The Tractatus de herbis (Treatise on Herbs), sometimes called Secreta Salernitana (Secrets of Salerno), is a textual and figural tradition of herbals handed down through several illuminated manuscripts of the Late Middle Ages. These treatises present pure plant, mineral, or animal substances with therapeutic properties. Depending on the version, there are between 500 and over 900 entries, grouped in alphabetical order. Originating in Italy, they were distributed throughout Europe and contributed to the transmission and popularity of the pharmacopeia of the Salerno School of Medicine. For example, there is a Tractatus de Herbis, an illustrated treatise of medicinal plants painted in 1440, housed under shelfmark Sloane MS 4016 in the British Library, in London. The illustrations in these manuscripts attracted the attention of art historians from the 1950s onwards, due to their descriptive value, which was interpreted as a revival of Greek botanical illustration. Some of these plant images represent the first studies based on nature since Antiquity. The original Latin text, whose author remains unknown, comes from Circa instans, a work from the second half of the 12th century attributed to Matthaeus Platearius, and written in the Salernitan milieu. It is augmented by extracts from other late antique and early medieval sources, such as Pseudo-Apuleius, Arabic medicine handed down by Constantine the African, medieval Latin versions of Dioscorides' work, Isaac Israeli's dietary principles, and perhaps includes pharmaco-botanical knowledge from oral tradition. The two earliest versions of the Tractatus de herbis, whose relationship is debated, are preserved in Egerton Manuscript 747 at the British Library in London and in Latin Manuscript 6823 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. The manuscripts derived from them are mainly divided between a group originating in northern Italy, some copies of which are devoid of text, and a French translation containing almost thirty testimonies and known collectively as the Livre des simples médecines. The latter was responsible for the publication of the first herbarium printed in French, Le Grant Herbier en françoys, which underwent several reissues between the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and was in turn translated into English as the Grete Herball. The origins of the tradition and the exact function of herbariums remain obscure and debated. While the earliest manuscripts were probably compiled as true scientific treatises, some derivative versions are more like prestige creations intended for a wealthy elite. Despite competition in the early 15th century from more naturalistic works, such as the Herbarium Carrarense, the schematic, flattened images of the Tractatus de herbis enjoyed over two centuries of popularity, before being definitively sidelined by the shimmering exoticism of New World plants.
Background
The Medieval medicine of Western Europe was much influenced by the many groups who contributed to the make-up of society. The contributions of Byzantine, Arabic and Mozarabic physicians were introduced into the Greek foundational texts of medicine, as was also the knowledge of people from further afield across the borders of the western world. Among the many results of this multiplicity of ethnic groups and cultures, medicinal plants had many different names coming from the several groups who were using them to prepare remedies. Such diversity was a source of confusions. To avoid the danger possibly generated by confusion between plants, apothecaries and physicians compiled dictionaries of plant names and commissioned albums with representations of the plants and other materia medica (animal and mineral) they used in their daily medical practice. The Tractatus de Herbis is one such work linking the different plant names to the plants themselves through the mediation of the image. This made it possible to avoid confusion and, consequently, the risk of administering to a patient a plant different from the one prescribed by the physician. The Tractatus was produced to enable physicians, apothecaries and others identify the plants they used regardless of their nationality and language. the earliest surviving version, from the early 14th century (before 1330) and now known as Egerton 747, and in the British Library was relatively unknown till 1950, following which it was realised that there was a whole family of herbals with a common ancestor, which became collectively known as the Tractatus de herbis. These fall into two main groups, The North Italian Group (including British Library Sloane MS 4016) and the French group (including British Library Egerton MS 747). In some manuscripts, such illustrative albums do not contain any text, but only the names of the plants in the language of the several groups present in medieval society. These albums with multilingual lists of plant names were visual aids which allowed for easy identification of the plants to be used in the practice of remedial therapy. Their representations of materia medica were much more efficient than words to make transcultural exchanges possible. These illustrated works transformed the whole field of botanical literature. From translators/interpreters aimed to make it possible to associate one plant with its names in different languages and populations, they became reference works which made unnecessary to include plant representations in botanical and medical treatises. They became reference works of a new type which could be consulted and used by readers of any language.
