Details

Subject(s)

• Ethnopharmacology—Greece—History—Sources [Browse]
• Medicine—Greece—History—Sources [Browse]
• Herbs—Therapeutic use—Sources [Browse]
• Plants, Medicinal—History—Sources [Browse]
• Astrology and health—Greece—Sources [Browse]
• Medical astrology—History—Greece—Sources [Browse]
• Medicine—Folklore [Browse]
• Medicine, Magic, mystic, and spagiric—Greece [Browse]
• Manuscripts, Greek—New Jersey—Princeton [Browse]

Getty AAT genre

• Manuscripts, Greek—16th century [Browse]
• Manuscripts, Greek—17th century [Browse]
• Manuscripts, Greek—18th century [Browse]

Summary note

Iatrosophion compiled and used by Greek healers and practitioners of folk medicine, perhaps including local clerics, from the 16th to 18th centuries, possibly in Crete. The volume is foliated in part, but largely paginated (pp. 1-815). There are many missing and unnumbered pages. Decorative head pieces in the earlier parts of the manuscript. The text is comprised of approximately 70 sections, written in at least five different hands. This volume contains extracts from Greek medical treatises and information on botanical remedies (with a few color illustrations of plants), pharmacology, popular cures, astrological medicine (with charts), lists of "good" and "bad" days for phlebotomy, magical script, Cabalistic symbols, Zodiacal signs, pseudo-Solomonic pentacles, invocations of angels and demons, amuletic texts, spells, and prognostications. Among texts extracted are "Logoi pneumatikoi metaphrasthentes eis tēn koinēn glōttan para Agapiou monachou" (fols. 1r-3v); the "Iatrosophion plousiōtaton Agapiou Lantou Krētos logiōtatou kai sophōtatou" (fols. 21r-64v), copied from the Geoponicon of Agapios Landos (1585-1657), a Cretan monk; and "Vasileia Solomontos," a Greek version of the Clavicula Salomonis (fols. 171r-201r).

Binding note

Bound in paper. Composite volume was kept in a thick goatskin wrapper.

Language note

Greek.

Source acquisition

Purchase: Acquired with matching funds provided by the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund. AM 2017-132.

Other standard number

• C0879 (Princeton Greek MS. 131)

Statement on language in description

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