The Calendar

Due to the various additions the Guild made to Egerton 2572, the oldest part of the manuscript begins on fol. 44r with the calendar. Neatly written but not decorated, except for some flourishing in red ink, the calendar shows one month to each page and is of York use. The borders of the pages have been left blank but are wide, as is the case with all of the late medieval folios containing text. Wider borders meant more parchment was required and the design gives an impressive mise-en-page. However, leaving the pages largely unadorned demonstrates a compromise being made when commissioning a manuscript that was both high-status in appearance but affordable to produce.

Using a calendar as evidence for the location of a manuscript's production can be problematic. There are many fifteenth-century examples of books for an English market having been manufactured on the Continent, whilst a calendar of Sarum use could be adapted to include local saints and give the impression of a different regional provenance. What can be said about the calendar in Egerton 2572 is that all of the entries have been written in the same hand and it is apparently as close to being a perfect example of York use as one could expect to find. Janet Backhouse identified the presence of certain saints’ feasts as being indicative of York use, assigning particular emphasis to John of Beverley (7 May, translation 25 October), William of York (8 June), Paulinus of York (10 October) and Wilfred of Ripon (12 October), all of whom are named in the guild book. Matthew Salisbury, in his analysis of the York use, adds to this list entries for St Everildis (9 July) and the Feast of the Relics, commemorating all of the saints whose relics were said to rest in York Minster (19 October). Both are found in the guild book's calendar, as too are the four saints – Germanicus (19 January), Babillus (24 January), Pelagia (8 October), Hilarion (21 October) – which Richard Pfaff states are found as a group only in York manuscripts.

In addition to identifying the calendar as York use, it is important to consider it in the context of the Guild's activities.

The guild book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York is a unique record of the knowledge, ambitions, activities and civic relationships maintained by the Guild over a period of 300 years. The volume is a rare survival of late medieval medical knowledge placed within a civic context. It is unlike anything else surviving from York and can tell us a great deal about the use of secular books in a ceremonial context. This important manuscript, now British Library MS Egerton 2572, is both well-known and under-studied. The medieval images showing astrological and surgical figures and the fine, if now incomplete, volvelle have often been used for illustrative purposes in recent publications. One can also find frequent references to the guild book in more general assessments of astrology, medical practice and guild activities. Short passages of text have even been transcribed and edited for publication. Despite this interest, Egerton 2572 has not been the subject of comprehensive and focused research. The book is acknowledged to contain items of importance for the study of medical history; however, it seems that at times its significance as a cultural object, utilised by the Guild for ceremonial purposes, has been forgotten.

In order to fully understand Egerton 2572 it is necessary to submit the manuscript to an archaeological examination. Proceeding in the tradition of l’archéologie du livre, this work explores the book as a multi-period artefact. Between the leather-covered wooden boards we find a coming together of knowledge, in the form of the medieval tracts, the Guild's post-medieval ordinances and various declarations.

The oldest elements of the manuscript are those folios dating from 1486 to which I shall refer as the ‘medieval core’. A bloodletting man shows a figure viewed from the front, annotated with the appropriate points for bleeding. A zodiac man acts as a visual counterbalance. These figures are often found in the manuscripts of medical practitioners and the examples here are fine but not lavishly illuminated depictions. The volvelle is surrounded by the figures of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and the medical saints Cosmas and Damian. The final element of the medieval decorative scheme is a representation of the four temperaments in human form. Following the images is a series of tracts, many with an astrological emphasis, whilst a poem on bloodletting brings the oldest part of the manuscript to a close.

London, British Library, Egerton 2572. The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York. A late medieval calendar and collected medical and astrological tracts and illustrations bound with ordinances; royal portraits; registers of Guild masters and apprentices; miscellaneous declarations. Intended for use by the York Guild. Produced in the north of England, possibly York.

Contents

Fols. 5–12 form a quire of four folded bifolia still intact. Continuing through the manuscript, folios of the same stock, ruled for text appear as fols. 17, 19, 21, 23, 25–342*, 44–70. Fols. 26–27 and fols. 30–31 remain intact as bifolia, hinting at a further four quires of four folios. The consecutive foliation indicates that they were at the centre of the quire. Further complete bifolia are visible at fols. 53–54, fols. 58–59 and fols. 65–66. Fols. 48–51 form an intact quire of two bifolia. It should be noted that fols. 50–51 are double-thickness parchment. Two pieces, bearing the fifteenth-century drawings and volvelle, have been stuck together to give extra rigidity. This construction recognises the vulnerability of the volvelle's moving parts whilst also ensuring that the image of the temperaments on fol. 51v is not disturbed by a knotted thread.

