Stockholm, Royal Library, manuscript X. 90

Early fifteenth-century manuscript

Stockholm, Royal Library, manuscript X. 90 (also known as Kungliga Bibliotek, handskrift X. 90 or 10\. 90) is an early fifteenth-century manuscript noted for the Middle English medical texts that it contains.

## Origins and provenance

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The quarto manuscript is made almost entirely of 'greyish and thick' paper, but pages 7–10 are made of two folios of vellum, while pages 94–104 are dyed red. The codex seems to have been composed in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and exhibits four hands (of which the first and fourth contributed most of the material). Mention of Frawsham Halle on p. 49 associates the production of the manuscript with Fransham in Norfolk.[1]: 309 [2]: 302 [3] Dialectal analysis using the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English supports the idea that the manuscript was a Norfolk production, though the texts it contains at least sometimes originated elsewhere.[1]: 310–15 The final leaves of the manuscript have been lost.

The manuscript is thought to have been donated to Stockholm's royal library by Christianus Ravius, who spent time in Oxford, and served as Sweden's Royal Librarian 1655–59;[1]: 309 the volume was accessioned in 1706.[4]: xvi

## Contents and editions

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Irma Taavitsainen summarised the English contents of the manuscript in the Index of Middle English Prose as follows[4]: xxv, 22–25 (with additional information added from other sources):

Item no  | Contents  | MS pages  | Main editions  | Notes

|
|
|
|

1  | Medical recipes  | 1–18  | [5]: 27–49 | 70 recipes in English followed by four in Latin
2  | Medicinal plants and their virtues  | 18–32  | [6]: 77–78 (excerpt)  |
3  | Medical recipes  | 32–35  | [5]: 50–57 | 23 medical recipes in English ending with a Latin note
none  | Poem on health  | 35–47  | [7]: 295–307 | a 460-line poem of medical advice
4  | Medical recipes and charms  | 47–48  | [5]: 57–59 | 8 texts
none  | Poem on plants  | 49–78  | [7]: 307–30 | A 1025-line poem on plants and their properties
5  | Henry Daniel's translation of the treatise on rosemary  | 80–86  | [1] |
6  | Medical recipes  | 86–91  | [5]: 59–65 | 14 medical recipes
7  | Medical recipes  | 91–93  | [5]: 65–67 | 7 medical recipes
8  | Medical recipes  | 93  | [5]: 67–68 | A recipe 'for the mygrym'
9  | Medical recipes and charms  | 95–104  | [5]: 68–83 | 60 medical recipes and charms
10  | Medical recipes and charms  | 105–23  | [5]: 83–108 | 115 medical recipes and charms
11  | Urinology  | 123–26  |  |
12  | Medical rules  | 126–27  | [5]: 108–9 | Four rules for interpreting pregnancy
13  | Medical recipes and charms  | 127–50  | [5]: 109–35 | 73 medical recipes and charms in English, with some in Latin in the middle
14  | Phlebotomy  | 150–52  |  | The treatise lists the veins and gives guidance on bloodletting
15  | Medical recipes  | 152–55  | [5]: 135–39 |
16  | Agnus Castus | 156–216  | [8] |

The distribution of scribal activity in the manuscript is as follows:[4]: 25

pages  | hand

|

1–91  | 1
91–93  | 2
93  | 3
95–104  | 4
104–216  | 1

A selection of the prose texts from the manuscript was published by Ferdinand Holthausen in 1897.[6] Though superseded by other editions, Holthausen's selection remains in use as a convenient sample of Middle English medical recipes; he printed samples from pages 14, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35, 47, 85, 103, 104, 110, 117, 120, 121, 129, 136-37, 145, and 155.

## References

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1. ^ a b c d Martti Mäkinen, 'Henry Daniel's Rosemary in MS X.90 of the Royal Library, Stockholm', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 103 (2002), 305–27.
2. ^ Sudhoff, Karl 1909. 'Die gedruckten mittelalterlichen medizinischen Texte in germanischen Sprachen', Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, 111 (1909), 273–303.
3. ^ George Stephens, Förteckning öfver de förnämsta brittiska och fransyska handskrifternauti Kongl. bibliotheket i Stockholm (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1847), pp. 40–43.
4. ^ a b c Irma Taavitsainen, Manuscripts in Scandinavian Collections, Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist 10 (Cambridge: Brewer, 1994), ISBN 0859914143.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k G. Müller, Aus mittelenglischen Medizintexten: Die Prosarezepte des Stockholmer Miszellan Kodex X.90, Kölner anglistische Arbeiten, 10 (Cologne: Kölner anglistische Arbeiten, 1929).
6. ^ a b 'Rezepte, segen und Zauberspruche aus zwei Stockholmer handschriften', ed. by F. Holthausen, Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie, 19 (1897), 75–88 (pp. 75–86); doi:10.1515/angl.1897.1897.19.75.
7. ^ a b 'Medicinische gedichte aus einer Stockholmer handschrift', ed. by F. Holthausen, Anglia, 18 (1896), 293–331, doi:10.1515/angl.1896.1896.18.293.
8. ^ Angus Castus. A Middle English Herbal, ed. by Gösta Brodin, Essays and Studies on English Language and Literature, 6 (Uppsala: A.-B. Lundequistska Bokhandeln; Copenhagen: Munksgaard; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950).