(09-09-2016, 09:35 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (09-09-2016, 02:10 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
A. What do you mean by "Lombardy" here? Could you please name the main cities making part of it in the XV Century?
These are good questions and I can't answer all of them before I have to get back to work, so I'll start with what I mean by Lombardy...
I think of "Lombardy" as a tide moving out and receding back again, similar to the expansion and recession of the Roman Empire.
There was a significant loss of population around the Mediterranean a few centuries after the Roman Empire ended and opportunistic northerners from southern Scandinavia took advantage of the decline to colonize parts of what we now call northern Italy, all the way into western Austria and eastern Spain, along with pockets around Naples and Salerno and the Greek islands (some moved as far as south Africa along the northern coast but I haven't looked into that yet). At one point Lombardy included Rome and Vienna.
The Lombards sacked Padua and it was rebuilt in succeeding centuries, then ruled by Franks, etc. In the 13th century, the Schwabian Holy Roman Emperor ruled the Lombardic regions and Sicily and founded the now-famous university in Padua (which is also well-known for its botanical garden).
So it was like a tide sweeping down through Italy. Some warfare was involved but their success was largely due to the fact that they encountered less resistance due to lower populations at the time. The flowering of Salerno and the beginning of the herbal manuscript tradition happened during Lombardic rule (which, quite frankly, is the only reason I bothered studying Lombardy). As the Salerno medical school grew and evolved, they started creating their own manuscripts (and illustrating ones that had formally been only text) rather than just copying the old Greek and Arabic textual sources. These manuscripts moved to south-central Europe, mostly to the areas colonized by Lombards and Schwabians (what we now call northern Italy).
So, the Alps were not a barrier between Italy and Germany in those days because the germanic tribes occupied northern Italy. Lombardy included Venice and Rome and the Schwabians came to rule Verona and Padua, etc. Just as the Roman Empire used to reach beyond the borders of what we now call Pakistan, the germanic tribes ruled much farther south than they do now, and those in the Mediterranean kept in touch with their associates in the north.
Egerton 747 is thought to be from Salerno/Naples and Sloane 4016 is identified as being from Lombardy. The Manfredus Codex is also from a Lombardic region as is a 14th-century copy of the
Tacuinum sanitatis. Geographically, much of the "herbal tradition" skipped over the central Italian states and went hand-to-hand from the Salerno/Naples area to the communities in and around Venice/Padua/Verona (formerly part of the receding Lombardy).
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Consider this as a related issue... there are Ghibelline merlons in the VMS rosette images. Ghibelline and Guelf are Italianized versions of German names: the Schwabian Wibellingens and the Welfs. They came south down through Lombardy to rule and battle one another over religious/power differences between the Pope and the aspiring rulers of the Holy Roman Empire who were springing up in the north. This happened earlier than the VMS, but the political struggle continued (even as Lombardy receded), until the 14th century, and Ghibelline merlons were a symbol of power and political leanings just as the Rebel flag in the U.S. is a symbol of long-ago hostilities between the north and the south. The merlons were not a mere architectural variation in those days, they signified a person's alliances, just as a coat of arms signaled their family alliances.
Also on the rosettes page, many people notice the Ghibelline merlons, but they don't seem to comprehend the importance of the saddleback roofs. They are almost as significant as the merlons! Saddlebacks with the flag on each end were a very specific architectural style that is hard to find outside of certain areas in the 15th century. France, southern Switzerland, Bavaria, a few of the northern Italian (Lombardic) states, and some of the Lombardic and German colonies in the Greek islands are the major areas where you find flagged saddlebacks. Since people walked in the 15th century, it was important to know where to enter a city, or you could end up walking a lot of extra miles. Each culture had a slightly different way of indicating a portal and flagged saddlebacks were primarily Frankish and germanic.
Thus, the architectural details in the VMS are very specific cultural signals (and possibly landmarks) related to the same geographic area as many of the 14th and 15th century herbals.
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So, to get back to the previous line of thought... there appear to be several direct links between herbal manuscripts and the Lombards/Salerno/Naples in the south and the Lombards in the north around Venice, Verona, Padua (Lombardy and former Lombardy) jumping over many of the Italian states in between.
But the tide was receding. Just as the Holy Roman Empire was shrinking, so was Lombardy. As Lombardic and Schwabian influence receded, Rome and Vienna, and the lands in between, were gradually recaptured by the Italian states, but many of the colonists remained in those areas and assimilated and many documents remained as well (e.g., documents in the Vatican library).
Lombardy is now about half as big as it was in the first two centuries of the migration/colonization. The Lombardic language is being supplanted by Italian (and may soon be extinct).
I have no specific interest in the Lombards other than the fact that they had direct associations with herbal manuscripts and their transmission. I noticed the geographic connections between the Salerno and other Lombard-region herbals a few years ago and started trying to trace the specific people who might have brought them north, hoping to unearth more of the VMS provenance.
Okay, gotta run, lunch over. More later.