In this article a previously unknown fragment of Saint Hildegard's 'Physica' is added to the list of extant manuscripts. Extracts from three books of the 'Physica' ("De Plantis", "De Piscibus", and "De Avibus") were found to be incorporated in a late-medieval German cookbook, the 'Kochbuch Meister Eberhards'. While the German sources for the cookbook, such as the 'Regel der Gesundheit' and the 'Breslauer Arzneibuch' have been known for some time, the Latin parts have traditionally been neglected by scholars. Neither were they included in the 1963-edition of the cookbook nor studied in any detail in the past. The discovery of the 'Physica' as their source provides us with new insights into Eberhard's compiler-work and the literature which was available to him, as well as the reception of Hildegard's medical writings in the fifteenth century. - [Abstract]

Language: German

PMID: 1631915