Historiography
The title Tractatus de herbis appears for the first time in a late 18th-century catalog of the Estense Library in Modena, to designate, within a collection of larger medical texts, a specific treatise on medical matters in Latin attributed to Dioscorides. It is derived from the explicit text that begins with the phrase Explicit tractatus herbarum ("Ends the treatise on herbs"). The treatise attracted the attention of the self-taught botanist Jules Camus, who recognized it as an amplified and illustrated version of Circa instans, a twelfth-century Latin text attributed to Matthieu Platearius and known since the second half of the eighteenth century through the works of Albrecht von Haller and, above all, Kurt Sprengel. In his study published in 1886, Camus also analyzed a second manuscript from the Estense library, which he identified as the French translation of the Tractatus de herbis and as the primitive version of a work printed at the end of the 15th century under the title Le Grant Herbier en françoys. In 1950, the Austrian art historian Otto Pächt noted that the Modena Tractatus was merely a copy of a manuscript in London's British Library, ms. Egerton 747, and that the latter had been compiled 150 years earlier. He also established that two other versions, preserved in Florence and Rome respectively, were directly derived from the London manuscript and belonged to the same figurative tradition, which he called Secreta Salernitana. In 1974, the Swiss Felix Baumann studied the development of this tradition, alongside his work on the Carrara herbarium, and popularized the use of the term Tractatus de herbis to describe the texts contained in numerous codexes from the 13th and 14th centuries, and to distinguish them from the Circa instans from which they derive. He confirms the centrality of ms. Egerton 747 and identifies a more or less contemporary derivative version transmitted by a codex from the Bibliothèque nationale de France - Latin manuscript 6823. Baumann also proposes a division of the various Tractatus into two categories: the "Northern Italian Group" (Oberitalienische Gruppe) and the "French Manuscripts" (Französische Handschriften). The latter include the numerous Livre des simples médecines from the 15th century, including the Modenese manuscript studied by Jules Camus, and are in turn divided by Baumann into three groups according to the order of the sentences in their incipit. This classification was called into question by François Avril when he published a critical edition of the French text contained in ms. 12322 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Instead, the French art historian proposed two main geographical groupings: manuscripts from Northern France and the Burgundian states, and those from Western France. These conclusions are partially contradicted by the work of Belgian historian Carmélia Opsomer, author of a two-volume edition of a Brussels manuscript likely to have originated in southern France. These works demonstrate that Livre des simples médecines are more numerous than those taken into account by previous researchers, and that they deserve to be classified not only according to their iconography but also in relation to the redaction of the text they contain. In the 21st century, the figurative cycle of the Tractatus de herbis was the subject of a detailed chapter in Minta Collins' book on the illustrative traditions of medieval herbariums. The American researcher does not question the classifications proposed by Baumann and Avril, but argues for a Campanian origin for the two oldest manuscripts. Her work is complemented by Vera Segre Rutz's analysis of the illustrative corpus of ms. 459 from the Casanatense library, which identifies the influence of North Italian manuscripts on the artistic production of the Visconti court. In 2006, Jean Givens analyzed the evolution of the transmission of medical and botanical knowledge through the study of three versions of the Tractatus de herbis: ms. Egerton 747 from London, a Livre des simples médecines from the Royal Library in Copenhagen and a printed edition by Grete Herball. While most research has focused on iconography alone, in 2009 Iolanda Ventura published the first critical edition of the Latin text contained in ms. Egerton 747. Her analysis highlights the relationship between the Tractatus de herbis and other redactions of the Circa instans, as well as with the main pharmacological sources of Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Transmission The Tractatus de herbis exists in two distinct versions, transmitted by the two oldest manuscripts in the tradition: the version by "Pseudo-Barthélémy Mini de Sienne", contained in ms. Egerton 747 in the British Library, and the version by Manfred de Monte Imperiale, present in ms. Latin 6823 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Each of these has given rise to copies, derived versions, and vernacular translations.
