Cambridge, St John's College, MS D.4
Medical texts
Physical Description
19th-century foliation
[i] - [ii] + 1-104 | 105-148 | 149-152 | 153-181 + [iii] - [iv]
Foliated in dark brown ink in the upper outer corner of each recto. The paper endleaves were assigned folio numbers in April 2023 in order to prepare the record for online presentation as part of the Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries Project; these have been enclosed in [square brackets].
Collation
A composite volume with quires of mostly 12 and 8 leaves arranged in the following way:
- Quires 1-812 (ff. 1-96)
- Quire 98 (ff. 97-104) |
- Quires 10-118 (ff. 105-120)
- Quire 1210 (ff. 121-130)
- Quire 138 (ff. 131-138)
- Quire 1412-2 (ff. 139-148: 4th and 5th leaf cancelled) |
- Quire 154 (ff. 149-152) |
- Quire 164 (ff. 153-156)
- Quire 1712 (ff. 157-168)
- Quire 18two (ff. 169-170)
- Quire 1912-1 (ff. 171-181: 1st leaf cancelled)
1-812 98 | 10-118 1210 138 1412-2 (4th and 5th leaf cancelled) | 154 | 164 1712 18 two (two leaves remain) 19 12-1 (1st leaf cancelled)
No leaf signatures common to the entire volume.
No quire signatures common to the entire volume.
No catchwords common to the entire volume.Additions
Quire signatures ('1-19') in the bottom right-hand corner of the recto side of the first leaf of each quire, written in pencil by a hand of the 19th/20th century.
Binding
19th-century binding. Fully bound in calf over paste- or mill- board with matching blind-impressed decoration to front and rear covers. The cover material is decorated with a feather-and-bead roll set at the perimeter of each board. The head, fore, and tail edges of the cover material, and also the turn ins are decorated with a hatched diagonal roll. Head and tail bands are visible and wrapped in alternating segments of pink and blue yarn. Four raised bands on the spine, each decorated with the hatched diagonal roll used elsewhere on the binding. Spine compartments not used for titles are decorated with a scale motif, some 'scales' enclosing a futher lobed or 'cloud' motif conforming to the shape of the scale. Title tooled in gold: 'M.S.S'.
Pastedowns of grey-brown paper at each end of the volume. The rear pastedown is blank. The front pastedown contains:
- The manuscript's shelfmark, 'D.4' in ink
- A St John's College bookplate
- A bookplate recording the donation of the volume by William Crashaw
Folded bifolia of stiff grey-brown paper at each end of the volume for the endleaves (ff. [i]-[ii] and [iii]-[iv].
Binding dimensions (mm): (l) 260 x (w) 155 x (d) 47
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Purchased at an unknown time before 1624 by William Crashaw (1572-1626) , a lawyer, book collector, and former Johnian. In his lifetime Crashaw's collection numbered around 200 manuscripts and 1000 printed books.
The manuscripts and printed books owned by William Crashaw were purchased by Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (1573-1624) , at an unknown time before Wriothesley's death in 1624. Wriothesley had been a student-contemporary of Crashaw at St John's College and he purchased Crashaw's collection with the intention to present the volumes as a gift to the Library of St John's College. The library was still partly under construction at the time of the purchase resulting in the Wriothesley family storing Crashaw's collection and delivering it piecemeal to the College over a number of years.
After Henry Wriothesley's death in 1624, care of Crashaw's books and manuscripts passed to Wriothesley's son, Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton (1607-1667) . Although Crashaw's printed books seem to have passed swiftly to the College, Thomas Wriothesley seems to have taken a particular interest in the manuscripts, adding his name (typically in the form Tho: C. S. for 'Thomas comes southamptoniensis') to most of them, and apparently exhibiting such reluctance to deliver the manuscripts that the College wrote to his mother, Elizabeth Vernon (1573-?1655) to ask her to encourage her son to hand over the manuscript volumes.
Given to St John’s College in 1635 by Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton on behalf of William Crashaw and Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton . A bookplate recording the Crashaw-Wriothesley donation is present on the front pastedown.
Part 1 [Cambridge, St John's College, MS D.4, ff. 1-104]
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Incipit incorrectly transcribed in eTK. Note that the eTK entry suggests that this text ends on f. 81v.
