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.

The Date of [Composition of] Mandeville's Travels (articles)

The Date of Mandeville’s Travels
By J. D. Thomas, for Modern Language Notes (1957)

and

The Date of Composition of Mandeville’s Travels
By Arpad Steiner, for Speculum (1934)

The Thomas piece is a brief article of fairly tangential relevance (to me). In it, Thomas presents a summary of the thoughts of critics (up until that point) on when the Travels might have been composed.

For my purposes, it is simply useful to note:
The actual date likes lies between “1355, the earliest year of authorship stated by any version” (Thomas 165) and “1371, the scribal date given in the oldest datable manuscript” (Thomas 165). Hamelius gives 1362 as the terminus a quo, with his likely date (accepted by some but by no means universally) as 1366 (Thomas 166).

The Steiner article, also brief, does not disagree with the above beyond setting the terminus a quo a bit later. It, predating Thomas by two decades and more, simply gives some historical background on different episodes in the Travels that can assist in the dating. Says Steiner, “the date of composition of Mandeville’s Travels may easily have been 1366” (Steiner 147), but certainly “the Travels were composed between 1365 and the early part of 1371” (Steiner 147).

Well: should anyone ask me when the Travels was written, I now have something to cover my ass.

A German Manuscript of Mandeville's Travels (article)

A German Manuscript of Mandeville’s “Travels” Dated 1433
by Malcolm Letts, for The Modern Language Review

Okay, so I’ve read other pieces of scholarship by Malcolm Letts and found them both edifying and enjoyable. So what happened here? Maybe I just don’t care enough about my German manuscripts. For shame.

This article is a brief discussion of the scribal and manuscript history of a particular German translation of Mandeville. As my German is abysmal and I am not working with this translation at all, the article is not a great boon to me, but if you like discussions of “spirited woodcuts” and all the wonder that is Michel Velser, hoo boy are you in for a treat!

(Sorry Malcolm.)