Egerton Manuscript 747 and derivatives
The Tractatus de herbis contained in manuscript Egerton 747 in London's British Library is the earliest evidence of the treatise, and may be the original version from which all the others derive. It occupies the first 109 folios of the codex, which also contains other texts, including a Nicolas Antidotary. The treaty is signed by a man named Barthélémy Mini from Siena. On the basis of its illustrative corpus and Gothic script, the manuscript itself is dated to a period between the last quarter of the 13th century and the first decades of the 14th century. Source analysis of the Tractatus, however, shows no use of works from after 1250, and it is possible that the work was copied from an earlier codex, or that it is based on a pre-existing text, probably unillustrated, the trace of which has been lost. The absence of references to Matthew Silvaticus's Opus pandectarum medicinae offers a potential terminus ante quem for the treatise: Silvaticus's medico-botanical encyclopedia, dedicated in 1317 to Robert d'Anjou, was a great success and was widely used by teachers at the Salerno school. It is unlikely that the Tractatus was written after this date, and that its author would have been unaware of the existence of such a source or chosen not to include it in his compilation. The geographical origin of ms. Egerton 747 is also obscure: some authors have suggested that it was compiled in Tuscany, more precisely in Sienne, while others consider it to have originated in southern Italy, in the Naples or Salerno region. These attempts at localization are all based on the illustrations in the manuscript, as the text itself offers no clues as to its origin, and it may have been written in any part of the Italian peninsula, then copied into the codex. Whatever its exact provenance, the manuscript quickly crossed the Alps and must have been in French hands at a fairly early date. Indeed, there is an abridged version of the treaty translated into Occitan around 1350, and a direct copy of the manuscript made in Bresse in 1458. The numerous accounts of the French edition known as the Livre des simples médecines also seem to derive from a single translation of a text very similar to that of the London manuscript. Two clues suggest that the Tractatus de herbis in ms. Egerton 747 is an original compilation. Firstly, extracts from Isaac Israeli were added to the margins of the manuscript after the first draft, whereas these passages are integrated into the body of the text and quoted in the summaries of later versions. In addition, the last folios of the treatise are ruled only at the top of the columns, to allow for the insertion of illustrations and to prevent paint from accumulating in the recessed lines. This adaptation of the illumination process, which took place in the course of production, indicates a close collaboration between the scribe and the illustrators, which could be the sign of an original figurative undertaking, rather than the copying of an existing work. The Egerton manuscript, the earliest version and acquired by the British Museum in 1839, is incomplete.
Provençal translation
In Manuscript Palatino 586 from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, each folio features four images surmounted by three to six lines of text, rarely one or two, in Occitan, with abbreviations. They correspond to condensed translations of each chapter of the ms. Egerton 747. The incomplete codex was produced in two separate campaigns. It opens with a series of quatrains containing the Dits de philosophes, at the bottom of which the copyist gives his name ("Aguiton") in a Latin formula common among medieval scribes: "Nomen scriptoris: aguito plenus amoris "ref 4. This is followed by portraits of seven "doctors" delivering aphorisms in Latin and Occitan (see below). Folios 9 to 29 contain the first series of simples, which follow the chapter order of ms. Egerton 747. The plants are surrounded by figures and grotesques. The first part of the manuscript, which dates from the middle of the 14th century, ends with the letter F. Folios 30 to 65 contain only images, and from folio 38 onwards, only preparatory drawings in black line are present. This second illustration campaign was carried out using a different technique and in a style similar to that of Jean de Sy's Master of the Bible. This illuminator would have appeared during the last years of the reign of John the Good, and would have frequently worked for Charles V. It is therefore possible that ms. Pal. 586 was brought to Paris from the South of France to be decorated for a royal patron in the years 1370–1375.
