In this workshop, ‘medicine’ is understood broadly, encompassing not only the types of medical writings that are descended from classical and late antique sources, but also a wider array of intersecting practices and traditions involved in caring for both body and soul, such as medical recipes, prognostics and incantations. Medical minitexts, given their unexpected codicological contexts (i.e., appearing outside of medical compendia), challenge the types of categories and classifications that have long shaped the study of medieval cultures of healing and encourage new approaches to, and a re-consideration of, the transmission of medical knowledge (and the social environments in which this transmission occurred) in the early Middle Ages.
The workshop will serve as a forum for exploring questions regarding the relationship(s) between medical minitexts and larger collections of medicine, as well as the extent to which medically-focused manuscripts attracted the addition of texts, healthcare-related or otherwise. For example, do medical minitexts appear to be drawn primarily from the writings found in medical compendia, or do they record knowledge deriving from contemporary practices? At the same time, what kinds of texts were added to the margins, flyleaves, and other blank spaces of medical miscellanies, and how can such additions provide a deeper understanding of early medieval cultures of healing and related textual practices
This workshop is organised by the FRIHUMSAM Project Voices on the Edge: Minuscule Texts in Early Medieval Latin (2021-27), funded by the Research Council of Norway. Voices on the Edge collaborates in its activities and agenda with the ERC Advanced Grant Project no. 101018645 MINiTEXTS: Marginalized Voices in Early Medieval Latin Culture c. 700–c.1000 funded by the European Research Council (2022–26).