Comparison with BL ms Ashmole 399

[MarcoP]

Marco, only now that I've been studying the VM layout features more closely I see the potential relevance of this MS. The way the images have been drawn first and then the text filling the available space is not something you see often.

By the way, looking at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., is it written in a different script than the rest of the MS? Either way, the lines are a bit less straight and approach VM layout more. Also, on sight, I'd say this script looks more recent than the 13th century. The script on the left side looks different again, and rather close to the VM marginalia script. Again, closer than I'd expect for the time. There are also some similar words.

Hello Koen,
you are clearly right about the script. Actually, in that detail one can see three different scripts:
* the original "textualis" in the label inside the circle (and all the other labels)
* a script I cannot classify in the central part of the page
* an English cursiva on the left (and top-right)

I think the script looks English because of the two-compartments a (different from that in the VMS).

Directly above the passage you highlighted, there must have been another recipe that was censored ("ad verucas? delendas", for the removal of warts?).

The passage on the left reads:

Si tu velis scire utrum
mulier sit pregnans. Accipe
alleum et ponat mulier in
matrice per noctem. Et in crasti-
no si sentiat odorem
allei in ore non est preg-
nans. Aliud teneat
crocum(?) per noctem in ore
et in mane eam respice-
as et si oculi sint infecti
non concipitur.

If you want to know whether a woman is pregnant, take garlic let the woman keep it in her womb for a night. If the next day you smell the garlic in her mouth, she is not pregnant. Otherwise, let her keep saffron(?) in her mouth  for a night; in the morning, look at her eyes, and if they are irritated she has not conceived.

The words you highlighted are mulier (woman) and alleum (garlic).