Harley MS 4346, ff 1r-54r

A copy of a Latin poem in hexameters describing the medical virtues of herbs written under the pseudonym of Macer (with reference to the Roman poet Aemilius Macer, d. 15 BC). The author is now generally identified with the French physician Odo de Meung-sur-Loire whose name is mentioned in another 12th-century copy of the text (Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, MS Dc. 160). Rubric (f. 1r): 'Incipit Macer in primis de artemesia', incipit: 'Herbarum quasdam dicturus carmine vires / herbarum matrem dedit artemisia nomen', explicit (f. 54r) '['De aloe' rubric f. 53r] … Una diagredij sic apta solutio fiet;'.

Includes notabilia and occasional glosses by later hands.

For the text see L. Choulant, Macer Floridus de viribus herbarum una cum Walafridi Strabonis, Othonis Cremonensis et Ioannis Folcz carminibus similis argumenti secundum codices manuscriptos et veteres editiones … recensuit (Leipzig, 1832). The present manuscript is not listed in L. Thorndike and P. Kibre, Catalogue of Incipits of Medieval Scientific Writings in Latin, rev. edn. (London, 1963; The Mediaeval Academy of America Publication, 29; with supplements in 1965 and 1968); Der deutsche 'Macer'. Vulgatfassung. Mit einem Abdruck des lateinischen Macer Floridus 'De viribus herbarum', ed. by Bernhard Schnell in and William Crossgrove, Texte und Textgeschichte, 50 (Tübingen, 2003). For Odo of Meung or Magdunensis see E. Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au moyen âge. Réimpression de l'édition de 1936, Hautes Études Médiévales et Modernes, 34(Geneva, 1979; ), II, p. 584; D. Jacquart, Supplément au E. Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au moyen âge. Nouvelle édition sous la direction de Guy Beaujouan (Geneva, 1979; Hautes Études Médiévales et Modernes, 35), p. 218.