The remainder of the parchment appears to be of a different type and does not feature the ruled lines of the medieval parchment stock. The folios are all singletons, those at the beginning of the book carrying the later royal portraits, with the exception of conjugate fols. 344*–345*, fols. 347*–36, fols. 40–41, and fols. 71–72. The parchment folios of the book end with the folded declaration numbered as fol. 119 and fol. 120 and a final list of Guild members’ signatures on fols. 122–1241*, numbers 122 and 123 being a bifolium. A single folio, foliated in ink as fol. 331 has been bound within the bifolium formed of fols. 347*–36. Its partner, once foliated as fol. 34, has been excised; together they may have formed the middle bifolium of a quire.

Editorial Conventions

In the interest of ensuring an edition as representative of the manuscript as possible I have kept the letters ‘u’ and ‘v’ and ‘i’ and ‘j’ as the scribe wrote them. Throughout the manuscript, the various scribes have used ‘y’ to represent ‘i’, ‘y’ or ‘Þ’, (the ‘th’ sound). When the letter represents ‘i’ or ‘y’, it has been left as written. In place of ‘Þ’, ‘th’ has been transcribed. The Old English letter ‘З’ has been transcribed as ‘y’, except in some cases where ‘z’ is clearly intended, e.g. ‘zodiac’.

Abbreviations have been expanded and the expansions underlined. Where a flourish or mark is present and is arguably intended as an abbreviation mark, but cannot be satisfactorily expanded, it is represented by an apostrophe. Numerals are given in either Roman or Arabic forms, as in the manuscript. In Roman numerals the final ‘j’ is retained to denote the end of a number.

During the period in which the manuscript was written, punctuation was not standardised. I have not modernised it except where symbols or scribal marks are used to separate clauses. Throughout Egerton 2572, capital letters are employed as a means of punctuation, they have been retained. Letters that are possibly, but not clearly, capitals – a particular difficulty with ‘w’ – are transcribed as lower case. In some instances, the scribe has used a red tint over a letter; such cases have been transcribed as capitals. The scribes’ use of the period, ‘.’, has been repeated. Symbols of a decorative nature have been retained where they serve an organisational function and are represented by an asterisk, ‘*’, with the first example footnoted where appropriate.

Headings, side-headings and some key words are written in a bold gothic script; this has been printed in bold type. I have retained the scribe's word division and paragraph breaks. Line breaks have not been retained unless they represent the organisation of the information on the page or ease use of the edition. Blank folios and those containing images are not recorded; for reference to these, see the appendix.

With the exception of the six modern supply leaves, all of the paper bound into Egerton 2572 is hand-made, used in folio, with vertical chain lines and, where present, watermarks centrally placed. The first contemporary folio, not foliated and used as a flyleaf, includes a watermark depicting two lions rampant supporting the coat of arms of the city of Amsterdam, crowned. Both Churchill and Heawood depict examples closely approximating the ‘Amsterdam’ watermark which they date to c.1688. The design was commonly used in the Angoumois region of France by mills backed by Dutch investors importing paper to their own country. The same watermark is to be found upside-down on fols. 1–2; fols. 3–4 contain no watermarks.

The next paper folios in the volume commence on fol. 73. A watermark is present showing a pot design, a device commonly found in French paper exported throughout the seventeenth century. The arrangement of watermarks and empty pages between fols. 73–80 and fols. 81–88 suggests two quires of eight folios each. Fols. 73–74 show the pot watermark; fols. 75–76 are empty; fols. 77–78 with pot and fols. 79–80 without. This indicates a quire formed of four bifolia, particularly as fols. 76–77 remain conjoint. From that point, a pattern for the ‘pot folios’ is more difficult to discern. Fols. 81–82 are empty; fols. 83–86 alternate beginning with a watermark; fols. 87–88 contain the pot watermark, whilst fol. 89 is empty and belongs with the ‘Amsterdam folios’ that follow. Despite the arrangement of the paper sheets, fols. 84–85 are conjoint and indicate a second quire of four bifolia. This, however, is far from conclusive. The pot design resumes on fols. 112–114 concluding with an empty sheet not foliated, fol. 1141*. In total, eleven folios carry the pot watermark; nine are empty but carry corresponding chain lines. The two missing empty folios added to fols. 112–1141* would create a quire of at least six folios but no more than this tentative statement can be made from the physical evidence surviving in the book.

