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Medieval to 16th century | 17th - 19th century | Garden Restoration | The Nonsuch Restoration Project

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Medieval Herbals

 


f you have ever had the privilege to hold in your hand a thousand year old medieval manuscript book, if you have felt the weight of its calfskin covers and vellum pages, and if you have ever been allowed to turn (very carefully) the leaves of its beautifully illustrated pages, then you can understand the thrall these books can exert. Medieval monks often took years to craft a book, spent weeks on a single page, and their skill was astounding and as highly valued then as it is now.

Medieval herbals - treatises on the properties of medicinal plants - are among the most beautiful of medieval manuscript volumes. A typical herbal contained lists or chapters of plants, each chapter detailing the name of the plant, its characteristics, where it could be found and under what conditions it grew, how and when it should be gathered, how it should be prepared (dried, powdered, distilled etc.), listed recipes for medicines that could be made from the prepared plant, listed what the plant could be used to cure, and also listed what its dangerous indications were - to whom it should not be given and various other contra-indications. If the herbal had been produced in one of the richer monasteries with a large and experienced scriptorium, then the herbal would usually also have beautifully drawn and coloured illustrations of the plants at the head of each chapter - very useful for us today when the names of so many plants have changed completely. Even so, many of the plants mentioned in medieval herbals remain completely unidentifiable today.

erbals have a long and illustrious history - they are one of western culture's oldest literary traditions and have been in production for at least three thousand years, being common in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. Herbals are based on books of 'simples', medications composed of only one constituent, or plant. The herbals of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks were a compilation of plant descriptions and uses, folk medicine and a wealth of accumulated knowledge. The tradition was taken up and furthered by the Arabs during the Dark Ages, particularly encouraged by the patronage of the Abbasid caliphs at Baghdad. (Interestingly, most of the scribes who translated the ancient Hebrew and Greek herbals into Arabic were Christians). Herbals existed in medieval Europe, but were very rare until the thirteenth century (although many early herbals may well have been lost due to the extent of their daily use and the ravages of time).

any of the medieval herbals came from the Italian towns and states, and one of the most famous and well known is the Tractatus de herbis which originally formed part of a collection of pharmacological texts written in southern England about 1300. The Tractatus contains a vast amount of knowledge and information about plants, their virtues and medicinal uses, that is directly descended from the Greek, Roman and Arabic herbal tradition. The Tractatus now rests within the British Library, catalogued as British Library, Egerton MS 747. it is one of the most celebrated medieval herbals because, for the first time in centuries, the scribe who produced it actually drew the plants from living examples, rather than reproducing the often flat and unlife-like illustrations of the Greeks and Arabics. For the first time in many centuries, the illustrations contained within the Tractatus were helpful, rather than misleading.

ver five hundred entries fill the Tractatus, most of which relate to plants, but some fifty relate to animal and mineral substances. The information given about each plant follows tradition: an illustration, its place of origin, the distinguishing properties of the plant, when to gather and how to prepare the plant, its virtues and healing properties, and the form in which it could be used to treat various ailments (there might be up to forty or fifty such items for a single herb).

For instance, the information given on the rose stated where it might be found, and how and when it could be gathered (preferably when the petals were open and red, and under no circumstance whatever should petals be gathered when they were colourless or blackened). If they were then dried properly in the sun they could be kept for three years. It was always dried roses used in medicinal preparations, as they were so easily ground into a powder.

oots, leaves and seeds were the most commonly used parts of a plant, the bark and flowers being used less often. Generally herbs were used dried and powdered, and they might be prescribed to be mixed with water or wine, or as a syrup (mixed with sugar, honey, wine, rosewater or vinegar). Powders could also be made into pills or suppositories by being mixed with animal fats or honey, or they might be applied as poultices in a looser concoction. Crushed and/or dried herbs could also be placed into linen sachets and wrapped about the painful area, or even ingested by being baked into cakes or tarts.

Just as one example of the many and varied uses to which a single plant could be put, the Chamomile flower, whether fresh or dried, could be used:

  • mixed with water or wine for urinary problems, stones, blockages of the liver and spleen, pain and swelling of the stomach and to prevent premature birth;
  • steeped in bath water to aid menstruation;
  • as a compound mixed with oil to relieve daily fevers, the headaches of colds, and to aid in the healing of wounds;
  • mixed with honey to remove scabs and scaly skin from the face;
  • taken with wine for forty days to relieve and cure ills of the spleen;
  • chewed into a compress for swollen eyelids;
  • mixed with a vinegar to cure scalp disease;
  • mixed with other herbs in hot water to produce a vapour for diarrhoea;
  • mixed with wine (yet again) to protect against poisonous bites.

 

ost medieval herbals contained a vast amount of remedies for women's gynaecological problems, as well also insomnia, headaches and leprosy, as also recipes for simple cosmetics. Here are a few items found in a middle English treatise written by Gilbertus Angelicus in the fifteenth century.

 

  • The smoke of henbane was useful for worms in the teeth, although if the worms grew too vicious the tooth should be pulled;
  • Vomiting could be stopped by applying a plaster to the stomach composed of mint, aloe, and wormwood, all mixed with oil of roses.
  • Frenzy (defined as much falling down and much waking and lacking of good wit) might be eased by rubbing a lotion of vinegar, wine and salt onto the soles of the sufferer's feet. If this didn't work, then he might take a preparation of hollyhock, wax, fennel, salt and mercury steeped in water (please do not try this at home as it is highly poisonous!). Afterwards the head should be completely shaved and a warm plaster of cold pressed herbs applied. If the frenzy still persisted, then a concoction composed of opium an henbane mixed with the breast milk of a woman suckling a female baby should do the trick.

erbals rarely circulated within general society. They were kept within monasteries to be used within their infirmaries, or in noble households or university libraries. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the advent of the printing press, many physicians and surgeons also owned and consulted them. They remain today as extraordinary windows into medieval life, disease, and the plants and herbs commonly used in treatments. To some extent they reflected common herbal lore (Nicholas Culpeper's Herbal, first published in the seventeenth century, does include much regional herbal lore), but more particularly they reflected the knowledge and experience of the monasteries, drawing on a tradition of centuries of ancient Greek and Arabic herbals.



Please also visit Old London Maps on the web as many of the maps
and views available there have plans and depictions of gardens from
the medieval period through to the late nineteenth century.

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