Medieval manuscripts

Making the Medieval Digital

Staff Digital humanities, Education and outreach, Out of the stacks, Staff projects December 19, 2016April 22, 2019BiblioPhilly, Codicology, Digitization, History of medicine, History of the book, Medieval manuscripts, Paleography

“If [medieval] culture is regarded as a response to the environment then the elements in that environment to which it responded most vigorously were manuscripts.”

– C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

Composite Medical Miscellany I. England, 15th century. Call number 10a 215.

The Historical Medical Library, as part of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL), is participating in a CLIR grant to digitize Western medieval and early modern manuscripts held by libraries in the greater Philadelphia area. The Library is lending thirteen medical manuscripts dating from c. 1220 to 1600 to this project, called Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis (BiblioPhilly). Our manuscripts will be digitized at the University of Pennsylvania’s Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Images (SCETI) and the digital images hosted through the University of Pennyslvania’s OPenn manuscript portal and dark-archived at Lehigh University.

A Little-Known Manuscript Dated 1471, made for Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara

Staff From our researchers, Out of the stacks July 28, 2016July 29, 2016Baptista Massa of Argenta, Emblems, Ercole d’Este, Medieval manuscripts, Provenance

–by Peter Kidd, Wood Institute travel grantee*

Baptista Massa de Argenta, *De fructibus vescendis*, 1471, Call number 10a 189

In early November 2014 I spent a stimulating morning looking at the medieval manuscripts belonging to the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. One that particularly caught my interest is a small volume of 80 leaves, each about 155×115mm (6”×4½”), whose main content is a treatise in 27 chapters on edible fruits, from figs and grapes to pumpkins and capers. It was an appropriate acquisition for the College because it discusses each fruit under various headings, giving their general medical and other properties, and their effect on various parts of the body.