RECONSTRUCTING ROBERT THORNTON'S HERBAL

Abstract

At the end of Lincoln Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Library, MS 91, one of the two Thornton MSS, are seven fragments - fols 315-21 - apparently the inner edges of leaves that were torn away during an unhappy moment in the history of the codex. These fragments follow a book of medical recipes, the Liber de diver.ris medicinis (fols 28o`-3 14, which constitutes a third, separate, and clearly unrelated booklet following on two other separate and distinct booklets, the first a collection of vernacular romances and other narratives (fols 1'-178S, the second a collection of moral and devotional writings, mostly in the vernacular (fols 179'-279').' Despite the abundant attention given to the Lincoln Thornton MS in the past two centuries, these fragments have gone almost unnoticed - and not surprisingly. The rich collections in the two preceding booklets, including unique texts of the prose Alexander, the alliterative Morte Arthure, and Sir Percevall of Galles, as well as the Liber itself, are of sufficient quantity and interest to occupy the attention of a legion of scholars over many generations.2 Moreover, the scant nature of the text on these fragments (usually no more than two, three or four words per line) and the presence of marginal headings on three leaves indicating they contained a herbal have encouraged, understandably, no previous attempts to identify the nature of the text more accurately. Nevertheless, the fragments have always presented a challenge to one whose major scholarly preoccupation for two decades has been the Lincoln MS and London, British Library, MS Add. 31o42, the other miscellany compiled c. 142 5-Go by Robert Thornton of East Newton in the North Riding of Yorkshire.3 Fortuitously, my interest in the Thornton receptory led to a larger interest in vernacular medical and scientific writings and that interest, in turn, led to my taking on the preparation of the bibliography and commentary on `Science and Information' for A Manual of the Writings in Middle English. The work for the Manual inevitably required a close look at vernacular herbals, and that eventually brought me around to having a closer look at the Thornton herbal. Along with the fascination inherent in solving a puzzle, the identification of the nature of this herbal has an intrinsic value, about which I shall say more later in this paper. Of the seven fragments in the Lincoln MS, two are of little concern. One is a very small scrap, of less than 3o mm in length, and is clearly a part of one of the three lost leaves from the Liber.' The appearance of `an oper' twice in the margin, such as we find throughout the Liber, indicates that this page contained medical receipts. Another fragment (fol. 3 20) is slight, with so little writing visible that identi cation of its contents seems impossible. Four of the five remaining leaves have names of herbs written in the margin - Dok (fol. 3 i66; Betoyne, id sunt Vetoyne (fol. 3 17*; Hoxyge and Ha ue (fol. 3 i 8`); Pympernelle (fol. 3 I 9'). The tear of the page on fol. 3 I 6 is so close to the margin line that it is impossible to determine the nature of the text on Dok. (Marginal glosses on this leaf are of no help in determining the nature of the entry that would have preceded Dok.) So too with Ho:-ge, for which no text survives, and with Hayue, for which the text is too slight to be useful. As we shall see, however, sufficient text remains to identify the nature of the text of Betoyne and Pymperne/le, as well as some of the texts on the versos of fols 317 and 3 i9 and on both sides of fol. 32z. Admittedly, given the exceedingly limited quantity of text that survives on these fragmentary leaves, in some instances the identification of the material is not entirely certain. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that so few Middle English herbals have been eiten and so lttle work has been done on those that remain unedited including their sources. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence to determine with some specificity about its nature, that Thornton's herbal was a hybrid, a compilation consisting of material in prose and verse. …