Bibliographical Fun: the “Medicina Plinii” in a Swedish Queen’s Library

September 15, 2024

Bibliographical Fun: the “Medicina Plinii” in a Swedish Queen’s Library

Did you know that the word “bibliography” refers to more than just a list of works you used that you collate at the end of a piece of research?

Sadly, I didn’t until my good friend Fiona convinced me to submit an abstract for the Bibliographical Society of Australia New Zealand annual conference. I mean, it’s obvious when you look at the word: it literally means writing about books. As an area of study, such as promoted by the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, you can look here for details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography. Why isn’t it called “Bibliology”? Well, Biblical scholarship used that term first, so people researching books had to find another term.

So, I am preparing to present at the conference looking ant manuscripts of the Medicina Plinii and have had a student ask about how to follow and locate manuscripts. As an inherently lazy person, I of course combined these two tasks, so I am using Medicina Plinii as the example to show how to do this. Now, this blog is not about how to understand references to and locate manuscripts - that will be a later blog - but is rather about something cool (at least to a book nerd like me) that I discovered today.

A thing I do when preparing to discuss something with students is I try to anticipate questions. When confronted with a list of manuscripts like this from Önnerfors’ critical edition of the Medicina Plinii, my first question would be to ask “what the hell does all that Latin mean?”

SIGLA CODICVM ET CETERA COMPENDIA SCRIPTVRAE
Medicinae Plinii (Med. Pl.)
G Sangallensis 752, saec. IX
V Vossianus Lat. O. 92, saec. X in.
H Hortensis med. 192, saec. XII, nunc deperditus
A Bibl. Cathedr. Lincoloniensis Lat. 220 : 4, saec. XII, mutilus
L Londiniensis Lat. Reg. 12 E. XX, saec. XII
(D Dresdensis Dc. 185, saec. XII, nunc deperditus)
R Vaticanus Reginensis Lat. 1004, saec. XII uel in XIII, mutilus
B Cantabrigiensis S. Petri 222 : III : 1, saec. XIV
C Vaticanus Capponianus Lat. 129, a. 1501 scriptus

While some of this Latin refers to place names, it officially refers to various manuscript collections. While some parts are more obvious (again, watch for next blog for fuller details) like Vaticanus relates to the Vatican Libraries, some are not so obvious.

What I found out and got super-excited about today relates to “Vossianus Lat. O. 92” and “Vaticanus Reginensis Lat. 1004.”

Vossianus Lat. O. 92 is held in the Leiden University Library special collection, but nothing in “Vossianus” relates to Leiden, so I asked myself as a student might, “why is it called that?” Well, my dear friend, google, informed me that this manuscript belonged to the classical philologist and book collector Isaac Vossius (1618-89). He is also called by his non-Latinised name Vos. He started work as a scholar for Queen Christina of Sweden in 1648, and following his father’s death, Gerard Johannes Vossius (1577-1649) he sold his father’s library to the queen for 20,000 gilders. Vossius was then appointed as court librarian in 1650. I imagine he was willing to sell his father’s library because as a court scholar, he would continue to have access to the books, and have the money. Vossius increased Christina’s library through other means which meant travel, and when he returned to Stockholm in 1653, he found both the library and his own collection in shambles. Vossianus was not long to be the royal librarian, because Christina was not long to be queen: she abdicated following her conversion to Catholicism in 1654. She owed Vossius money for unpaid debts (maybe because she was meant to be paying him 5,000 gilders per year on top of board and lodgings), so he was paid in books for moneys owed and his own lost books as it appears that someone stole from his personal collection in his absence. Apparently some of the debt had still not been settled in 1668. Curiously, with moneys still owed to him, Vossius didn’t get all the books in the Christina’s library. A large part was shipped to Rome - I will come back to this point.

Vossius eventually settles in England, acquired a doctorate in law from Oxford University and died in Windsor. He seems to have been quite the character, and even though he held the position of canon at Windsor, he wasn’t terribly religious and was described as reading Ovid during services (I don’t know which of Ovid’s works would have been considered the most scandalous in this circumstance). Following his death, his heirs sold his library, described by some as the greatest collection in the world, to Leiden University for 33,000 guilders in 1690, but only after a deal with Oxford University fell through. The collection contained more than 4,000 print volumes and 700 manuscripts. Too bad his heirs had based the negotiations on a catalogue they had sent to Leiden and then they didn’t send all the books, keeping the finest back, so the University refused to pay more than 21,000 guilders, and it all ended up in court. Eventually, the heirs had to send the missing volumes, Leiden University had to pay the rest of the money and got stuck with the legal costs of 12,000 guilders. The purchase of the finest book collection in the world placed the University in financial distress. For this reason, I have now forgiven Leiden University for charging to access the digitised Vossianus collection; they really did get stiffed by this legal outcome.

So, back to Vossianus Lat. O. 92. It’s called “Vossianus” as this is the adjectival form of “Vossius” to denote it is a part of Vossius’ collection. “Lat.” is because the text is written in Latin, and as this is a part of the shelf-mark, I’d hazard a guess that the Latin texts were shelved together. Why the “O”. I have no idea. 92 is just the number part, so likely the 92nd Latin manuscript in the collection. This manuscript contains a copy of the Medicina Plinii made in the 10th century. It is also quite probable that this volume was a part of the library owned by Queen Christina of Sweden given that much of Vossius’ collection came from this source. Given that I have not yet been able to look at this manuscript, I do not know if any writing in it might confirm this.

Now what about the rest of Christina’s library? Remember how I said it was shipped off to Rome?

Well, in the list of Medicina Plinii manuscripts I’ve provided above, please note the entry “Vaticanus Reginensis Lat. 1004.”

“Vaticanus” relates to the Vatican, whereas “Reginensis” is the adjectival form of regina, the Latin word for queen. Yes, that does refer to Queen Christina of Sweden. According to notes published relating to the Vatican Library’s digitisation project, this refers to the collection bought by Pietro Ottoboni (a cardinal) following her death in 1689. These were the parts of her library that had been sent to Rome prior to Vossius claiming books in lieu of payment. The number 1004 relates to the number of this volume within the 1900 manuscripts from this collection which were donated to the Vatican Library by Pietro Ottoboni, and he didn’t even hand over all of them; he kept some for his own personal collection. Christina had well and truly managed to keep the majority of the books from her library. And this particular volume contains a copy of the Medicina Plinii made in the 12th century.

So, if the majority of the manuscripts in Vossius’ collection came from the library of Queen Christina of Sweden, it seems probable that at one time two copies of the Medicina Plinii were held at Stockholm for at least a short time. And I think that knowing this is damn cool.

I don’t know how complete the Vossius text is, but that kept by Christina is rather incomplete, and does not contain even the entire first book. This is likely why the list manuscripts call it mutilated; Vossius’ copy is not similarly described, it is likely more complete. If this is so, even though Christina still owed him money, he likely came away with an older and more complete copy of the Medicina Plinii from the short-lived Stockholm collection. If his copy was acquired after Christina’s abdication, well he at least replaced a work he used to have access to with a superior copy.