Fantastic Herbals and Where to Find Them: Contextualizing and Expanding the Alchemical Herbal Tradition

Beasley, Bryce

Fantastic Herbals and Where to Find Them: Contextualizing and Expanding the Alchemical Herbal Tradition

dc.contributor.advisor	Vermij, Rienk
dc.contributor.author	Beasley, Bryce
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Magruder, Kerry
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Endres, Bill
dc.date.accessioned	2024-08-08T18:23:40Z
dc.date.available	2024-08-08T18:23:40Z
dc.date.issued	2024-08-01
dc.date.manuscript	2024-07-23
dc.description.abstract	A collection of 38 herbal manuscripts have remained all but hidden to scholars in the shadow of the Italian Alps. Despite several texts analyzing specific texts (Leporace, 1952, Lupo 1982, Ragazzini 1983, Toresella 1985, Pezzella 2007 and Bruzzone 2015, 2019) and one pioneering work which synthesizes a large portion of them as united in the corpus (Segre 2000), the “alchemical herbal tradition” has so far escaped examination through methodologies employed in the history of science, medicine and magic. The 98 alchemical herbs described in the tradition demonstrate a complex and nuanced medieval approach to astrology, natural and vernacular magic, botanical medicine, religion and alchemy. However, there is far less of this final category than one might expect to find in a manuscript tradition named after the discipline. The present work adds 14 alchemical herbals to the 24 manuscripts examined by Vera Segre’s foundational census of the tradition in an effort to improve the body of evidence available for analysis and comparison. In addition to using existing frameworks and methodologies from the history of medical botany, we find that these manuscripts can be better understood by applying terms such as magiferous and natural magic, placing them squarely within their cultural and intellectual contexts of the Italian Quattrocento. By analyzing individual plants across the full collection of manuscripts, changes in their medical uses, occult properties, and fantastic illustrations can be traced to provide better understanding of the lived histories of their manuscripts and owners. This is a preliminary study examining the theoretical foundations underpinning this large and varied collection of herbals, with the aim of one day understanding who the supposed alchemists were that created these enigmatic codices.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/11244/340569
dc.language	en_US	en_US
dc.subject	History, Botany	en_US
dc.subject	History, Medieval Medicine	en_US
dc.subject	History, Magic	en_US
dc.subject	Italian Studies	en_US
dc.thesis.degree	Master of Arts in History of Science, Technology and Medicine	en_US
dc.title	Fantastic Herbals and Where to Find Them: Contextualizing and Expanding the Alchemical Herbal Tradition	en_US
ou.group	Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences::Department of History of Science	en_US
shareok.orcid	0009-0003-4443-5444	en_US