Bresse copy
Manuscript alfa.l.09.28 (formerly ms. Lat. 993) from the Estense Library in Modena is a 15th-century Latin version, very close to that of ms. Egerton 747, and the first to be given the title Tractatus de herbis. It even contains the explicit with the (usurped) signature of Barthélémy Mini de Sienne, whose surname was mistranscribed as "Mundsens" in the library catalogue. The treatise includes 390 images of plants, 50 of minerals and other substances, often depicted in boxes, and 22 unframed illuminated scenes. The illustrator may have been the Master of the Prince of Piedmont, an artist known for his work for the future Duke Amédée IX of Savoy. The last folio of the treatise includes a second explicit in French, following the one already present in ms. Egerton 747, which provides information on the provenance of the manuscript (Bourg-en-Bresse), the date of its completion (1458) and the name of its copyist ("Le petit pelous"):Explicit this herbology To which an affair has been made In bourg it was script One thousand fifty and eight And wrote it all certain The owner with his hand Please pray for him For the love of your company
- Le petit pelous, etc., 1458
Central European Kräuterbuch
In addition to the two groups of manuscripts defined by Felix Baumann, an abridged version of the Tractatus de herbis has been transmitted by two manuscripts from the Germanic cultural area. It is limited to substances of plant origin and has been purged of all medical data, retaining only lexicographical information. The text, which is accompanied by illustrations, is comparable to the ms. Egerton 747. One of these Kräuterbuch ("Book of Herbs"), comprising just 200 chapters, is contained in ms. K II 11 of the Basel University Library. It was the subject of a critical edition in 1961, which dated it to the end of the 14th century based on the costume worn by the character in its only figurative scene. In 1990, however, the discovery of a second manuscript rendered this initial analysis obsolete: the "Petroneller Kräuterbuch", so nicknamed because it was kept in the library of the castle of the Counts of Abensberg-Traun in Petronell, Austria, turns out to be the model for the Basel manuscript and dates from the mid-15th century6. The codex was sold at auction at Sotheby's in 1985 and is now in private hands. The codex has a specificity for the history of the transmission of the Tractatus de herbis: an anonymous reader at the end of the 15th century inserted between the pages additional folios with the complete translation of the text into German, in a dialect of the Austro-Bavarian group.
Latin manuscript 6823 and Northern Italian group
Latin manuscript 6823 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris contains a version of the Tractatus de herbis, entitled "Liber de herbis et plantis", which is different from that of ms. Egerton 747. Its signature indicates that it was written and illustrated by Manfred de Monte Imperiale, an unknown author whose origin is the subject of debate. The work could not be precisely dated, and would have been written between the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th century. However, the terminus post quem date of 1296 has been retained, due to the presence of extracts from Simon of Genoa's Clavis sanationis, which appeared no later than that year. The geographical origin of Latin ms. 6823 is as much debated as that of ms. Egerton 747, although the illustrations on the preface folios may point to a Neapolitan production (see below). Apart from the Paris manuscript, the "Manfred version" was transmitted by four other codices dating from the 15th century: mss. Ross. 1067 and Chigi F. VIII. 188 from the Vatican Apostolic Library, ms. L. VIII. 18 from the Biblioteca comunale degli Intronati in Sienae and ms. Thott 191 2° from the Royal Library in Copenhagen, which is incomplete and lacks illustrations. Manfred's writing sweeps across a more varied cultural horizon than Pseudo-Barthélémy Mini's. The link between the two works has not yet been elucidated and is the subject of debate among scholars. They agree in drawing parallels between the illustrative corpus of the London and Paris codices. The text, on the other hand, shows differences that make the hypothesis of a direct relationship between the two manuscripts unlikely. If Manfred had ms. Egerton 747 on his desk, he would have consciously and systematically replaced the content of certain chapters with texts taken from other sources (see below). Another explanation is that he used a version of the treatise containing illustrations derived from that of the London manuscript, but a substantially different text. A third hypothesis is that both versions are descended from a common archetype, which would have undergone distinct developments. Whatever the answer to this question, Manfred's version represents an essential step in the history of the transmission of the Tractatus de herbis and the extended, illustrated versions of Circa instans. Having probably been found in Lombardy as early as the second half of the 14th century, it served as the basis for some of the most famous accounts of the work, collected by Baumann under the name of the "Northern Italian group " . This migration from the south of the peninsula, if Latin ms. 6823 was indeed produced in this region, is the subject of an elaborate hypothesis: the manuscript may have belonged to Francesco da Carrara, lord of Padua from 1350 onwards. This acquisition is perhaps linked to the gradual transfer of Salerno's center of medical knowledge and teaching northwards, first to Bologna, then to Padua through the efforts of the House of Carrara to develop its university. When the city was taken by Jean Galéas Visconti in 1388, books were listed as spoils of war, and in 1426 the Latin ms. 6823 was mentioned in the catalog of the Library of the Dukes of Milan. A few years later, Francesco's son Francesco II commissioned a superb manuscript known as the Carrara Herbarium, whose images were partly inspired by Manfred's treatise. Unable to physically recover his father's books, Francesco II may have attempted to replace the loss by creating a new illuminated manuscript.
