Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture by Emily Kesling

Abstract

Reviewed by: Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture by Emily Kesling Stephanie Hollis Kesling, Emily, Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture (Anglo-Saxon Studies, 38), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2020; cloth; pp. xii, 223; R.R.P. £19.99; ISBN 9781843845492. The novelty of Emily Kesling's examination of the four Old English medical compilations lies in regarding them as literary translations made by skilled Latinists for readers interested in medicine as a liberal art. In other words, she is suggesting that the vernacular medical compilations were read by an educated elite engaged in the eclectic pursuit of knowledge of the nature of God and his [End Page 230] creation that is exemplified by the study of computus. Specifically, she argues that all four compilations were produced in major ecclesiastical centres, and that each of them consistently displays connections with an elite intellectual culture. Kesling's view flies in the face of a substantial body of scholarship that argues that Bald's Leechbook was compiled for the use of a specialist practitioner (or practitioners). She does not address this anomaly, nor does she mention Angus Cameron's study of its 'professionalism', particularly its repeated references to the specialist expertise and equipment employed by leeches. Her analysis of a few passages to illustrate the differing styles of translation is admirably clear, but scarcely necessary, given that the translators' handling of their Latin sources has already been demonstrated in painstaking and comprehensive detail by Cameron and others. Kesling is by no means the first to see a connection between the educational revival associated with King Alfred and Bald's Leechbook, copied at Winchester c. 950 from an exemplar dated c. 900. The connection is inescapable, in view of the Leechbook's account of medical advice and pharmacological ingredients sent to Alfred by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, also mentioned in Asser's biography of the king. Cumulatively, there is evidence of an interest in the practical application of medical knowledge at Alfred's court, which includes an echo of the Leechbook's entry on synovia in the compensation for injury clauses of Alfred's law-code. What needs to be addressed is whether the Leechbook reflects the encouragement given to the study of medical practice by the king's chronic illness, or whether it was actually part of the same educational project as the translation of Boethius's Consolation, Augustine's Soliloquies, Gregory's Pastoral Care, and the Tollemache Orosius. Kesling's discussion of the Old English Herbarium as a product of the Benedictine Reform draws chiefly on Maria D'Aronco, who argued that the translation may have originated at Winchester under the auspices of Bishop Athelwold. The three extant manuscript copies, however, appear to have been undertaken independently of one another, not disseminated from Winchester. It is worth recalling, moreover, that the number of reformed monasteries in the late Anglo-Saxon period, though small, exceeded the three that Kesling names, and Linda Voigts made a strong case for an East Anglian provenance for London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C III. But book owners and readers in the late Anglo-Saxon period included high status lay men and women, and also, presumably, the male and female members of un-reformed communities. In her chapter on Lacnunga, Kesling pursues her overall thesis by arguing that it shows a learned interest in foreign languages, letters, and alphabets. This seems to me to confuse the eighth- and ninth-century translators of Lacnunga's sources with its eleventh-century readers, whose intellectual appreciation of these matters must have been severely limited by the copyists' garbled rendering of Irish and the three sacred languages. [End Page 231] The chapter on Leechbook III argues that learned persons must have created the remedies for illnesses attributed to elves because the cures employ medical expertise and ecclesiastical practices. Kesling, then, like Karen Jolly, and a number of others, regards the pagan elements in Leechbook III and Lacnunga as having been Christianized. She shows no sign of having considered the argument advanced by Valerie Flint in her landmark study of early medieval magic. Whereas Jolly described a process of Christian cultural imperialism, Flint envisaged a process of cultural negotiation...