INTERPRETING TEXTS

Opening remarks

Why has it seemed so difficult to produce a comprehensive medical history of the year 1000 (i.e., the early middle ages). There are several obstacles to such a synthesis. Most of the texts are known, but we are not sure how they are to be edited and presented. V. Rose's synoptic edition with five parallel columns of texts of Vindicianus exemplifies one approach. Yet the 'instability' of texts is not necessarily addressed by this method of presentation. Moreover, non-medical or seemingly unrelated material in a manuscript needs to be taken into consideration. In other words, an individual treatise needs to be considered within the context of the entire manuscript. We have to deal with manuscripts rather than texts, since texts are so mutable. Reliance on catalogues of medical manuscripts such as that of Beccaria, with their stipulative definitions of what is to count as a medical manuscript, may have obscured how often medical and non-medical material are found side-by-side in a manuscript.

If we are not careful, we reify texts, privileging some versions over others in the production of editions. Many of the texts we are dealing with are composites of smaller texts. The manuscript containing all of them is not necessarily the best guide to the original versions of the individual components. Nor can that particular form of the collection be taken as standard. The titles given to such works by modern editors reflect their a priori choices about whether a group of texts is a compilation that can be given a single title or is simply a collection of individual texts that happen to 'travel together' in various combinations.

The danger is that we create a canon of medieval texts with a specious legitimacy it does not deserve. Early medieval medicine was local, and the production of texts was personal. The Liber passionalis is an example. Rather than as parts of a canon of medicine, perhaps we should think of this and similar works as an archive compiled for personal use. The instability of the text is a sign of creativity, not weakness or ineptitude. Each text or collection of texts was adapted to immediate practical needs, much like arranging one's own kitchen, where the ingredients may be standard but the layout is highly personal. In searching for the sources of early medieval texts, we should be trying to establish the materials available to the author or compiler, not looking for the 'origins' of an idea or practice. For example, the pseudo-Galenic Liber tertius needs to seen not as a fake addition to Ad Glauconem but as an early medieval work with Galen's name on it. The use of a treatise is or should be at least as important to us as its origins. For early medieval medicine, we might say, reception trumps genetics.

Points arising in discussion

A text tinkered with is a text which has been used. But then are we to conclude that a stable text has not been used? If procedures are repeated without any alterations or additions, does that reflect absence of use? Is an omission an excision? Does the attitude towards tradition and authority determine the attitude towards copying rather than the utility of what is being copied? These are questions basic to the understanding of medical practice.

Perhaps gynaecology could be seen as a test case. Some of the material is preserved in monastic manuscripts, yet does its presence in this context represent its utility? What do we mean by 'utility' here? A medical manuscript is 'useful' not only for therapeutic purposes. When there is no discussion of gynaecology in a given treatise, it does not prove that the material copied was thought useful and the gynaecology not. Moreover, one should not assume that an early medieval monastic manuscript was written by a man.

We need to start understanding the medical material through analogies. Cooking has already been mentioned. Of overriding importance is the editing and publishing of as many textual sources as possible. Is the presentation of these texts on the Web the solution to the problem of how to edit them? In that environment, no one version of a composite work has to be privileged over another. The edition could even be made interactive, so that the user replicates the activities of the medieval compiler. Any copying of a text demonstrates that the text was perceived to be of some value. The motivation for a particular copy could be antiquarian (done in the spirit of conservation) or utilitarian. Were some treatises less utilitarian because of their enormous size? Vernacular treatises are not automatically more practical than Latin or Greek ones.

Did the Lacnunga, with its pagan deities, reveal an antiquarian interest in 'traditional English culture' rather than medical necessity. Compare Beowulf and the Exeter book.