Padua and Lombardy picture books
The oldest manuscript in the Northern Italian group appears to be ms. M. 873 from the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, entitled Compendium Salernitanum. It is unusual in that it contains only illustrations, although a separate volume with text may have existed. The 488 images, all by the same hand, follow the order of those in Manfred's version. The chapters without illustrations are not represented, but the New York manuscript includes, alongside the simple ones, the animals from the Liber medicinae ex animalibus. Analysis of the costumes and handwriting has enabled us to place its origin in northern Italy, probably in the Veneto region, and to date it to the third quarter of the 14th century. As indicated in a note on folio 94, the codex belonged to Marcellin-Hercule Bompart, physician to Louis XIII, whose library was subsequently passed on to Antoine Vallot, archiatrist to Louis XIV. Many titles are translated into French in cursive script of the 15th or 16th century. A second, textless manuscript is held by the library of the École nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the Masson number 116. A hard-to-decipher note at the bottom of the first folio, as well as several iconographic clues, link the codex to the city of Padua. The 580 illustrations, whose uneven level reflects the participation of several artists, are presented in an order now disrupted by a clumsy restoration of the binding and which does not correspond to the original sequence. Unlike the Morgan Library manuscript, ms. Masson 116 was not originally designed to contain images only: the folios show traces of a discreet pen and ink rule, and the trees are placed in the center of the pages to allow the insertion of two columns of text. The details of the costumes and certain scenes show many similarities with the illustrations of a Guiron le Courtois and a Lancelot du Lac transmitted by two Parisian manuscripts, suggesting that they may have come from the same workshop, and have made it possible to date ms. Masson 116 to the years 1370 or 1380. The work of some of the manuscript's illustrators also corresponds closely to the stylistic canons of Altichiero da Zevio or Jacopo Avanzi, two artists who worked in Padua between 1376 and 1379.
Although apparently unintentional, the absence of text in ms. Masson 116 seems to have served a remarkable tendency in the 15th and 16th centuries to prefer picture books to scientific treatises. The École des Beaux-Arts manuscript, or a copy of it, thus served as the basis for two books designed to feature only illustrations. The first is ms. Chigi F. VII. 158 from the Vatican Apostolic Library, dated to the late 14th or early 15th century. Although it is labelled "Latin Dioscorides" and has been studied as such, the codex contains only images belonging to the figurative tradition of the Tractatus de herbis. The second is British Library manuscript Sloane 4016, whose illustrations are almost identical copies of those on ms. Masson 116, but adjusted and grouped to fill the entire surface of the folios. They are accompanied by captions indicating the name of the simple and its synonyms, and feature scenes that indicate a clear predilection on the part of their patron for courtly and worldly aspects, testifying to a realization with a primarily aesthetic purpose. Details of costumes and hairstyles have been altered from the original and have been used to date the manuscript to the 1440s, by comparison with the frescoes attributed to the Zavattari in the chapel of Queen Theodelinde in Monza Cathedral. The link with this family of Lombard painters, as well as the presence of Visconti emblems, would place the origin of ms. Sloane 4016 to Pavia or Milan. Other authors, however, have suggested a Venetian production around 1450. Some of the illustrations in ms. Masson 116 still appear in a distinct 15th-century tradition commonly referred to as "alchemical herbariums", of which there are around twenty manuscripts originating in Italy. The best-known examples are ms. 106 from the botanical library of the University of Florence and ms. Aldini 211 from the University Library of Pavie both of which have been the subject of detailed studies. These codices are divided into two parts: the first presenting 98 illustrated "alchemical" plants, and the second containing a selection of images from the Tractatus de herbis tradition, interspersed with texts. Sloane 4016:
The Sloane manuscript is a volume with 109 folios of large parchment, (365 mm x 265 mm) It is illustrated with nearly 500 polychrome representations of plants, animals and minerals, which were all used as primary materials to produce drugs. These illustrations also include some people (ff. 2r, 44v, 98v), a mummy (f. 62r), animals’ parts (antlers, for example, on f. 34v), and manufactured by-products (wax, f. 30r). Though this manuscript lacks a signature, colophon, or any indication of its provenance or date, it has traditionally been considered to be of North Italian origin, most likely from the Lombardy region from about 1440 judging from its Gothic-style script. Later, it belonged to the Marquis of Magny, Nicolas-Joseph Foucault (1643-1721), then to the English collector Hans Sloane (1660-1753), before it became part of the collections of the British Museum in 1839.
