchio, Corale 353 (see Collins, Medieval Herbals (2000), p. 248-49).
Large miniatures of plants and some animals, people and landscapes, mostly in greens and browns, set into the text area on each folio, illustrating each plant or substance described in the text of the Tractatus, from 'Aloen' to 'Zuchara' (ff. 2r-106r). Full-page miniatures of plants with titles (ff. 106v-109r). Initials in red or blue, some with penwork decoration in the other colour. Rubrics in red
For a full description of each image see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Egerton Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-001983805", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Egerton MS 747: A collection of medical texts including Tractatus de herbis" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001983805
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-001983805
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex, 147 folios
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100058663072.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1275
- End Date:
- 1350
- Date Range:
- c1280-1350
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: parchment.
Dimensions: 360 x 240 mm (text space 260 mm x 170 mm).
Layout: written in two columns of up to 55 lines.
Foliation: ff. 1* 147 ( + 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end + an unfoliated parchment leaf after f. 111; f. 1* is a paper flyleaf).
Collation: i-ix12(ff. 1-108), x4(ff. 109-[111a]), xi-xiii12(ff. 112-147). Catchwords at the end of most gatherings.
Script: Gothic
Binding: BM/BL in-house.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Italy, S. (Salerno).
Provenance:
Bartholomeus Mini de Senis (?), copied by him: his colophon added over an erasure (f. 106r).
The Reverend John Josias Conybeare, Vicar of Batheaston, Somerset, scholar and geologist (b. 1779, d. 1824), his sale, Southgate's, 10th July 1839: inscription by Sir Frederick Madden on f. 1*.
Bought by the British Museum, using the Bridgewater fund (£12,000 bequeathed in 1829 by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829).
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
A Medieval Herbal: A Facsimile of British Library Egerton MS 747, intro. by Minta Collins, list of plants by Sandra Raphael (London: British Library, 2003) [printed facsimile]
- Publications:
-
List of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1836-1840 (London: British Museum, 1843), 1839, p. 15.
A Guide to the Exhibition of Some Part of the Egerton Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1929), no. 18.
Otto Pacht, 'Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 13 (1950), 13-47 (p. 29).
Loren MacKinney, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 5, 2 parts bound together (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), with Thomas Herndon, Part II, Medical Miniatures in Extant Manuscripts: A Checklist, no. 32.
Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals (New York: Dover Publications, 1971, repr. Longmans, Green, 1922), p. 193.
Felix Andreas Baumann, Das Erbario Carrarese und die Bildtradition des Tractatus de herbis, Berner Schriften zur Kunst, 12 (Bern: Benteli, 1974), esp. p. 102.
Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis, trans. and adapted by Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1976), p. 153.
Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der Italienischen Zeichnungen 1300-1450, part 2 in two volumes (Berlin: Gerb. Mann, 1980), II, pls. 556, 558, 561, 563.
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medical Miniatures (London: British Library, 1984), fig. 39.
Peter Jones, 'Secreta Salernitana', Kos (1984), 33-50.
Wolf-Dieter Müller-Jahncke, ‘Die botanische Illustratioe des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts in Italien’, in Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, ed. by Wolfram Prinz and Andreas Beyer (Cologne: Acta humaniora, 1987), pp. 75-81 (p. 76, pl. 1).
Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, ‘Toward the Scientific Naturalism: Aspects of Botanical and Zoological Iconography in Manuscripts and Printed Books in the second half of XV [sic] century’, in Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, ed. by Wolfram Prinz and Andreas Beyer (Cologne: Acta humaniora, 1987), pp. 91-101 (pp. 98-99).
Two East Anglian Picture Books: A Facsimile of the Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary and Bodleian Ms. Ashmole 1504, ed. by Nicholas Barker (London: The Roxburghe Club, 1988), pp. 16, 31.
Wilifred Blunt and Sandra Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal, 2nd edn (London: Lincoln, 1994), pp. 61, pls 56, 58, 60).
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd edn (London: British Library, 1998; first publ. as Medieval Medical Miniatures, 1984), pp. 67-68, fig. 61.
Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 239-65, pls XXII-XXIV.
A Medieval Herbal: A Facsimile of British Library Egerton MS 747, intro. by Minta Collins, list of plants by Sandra Raphael (London: British Library, 2003) [facsimile]
Celia Fisher, Flowers in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2004), pp. 7-8.
Alixe Bovey, Tacuinum Sanitatis: An Early Renaissance Guide to Health (London: Sam Fogg, 2005), p. 20, p. 35 n. 22.
Jean A. Givens, Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 90-92, 95, 99, pls 28, 30.
Jean A. Givens, ‘Reading and Writing the Illustrated Tractatus de herbis, 1280-1526’, in Visualising Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550, ed. by Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain Touwaide, AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, 5 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 115-45 (pp. 115-25).
Jean A. Givens and D. Stewart, 'The Illustrated Tractatus de Herbis: Images, Infomation and Communication design', Medievalia, an Interdisciplinary Journal of Medieval Studies Worldwide, 29.1 (2008), 179-206.
Bartholomaeus Mini de Senis, Tractatus de herbis: Ms London, British Library, Egerton 747, ed. by Iolanda Ventura, Edizione nazionale: La Scuola Medica Salernitana', 5 (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2009) [a critical edition].
Iolanda Ventura, 'Une oeuvre et ses lecteurs: la diffusion du Circa instans salernitain' in Florilegium mediaevale. Études offertes à Jacqueline Hamesse à l’occasion de son éméritat (Louvain: Institut d’Études Médiévales, 2009), pp. 585-607, p. 587.
Tractatus de Herbis: Sloane MS 4016, ed. by Alain Touwaide (Barcelona: M. Moleiro, 2013), pp. 51-53.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)