Claire Burridge writes…
We’re going to start the New Year by going back in time. Far back in time.
So, no, this won’t be a review of the past year’s posts, or even a look back at how the study of early medieval medical manuscripts has changed in recent decades. Rather, the first MotM of 2025 centres on what may be the earliest manuscript to feature on our soon-to-be-released handlist![1]
The codex in question is Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS XVII (15). This volume is thought to have been produced in Italy and has been dated to the sixth century. It contains a collection of works by Jerome (d. 420), including his Adversus Iovinianum (fols 2v-208v) and Adversus Helvidium de Mariae virginitate perpetua (fols 248r-281v), as well as several of his letters (fols 211v-247v).
Unfortunately, it has yet to be made accessible online, but you can at least get a glimpse of the manuscript’s gorgeous uncial via its entry on the Early Latin Manuscripts site (the digital home of E. A. Lowe’s Codices Latini Antiquiores). Lowe describes the script as ‘bold, expert uncial’, commenting that it may have even belonged to Ennodius (d. 521), a Gallo-Roman poet and bishop of Pavia.[2]
In several places throughout the manuscript, a number of scribes made use of the blank spaces that remained after the main text had been copied, adding notes of various kinds. These range from a few lines of poetry at the top of fol. 2r to the addition of Ennodius’ name, written in large rustic capitals, on fol. 208v. So, where’s the medical material in this mix?
In the middle of fol. 2r, which was originally left blank, someone also added a simple recipe for posca, a drink made by mixing water, vinegar, and, depending on the recipe (or perhaps personal preference?), potentially some spices and herbs. While Lowe suggests that this ‘excellent’ cursive note was written by a contemporary hand, others have dated it later. The MINiTEXTS project suggests a rough date of c. 650-750, meaning that it was added at least a few generations after Jerome’s texts were copied.[3] It reads:
‘A posca for loosening the belly. Nineteen eggshell-fuls of plain water. Of vinegar, three eggshell-fuls. Of salt, one eggshell-ful.’
(Posca ad ventrem solvendum. Decem novem ova aqua plena. Aceti ova trea. Salis ovum unum.)
Like so many of the medical additions made to non-medical manuscripts that CEMLM has encountered, the appearance of this recipe raises many questions. To begin, why was this information added to this page? Was the individual who wrote it simply looking for any available space? Perhaps they found this posca recipe to be a particularly nice blend and didn’t want to forget the ratio of ingredients, so they made use of the first free section of parchment they could find. That the recipe is written in cursive and doesn’t conform to the page’s rulings at least gives the appearance that it may have been jotted down in a hurry.
Alternatively, was this manuscript specifically chosen to house the posca recipe? Due to the codex’s fairly deluxe nature and relative antiquity, it might have been easily recognisable, thereby making it a memorable storage location. Indeed, it’s possible that the manuscript was no longer being actively used, meaning that its blank pages were available for repurposing (or perhaps that repurposing might be less noticeable?). On the other hand, did the scribe know about this blank page because they were actively reading this collection of Jerome’s writings?
While it is currently impossible to answer these questions, thinking about several different scenarios in which this addition occurred, as well as the possible rationales behind this site selection, demonstrates how ‘medical minitexts’ can open up many different research directions – and we haven’t even considered it from a medical perspective. How, for example, was this drink conceptualised? Described as ‘A posca for loosening the belly’, was this understood first as a beverage and secondly as a medication? (Perhaps something akin to ‘a drink with health benefits’, like a probiotic-rich kombucha or kefir today?) Or was it seen as a drug that could also have culinary purposes?
The simplicity of the recipes also leaves many questions unanswered: how or when would it have been consumed? (With a meal or as a special treatment?) Would the resulting posca have been intended for one person to drink over several days, or would this have produced enough for several people, say, members of the community at Verona? What size eggshells should be used to create the desired volume? (Or rather, should it be understood as ‘half an eggshell’?) How long, and how often, should this drink be consumed? Can it be stored, and if, in what sort of vessel?
The questions could go on and on, but I’m afraid this blog post doesn’t have many answers. If, however, this post has whetted your appetite for recipes added to non-medical manuscripts (or perhaps it’s made you thirst for posca?), you can hear more about some of the recent findings from the MINiTEXTS project and CEMLM later this month! I’ll be speaking at the next meeting of the Medieval European Medical Manuscripts working group, an online working group hosted by CHSTM (the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine) on 23 January.
In the meantime, we wish all our readers a happy, healthy, and manuscript-filled 2025!
[1] Our team is in the final stages of preparing a handlist of early medieval manuscripts containing medical texts that were catalogued by neither Augusto Beccaria nor Ernest Wickersheimer in their mid-twentieth-century catalogues (I codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano (secoli IX, X e XI) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1956) and Les manuscrits Les manuscrits latins de médecine du haut Moyen Âge dans les bibliothèques de France (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la Recherche scientifique, 1966), respectively). This will be made freely available online via our project website.
[2] E. A. Lowe, Codices Latini antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934–66), IV.489a.
[3] For more on the MINiTEXTS project, check out the research group’s website. A database will be made available online at the end of the project.