Reproductions In 2002 the Folio Society reproduced the Tractatus de Herbis in a numbered limited edition of 1000, accompanied by a commentary volume written by Minta Collins with list of plants compiled by Sandra Raphael. In 2011 the Spanish publishing house M. Moleiro Editor produced a facsimile edition of the Tractatus de Herbis. This edition limited to 987 copies comes with a companion volume by Historian of Science and Medicine Alain Touwaide of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions and the (Smithsonian Institution).
Historia plantarum: a sum for Wenceslas
It was at the court of the Visconti family that the most luxurious version of Manfred's treatise was produced: ms. 459 from the Casanatense library in Rome, otherwise known as the Historia plantarum, is a grandiose edition of over 900 entries that represents the pinnacle of medieval scientific illustration. Its design and border decoration correspond to the style employed by Giovannino and Salomone de' Grassi for the Book of Hours commissioned by Jean Galéas Visconti. It is likely that the Historia plantarum was produced in the same workshop, by the same artists and for the same patron39. The representation of plant species follows in the tradition of the Tractatus de herbis, and closely resembles that of ms. Masson 116, which could suggest an archetype common to both manuscripts. On the other hand, that of the animals and figurative scenes differs markedly: it corresponds more closely to the studies carried out in the de' Grassi workshop, and has many points in common with the contemporary production of the Tacuinum sanitatis illustrated in the Lombard region. The manuscript may date from the period 1394–1395, when Jean Galéas was trying to persuade the King of the Romans to invest him with the Duchy of Milan in exchange for financial support. Wenceslas of Luxembourg, to whom the work was presented, is depicted on the frontispiece surrounded by his electors and the seven virtues. The latter may be an allusion to the title of Count of Vertus conferred on Jean Galéas after his marriage to Isabelle de France. The manuscript was later inherited by the famous library of King Matthias Corvin in Hungary, who had his coat of arms placed over that of the House of Luxembourg on the same frontispiece. A copy of the Historia plantarum was produced in the 15th century during this stay in Hungary. Transmitted by ms. Cim. 79 (formerly ms. 604 2°) of the University Library of Munich, and known as the Lexicon plantarum, it was essentially limited to simple plants. Written in bastard Latin script, the manuscript was probably originally intended for a hospital.
Books of simple medicines and printed works
The Tractatus de herbis was translated into French, commonly known as the Livre des simples médecines, at the end of the 14th century or the beginning of the 15th century. In France, this period corresponds to the transition from Latin to the vernacular of many scientific and philosophical works. The vernacular version was transmitted by at least 28 manuscripts, alternately titled Livre des secrets de Salerne or Arboriste. The earliest date from the second quarter of the 15th century, and the majority from the second half of that century. The Livre des simples médecines is clearly derived from the Pseudo-Barthélémy Mini version: it contains the same chapters, presented in the same sequence, and strictly adheres to alphabetical order, even when the transition to French would have required otherwise. It does, however, show certain specific features that might suggest that the original translation was not based on ms. Egerton 747, but from another codex containing a derived version, closer to that of Modè's ms. alfa.l.09.28. Finally, while the stemma codicum of the Livre des simples médecines tends to indicate a unique archetype, the original translation developed over time and evolved into several sub-editions, according to what its copyists felt authorized to add or subtract. Some of these contain extracts from the work of the Italian physician Gentile da Foligno and the Tacuinum sanitatis, two sources absent from earlier versions of treatise.
