Harley MS 3719, ff 33r-152r

Gerardus Bituricensis, Glossae super Viaticum Constantini. The commentary by a Parisian doctor known as Gerardus Bituricensis or Gerardus Parisiensis (13th century) of the medical summa, traditionally called Viaticum, put together by Constantine the African (c. 1020-1098/9) on the basis of a standard Arabic medical manual, entitled Kitāb Zād al-musāfir wa-qūt al-hādir (Provision for the Traveller and the Nourishment of the Settled), composed by Abu Ja‛far Ahmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn abī Khālid al-Jazzār (d. 979 or 1004-5), a pupil of Isāq ibn Sulaymān al-Isrā’īlī (fl. c. 855-955), known in the West as Isaac Judaeus or Isaac Israel. Rubric (f. 33r): 'Incipiund [sic] glose viatici ysaac', incipit: 'Cum omnia ex quatuor elementis / generata', explicit (f. 152r): 'consolidare habent et mundificare', note in the lower margin 'Expliciunt glosule gerardi super viaticum'. The text is divided into seven books, beginning on ff. 33r, 50v, 64r, 76r, 93r, 109r, 123r. Includes occasional scribal additions and marginalia by two English hands (14th and the early 16th century), and by Knott (f. 106r).

Other copies of the Viaticum without commentary are Harley MS 3140 (ff. 196r-254v) and Harley MS 3407 (ff. 83r-90v; fragment). See L. Thorndike and P. Kibre, Catalogue of Incipits of Medieval Scientific Writings in Latin, rev. edn, The Mediaeval Academy of America Publication, 29 (London, 1963; with supplements in 1965 and 1968), p. 325j; and its electronic version on CD-ROM (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), no. 325J.

Printed for the first time with attribution to Gerardus de Solo at Venice in 1505 (a British Library copy is 546.m.14). For Gerardus, see Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au moyen âge, Hautes Études Médiévales et Modernes, 34/2 (Geneva, 1979; original edition: 1936), p. 203.