Hi
guys! I had a successful week, finding sources and reading some articles on
plants and gardening in the Middle Ages. I’ve started looking at actual herbals
from the time: one comprised Latin poems written by Friar Henry Daniel, and it
has already been very useful (I picked up the book yesterday). During all this,
I came across an interesting article on a primary source that I’d love to see,
or read through a translated secondary source.
The
article is called The First English
Gardening Book: Mayster John Gardener’s Treatise and Its Background, and,
as we see in the progression of this study, although it certainly wasn’t the first
book on this s ubject, John H. Harvey argues it could be the first in the
burgeoning, yet more stable, ‘vulgar’ (common) English language. He says that, “the
practical character of this book, and its lack of ‘authorities’ strongly
suggest a vernacular origin in the personal experience of a master English
gardener.”[1]
The
“primary manuscript,” as Harvey calls the one from Cambridge, is expanded in
some areas, by the more recently discovered (and probably more recently
composed) “Loscombe” manuscript. However, Harvey calls the Loscombe “seriously
defective” in that it is lacking the introduction on gardening along with the
following chapters on “Trees, Grafting” and “Viticulture.”[2] The
Loscombe contains information on saffron and rosemary, while the Cambridge has
no information concerning rosemary and only some on saffron. Harvey notes particularly
“this last may well indicate that Loscombe was based upon an enlarged edition
of the original booklet, revised in light of further experience of saffron
growing.”[3] Saffron,
we must remember, was introduced to England in the mid-1300s. Rosemary too,
introduced to England in about the 1340s, helps put the date of the Loscombe’s
composition “quite late in the fourteenth century.”[4]
Other differences exist between the lists in the two manuscripts, but also
points of concordance.
There
are also some questions on types of ‘liverworts’ (so called because of their actual
uses in liver-treatment) included. These plants appear in the older text. Harvey
notes that the newer text “suffers
from textual corruption,” one example being the repetition and confusion of some
herbs: a helpful list of plants and variations on their names appears at the
end of the article.[5]
Thus, the differences in manuscripts exist. Something included in both
manuscripts however is “honysoke”; Harvey tells us that this is NOT
honeysuckle, but rather a “trefoil,” i.e. thre leued gras (three-leaved grass) and
furthermore, that this plant appeared in another list under this category. Therefore,
“the original sense [of honysoke] was a species of Meliotus, to which the clovers, Trifolium
spp., were later added.”[6]
Personally, I find this categorization, and particularly the name change,
fascinating! And we do have clover in the Loyola medieval garden!
In
short, this is a primary source FULL of information for use in our website ‘herbal’
on Loyola’s garden. I have Friar Daniel (who used this source) and new books on
medieval medicine to read through as well! Until next time everyone!
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