[Medical miscellany].

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Author/Creator:

Israeli, Isaac, approximately 832-approximately 932.

Contributor:

Constantine, the African, approximately 1020-1087, translator.

Dysart, Lionel Tollemache, Earl of, 1708-1770, former owner.

Tollemache, Bentley Lyonel John Tollemache, Baron, 1883-1955, former owner.

Robinson, Philip, former owner.

Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

Arabic

Latin

Subjects (All):

Dominicans--In art.

Dominicans.

Medicine--Early works to 1800.

Medicine.

Medicine, Medieval.

Fever--Early works to 1800.

Fever.

Genre:

codices (bound manuscripts)

illuminations (paintings)

treatises

Manuscripts, Latin.

Manuscripts, Medieval.

Art.

Penn Provenance:

Formerly owned by Lionel Tollemache, Earl of Dysart (Helmingham Hall, Suffolk, arms on covers; Dysart armorial stamp, f. 15v) in the 18th century and by his descendants through Bentley Lyonel John Tollemache (third Baron Tollemache).

Sold privately to the Robinson Brothers after the death of Baron Tollemache in 1955 and held in the private library of Philip Robinson.

Sold at auction at Sotheby's, 6 Dec. 1993, lot 53.

Appears in Jörn Günther Antiquariat's Mittelalterliche Handschriften und Miniaturen (1995), no. 4.

Sold by Sam Fogg Ltd., cat. 16 (1995), no. 46, to Lawrence J. Schoenberg.

Deposit by Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle, 2011.

Physical Description:

149 leaves : parchment ; 278 x 196 (188 x 125-127) mm bound to 293 x 211 mm

Place of Publication:

[Paris], [between 1225 and 1275]

Language Note:

Latin.

Biography/History:

Jewish physician to the Fatimid caliph ʻUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī in Qayrawān in Tunisia, writer of medical works in Arabic.

Summary:

Collection of 10th- through early 13th-century texts that formed the standard 13th-century medical curriculum (referred to and printed in the Renaissance under the collective title Articella), here copied in the mid-13th century with inhabited initials showing medical scenes. 5 works of Isaac Israeli concerning diet, urine, fevers, and the elements, which were translated into Latin in the 11th century by Constantine the African, a Benedictine monk, comprise most of the manuscript. These are preceded by a brief introduction to Galen and 2 short works on the pulse, the later of which, by Gilles de Corbeil, is the latest work in the collection. Most of the illuminations depict Dominican monks teaching and tending to patients.

Contents:

1. f.1r-5v: [Isagoge ad artem parvam Galeni] / Johannicii.

2. f.6r-7r: Liber Philareti de pulsu.

3. f.7v-15r: Liber de pulsu / [Gilles de Corbeil]

4. f.16r-51r: Diete universales / [Isaac Israeli]

5. f.51v-84v: Diete particulares / [Isaac Israeli]

6. f.85r-90v: [Liber urinarum, lacking beginning and end / Isaac Israeli]

7. f.91r-136r: Febres / Ysaac.

8. f.137r-149v: Liber elementorum / Ysaac Ysraelite, filii Salomonis.

Notes:

Ms. codex.

Title supplied by cataloger.

Collation: Parchment, ii (18th-century paper) + 149 + ii (18th-century paper); 1¹⁴(-1) 2² 3¹⁰ 4-7¹² 8¹²(-1) 9¹²(-2) 10-13¹² 14¹⁰(-3); gatherings 3, 6, and 12 have horizontal catchwords (f. 25v, 61v, 130v); gatherings 3, 4, and 8 have letters on the rectos in the first half of each gathering (starting f. 16r, 26r, 75r); gathering 4 is signed II (f. 37v). Link to collation model at end of record.

Layout: Written in 2 columns of 44-47 lines; frame-ruled in faint ink with double vertical bounding lines.

Script: Written in Gothic script.

Decoration: 1 8-line miniature of a Dominican doctor teaching clerics (f. 1r); 11 inhabited initials (Dominican doctor taking a pulse, f. 6r; Dominican doctor possibly with an abstract representation of Gilles de Corbeil's four essential parts of the body (Mountford), f. 7v; laymen at a feast, f. 16r; Dominican doctor, servant, and patient, f. 65r; Dominican doctor teaching laymen, f. 91r; Dominican doctor reading, f. 92v; man covering patient with cloak, f. 94v; Dominican doctor and layman, f. 98r; man bringing poultice to patient, f. 103v; Dominican doctor with urine flask and patient, f. 121v; Dominican doctor reading, f. 137r); 4 faint guide sketches for initials in lower margin (f. 65r, 94v, 103v, 121v); 3 illuminated initials (7-line, f. 51v, 52r; 11-line, f. 70r); 2- and 3-line initials alternating between red flourished with turquoise and blue flourished with red throughout; alternating red and blue paragraph marks throughout; unusual manicules in the form of a tongue extended from a hooded head throughout. The miniatures are attributed to the Johannes Grusch atelier of Paris.

Binding: Early 18th-century mottled calf, gilt with Dysart arms on covers and spine label Theorica practica.

Origin: Written in Paris in the mid-13th century.

Local Notes:

Lawrence J. Schoenberg & Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative.

Cited in:

Described in Transformation of knowledge: early manuscripts from the collection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg (London: Paul Holberton, 2006), p. 88-89 (LJS 24).

Publications about:

Mountford, Angela. "'Brothers who have studied medicine': Dominican friars in thirteenth-century Paris." Social History of Medicine 24, number 3 (December 2011): 535-553.

Cited as:

Oversize LJS 24

Contains:

Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī, 809?-873. Isagoge ad artem parvam Galeni.

Philaretus. De pulsu.

Gilles, de Corbeil, active 1200. De pulsu.

Israeli, Isaac, approximately 832-approximately 932. Diete universales.

Israeli, Isaac, approximately 832-approximately 932. Diete particulares.

Israeli, Isaac, approximately 832-approximately 932. Kitāb al-ḥummayāt. Latin.

Israeli, Isaac, approximately 832-approximately 932. Liber elementorum.

OCLC:

764478343

Online:

The Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative Fund Home Page

Collation model