Cotton MS Vitellius C III, ff 11–85

These folios, sometimes called the Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, contain an illustrated Herbal, comprising Latin texts translated into Old English, along with texts called Medicina de quadrupedibus, also translated into Old English. These folios were copied in the first quarter of the 11th century, possibly at Christ Church, Canterbury or somewhere else in southern England (D'Aronco and Cameron, Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, p. 25; Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, pp. 126-27). Chapter numbers were added to the table of contents and the body of the text in a 12th-century hand, and glosses in Latin, Anglo-Norman French and English were added in 12th-, 13th-, 14th or 15th- and 16th-century hands throughout the text (see D'Aronco and Cameron, Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, pp. 15-17).

Contents:

f. 11r: fragment of further herbal recipes in Latin, possibly in a 13th-century hand (D'Aronco and Cameron, Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, p. 15).

f. 11v: full page miniature depicting a tall man spearing an animal (possibly a lion) next to a man with a shield and a tonsured man presenting a book (see D'Aronco and Cameron, Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, p. 14).

ff. 12r-18r: table of contents for the illustrated Herbal.

f. 18v: Old English recipes added in the mid-11th century.

f. 19r: full-page miniature showing a man and a centaur presenting a book to a central figure in a blue veil or hood, in a landscape full of animals. The image has the caption 'Escolapius Plato Centaurus'.

f. 19v: page with circular border and display capitals.

ff. 20r-74v: an illustrated Herbal, comprising the De Herba Vettonica liber attributed to Emperor Augustus' physician Antonius Musa (Pseudo-Antonius Musa), the Herbarius of Pseudo-Apuleius, Pseudo-Dioscorides's Liber medicinae ex herbis feminis,and Curae herbarum, all translated into Old English.

ff. 75r–82v: Medicina de quadrupedibus, including texts on the medicinal properties of badgers and mulberry trees, and Sextus Placitus Papiriensis's Liber medicinae ex animalibus, translated into Old English.

ff. 83r-v: recipes in Latin and Old English in various hands of the 11th or early 12th century.

ff. 83v-85r: two Latin charms and a Latin tract on urine in a late 12th- or early 13th-century hand.

Decoration:

Full page miniatures (ff. 11v, 19v). Page with circular border in blue, silver and red and display capitals in green, red and blue (f. 19v). Paintings of various plants, scorpions, and snakes (ff. 20r-74v). Drawings of animals including a badger, a stag, snakes, a fox, a hare, a scorpion, a wild goat, a domestic goat, a ram, a boar, a snake, a wolf, a lion, a bull, an ape holding a blue object, possibly a bull's liver (see D'Aronco and Cameron, Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, p. 40), an elephant and a dog (ff. 75r-82v). Capitals in red, green and blue throughout.

The decoration may have used a copper-based material for some of the green paint, which has damaged some of the folios (see D'Aronco and Cameron, Old English Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, p. 31).