A Fifteenth Century Botanical Glossary (article)

A Fifteenth Century Botanical Glossary
By Jerry Stannard, for Isis (1964)

In this article Stannard discusses “a glossary of plants, minerals, and animal products used as drugs plus a few miscellaneous items denoting pharmaceutical equipment and other matters of interest to the physician and apothecary” (353-4). This glossary, contained in a manuscript dating to 1475, takes the form of columned entries that name and describe specific items (for example, a plant, and its corresponding medicinal properties, means of identification, provenance, synonyms, and other information).

Says Stannard, “Of the 309 entries, the majority, some 278, refer to plants” (354). Stannard then goes on to discuss some of the sources for the information contained in the botanical glossary and a brief timeline of the native Anglo-Saxon botanical tradition.

What interests me about this article is the mentions it makes of culture. For example, Stannard writes:

“To the rustic or to those who looked for edification from a world endowed with moral reminders, the shape of the leaves often suggested animal, bird, or human forms. From these resemblances, usually quite fanciful, moral allegories were often developed” (360).

I think we see this to some extent in the Travels, at least in the instances of moral nature that occur at reasonably frequent intervals. This explains, for example, the supposed cross-shape visible in the center of a banana cut cross-wise, which points us to the readiness of people in the region to receive the Christian faith.

Stannard also discusses “the doctrine of signatures. According to this belief, a plant indicates by its mere external appearance the disease or portion of the body for which it was intended and for which it was, for that reason, of special therapeutic value” (361). I’m not sure this has specific application to Mandeville, but it does give a name to a phenomenon of which I was already aware and struggled to communicate clearly on the surprisingly frequent occasions on which it arises in daily conversation. No, really – you’d be surprised how often I’ve discussed “the doctrine of signatures” and didn’t know what the hell to call it.

Later in the article, Stannard mentions analogy:

“The use of analogy in plant description is as old as Theophrastus and is a particularly common device in nonbotanical writings when mention of a plant is required, but where science can be, momentarily at least, ignored or subordinated to poetry” (362). Again, of no specific application to Mandeville (or at least nothing obviously striking), but I think this idea is present in the Travels: though SJM sometimes plays the naturalist, he plays just as often the poet and storyteller. Plants often become cultural objects, not scientific specimens.

Lastly, Stannard points to the medieval “belief that by examining the etymology of the name of a drug, something of value might be learned concerning its medicinal uses” (365). Such a practice might not point to the modern, scientifically proven properties of the plant, but it might well point to how the plants were received as useful, practicable cultural objects.

So, A Fifteenth Century Botanical Glossary. Though it is an examination of a primary text with no relation to the Travels, still it contains some interesting tools for thinking about how plants are given over to the audience by Mandeville.