Text’s transmission of Þe boke of ypocras: editing and studying its Early Modern English witness contained in London, Wellcome Library. MS 7117 (ff. 92r–94v)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24197/ddz5gz50Keywords:
Þe boke of Ypocras, Early Modern English manuscripts, astrological medicine, Wellcome Library MS 7117Abstract
Þe boke of Ypocras is a zodiacal lunary which outlines the effects that the moon causes in each of the twelve zodiacal signs upon parts of the body leading to different diseases. During the Late Middle Ages this tract circulated extensively and was translated from Latin into different European vernaculars. Middle English manuscript witnesses have been recently studied (Diego Rodríguez, Þe boke). However, post-1500 witnesses remain unidentified and unedited. This paper aims to bring to light the sixteenth-century witness of Þe boke of Ypocras contained in London, Wellcome Library. MS 7117 (ff.92r–94). Its edition enables the identification of this witness and to place it in the line of transmission. Also, it provides new insights to reflect on how this treatise influenced the ongoing interpenetration of medical astrological thought in the sixteenth century
Downloads
References
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College. MS 336/725.
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College. MS 457/395.
Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.14.52.
Durham, Durham University Library. MS Cosin V.IV.7.
Glasgow, Glasgow University Library. MS Hunter 513.
London, British Library. MS Additional 12195.
London, British Library. MS Harley 1736.
London, British Library. MS Harley 2378.
London, British Library. MS Sloane 73.
London, British Library. MS Sloane 340.
London, British Library. MS Sloane 2270.
London, Royal College of Physicians. MS 384.
London, Wellcome Library. MS 7117.
Oxford, Bodleian Library. MS Ashmole 210.
Oxford, Bodleian Library. MS Ashmole 393.
Oxford, Bodleian Library. MS Selden Supra 73.
References
Braswell, Laurel. “Popular Lunar Astrology in the Late Middle Ages.” University of Ottawa Quarterly, vol. 84, 1979, pp. 187–94.
Capp, Bernard. Astrology and the Popular Press. English Almanacs 1500–1800. Faber and Faber, 1979.
Chapman, Allan. “Astrological Medicine.” Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Charles Webster, CUP, 1979, pp. 275–300.
Clark, Charles. “The Zodiac Man in Medieval Astrology.” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, vol. 3, 1982, pp. 13–38, scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol3/iss1/3/.
Copeman, William Sydney Charles. Doctors and Disease in Tudor Times. Dawson’s of Pall Mall, 1960.
Däath, Heinrich. Medical Astrology. L.N. Fowler, 1907.
De la Cruz-Cabanillas, Isabel, and Irene Diego Rodríguez. “Astrological Medicine in Middle English: The Case of Þe Booke of Ypocras.” Textual Reception and Cultural Debate in Medieval English Studies, edited by María José Esteve Ramos and José Ramón Prado Pérez, 2018, pp. 79–99.
De la Cruz-Cabanillas, Isabel and Irene Diego Rodríguez. “Astrologia Ypocratis and its vernacular early modern afterlives” [Forthcoming].
Diego Rodríguez, Irene. “‘The ‘Englishing’ of the Pseudo-Hippocratic zodiacal lunary contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 210 (ff. 36v–42r).” Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, vol. 68, no. 3, 2021, pp. 334 – 350.
Diego Rodríguez, Irene. Þe boke of ypocras in Late Middle English Manuscripts. Studies in English Language and Literature, Servicio de Publicaciones y Difusión Científica de la Universidad de la ULPGC, 2023.
Dooley, Brendan. “Astrology and Science.” A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance, edited by Brendan Dooley, 2011, pp. 233–266.
Gleadow, Rupert. The Origin of the Zodiac. Jonathan Cape LTD, 1968.
Keiser, George R. “Works of Science and Information.” In A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, edited by Albert E Hartung, 1998.
Kibre, Pearl. “Hippocratic Writings in the Middle Ages.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 18, 1945, pp. 371–412, www.jstor.org/stable/27830984/.
