A Fifteenth-Century Medical Handbook in York Minster Library (YML, XVI. E. 32). Part 1 - a blog by Dr. Dr Rebeca Cubas-Peña

Part I: General description

York Minster Library is the largest cathedral library in the UK. It accommodates more than 90,000 printed works on various subjects that range from theology and ecclesiastical history, arts and architecture to other non-religious topics, notably playbills and books and pamphlets on York and Yorkshire history. Its 250 medieval manuscripts are unsurprisingly religious; however, like the rest of the collection, they cover other matters too, including medicine. The Minster collection houses a reasonable number of medical books, including two late medieval manuscripts: York, York Minster Library, XVI. O. 10 and York, York Minster Library, XVI. E. 32.


York Minster Library, XVI. O. 10 was written in the fifteenth century and contains a collection of medical and culinary recipes. The forty-three folios that comprise this manuscript were described and examined in a work entitled ‘A Medieval Book of Herbs and Medicine’ written by Elizabeth Brunskill, a former library assistant, and from which a copy is held in York Minster Library´s Special Collections. [1]

York Minster Library, XVI. O. 10 with a mark of ownership: ‘Thomas Ellys hau thys buke quod Thomas Ellys’ (fol. 13v)

York Minster Library, XVI. E. 32, or the York medical manuscript as it will be called hereafter, is a fifteenth-century compilation composed of a series of therapeutic texts intended to cure diseases or conditions. The majority of these texts are collections of herbal recipes which offer a number of treatments to cure various maladies. It also contains other practical texts which a medical practitioner would have found very useful to treat, diagnose and prognosticate diseases and their outcomes, including bloodletting instructions, herbals, or a urine treatise. These texts, which will be further described in later posts, were believed to be medical in the Middle Ages and were copied in little books called ‘booklets’.

Booklets were independent textual and formal units that had meaning in themselves and could be put together to form books or larger compilations. This was a rather common practice when making books in late medieval England, since medieval manuscripts were composed of folios ― made of parchment [2] or paper ― that were bound together to form quires or gatherings which were in turn bound together to form books or booklets. Thus, the York medical manuscript is composed of a hundred and seventy-four folios, distributed into twenty-one quires and ten independent booklets, which are covered by six flyleaves or endleaves added to protect the text from worming or damage to the binding [3].

The palaeographical features of its ten booklets show that they were copied by various scribes from the last quarter of the fourteenth century to the fifteenth century. Seeing that the compilation does not contain any sixteenth-century writings but does contain marginal annotations which date to the early sixteenth century all through the manuscript, it is likely that the volume was put together by its compiler around 1500.

The spine of its nineteenth-century binding attributes the book to a William of Killingholme and suggests that it was produced in 1412: ‘MEDICINE. by WILL: DE KILINGHOLME AD MCCCCXII’.

Spine of the manuscript with a title that ascribes the codex to William Killingholme

The name of the alleged author was possibly taken from an ascription to a ‘Magister Willelmus leche de Kylingholme’ in the fourth booklet of the manuscript (fol. 109v).  [4]. There is nothing in the manuscript which indicates that it was written in 1412; and even if there was, establishing the exact date of production of a volume that is composed of several separate booklets copied at different times seems out of place. It is possible, however, to infer the date of production of some texts by their content. For instance, the list of kings that opens the book (fol. 2) was probably written between 1413 and 1422 under Henry V’s reign, as this is the last king mentioned in this questionable list which names the English monarchs from Alfred the Great to Henry IV and the number of years they reigned.

The majority of the booklets in the York medical manuscript are in good condition and have abundant marginal space, although a number of folios have been obscured by reagent. This was a former practice to improve the legibility of parts that were difficult to read and consisted of applying a series of chemicals to the manuscript, normally gallic acid, potassium bisulfate, an alternation of hydrochloric acid and potassium cyanide, and more frequently, hydrophosphate of ammonia [5].

Folios stained by reagent (fols. 28v-29r)

Being produced in a period when medical texts written in English spread through the country, the York medical manuscript is mostly, though not exclusively, written in Middle English ― the dominant language in England from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. The manuscript, which shows a variety of Midlands dialects (Shropshire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire), holds a number of recipes and charms in Latin, and a charm in Anglo-Norman ― the French spoken in Britain after the Norman Conquest. Medical manuscripts written in the three languages were not uncommon in late medieval England: Latin was still the European lingua franca amongst scholars, Anglo-Norman became an important written language after the arrival of the Normans, and the production of texts copied in English increased.

The fact that the manuscript was copied primarily in English and contains practical, medical texts suggest that the book was probably commissioned or made for the use of a medical practitioner with a basic knowledge of Latin. Otherwise who else would be interested in acquiring a manuscript composed exclusively of medical writings? Higher layers of society, especially the new emergent gentry, commissioned works on various topics written in English in late medieval England, including medical texts. However, the compilations owned by this social class have shown to be varied, with a special interest in medieval romances and devotional texts.

Like modern doctors have vademecums and other medical books in the shelves of their surgeries, medieval medical practitioners owned rather specialised medical books. A minor group of physicians, who due to their high tariffs took care of royal and noble households, were university-trained and Latin literate therefore could own and commission works both in vernacular and Latin. Most medical practitioners, however, would have worked in the country and treated the majority of the population. These rural medical practitioners did not attend university: they acquired their medical knowledge through apprenticeship along with an elementary level of Latin. It is unlikely, thus, that these practitioners owned the complex, Latinate works used by university physicians. They most likely commissioned and owned books, which like the York medical manuscript, were composed of uncomplicated medical texts produced in English. As a matter of fact, it is my belief that the York medical manuscript was not only originally owned, but also compiled, by a rural medical practitioner who determined the position of the quires in the manuscript by means of quire annotations [6].

Quire annotation: ‘quaternus 6 in 10 folios’ (fols. 57v-58r)

[1]. E. Brunskill, ‘A Medieval Book of Herbs and Medicine’, North Western Naturalist, I (1953), pp. 9-17, 177-89, 353-69. This work is divided into three parts published in March, June and September 1953. You can book an appointment to see Brunskill’s work (Yorkshire Pamphlets SC Pamph Box 64/3) or any other item from York Minster´s Special Collections or Archives at collections@yorkminster.org.

[2]. Parchment was the name given to the animal skin, more particularly goat and sheep skin, that was prepared as a material on which to write or/and paint.
[3].  For a better understanding of how to make medieval manuscripts, see these videos from the Getty Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKBJkf2xbqI and https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/pharos/sections/making_art/index_manuscript.html. As it is an interactive video, you will need the Flash 6 plugin for the second one, which you can download for free in the museum´s page.  
[4]. There is a transcription of the fourth booklet of the York medical manuscript in my MA dissertation: R. Cubas-Peña, A Collection of Medical Recipes in York Minster Library, MS. XVI. E. 32 (unpublished master’s thesis, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, 2009). 
[5]. R. Clemens and T. Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2007), p. 104.
[6]. For further details, see my doctoral thesis: R. Cubas-Peña, ‘Every Practitioner his own Compiler’: Practitioners and the Compilation of Middle English Medical Books with Special Reference to York Minster Library, XVI. E. 32 (Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017).