The Herbal also includes mythical lore about some plants, such as the mandrake, said to shine at night and to flee from impure persons. It grows at the tops of mountains where there are groves of trees, chiefly in holy places and in the country that is called Apulia’ (translated by Anne Van Arsdall, in Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. For example, ‘dragonswort… is said that it should be grown in dragon’s blood. The text sometimes explicitly acknowledges that plants are best found in distant regions. Alternatively, the scribes and artists could simply have copied them from their Mediterranean source. Scholars debate whether the Anglo-Saxons knew these plants through trade or whether the early medieval climate could have permitted such plants to grow in England. Secondly, the texts include plants and animals from Mediterranean regions and beyond which are not known to be native to the British Isles, such as cumin and licorice. 33vĪ monkey and elephant, from Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f.
‘Streawberian’, from Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. First, the illustrations are not always very useful for identifying plants and animals in the wild: take, for example, these depictions of strawberries and elephants. 57rĪlthough it might seem like a practical guide to finding plants and preparing remedies, this manuscript's uses are debated. ‘Snakeplant’, from Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. For instance, a snake appears near the entry for sweet basil, called ‘snake plant’ ( naedderwyrt), because it was reported to grow where snakes were found and to be useful against injuries caused by snakes. Remedies for poisonous bites were marked out with drawings of snakes and scorpions. 19rĮach entry features an illustration of a plant or animal its name in various languages descriptions of ailments it can be used to treat and instructions for finding and preparing it. Together, the herbal and the text on four-legged animals are now known as part of the so-called 'Pseudo-Apuleius Complex' of texts.Ī man and a centaur presenting a book to a figure in a blue veil or hood, captioned 'Escolapius Plato Centaurus', from Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. The manuscript also includes Old English translations of Late Antique texts on the medicinal properties of badgers (framed as a fictional letter between Octavian and a king of Egypt) and another on medicines derived from parts of four-legged animals. (There are other, non-illustrated manuscripts of the same text, for example in Harley MS 585.) The text is an Old English translation of a text which used to be attributed to a 4th-century writer known as Pseudo-Apuleius, now recognised as several different Late Antique authors whose texts were subsequently combined. This manuscript ( Cotton MS Vitellius C III) is the only surviving illustrated Old English herbal, or book describing plants and their uses.
Thanks to our current digitisation project with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, funded by The Polonsky Foundation, one of the British Library’s earliest illustrated collections of such remedies has just been digitised.Įntries for chamomile and ‘hart clover’, from an illustrated Old English Herbal, England (? Christ Church Canterbury or Winchester), c.
Plant-based remedies were a major feature of Anglo-Saxon medicine.
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