Three Receptaria from Medieval England: The Languages of Medicine in the Fourteenth Century by Tony Hunt

Abstract

REVIEWS as to where I might hear more. This silence works against Holsinger’s declared principles of empathy and performativity, the need to be ‘‘honest and straightforward concerning our love and even desire for the music we study’’ (p. 348), pulling us back from the body to the world of intellectual discourse. It is an easy slip. In his preface Holsinger describes the recent work of Hiroshi Chu Okubo, a ‘‘Virtual MIDI body percussionist,’’ who straps electronic sensors to his own body, plugs them into a computer, and plays on his own appendages. A living instrument , Hiroshi offers an avant-garde demonstration of Holsinger’s subject. Hiroshi’s website, for which Holsinger provides the URL, is richly illustrated but, as of November 2002, was still silent. Andrew Taylor University of Ottawa Tony Hunt, Three Receptaria from Medieval England: The Languages of Medicine in the Fourteenth Century. Medium Aevum Monographs, n.s. 21. Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures, 2001. Pp. viii, 263. With the collaboration of Michael Benskin. $25.00. This work is an edition of medical receptaria found in three texts from the first half of the fourteenth century: one in Bodleian MS Rawlinson C. 814, designated R, and two in Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 388, designated C and CC. Most of the recipes in R are in Anglo-Norman (64 percent), the remainder in Latin. Middle English makes its appearance in C, where the language division is roughly that of equal thirds. All the recipes in CC, save one in AN, are in ME. This volume also includes Michael Benskin’s discussion of the language of the Corpus manuscript (C and CC), glossaries of AN and ME words, and an index of ailments treated by the 1,500 medical recipes. Hunt describes this monograph as initiating his efforts to establish a taxonomy for recipe collections from medieval England. Hunt’s undisputed expertise and extensive publications in the study of AN Fachliteratur make this work a welcome one, but the fact that he comes late to the study of ME medical writings means that any reader primarily interested in ME will be required to supplement this edition 383 ................. 10286$ CH15 11-01-10 13:55:07 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER with information from other resources. Hunt compares recipes to published editions of ME prose, but those texts are all fifteenth century and represent only a fraction of surviving writings. He does not cite published editions of ME verse, nor references that provide extensive information on ME texts in manuscript, for example, The Index of Middle English Verse and Supplement; George Keiser’s A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, vol. 10 (New Haven, 1998); or Patricia Kurtz’s and my database, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference, CD-ROM (Ann Arbor, 2000), here cited as eVK. It is possible that Hunt’s volume was in press when this last reference appeared. In the case of C, for example, the reader will have to look elsewhere to learn of ME versions of two striking AN texts. Hunt edits (on pp. 88–89) the AN metrical prologue that begins this compendium with the lines ‘‘Ypocras se livere fyt, / A le emperour Cesar myt.’’ He refers (at p. 85) to edited ME compendia with similar rubrics but does not mention the many ME versions of this verse. ME metrical versions are IMEV/S 1603 (eVK 3098, 3099 [Sloane 3466, not cited in IMEV/S 1603], 3100) and IMEV/S 1605 (eVK 3108). Another text, IMEV 1604, is relevant although deleted in IMEVS as prose. IMEV/S 3422 and 4182 (additional manuscripts supplied in eVK) are related as well. The tradition also includes eVK 7426 (Wellcome 405), not in IMEV/S. Other Latin and AN texts on uroscopy and fevers precede the recipes in C and are edited by Hunt. One of them, an AN uroscopy text (pp. 92–93) begins ‘‘Si le urine seyt blanche de tut le matyn e ruge aprés manger signefiet sainté.’’ The ME scholar should be aware that Hunt does not cite any ME versions (e.g., eVK 6592, 7809...