Grands herbiers
It was precisely one of these redactions that was used to produce the first printed herbarium in the French language: published in Besançon in 1486 or 1487–1488, it was entitled Arbolayre contenant la qualitey et virtus, proprietey des herbes, arbres, gommes et semences, extrait de pluseurs tratiers de medicine, comment d'Avicenne, de Rasis, de Constantin, de Ysaac et Plateaire, selon le commun usaige bien correct. The work is a large folio in Gothic script on two columns, which was reprinted in Paris at least twice, in 1498 and 1520, this time under the name Grant Herbier en françoys. The woodcuts in these works no longer follow the iconographic tradition of the Tractatus de herbis, but seem to have been borrowed from the Gart der Gesundheit, the first herbarium printed in German, published in Mainz in 1485. The text of the Arbolayre has a number of remarkable features that distinguish it from all versions derived from the Tractatus de herbis and the Livre des simples médecines, such as the presence of chapters absent elsewhere. As it seems unlikely that the editor himself would have taken the initiative of making such additions to an existing work, this means that the manuscript at the source of these impressions has yet to be determined. The Grant Herbier was in turn translated into English as the Grete Herball and published several times between 1526 and 1561. The work is dedicated to "the perfect knowledge and understanding of all kinds of herbs and their gracious virtues" and incorporates a number of novelties: a register of chapters in Latin and English, an anatomical diagram showing the names of different human bones, a section devoted to 25 treatments presented as "innovative" or a treatise on urine attributed to Avicenna.
Text
Material processed
The Tractatus de herbis consists of an alphabetical compilation of over 500 simples, each chapter devoted to the description of a different product. The enumeration begins after a short prologue from Circa instans, which explains that a simple medicine is a substance used as found in nature, without additions or modifications. Each initial begins with a summary, which does not always correspond exactly to the products actually processed. Within the same alphabetical section, the chapters follow a sequence that does not respect alphabetical order, but seems dictated by the sources used for compilation. The treatise is mainly made up of plants and substances of plant origin, but also includes several simple animals (such as ambergris, castoreum and musk) and minerals (such as mercury, orpiment and magnetite). It also contains a number of processed products, such as starch, butter, vinegar and... mummies. The internal organization of the chapters varies according to the sources used. Those taken from Circa instans, however, all share a similar structure: they begin by mentioning the qualities of the simple (hot or cold, dry or wet) and their degree of intensity, then provide lexicographical information, such as synonyms and sometimes the etymology of the name, and finally indicate the substance's secondary qualities (astringent action) as well as the mood it serves to regulate (blood, phlegm, bile, atrabile). After this introduction, which constitutes a kind of "identity card" for the product, the text goes on to list its various therapeutic properties. These are grouped by body part, often following a sequence a capite ad calcem ("from head to heel").
Authors The colophon of ms. Egerton 747, copied in full in the Modena manuscript, cites Diascorides (Dioscorides), Platone (Appuleius Platonicus), Galienus (Galien) and Macronem (Macer Floridus) as authors of the treatise, and mentions the name of "Bartholomeus Mini de Senis" as compiler and scribe:
« Explicit tractatus h[e]rbar[um] Diascorides & Platone adq[ue] Galienus et Macrone[m] tra[n]s latate manu et i[n]tellectu bartholomei mini d[e] senis i[n] arte speciare se[m]p[er] i[n]fusus d[e]o gra[tia]s am[en]. Q[u]i scripsit scribat se[m]p[er] cu[m] d[omi]no vivat.
