Greek medical manuscript.- Iatrosophion, decorated manuscript on paper, 266 leaves in all, many of them detached (n.b.it has not been possible to collate the quires and determine how many leaves are missing), text block: single column with variable number of lines and text space measures, text written in black or dark brown ink in at leat five different hands, headings written in red, in upper and lower margins sequences of early and inconsistent foliations in arabic numerals, in brown and red ink, red pen-flourished initials, strapwork headpieces coloured in red, yellow and brown, numerous diagrams, charts, astrological wheels, zodiacal signs, magical symbols, drawings of amulets and plants, early flap binding in black goatskin, strips of leather preserved, worn with numerous leaves detached, browned and stained through extensive use, small 4to, 155 x 105mm., Greece (probably Crete), first half of 16th century.

⁂ Text: It is not possible to describe in detail the content of this highly interesting medical notebook, which contains over seventy writings and represents an exhaustive supply of centuries-old practices of empirical healing: not only medical recipes and advice on plants and herbal remedies, but also astrological charts, lists of 'bad' and 'good' days, invocations of angels and demons, amulets, predictions and spells, occult treatises on the properties of stones and herbs, and short magical writings such as the Clavis or Clavicula Salomonis (the ??????? ??????????, fol. 171r-201r). Many pages of the manuscript feature magical and cabalistic symbols, including the pentalpha sign, known as Salomon's Seal or Star of David. Some texts, e.g. the ????? ??????????? ?????????????? ??? ??? ?????? ??????? (fol. 1r-3v) and the ??????????? ???????????? (fol. 21r-64v), are copied from the Geoponicon composed by the 17^th-century Cretan monk Agapios Landos. This popular work, printed 26 times between 1643 and 1919, includes medical remedies from the Greek canon - Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides - as well as therapeutic instructions and botanical information from astrological and magical beliefs.

The notebook offered here belongs to the genre of iatrosophion - the term means medical wisdom - and contains an astonishing variety of medical, botanical, astrological and magical texts, assembled in all likelihood in Crete, and continuously added to over centuries and passed down over generations. "Popular medicine, praktiki iatri, and iatrosophia remained vital resources for health care for many Cretans well into the twentieth century" (P.A. Clark, A Cretan Healer's Handbook, p. 22). As Alain Touwaide states, the number of such manuscripts which survive is unknown. This composite manuscript is similar in layout and decoration to the manuscript preserved in the national library of Athens (Ath. 1265), datable from the end of the 16^th century to the 19^th century.

"Copied and re-copied, these handbooks were used in the community predominantly by practical healers and midwives, priests and monks. Increasingly, in many the content epitomized from ancient sources became diluted and the medical advice supplemented with a whole host of additional information from popular medicine" (P.A. Clark, A Cretan Healer's Handbook, p. 5).

Literature: Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (CCAG), x. Codices Athenienses, ed. A. Delatte, Bruxelles 1924, pp. 9-22; Anecdota Atheniensia, ed. A. Delatte, Liège 1927, pp. 397-445; Agapios Landos, Geoponicon, Venice 1643, ed. D.D. Kostoula, Volos 1991; A. Touwaide, Byzantine Hospitals Manuals (Iatrosophia) as a Source for the Study of Therapeutics, in The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, ed. B. Bowers, Aldershot 2007, pp. 147-173; P.A. Clark, Healer's Handbook in the Byzantine Time, Aldershot 2011, pp. 1-22.