Library

Steven J Livesey

Supported by Friends of Glasgow University Library

Steven J. Livesey, Brian E. and Sandra O’Brien Presidential Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, at the University of Oklahoma, is the author of Science in the Monastery: Texts, Manuscripts and Learning at Saint-Bertin (Brepols, 2020). His books and articles focus on the history of early scientific methodologies, science in medieval universities, and paleography, codicology and textual transmission; among his recent articles, two report the discovery of new copies of Gerbert of Aurillac’s Epistola ad Constantinum and William of Ockham’s Brevis summa libri Physicorum. His current project is a manuscript census of surviving copies of Aegidius Corboliensis, Versus de urinis and Versus de pulsibus, as a preliminary to the preparation of a new critical edition of the texts.

My project focuses on two central texts of the medieval Latin medical tradition, Gilles of Corbeil’s Versus de urinis and Versus de pulsibus.  The popularity and significance of these two diagnostic texts can be seen in the large number – currently 340 (315 of De urinis, 112 of De pulsibus) in my census – of extant copies produced between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries, many of which attracted commentaries and glosses that were more extensive than the texts on which they were based.  The striking feature about both is the form they took: Gilles composed both texts in verse, convinced that this medium was ideal as a vehicle for both precision and recollection.  Yet a complete account of the reach of these poems still remains to be achieved; no exhaustive census of extant manuscripts had been undertaken prior to my investigation, and the most recent critical edition was published in 1826, on the basis of a handful of manuscripts from Leipzig, Wolfenbüttel and Dresden.  A new edition, based on a comprehensive examination of all extant manuscripts, is the ultimate goal of this project.  The University of Glasgow’s Libraries contain three copies of the texts: Ferguson MS 209 [s. XIV^(inc), Italy], containing both Versus de urinis and Versus de pulsibus (fol. 39v-52r); Hunterian Museum, MS 328 [s. XV^(inc), England], containing Versus de urinis (fol. 1r-44v); and Hunterian Museum, MS 414 [s. XIV^(ex) - XV^(inc), Low Countries/Flanders] containing Versus de urinis (169ra-172rb).  With the support of a Visiting Research Fellowship, I plan to examine all three manuscripts with three goals in mind.  The textual variation of these three manuscripts, when combined with similar analysis from other witnesses, will help me establish the interrelationships of the manuscripts in my census.  Second, examination of the content of the codices beyond the poems by Gilles, when combined with the same examination in other codices, will help to establish the milieu in which the poems circulated.  Finally, while the catalogue descriptions of these manuscripts are generally sound, I wish to examine the construction of the codices in situ to ascertain whether anything further can be said about their origin or provenance.

This University of Glasgow Library Visiting Research Fellowship will enable me to examine three early copies of the Versus de urinis produced in distinctly different intellectual centers of Europe and contribute to my analysis of the circulation and use of this important text.