A Middle English verse compendium of astrological medicine

Abstract

IN late medieval England, the number of persons literate in the vernacular was growing rapidly.'The same interest in self-improvement which led these people to learn to read also led them to seek out, or to sponsor the production of, works that would make available to them knowledge from both antique and earlier medieval sourcesknowledge to which as yet, for the most part, only those who could read Latin had access.The broad and growing interest in such reading matter must have occasioned the composition in, or translation to, the vernacular of the many works of medical, scientific, and practical knowledge which survive from the fifteenth century.2In a recent article in Medical History, Faye Marie Getz has examined the Middle English translations of Latin medical texts, concluding that ".. .Middle English medical literature ... [provided] vernacular access to the best of contemporary Latin medicine, through translations, excerpts and paraphrases."3The Middle English work on astrological medicine edited below offers evidence of another method by which the received knowledge of medieval medicine was rendered into the vernacular, through the compilation of excerpts, paraphrases, and translations from several sources, loosely held together in rhyme.Before turning to this aspect of the work, however, a brief description of the surviving texts will be necessary.The Middle English verse compendium of astrological medicine survives in two manuscripts of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: Bodleian Library, Ashmole 210, Part I (Summary Catalogue 6795), on folio 9 r and British Library, Sloane 610, on folios 5 rto 6r The 1 10-line poem is unpublished, except for ten lines from the Sloane version edited by T. J. Pettigrew in 1844;4 and, indeed, it has only recently been recognized as a distinct poem, for these two manuscript versions were listed with poems dealing only with bloodletting under number 3848 in the Index of Middle English verse and its Supplement.'The verses bring together instruction in the

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