Written in the bottom margin. For joint pain.
Attributed to Alexander of Hales in the manuscript.
This text is sometimes attributed to Ricardus Anglicus
This text is also in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 6976, ff. 128v-129v (defective at end).
Also in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 3718(3 vols), Vol. 2 - ff. 80r-82v . The version of the poem in St John's MS D.4 ends at least 50 lines before the BNF version.
This text is printed in Hefferman, 'Wyse Boke', pp. 319-320.
Carol Hefferman identified a related text in Middle English preserved in Philadelphia, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, MS 10a. 215, Part III, ff. 23r-40v (formerly Philadelphia, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, MS Med. Misc. I, No. 3, ff. 1r–18v), with the rubric: 'Here beynnyth the wyse boke of maystyr Peers of Salerne as he transposyd it owte of lateyn in to englysche at ye requeste and desyre of Margerye ffygyll the qwene of Spayne. And as it was affermyd by ye opynyons of alle the maystres that time in Sallerne dwellynge'. Unfortunately, scholars have not been able to securely attach the names 'Margarum fregille' or 'Margerye ffygyll' to a Spanish monarch, or any other identifiable person.
This text is discussed extensively in Hunt, Popular Medicine. Hunt also prints several portions of this text in a comparative edition with:
- Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.1.20, ff. 1r-21r
- Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.8.27, Part 3, ff. 1r-3r
- London, British Library, Sloane MS 146
- London, British Library, Sloane MS 3550
Hefferman, 'Wyse Boke' (1993) prints some of the recipes for 'cancre' on ff. 95v-96r.
In Popular Medicine, Tony Hunt discusses this text and several other versions of the 'Lettre d'Hippocrate', and draws attention to several manuscripts that preserve portions of this text and also versions of the Physique rimee:
- Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.1.20, ff. 1r-21r
- Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.8.27, Part 3, ff. 1r-3r
- London, British Library, Sloane MS 146
- London, British Library, Sloane MS 3550
In several hands. The final recipe begins on f. 104v and crosses into the lower margin of f. 105r, a separate Part of the manuscript; this shows that these two Parts have been bound together since the late 13th or early 14th century.
They address the following:
- f. 100v: three for paralysis and obtusion of the limbs, for stopping the retention of menstrual flow, for heart ailments, for headache, remedies attributed to Robert de Pennard (the first for uncertain purposes, the second for kidney and bladder ailments, continuing on f. 101r)
- f. 101r: medical notes
- ff. 101v-102v: medical notes on clysters
- ff. 102v-103r: medical notes on suppositories
- f. 103r: notes on signs ('Hiis signis certis iudex videlicet esse discretus'); recipes for oversupply of hot humours (continuing on f. 103v)
- ff. 103v-104r: recipes for oversupply of phlegm
- f. 104r: recipes for oversupply of ? (uncertain), for making aqua ardentem (continuing on f. 104v)
- f. 104v: for cough, for a preparation called oleum benedictum (continuing on f. 105r)
Physical Description
Collation
- Quires 1-812 (ff. 1-96)
- Quire 98 (ff. 97-104)
Medieval alphanumeric leaf signatures (symbols and letters with Roman numerals), written in blue ink, in the lower margins of the rectos in the first halves of some quires as follows:
- Quire 2: T i-ui
- Quire 3: Inverted T i-ui
- Quire 4: C i-ui
- Quire 5: t i-ui
- Quire 6: a i-ui
- Quire 7: O i-ui
No medieval quire signatures particular to this Part.
Catchwords in ink in the lower margin of the last verso of each quire.Condition
Layout
180 × 105 mm. Ruled in ink and leadpoint, frame and lines. Ruled in double-column format, typically 40-41 lines to the column and written below top line.
Hand(s)
Main texts written by various hands in Anglicana.
Decoration
Plain initials in blue and occasionally in red at the major and minor divisions of the texts.
Some texts have rubrics and chapter headings in red ink.
Paraph marks in red and blue.
Guide letters visible in the margins adjacent to decorative initials, see e.g., f. 85v.
Additions
Partial list of the contents of the volume in a late 15th- or early 16th-century hand in the outer margin of f. 1r: 'Autores huius libri Alexander de Hales Petrus de Salerno Platearius Muscio Theodorus Priscianus'.
