22-02-2020, 09:20 PM
I'm going to add a little bit in here. A lot of this has already been said correctly by others in this thread, but I think that there are a few gaps, and I want to tie what I'm saying to what has gone before.
The +N notation is something that made its way into medical texts (charms, magic spells, etc.,) from liturgical manuscripts and collections of prayers. In manuscripts of the Christian liturgy or in written collections of prayers there are times when the celebrant would want to name the person who was the focus of the prayer, so the text would be copied with an N (for "nomen", Latin for "name") to indicate where the celebrant should say the name of that person. Sometimes the N would have a dot on either side .N. as a way of visually separating the N from the rest of the text and also to remind the reader to use contextual clues for this abbreviation.
In addition to saying the name, in Christian rituals and prayers, the celebrant would often make the sign of the cross or ask the person who was the focus of the prayer to make the sign of the cross where appropriate. The cue for making the sign of the cross was often a little + sign copied into the body text or sometimes in the margin. You can find + signs in lots of liturgical manuscripts because priests had to make the sign of the cross as part of many Christian rituals such as the mass and the sacraments.
In manuscripts that contain Christian prayers you will often see +N or +N+ written into the text of the prayer as a direction to the person using the manuscript to make the sign of the cross and to say the name of the petitioner. This is a common feature of liturgical manuscripts and prayerbooks by the tenth century.
All of you are familiar with medical charms which usually combine plant/animal ingredients with some sort of invocation or ritual. Many medical charms also incorporated religious elements such as asking the saints for help, or ending with an "amen", or telling the person to "say 3 Our Fathers" over the herbs before preparing them. Scribes in the early middle ages were often members of religious communities and so they would have been very familiar with the +N convention from their liturgical manuscripts so when they copied charms that included directions to say the patient's name or do the sign of the cross they used the +N notation because it could serve an identical function there too.
Over time the +N notation becomes a very normal part of indicating "name of patient" in medical texts even if there was not any other explicitly Christian stuff happening in the rest of the medical text. A bit like how in English it is polite to say "bless you" after someone sneezes, or "Gesundheit" in German for a similar reason. When we say "bless you" or "gesundheit" in the 21st century, very few of us are making a prayerful request for the health or protection of the person who just sneezed. Similarly, the +N thing in the later medieval period is sometimes just a stylish way of writing "insert name here".
I'm not sure exactly what is going on on f. 116v - but I agree with everyone who has observed that the text has some features in common with medical recipes/charms/prayers. Since I don't know what the text actually means I'll always keep an open mind for other possible interpretations, but to find a +N in the context of a medical recipe, a charm, or a prayer is a very normal thing in the 15th century.
The +N notation is something that made its way into medical texts (charms, magic spells, etc.,) from liturgical manuscripts and collections of prayers. In manuscripts of the Christian liturgy or in written collections of prayers there are times when the celebrant would want to name the person who was the focus of the prayer, so the text would be copied with an N (for "nomen", Latin for "name") to indicate where the celebrant should say the name of that person. Sometimes the N would have a dot on either side .N. as a way of visually separating the N from the rest of the text and also to remind the reader to use contextual clues for this abbreviation.
In addition to saying the name, in Christian rituals and prayers, the celebrant would often make the sign of the cross or ask the person who was the focus of the prayer to make the sign of the cross where appropriate. The cue for making the sign of the cross was often a little + sign copied into the body text or sometimes in the margin. You can find + signs in lots of liturgical manuscripts because priests had to make the sign of the cross as part of many Christian rituals such as the mass and the sacraments.
In manuscripts that contain Christian prayers you will often see +N or +N+ written into the text of the prayer as a direction to the person using the manuscript to make the sign of the cross and to say the name of the petitioner. This is a common feature of liturgical manuscripts and prayerbooks by the tenth century.
All of you are familiar with medical charms which usually combine plant/animal ingredients with some sort of invocation or ritual. Many medical charms also incorporated religious elements such as asking the saints for help, or ending with an "amen", or telling the person to "say 3 Our Fathers" over the herbs before preparing them. Scribes in the early middle ages were often members of religious communities and so they would have been very familiar with the +N convention from their liturgical manuscripts so when they copied charms that included directions to say the patient's name or do the sign of the cross they used the +N notation because it could serve an identical function there too.
Over time the +N notation becomes a very normal part of indicating "name of patient" in medical texts even if there was not any other explicitly Christian stuff happening in the rest of the medical text. A bit like how in English it is polite to say "bless you" after someone sneezes, or "Gesundheit" in German for a similar reason. When we say "bless you" or "gesundheit" in the 21st century, very few of us are making a prayerful request for the health or protection of the person who just sneezed. Similarly, the +N thing in the later medieval period is sometimes just a stylish way of writing "insert name here".
I'm not sure exactly what is going on on f. 116v - but I agree with everyone who has observed that the text has some features in common with medical recipes/charms/prayers. Since I don't know what the text actually means I'll always keep an open mind for other possible interpretations, but to find a +N in the context of a medical recipe, a charm, or a prayer is a very normal thing in the 15th century.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)