Just in time for spring, we’re having a look this week at a medieval herbal and exploring the medicinal properties of the violet. 10a 159 is 15th century Italian manuscript and contains Macer Floridus’ De virtutibus herbarum, among other texts.
Macer Floridus is thought to refer to Odo of Meung, an 11th-century physician in the Loire Valley. His De virtutibus herbarum is one of the most well-known herbals, and one of the earliest representing a renewed interest in botany during the High Middle Ages and Renaissance period.
De virtutibus herbarum describes the healing properties of 77 herbs and is written in hexameter, a poetic verse form that was standard in classical literature. Odo’s sources for this work included the writings of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen. Although the manuscript is not illustrated, later, printed copies have woodcuts of the plants.
Below is a more modern version of a Middle English translation for the verse pertaining to violets.
Neither the rose in color nor the lily may overpass the violet neither in beauty, neither in strength nor virtue, neither in odor. It is said that violet is moist and cold in the fourth degree. Of violet there are three manners, which can be known by its flowers; they are diverse, of which the first is white, the second black, the third of purple color. And though they are of diverse colors, yet they have all one virtue [efficacy] and might in medicine.
For unkind heat [fever].
Violet helps and refrains the places that been inflamed and hot, if it is stamped and laid on as if it were a plaster [a solid medicinal or emollient substance spread on a bandage].
For the head.
Violet destroys the head-ache, if it is drunk or smelled, or covers the head.
For the groin.
Water that violet is boiled in is good for the disease of the groin, if it is often washed and bathed in.
For the falling evil [epilepsy].
It is said that violet of purple color helps and destroys the falling evil, specially in children, if it is drunk with water.
For the eye.
Stamp violet with myrrh and saffron and lay this plaster on the swelling of the eye, and it will heal it.
For boils [sores/lesions] of the head.
Stamp violet with honey and vinegar and anoint the boils of the head with it. With the water that violet is boiled in, wash and bathe moderately often, and it will abate the swelling of them.
For the arse.
Muddle violet with wax and then anoint often the fissure of the arse, which the Greeks call ragadias, or lay it on, and it will make him whole.
For pimples.
Muddle violet with honey and then anoint the pimples or cover them with a plaster, and this will destroy and heal them.
X.
Violet seed drunk with wine purges women’s flowers.
XI. For the spleen.
Violet roots stamped and muddled with vinegar dries the spleen, if they are drunk or laid on.
XII. For the gout in the foot.
It is said that in this same way you might cure and heal the gout that is hot.
XIII. For the stomach.
Drink green violet or the flower or juice of it, and you shall destroy colera rubea [red choler; cholera, associated with bilious diarrhea, vomiting, stomachache, and cramps] in the stomach.
XIV. For the sides.
Drink violet muddled in water fresh, and it will destroy all the sicknesses that come from colera rubea or of blood in the tender and soft sinews or in the lungs, and the cough of children and the sighing [panting; shortness of breath] in the same way.
XV. For ears and the head.
As you make oil of roses, so shall you make oil of violet, and that is profitable to many causes as men say, for it will destroy the ache of the ears and the ringing therein also, and to the head it profits whatsoever ache it holds.
XVI. For worms.
Put in or drink this oil or anoint your womb with it, and it will slay all the worms therein.
XVII. For the body.
It easily cools the body and resolves it of slumbering.
XVIII.
Anoint with this oil the ears of the head, and it will destroy the scaly dust [dandruff] of it.
XIX. For breaking of a man’s skull.
If the skull or the brain is broken or bowed, so that the patient may not speak, stamp the violet and have him drink it in wine first. Afterward, if the right side of the head be hurt, stamp violet and bind it to the left foot sole; if it be the reverse, do the reverse; soon the bone will set again, and in the same day the patient shall speak, just as the leech [physician] said.
XX. For flux of the womb.
The root of the white violet will stanch the flux of the wound, be it old, be it new, and if you hold it in your mouth and swallow often the juice of it, and if you take licorice and chew both together, its virtue is the speedier.
Sources:
Flood, Bruce P., Jr. “The Medieval Herbal tradition of Macer Floridus.” Pharmacy in History 18, no. 2 (1976): 62-66.
Frisk, Gösta, ed. A Middle English Translation of Macer Floridus De Viribus Herbarum. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri AB, 1949.
Regents of the University of Michigan. Middle English Dictionary. 24 April 2013. <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/>.
Special thanks to Geoffrey B. Elliott for his assistance in modernising the Middle English.
Always glad to help!