Kibre, Pearl. “Hippocrates Latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages (III).” Traditio, vol. 33, 1977, pp. 253–295. Reproduced in Hippocrates Latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages. Fordham University Press, 1985, www.jstor.org/stable/27831030/.
Kibre, Pearl. “Astronomia or Astrologia Ypocratis.” Science and History: Studies in Honor of Edward Rosen, Studia Corpenica, vol. 16, 1978, pp: 133–66. Wroclaw, Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk and Ossolineum: The Polish Academy of Sciences Press. Reproduced in Studies in Medieval Science. Alchemy, Astrology, Mathematics and Medicine. The Hambledon Press, 1984.
Means, Laurel. “Electionary, Lunary, Destinary, and Questionary: Toward Defining Categories of Middle English Prognostic Material.” Studies in Philology, vol. 89, no. 4, 1992, pp. 367–403.
Means, Laurel. Medieval Lunar Astrology: A Collection of Representative Middle English Texts. The Edwin Mellen Press, 1993.
Pahta, Päivi, and Irma Taavitsainen. “Authorities in Medieval Medical Treatises.” The New Courant 3, edited by J.J. Mary Hatakka and Kirsti Peitsara, 1995, pp. 97–107.
Pahta, Päivi, and Irma Taavitsainen. “Vernacularisation of Scientific and Medical Writing in its Sociohistorical Contexts.” Medical and Scientific Writings in Late Medieval English, edited by Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta, 2004, pp. 1–22.
Rawcliffe, Carole. Medicine & Society in Later Medieval England. Alan Sutton, 1995.
Robbins, Rossel Hope. “Medical Manuscripts in Middle English.” Speculum, vol. 45, no. 3, 1970, pp. 393–415, doi: 10.2307/2853500.
Siraisi, Nancy G. Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine. An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. The University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Siraisi, Nancy G. History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning. The University of Michigan Press, 2007.
Taavitsainen, Irma. “The Identification of Middle English Lunary MSS.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, vol. 88, 1987, pp. 18–26, www.jstor.org/stable/43343791/.
Taavitsainen, Irma. Middle English Lunaries, a Study of the Genre. Société Néophilologique, 1988.
Taavitsainen, Irma. “A Zodiacal Lunary for Medical Professionals.” Popular and Practical Science of Medieval England, edited by Lister M. Matheson, 1994, pp. 283–300.
Taavitsainen, Irma, and Päivi Pahta. Early Modern English Medical Texts. Corpus Description and Studies. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010.
Taavitsainen, Irma, and Päivi Pahta. Medical Writing in Early Modern English. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Tavormina, M. Teresa. Sex, Aging, & Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium. Trinity College Cambridge MS R.14.52, Its Texts, Language, and Scribe (Vols 1, 2). Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006.
Tester, Jim A. History of Western Astrology. The Boydell Press, 1999.
Voigts, Linda Ehrsam. “The Golden Table of Pythagoras.” Popular and Practical Science of Medieval England, edited by Lister M. Matheson, 1994, pp. 123–50.
Voigts, Linda Ehrsam. “The Medical Astrology of Ralph Hoby, a Fifteenth Century Franciscan.” The Friars in Medieval Britain, edited by Nicholas Rogers, 2010, pp. 152–68.
Voigts, Linda Ehrsam, and Patricia Deery Kurtz. Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference CD. University of Michigan Press, 2000.
Wear, Andrew. Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680. CUP, 2000.
Young, John and Henderson Aitken. A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow. James Maclehose and Sons, 1908.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Irene Diego Rodríguez
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors retain publishing rights and grant ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies right of first publication.
Simultaneously, all articles and reviews published in ES Review until nº 43 are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) while those published from nº 44 onwards will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), by which others are allowed to share and use their work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
In addition, ES Review allows authors to arrange additional contracts for the non-exclusive publication of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. In such a case, authors are required to approach the editor(s)/publisher to request permission.