The Regimen sanitatis [Salernitum] falls under the genre of ‘advice literature,’ just like the Regimine regum et principum (see this earlier post).
Two weeks ago, we read Giles of Rome’s advice on moderation in the diet, and this week we are examining the best time to conceive children – male and female. In the Book II, Part I, chapter 17, Giles explains what Aristotle says in Textus poleticorum and De metheoris regarding conception.
I have written several posts regrading initials in medieval manuscripts (here, here, here, and here), and here’s yet another. This week it’s about historiated initials, the most elaborate initials one can find in manuscripts. Historiated initials are letters which contain “an identifiable scene or figures, sometimes relating to the text.”
– by Wood Institute travel grantee Heather Christle*
In 1906, Alvin Borgquist–a little-known graduate student at Clark University–published the world’s first in-depth psychological study of crying, and then appears to have vanished back into a quiet, private life in his native Utah. His study is moving, strange, detached, threaded through with the racist and colonialist assumptions common to this era (and, distressingly, our own). The questionnaire he crafted to solicit data on typical crying behaviors fascinates me, forming as it does a kind of accidental poem. Here, for instance, is Borgquist’s first question:
As a child did you ever cry till you almost lost consciousness or things seemed to change about you? Describe a cry with utter abandon. Did it bring a sense of utter despair? Describe as fully as you can such an experience in yourself, your subjective feelings, how it grew, what caused and increased it, its physical symptoms, and all its after effects. What is wanted is a picture of a genuine and unforced fit or crisis of pure misery.[1]
Giles of Rome’s De regimine regem et principum falls under the ‘mirror for princes’ genre. The ‘mirror for princes’ genre is advice literature, meant to instruct rulers in governance, and the morals and ethics found in good government. This genre dates as far back as ancient Greece, and became popular in Western Europe during the high Middle Ages. Giles of Rome’s De regimine – if we can take extant manuscripts as evidence – was seemingly more popular than any other ‘mirror for princes’, with the exception of the pseudo-Aristotle’s Secretum secretorum.
This month for #MedievalMonday, we’ll look at 10a 212 – a 14th century Italian copy of Giles of Rome’s De regimine regem et principum.
But because today is Labor Day, no lengthy posts here – just enjoy the labors of 10a 212’s illuminator in these beautiful painted initials. (For earlier posts about initials, please see They don’t make pen-work like this anymore!; Ghoulies and ghosties and medieval beasties; and Pretty in…purple?).
In book 2 of Galen’s De crisibus, Galen describes a crisis as “a sudden change in a disease, either towards death or recovery; which last is produced by nature secreting the good from the bad humours, and preparing the latter for excretion.” In what ways might the bad humours be excreted?
This answer we can find in book 3 of De crisibus.
