NA TURE 



529 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1887. 



ALPHITA. 



Alphita. A Medico Botanical Glossary from the Bodleian 

 Manuscript Selden B 35. Edited by J. L. G. Mowat, 

 M.A., Fellow of Pembroke College. \Anecdota Oxoni- 

 ensia. Mediaeval and Modern Series. Vol. I. Part 2.] 

 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887.) 



THIS interesting vocabulary, which Mr. Mowat has 

 transcribed and edited from a manuscript in the 

 Bodleian Library, is offered by him as a contribution to 

 the study of English plant-names. To explain why it has 

 this and also other claims to attention, we must say a 

 word about the class of literature to which it belongs. 



When ancient Greek science was first brought to the 

 knowledge of mediaeval Europe it was by means of Latin 

 versions of the Greek writers, made not directly, but at 

 second hand, from Arabic versions written or brought 

 into Europe by the Moors. The earliest known Latin 

 translations of certain works of Galen, Hippocrates, and 

 other medical writers, with probably some of Aristotle, 

 originated in this way. On the basis of these versions, 

 which began in the eleventh century with the writings of 

 Constantine the African, a medical literature grew up, 

 containing many Greek words corrupted by passing 1 

 through an Arabic channel, as well as Arabic and some 

 Latin terms hardly less strange to the mediaeval reader. 

 It is clear that these hard words presented great diffi- 

 culties, not as a matter of language only, but of practical 

 use, since it was difficult for the reader to identify the 

 diseases spoken of and the drugs recommended for their 

 cure. 



To remedy the uncertainties and dangers thus arising, 

 a new class of literature sprang up — that of the writers 

 whom we may perhaps call the synonymists or glossarists — 

 who compiled lists of the hard words occurring in medical 

 works of the Arabian school, with explanations in Latin. 

 The most celebrated though not the earliest of these was 

 Simon of Genoa, whose list of medical synonyms, the 

 " Clavus Sanationis," was largely borrowed from by 

 subsequent writers. Several others might be named, but 

 there are also anonymous collections of the same kind, 

 one of which is the vocabulary or glossary known as 

 " Alphita." 



The anonymous character of this production is not 

 merely a matter of accident. In its present form it is 

 clearly not the work of one writer. A vocabulary or 

 glossary originally intended to explain some work of 

 practical medicine (possibly the " Antidotarium Nicolai," 

 as Mr. Mowat suggests) was expanded by matter intro- 

 duced from many sources, and by the work of many 

 I hands, till at length it could only be regarded as a sort of 

 I joint-stock compilation to which no one man's name could 

 Ibe attached. 



The title under which it goes is not explained (so far as 



|we can see) by Mr. Mowat, and therefore we may say 



that it is merely the first word of one of the glosses or 



iefinitions, " Alphita, farina ordei idem," or " aX^troi/— 



the same thing as barley-meal." 



This definition happening to come first in an older form 

 Vol. XXXVI. — No. 936, 



of the glossary was taken as its title. Tt has been 

 reprinted under this title in the " Collectio Salernitana " 

 of De Renzi, and another Bodleian manuscript (Ashmole, 

 1398) giving what appears to be an abridged form of that 

 now published is also thus headed. 



But what has all this to do with English plant-names ? 

 Merely this, that when scholars or scribes in Northern 

 Europe copied or edited these glossaries (most if not all 

 of which were produced in Italy) they often added the 

 French or English vernacular names of plants. Hence these 

 glossaries form a supplement to the earlier lists of names 

 published by Prof. Earle in his valuable " English Plant 

 Names." There is no reason to suppose that these names 

 were contemporary with the original composition ; we may 

 rather assign them to the date of the manuscript, which 

 Mr, Mowat refers to the fifteenth century. They thus 

 form a connecting-link between the Anglo-Saxon and Old 

 English names of the earlier lists, and those which we find 

 in Gerarde and the printed " Herbals " which preceded his. 

 Some of these are very interesting, and have been eluci- 

 dated with much skill in Mr. Mowat's most laborious and 

 valuable notes ; the corrupt and barbarous forms of the 

 Greek and Latin words making them often difficult of 

 recognition. 



The interest of the work then lies in the preservation 

 of a number of plant-names ; and it is worth inquiring 

 first of all in what way the English names have been 

 identified with their classical equivalents. Sometimes 

 the modern name is a mere corruption of the ancient, as 

 in rose, bugloss, tansy, and numbers more. Sometimes 

 the one is a translation of the other ; hound's tongue, 

 coltsfoot, cranesbill, are familiar instances. But when a 

 name was thus altered or translated it did not follow that 

 the plant was identified. A curious instance of the con- 

 fusion which may arise is the following. 



Eleutropia, or elitropia, evidently represents the Greek 

 jjXioTpomov = heliotropium, and the Latin equivalents 

 Solseqium and Sponsa solis have the same meaning, viz. 

 a flower which turns to the sun ; and an Anglo-Saxon 

 glossarist (quoted by Earle) boldly translates the Latin 

 as Sigel hweorfa (turning to the sun). It might still, 

 however, remain doubtful what flower was meant ; but 

 when we find Calendula used as a synonym of Solseqium, 

 and when we read in " Alphita " (p. 88), "Kalendttla, sponsa 

 solis, incuba idem, Anglice goldwurt vel rodes," we see 

 that the marigold, a common garden flower in the Middle 

 Ages, and known as golde, gold wort, rode-wort, ruddes, 

 marigolds, mary gowles, &c., is meant (though by the 

 bye it had only borrowed from the marsh marigold — 

 Caltha palustris — a name which originally belonged to 

 the latter). The Latin name points clearly to the 

 Calendula folding its flowers when the sun goes down. 



But the synonym incuba in the above line betrays a 

 confusion with intybum, chicory, as shown again in the 

 gloss (p. 53) : " Eleutropia, incuba, sponsa solis vel 

 mira solis solseqium cicoria idem, anglice et gallice 

 cicoree ; " or in the line from " Sinonoma Bartolomei " 

 which seems meant for a hexameter : " Incuba, solseqium, 

 cicoreaque sponsaque solis." Gerarde also gives sponsa 

 solis as a name of chicory. So that both marigold and 

 chicory are made synonyms of heliotropium. The curious 

 thing is that the glossary gives definitions quoted from 

 Dioscorides of a larger and lesser *' Eliotropium/' neither 



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