Medical Miscellany (Book of Recipes from Lorsch) Medical Miscellany (Book of Recipes from Lorsch)

This manuscript is a milestone in the history of medicine, for it is the oldest surviving document to combine pagan medicine from Antiquity with elements of the Christian religion. For the first time, the treatment of the sick is seen not as an illicit interference with God’s intentions, but as an act of charity demanded by the Christian faith.

The collection’s name derives from the 482 medical recipes that constitute the main part of the codex. The opening shown contains the last page of the second chapter (left) and the beginning of the third chapter (right).

On the left-hand page, four lines of text have been added at a later stage. They transmit the only known (partial) inventory of an imperial library from the early Middle Ages. The list was probably compiled by bishop Leo of Vercelli, a close confidant of Otto III, and contains twelve manuscripts that were waiting to be collected by the emperor in Piacenza around the year 1000. One of them was the Lorsch miscellany itself, another the manuscript of Livy also shown in the exhibition.