14-06-2017, 07:14 PM
David,
like most other researchers I have given most of my thinking to the Herbal section and I think you are overestimating widely the amount of sources needed. There are about a dozen possible sources, some of them quite obvious and depending on what our author used there could have been only two or three. You have to take into account that he quite likely took some of his material from sources which quoted other sources. There are several encyclopedias and handbooks available to 15th c. writers describing (medical) plants, these encyclopedias should have been accessible in all the better places of learning (my personal preference is Padova with its university for several reasons, I have a candidate for author as well). Just some examples of possibles, because these texts were widely known: Albertus Magnus, Avicenna, Simon of Genua and several others. I think the VMs author drew his plant (quite likely imo from nature) and wrote his text making excerpts from texts available to him in a library. I think that the Gallows are just abbreviations for his sources and the rest of the text gives aditiona information in an abbreviatrd form.
Please mind that in what I am stating here I am talking about the Herbal section only at present.
A good example for what gave me the idea are the Kräuterbücherdrucke of the late 15th c.. Hortus sanitatis, gart der gesundheit, the similarity to the Beinecke 408 text is remarkable
like most other researchers I have given most of my thinking to the Herbal section and I think you are overestimating widely the amount of sources needed. There are about a dozen possible sources, some of them quite obvious and depending on what our author used there could have been only two or three. You have to take into account that he quite likely took some of his material from sources which quoted other sources. There are several encyclopedias and handbooks available to 15th c. writers describing (medical) plants, these encyclopedias should have been accessible in all the better places of learning (my personal preference is Padova with its university for several reasons, I have a candidate for author as well). Just some examples of possibles, because these texts were widely known: Albertus Magnus, Avicenna, Simon of Genua and several others. I think the VMs author drew his plant (quite likely imo from nature) and wrote his text making excerpts from texts available to him in a library. I think that the Gallows are just abbreviations for his sources and the rest of the text gives aditiona information in an abbreviatrd form.
Please mind that in what I am stating here I am talking about the Herbal section only at present.
A good example for what gave me the idea are the Kräuterbücherdrucke of the late 15th c.. Hortus sanitatis, gart der gesundheit, the similarity to the Beinecke 408 text is remarkable
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