Several annotators have added keywords and glosses to the margins of all of the texts in this Part.
Binding
This Part of the manuscript was probably once situated as the first part of a manuscript with wooden boards. Folios 1-2 have worm damage characteristic of leaves adjacent to wormed wooden binding boards.
History
Provenance
This Part of the manuscript (ff. 1-104) and the next Part of the manuscript (ff. 105-148) have been bound together since the 14th century as an annotator writing a late 13th or early 14th century added a medical recipe to f. 104v and continued the text into the lower margin of f. 105r.
Part 2 [Cambridge, St John's College MS D.4, ff. 105-148]
Contents
Language(s): Latin
For making blue pigment, for making aqua ardentem, for an unguent for scabies, for black morphew.
Written in bright yellow ink and enclosed in a decorative yellow frame.
Folio 148v blank.
Physical Description
Collation
- Quires 10-118 (ff. 105-120)
- Quire 1210 (ff. 121-130)
- Quire 138 (ff. 131-138)
- Quire 1412-2 (ff. 139-148: 4th and 5th leaf cancelled)
No leaf signatures particular to this Part.
Quires 10-13 numbered in ink in Roman numerals I-IV.
Catchwords in ink in the lower margin of the last verso of each quire, some lost to trimming.Condition
Layout
180 × 100 mm. Ruled in brown crayon frame and lines. Ruled in double-column format, typically 43 lines to the column, written above top line.
Hand(s)
Written in a protogothic minuscule in a style typical of Italian scribal work in the 12th century. Additional texts on ff. 147r-148r are by a different scribe writing a more elongated form of the script.
Decoration
Major initials are in two colours, typically red letterforms with yellow in the counterspaces.
Minor initials in red, some with occasional 'Arabesque' flourishing.
Chapter headings in red, the first letter sometimes touched with yellow.
Black paraph marks touched with red.
Additions
Extensive marginal annotations throughout this Part in several medieval hands.
History
Provenance
This Part of the manuscript (ff. 105-148) and the previous Part of the manuscript (ff. 1-104) have been bound together since the 14th century, since an annotator writing a late 13th or early 14th century added a medical recipe to f. 104v and continued the text into the lower margin of f. 105r.
Part 3 [Cambridge, St John's College, MS D.4, ff. 149-152]
Contents
Language(s): Latin
This list of contents on two additional nested bifolia, in an English hand of the 14th or 15th century.
Physical Description
Collation
Two nested bifolia.
No leaf signatures particular to this Part.
No quire signatures particular to this Part.
No catchwords particular to this Part.Condition
Layout
175 × 100 mm. Ruled in leadpoint, frame and lines. Ruled in double-column format for a chapter list, typically 41 lines to the column and written below top line.
Hand(s)
Written in a legible northern textualis currens in England in the 14th century.
Decoration
No significant decorative features in this Part.
History
Monica Green discusses the origin of Cambridge, St John's College, MS D.4 in several works, but in particular see M. H. Green, 'The De Genecia Attributed to Constantine the African', in M. H. Green (ed.), Women's Healthcare in the Medieval West Texts and Contexts (Aldershot, 2000), p. III:302, esp. n. 11, where she quotes Consuelo Dutschke's assessment that this list of the contents of ff. 153-181 was added to the volume in England in the 14th century.
Provenance
Monica Green discusses the origin of Cambridge, St John's College, MS D.4 in several works, but in particular see M. H. Green, 'The De Genecia Attributed to Constantine the African', in M. H. Green (ed.), Women's Healthcare in the Medieval West Texts and Contexts (Aldershot, 2000), p. III:302, esp. n. 11, where she quotes Consuelo Dutschke's assessment of the manuscript as follows: 'By the fourteenth century it had moved to England, as evidenced by the chapter list added at the beginning of the manuscript [i.e., fols. 149-152]. An English hand continued to annotate it during the fifteenth century.'
Additional Information
Bibliography
Part 4 [Cambridge, St John's College, MS D.4, ff. 153-181]
Contents
Language(s): Latin
There is a note in the margin of f. 170r in display capitals by the same scribe as the text: 'Ex paulo auctoris'.
