Re-reading this thread, I want to offer additional information for readers and sincere thanks to Rene Zandbergen for bringing this manuscript to notice once more, and in this context.
(I will have to check to see who first noticed similarities between that ms and the Vms; for those who like details to be in order, my only previous public reference to it is a clip, unlabelled, in 'Paradoxical History of Balsam #5 (final)' (Sun., May 5th, 2013).
Anyway -
The website for the whole manuscript is
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where this manuscript is
Item 122.
The whole manuscript can be downloaded as a PDF - I hope that information is helpful for Rene and others.
The PDF shows the manuscript is too late to have influenced the Vms, but the opposite may well be true.
As those who read my research well know, I consider the source for the botanical imagery to have been persons actively and personally involved in the eastern trade in vegetable products ... in the east.
I have also sketched my reasons for thinking the same profession and those who used the imported plants before the Norman period in Sicily are responsible for the sudden appearance of certain texts there.
That as it may be, on folio 36v (pdf 37/340) we see a fine image of a cinnamon merchant, and non-European plants and produce throughout this later, Latin, manuscript.
I would recommend everyone interested in the botanical section - regardless of where they stand theory-wise - downloads that manuscript.
It is publicly available and (in my not-unqualified opinion) an important evidence for subsequent influence in Latin manuscripts of the eastern customs in art earlier and more authentically represented by the Vms - or rather its fourteenth-century precedents.
Quote:Modena herbal Estense alfa.L.9.28 (also known as Lat.993)
(I will have to check to see who first noticed similarities between that ms and the Vms; for those who like details to be in order, my only previous public reference to it is a clip, unlabelled, in 'Paradoxical History of Balsam #5 (final)' (Sun., May 5th, 2013).
Anyway -
The website for the whole manuscript is
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
where this manuscript is
Item 122.
Quote:ALFA.L.9.28 = LAT.993
Tractatus de herbis
Ms., 15. sec.
The whole manuscript can be downloaded as a PDF - I hope that information is helpful for Rene and others.
The PDF shows the manuscript is too late to have influenced the Vms, but the opposite may well be true.
Quote:The PDF gives the manuscript's date as 1458.
As those who read my research well know, I consider the source for the botanical imagery to have been persons actively and personally involved in the eastern trade in vegetable products ... in the east.
I have also sketched my reasons for thinking the same profession and those who used the imported plants before the Norman period in Sicily are responsible for the sudden appearance of certain texts there.
That as it may be, on folio 36v (pdf 37/340) we see a fine image of a cinnamon merchant, and non-European plants and produce throughout this later, Latin, manuscript.
I would recommend everyone interested in the botanical section - regardless of where they stand theory-wise - downloads that manuscript.
It is publicly available and (in my not-unqualified opinion) an important evidence for subsequent influence in Latin manuscripts of the eastern customs in art earlier and more authentically represented by the Vms - or rather its fourteenth-century precedents.