On fol. 90, the Amsterdam watermark resumes and again the arrangement is erratic, alternating with and without a watermark between fols. 90–95.

The Early Modern Images

The coat of arms in Egerton 2572 appears on fol. 6r and occupies almost the entire page; the Guild's motto, ‘De praescientia dei’, is written beneath (see plate 27). The arms are quartered by a red cross, the first and fourth quarters depicting fleams, a tool traditionally associated with the work of barbers. The second and third quarters show a crowned spatula and the Tudor rose. Upon the cross is an English lion. The arms are crowned by a mantel and golden opinicus. Two lynxes appear as supporters, both wearing chained crowns as collars around their necks.

On fol. 7r the sequence of royal portraits begins with a depiction of Henry VII. In their entirety, the portraits show a royal line of succession stretching as far as George III although there is an evident cluster of images from Henry VII to Elizabeth I. These portraits merit particular attention as they were all produced at the same time. Each of the five representations – Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I – follows the same basic pattern and colour palette. Corinthian pillars and a Romanesque arch adorned with cherubs frame each monarch in turn. The portraits, along with the coat of arms, have been produced by the same artist and sit apart from a later portrait of James I which, although stylistically similar, shows differences in colour palette, composition and execution (see plates 29–34).

Within the frame of the pillars, curtains have been painted behind Elizabeth where they do not appear in the previous portraits. This embellishment is used to denote the reigning monarch at the time of the earliest portrait's production. It is a visual embellishment which is repeated for James I's image. A further marker of Elizabeth's contemporary regal status appears beneath the earliest portraits where the name of the monarch is written in the same late sixteenth century hand. The lettering identifying Elizabeth is noticeably more decorative than those that go before. Interestingly, James's name appears on a plinth painted below his portrait and is therefore integrated into the image far more successfully. Given the earlier artist's attempts at stylistic consistency, this change appears as a later innovation.

Books have functioned as repositories of knowledge and collective memory for centuries. Richard Ovenden has written on the destruction of libraries and archives, an occurrence which, sadly, has occurred all too often. In times of war or civil unrest, attempts are frequently made to destroy those records which preserve history and inform the present. Our revulsion at such acts comes, in part, from the reverence in which books are held by so many. They are valued not as ephemeral objects but rather as something to preserve and cherish, representing far more than simply the words on their pages. Societies, groups and individuals have, for centuries, preserved on bound folios their most authoritative and sacred texts.

There is a long tradition of situating books at the centre of ceremonial activities. Some images within religious medieval manuscripts show signs of use indicative of them having been touched or even kissed, an action that would have imitated the kissing of a missal by a priest during Mass. Since 1945, the St Augustine Gospels, a sixth-century manuscript now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, has been taken to Canterbury for the swearing of the oath in the enthronement of new archbishops. The practice apparently revives an earlier tradition, a factor which is of great significance to those involved in the modern-day ceremonies.

The art contained within bound manuscripts often shows images of books. The depiction of John Banister delivering his anatomy lecture whilst a volume sits open on a lectern demonstrates the notion of an authoritative text. In other instances, books being presented to a patron or situated within a depiction of worship can be found, highlighting the significance of both their message and medium. What these images have in common is a focus on the book as an object.

From medieval Libri Vitae to twentieth-century war memorials, society has become accustomed to using a single item or fixed point to represent the individuals within a group or community. The guild book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York was not created to preserve the memory of the deceased, but it did function as a symbolic point of focus for the Guild.

The Guild and the City

Documentary evidence for York's medieval medical practitioners is limited and scattered amongst various city records. The City Council's ordinances of 1301 refer to medical services, and the entry for physicians and doctors is quoted here in full:

The subsequent entry in the Ordinances refers to the practice of apothecaries, including the instruction that one was not ‘to make concoctions for human use as medicine unless he knows his calling well’. A medicine found to have been made incorrectly ‘is to be burned, and [the apothecary] shall abjure his call forever’.

