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6 - Gardens on Vellum: Plants and Herbs in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts
- Edited by Peter Dendle, Alain Touwaide
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- Book:
- Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 March 2023
- Print publication:
- 31 January 2015, pp 101-127
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- Chapter
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Summary
Erce, Erce, Erce, eorþan modor,
geunne þe se alwalda, ece drihten,
æcera wexendra and wridendra,
eacniendra and elniendra,
sceafta hehre, scirra wæstma,
and þæra bradan berewæstma,
and þæra hwitan hwætewæstma,
and ealra eorþan wæstma.
The slow, stately chant and the heavy, stressed alliteration of the words weave their spell as the Anglo-Saxon enchanter invokes the Christian God to bless the Earth, mother of crops, and to make her fields fertile and fruitful. He is perhaps unaware that he is addressing Gea, the Great Mother, who creates, nourishes and restores all living beings as had been done for unnumbered generations around the Mediterranean Sea.
Dea sancta Tellus, rerum naturae parens,
quae cuncta generas, et regeneras †sidus†,
quod sola prestas gentibus vitalia …
So gatherers of herbs had sung and continued to sing from the pages of medieval Latin herbals. The portrait of Earth, the Mother and nurturer of all beings, is depicted holding a cornucopia brimming with herbs and flowers while the gatherer stands in front of her, asking her permission and her support before gathering the herbs that bring health and strength to men (see Plate 2). It is an image that the Greek and Roman world received from pre-Hellenic times and handed down to the Middle Ages in the herbals, those gardens on vellum where the accumulated knowledge of plant lore and their medical properties was preserved and re-elaborated.
Since the dawn of time, the quest for food has trained people to identify and distinguish edible plants from poisonous ones – and thus to learn their healing properties as well. This hoard of knowledge, handed down in oral tradition for millennia, gradually found its way into collections of remedies and medical treatises. The written tradition goes back to the Assyrians and the Egyptians. However, the true ancestors of the Late Antique herbals, which spread throughout medieval Europe, were the Greek works that began to appear in the fourth century BCE. The names of these ancient authors have been faithfully transmitted as precious legacy throughout the centuries, although the greater part of their work survives only in quotations by later writers. Little is known about Aristotle’s work on plants, but his library and his unpublished works were inherited by his pupil Theophrastus (371–286 BCE), the most important and influential botanist of antiquity.
The botanical lexicon of the Old English Herbarium
- Maria Amalia D'Aronco
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- Journal:
- Anglo-Saxon England / Volume 17 / December 1988
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 September 2008, pp. 15-33
- Print publication:
- December 1988
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Recent research has established beyond question that, in the study of medicine at least, Anglo-Saxon England was far from being ‘a backwater in which superstition flourished until the mainstream of more rational and advanced Salernitan practices flowed into the country in late medieval times’. On the contrary, Anglo-Saxon medicine was at least at the same level as that of contemporary European schools. In ninth-century England the medical works inherited by ‘post-classical Latin medical literature (which included translations and epitomes of Greek and Byzantine medical authorities)’ were not only well known, but served as the basis for original reworking and compilation, as the example of the Læceboc shows. More important, it was in pre-Conquest England that, for the first time in Europe, medical treatises were either compiled in or translated into a vernacular language rather than being composed in Latin or Greek. Ancient medicine made substantial use of drugs obtained from plants; and therefore, since the sources of Anglo-Saxon medical lore were in Latin (or in Greek: but invariably known through the medium of Latin), it is not surprising that most medicinal herbs used in the preparation of Old English prescriptions were not indigenous to England or even to continental Germany. And since such medicinal herbs were not indigenous to northern Europe, it is evident that, in using them, speakers of vernacular languages were obliged to create a vocabulary appropriate to denote them.