The Old English Herbal in Cotton Ms. Vitellius C. iii : studies
Authors:   , Voigst Linda Sue Ehrsam 
Published: December 2023

Even for experts in the field, early English medicine seems to present difficulties. For the uninitiated, it is a trackless jungle...the field of medical and other scientific vernacular manuscripts is still a Yukon territory crying out for exploitation.The MS. designated Vitellius C. iii in the Cotton Collection of the British Museum contains an Old English translation of a medical complex based upon the Herbarium of the Pseudo-Apuleius. This study is concerned with that herbal complex (f. ll-82v) and with an investigation of the full page illustrations in the complex to determine if they can provide any clues toward the solution of some of the vexing problems posed by this MS. No detailed study dealing with the MS., its position in the tradition, and its use has been made in this century. The only published complete edition of the herbal complex appears in Volume I of Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, ed. Thomas O. Cockayne, Rolls Series, Vol. 35 (London, 1864) . This work has recently been re-issued (London, 1961) with a new Introduction by Charles Singer. Problems inhering in the reprint will be discussed below; suffice it to say at this point that Cockayne's original work and Introduction are still important and will continue to be useful. The first 132 plant chapters of the Herbal were edited again by A. J. G. Hilbelink as Cotton MS Vitellius C III of the Herbarium Apuleii, Academisch Proefschrift (Amsterdam, 1930). Her edition is a collation of the MS. in question with the sister MSS. Bodleian Hatton 76 and B. M. Harley 585; it has the briefest of introductions, but a number of grammatical tables are appended. Recently a number of scholars have undertaken further work with the codex. The Herbal is scheduled for publication in the series Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, and two dissertation projects dealing with this MS. have been undertaken. The absence of any attempt to synthesize the various approaches to this MS. may be the result of the nature of the classical and medieval herbal. The herbal is a phenomenon with no modern parallels, and modern scholarly disciplines tend to distort our view of it. Historians of medicine and of science, particularly pre-Linnean botany, deal with the herbal tradition and this MS. as evidence of the state of their sciences at a particular time. Art historians are concerned with the tradition and the MS. from the standpoint of the survival of classical art and from the standpoint of the development of plant portrayal from naturalistic to ornamental representation. Paleographers and codicologists assess the textual problems of the many extant MSS. of the Herbarium Apulei in both Latin and the vernacular languages. Students of Old English language and literature find Cotton Vitellius C. iii of particular interest not merely because it is the source of most of our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon's plant vocabulary, but also because it is witness to the existence of a secular classical tradition in Anglo-Saxon England and because it tells something about the nature and function of a secular codex in England before the Conquest. Unfortunately, many of these approaches, by their modern frames of reference, impede our understanding of a herbal complex. In this study I intend to draw on these various approaches to Vitellius C. iii in order to assess our current knowledge regarding the codex, the herbal tradition, the position of the OE MSS. in that tradition, and the uses of such a codex. I intend also to deal with details concerning the MS. which have been hitherto overlooked, particularly those concerning the full-page illustrations.--Introduction.