At the bottom of f. 170v a 15th century English hand has added an explicit: 'Explicit liber secundum mustionis[sic] et genecie de secretis mulieris'
There are two surviving medieval versions of a text known as Gynaecia attributed to Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, a longer one, and an abbreviated version based on the longer one. The version here on ff. 171r-173r is the abbreviated version. See Green, 'Appendix', Women's Healthcare in the Medieval West', Appendix pp. 8-10 for further information.
List of capitula begins on f. 173r.
At the end of the text on f. 175r a 15th century English hand has added an explicit: 'Explicit ii cleopatre'
First (?and last) part of the text gone, medieval section numbers in the margin run from 39-57.
At the end of the text on f. 177r, a 15th century English hand has added an explicit: 'Explicit liber quartus de passionibus mulierum genecie et cleopatre'
The author is not the grammarian Priscianus.
Prologue not present. Note that the text is not especially close to the edition printed by Rose. The version of the text in Cambridge, St John's College MS D.4 is close to another version noted by M. Green, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 4234, ff. 25r-28r .
As described by M. H. Green, the text known as De genitailbus membris is an excerpt from Constantinus Africanus' Pantegni, Theorica, Bk. III, chs. 33-36 that circulated indepently of the larger work.
Physical Description
Collation
- Quire 164 (ff. 153-156)
- Quire 1712 (ff. 157-168)
- Quire 18two (ff. 169-170)
- Quire 1912-1 (ff. 171-181: 1st leaf cancelled)
No leaf signatures particular to this Part.
No quire signatures particular to this Part.
No catchwords particular to this Part.Condition
Layout
190 × 95 mm. Ruled mostly in drypoint and occasionally in ink, frame and lines. Ruled mostly in single-column format, typically 45 lines to the page and written above top line. Pricking visible in outer margin of several leaves in this Part, e.g., f. 172. Lists of capitula are presented in double-column format, but are not presented with an extra vertical column rule, see e.g., f. 173r.
Hand(s)
Written in protogothic minuscule but retaining several features of Caroline minuscule by at least two scribes working in Italy in the first half of the 12th century.
Headings in this Part are written in Rustic Captials.
Decoration
Marginal diagram of a womb in the outer margin of f. 153r; the diagram accompanies Muscio's Gynaecia, which has a cycle of images common to several copies of the text, but the diagram in St John's College MS D.4 represents an extreme simplification of the typical diagram. No other diagrams accompany the text.
Major initials, typically in red and green with 'Arabesque' flourishing at major divisions of the texts.
Minor initials typically in red (sometimes green, dark brown, ochre, yellow), with occasional 'Arabesque' flourishing.
Chapter titles typically in two styles: 1) Caroline minuscule in red or green ink 2) rustic capitals in brown ink on a green wash.
Additions
Many of the texts in this Part have been supplied with explicits by a 15th century ?English scribe who also added marginal annotations to some of the texts.
Glosses and additional recipes added in the margins in several medieval hands.
History
Monica Green discusses the origin of Cambridge, St John's College, MS D.4 in several works, but in particular see M. H. Green, ‘The De Genecia Attributed to Constantine the African’, in M. H. Green (ed.), Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West Texts and Contexts (Aldershot, 2000), p. III:302, esp. n. 11, where she shares Consuelo Dutschke's assessment of the manuscript as follows: ' ... copied in Italy during the first half of the twelfth century...'.
Provenance
Monica Green discusses the origin of Cambridge, St John's College, MS D.4 in several works, but in particular see M. H. Green, ‘The De Genecia Attributed to Constantine the African’, in M. H. Green (ed.), Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West Texts and Contexts (Aldershot, 2000), p. III:302, esp. n. 11, where she quotes Consuelo Dutschke's assessment of the manuscript as follows: 'By the fourrteenth century it had moved to England, as evidenced by the chapter list added at the beginning of the manuscript [i.e., fols. 149-152]. An English hand continued to annotate it during the fifteenth century.'
Additional Information
Record Sources
Availability
Visitors to St John's College who wish to consult Special Collections material are required to apply to the Library in advance of their visit. For information on eligibility and admission procedures see: St John's College: Old Library and Special Collections.
Funding of Cataloguing
Wellcome
Digital Images
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