The Ordinances were instituted by Edward I as he established York as a staging post for his military campaign into Scotland. Made with the full agreement of the civic authorities, they were intended to improve the sanitary conditions in the city. The insistence that physicians and doctors should have received appropriate instruction before treating patients is to be expected. Yet beyond this, there is a focus on ensuring violent attacks did not pass unrecognised and unpunished.

Late Medieval Astrology

The guild book's images were intended to work in conjunction with the manuscript's texts, beginning on fol. 54v, in order to present an explanation of astrological theory and its application to medical practice. Although there is a clear relationship between the texts and images of the guild book, the two are less successfully integrated than in a volume like Sloane MS 1088. Here, written material and visual devices such as lunar and planetary tables and a diagram named the ‘rota celi’ are intermingled, allowing for an explanatory text to be placed directly alongside the visual device to which it refers. The physical separation of the guild book's visual scheme from its texts highlights Egerton 2572's function as a manuscript for display. Nevertheless, the texts either complement the images or supply additional information which would have been core to the Guild's medical activities.

Hilary Carey has persuasively argued that in late medieval England the popular use of astrology spread from an elite class downwards. Whilst for centuries there had been those who looked to the heavens for information, it is suggested that from the reign of Henry VI onwards, astrologers enjoyed increasing patronage from English royalty. From here it entered a middle-class sphere, as demonstrated by references in the Paston letters and the notes of clients recorded in the manuscript of John Crophill. Thus the guild book represents knowledge that had become part of everyday life for many people. Indeed, the content of the German Volkskalendar shows that the widespread popularity of compilations of texts such as those found in Egerton 2572 was not limited to England. As Lauren Kassel has observed, astrology ‘provided a social and cosmological framework in a world where people experienced much anxiety and little medical efficiency’. The York Guild would, therefore, have understood the desirability of demonstrating a grasp of astrological concepts in 1486. Comparison with other manuscripts demonstrates that Egerton 2572 was emblematic of the types of material circulating in 1486. Such knowledge would have been just as relevant in the late sixteenth century when the guild book was revised.

The medieval core of Egerton 2572 was a representation of the understanding of astrology which underpinned the medical activities of the Guild's members. The medieval mind placed the Earth at the centre of the universe.

Provenance

Stamped in gold to a small rectangle of marbled paper and pasted inside the upper board of the guild book is the coat of arms of the eighth earl of Bridgewater, Francis Henry Egerton. The title was inherited by Egerton in 1823 and with it came the wealth that enabled him to make a bequest of over £12,000, in addition to his collection of manuscripts, to the British Museum. A supplementary £3,000 was bequeathed to the British Museum in 1838 by Charles Long, Baron Farnborough and cousin of Egerton. Monies from the Farnborough fund were used to purchase the York guild book in 1881. A brief minute reported the purchase on 9 April for the sum of £30 from W. H. Richardson. Custodianship by the British Museum, now British Library, is but one stage in the use and provenance of the manuscript.

The volume was sold, presumably on two occasions, following its ownership by the Guild and before it entered the collections of the British Museum. A note written in gold ink on fol. 34v states that the ‘book came into the possession of Mr. E. N. Alexander, by purchase, AD 1817’. This refers to Edward Nelson Alexander, a solicitor from Halifax with genealogical connections to medical men of York. Upon his death in 1859, the Halifax Guardian reported that ‘in a literary view, he will be much missed, he being one of the deepest read antiquarians of the parish’.

In 1830 Alexander had been a founding member of the Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society and he was subsequently elected as the Society's curator for antiquities and coins. Alexander was also a collector; he donated to the Society 150 coins from his personal collection and exhibited to his colleagues three antique gems in his possession. Antiquarian interests and financial means make Edward Nelson Alexander just the sort of person who would have acquired the guild book in 1817. It might even have been familial connections to medical practice in York that made the manuscript an attractive purchase; fol. 108v notes that a Doctor Alexander was made a contributor of the Guild. Regardless, the volume was not purchased as a source of useful medical knowledge but as a means of exploring the past.