Vivat i[n] celis bartho[lo]m[eu]s i[n] no[m]i[n]e felix.»"Barthélémy Mini de Sienne", of whom no other work is known, has been identified as an apothecary, "versed in the art of spices". Jules Camus suggested that he was related to Andrea Mino da Siena, a 14th-century Tuscan poet of the Piccolomini family. The name Bartholomeus Mini was also found with his coat of arms on the ceiling of a salon in Siena's Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, dated no earlier than 1347. A Bartalomeo d'Antonio di Mino, a resident of the Terzo di Camollìa, is also mentioned several times between 1453 and 1474 in the lists of the Sienese apothecaries' guild, but this late connection is unlikely. Otto Pächt points out, however, that the two mentions of the name in the colophon are later additions, written in a similar but different script and with darker ink. It is also unlikely that the compiler and scribe of the text were the same person, and that the latter signed twice. The abbreviation "barthoms" is used to fill a nine-character space in a formula ("Qui scripsit...") that was very common among medieval scribes. The reason for this probable usurpation remains unknown, but it is possible that Bartholomew Mini of Siena made several corrections and additions to the original text, and that he considered these modifications sufficient justification for substituting his name for those of the compiler and scribe.
On the other hand, the attribution of the Tractatus de herbis in the Paris ms. 6823 to Manfred de Monte Imperiale is indisputable. The incipit of the treatise contains his original signature: "Cum ego, Manfredus de Monte Imperiali, in artis speciarie semper optans scire virtutes [...] in libro hoc scripsi et per figuram demonstravi." The name does not appear in any other source, however, and nothing is known of the author beyond what he himself says in this passage, i.e. that he is a medical scholar with a thorough knowledge of the existing literature on simple medicines and first-hand experience with plants and their medicinal properties. The toponym "Monte Imperiale" has been likened to Kaysersberg in Alsace, Poggibonsi (formerly Poggio Imperiale) near Sienne, or Castel del Monte in Puglia, a castle built by Emperor Federico II.
For François Avril, Manfred and Barthélémy belonged "to a still little-known milieu of herbalists in the Sienese region", while for Minta Collins, both authors worked in the South. Manfred would have commissioned Neapolitan artists to illuminate the frontispiece and incipit of his work (see below), having compiled it during his stay in Salerno. The explicit title would also indicate the author's attachment to the teachings of the famous medical school:" Ne vero presentis operis prolixitas in immensum infundatur, haec leto fine illud concludimus. Actenus Arcanum Salerne diximus urbis littera et in lassa pollice sistat opus." "In order to prevent the prolixity of this work from becoming too long, we close it with pleasure. Thus far, we have spoken of the secrets of Salerno, and the work ends with weary handwriting and a [tired] thumb."The reference to "the secrets of Salerno" is present in a shortened form in French in the Livre des simples médecines, and has often been used as an alternative title for the work. However, it is already present in ms. Egerton 747, as well as in several versions of Circa instans, even though they were written far from Salerno.
Sources The chapters of Pseudo-Bartholomew Mini's Tractatus de herbis offer a pharmacological compilation typical of the field of knowledge of a mid-thirteenth-century expert in medicine and therapeutics. The author was probably not a university-educated intellectual, as the collection shows no influence of the academic sources typical of the period, such as Avicenna's Canon. Rather, it is representative of "popular" medicine, based on sources circulating in the Salernitan cultural milieu and on texts typical of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The compilation's methodology is relatively simple to reproduce: each alphabetical section begins with the chapters of the Circa instans, presented in the same sequence as in the original work. These are followed by additional chapters drawn from other sources, often grouped together according to their provenance. The internal structure of the chapters follows three distinct typologies:
Perfect reproduction, without modifications or additions, from a single source; Interpolation of the content of one source within the data of another; Mixed chapters", in which several sources are used to describe different properties of the substance.
Salerno heritage: Circa instans
Although Platearius is not cited in the treatise's colophon, the Circa instans is the main source of the text. Compiled in the mid-11th century by a member of Salerno's medical school, the work is one of the main texts on medieval pharmacology, which was dis