Ps. Roger Bacon On Tarrying the Acciden

ON TARRYING THE ACCIDENTS OF AGE

(De retardatione accidentium senectutis)

Carol A. Everest and M. Teresa Tavormina

Authorship

In the introduction to the standard edition of the De retardatione acciden- tium senectutis, Edward Withington comments on the intellectual insufi - ciencies of this work, attributed to the thirteenth-century Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon:

We must admit that the Epistle and treatises on old age are a grievous disappointment as coming from one so great in other departments. They show want of originality, and close dependence on authorities

he might have known were at best second hand, a simple faith in the marvellous power of remedies, most of which had been used for cen- turies with no remarkable results, and sometimes a pretence of secret knowledge which reminds us painfully of the alchemic quacks and

mystics of a later age. 1

Recent investigations of authorship provide a plausible explanation for the disparity between this work and Bacon’s other scientii c treatises. Although Little and Withington accept the authenticity of Bacon’s authorship with few reservations, more current scholarship argues convincingly against the

1 Little and Withington 1928 (henceforth LW), xlii. In LW, the text, textual notes, and the textual and codicological section of the introduction were the work of A.

G. Little, while the introductory material and explanatory notes on the De retarda- tione’s sources and historical contexts were written by Withington.

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possibility. Theodore Crowley’s published dissertation (1950) questions the likelihood of Baconian provenance. His work is endorsed and expanded by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (1987, with Steven Williams; 1991a), whose researches trace the De retardatione to one “dominus Castri goet,” writing in the early thirteenth century.

The case for Bacon’s authorship appears to rest on attributions in some of the manuscripts containing the tract 2 and on internal references between Bacon’s Opus maius and the De retardatione. Crowley, and later Paravicini Bagliani and Stevens, indicate that the earliest manuscript ascribing the De retardatione to Bacon dates from the late fourteenth century, and that the tract is not generally attributed to Bacon until the i fteenth century, mainly in English manuscripts (Crowley 1950, 23–24; Paravicini Bagliani 1991a, 297–99). In addition, the apparent reference within the De retardatione to the Opus maius seems to be a later addition, and the citations of the De retar- datione within the Opus maius all suggest that the author was unknown to Bacon. The treatise claims that the author was persuaded to share his medi- cal knowledge of old age by two learned men, one of whom can be identii ed with the Parisian philosopher Philip the Chancellor. But Philip died in 1236 when Bacon was only twenty-two years old; it seems unlikely, or at least ques- tionable, that the young Englishman would have been asked to undertake

a work of the magnitude of the De retardatione so early in his career, no mat- ter how precocious he may have been (Crowley 1950, 23). The discussions advanced by Crowley and the additional material provided by Paravicini Bagliani and Stevens leave little doubt that the author of the De retardatione was someone other than Roger Bacon, and that Bacon knew of this work when he composed the Opus maius and compiled his edition of the Secretum secretorum (Crowley 1950, 24; Paravicini Bagliani and Stevens 1987).

Content

The Liber (or Epistola) de retardatione accidentium senectutis — the Book (or Let- ter) on Delaying the Symptoms of Old Age — purports to deliver exactly what

its title indicates: it is a treatise on maintaining vigor and prolonging life. Unlike the Baconian extracts on longevity edited by Tavormina in chapter 9, this work does not mention the perfection of the pre-lapsarian state, focus-

2 Little lists seventeen manuscripts of the De retardatione, including the Middle Eng- lish translation in TCC R.14.52, and collates ten of the Latin manuscripts for his

apparatus (LW viii–xviii); Paravicini Bagliani identii es an additional seventeen manuscripts, a few of them now lost (1991a, 292–300). On the cultural and intellec- tual contexts of the ideas put forward in the De retardatione, especially as they relate to the thirteenth-century papal court and to Bacon’s authentic writings on the pro- longation of life, see Paravicini Bagliani [1994] 2000, 199–211; for further discus- sion of the medieval quest for prolongevity, see Headnote to chap. 9 below.

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ing instead on methods of maintaining the good health of youth and of slowing the advance of old age. Rigorous adherence to a restorative regimen can produce a signii cant degree of rejuvenation both in body and mind; although more difi cult to obtain, knowledge of the hidden (occult) secrets of the ancients can further lengthen life and vitality. As its goal is “to defende from the accidentis of age and of old men” (lines 30–31) the text is devoted to medical and dietary suggestions, none of them particularly new, on restor- ing and replenishing the vital spirits and l uids of the elderly body.

More efi cacious in renewing youth, according to the wisdom of the ancients, are various remedies passed down “with word hid,” so that they should not fall into the hands of “vnfeithful and vntriew men that were vnworthy” (line 307–308, 318). The treatise delineates a varying number of occult remedies for the ills of old age and for the prolongation of life, notably in chapters 1 and 6, which speak of seven hidden things, discussed in more detail in the section on Occult Medicines below.

That being said, however, the majority of the work concerns methods of restoring innate heat and natural moisture to the aging body. This pre- scription is not original to the writer. Medieval medical theory, inherited from the Greeks and Romans and expanded by Islamic physicians and phi- losophers, held that decline in the animal body originates in a depletion of its allotment of vital (or innate) heat and sustaining moisture. Concurrent with the creation of life itself, these two qualities diminish from conception onwards, until in old age, the body’s fatty moisture which feeds the i re of life is consumed and the i re is itself extinguished. The treatise repeats the well-known metaphor of the burning lamp to explain this process:

But to the resolucioun of natural humydite fallith of ij causes. The

i rst cause is the ayre compassyng, whiche drieth the matier, and the heete in man whiche is wiþthyn to that helpith; forwhi she is cause of quenchyng hirsilf, for that he hath consumed his matier, as fuyre of the lampe quenchith whan his oile consumyth. (lines 177–181; see also Explanatory Note 15)

Until optimum age, placed usually between forty and i fty years, 3 the vital i re burns in the heart, fueled by natural fatty moisture augmented and conserved by diet and lifestyle. At the prime of life, the healthy male body comes as close as possible in this world to the perfect balance of heat and moisture. In the years of decline, however, the life-i re grows weaker, nourished by ever dwindling supplies of moisture. The body becomes

3 The treatise places the peak of maturity at forty-i ve to i fty years: “after that nat- ural heete bigynnyth to mynush of necessite, and that tyme bigynneth after xlv or

l yeere generaly” (lines 213–214). On the general medieval notion of the prime or perfect age, see Dove 1986.

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cooler, causing insufi cient digestion, which in turn decreases heat-sus- taining fatty moisture and increases cold, harmful moisture in the form of phlegm. A cycle is thereby established wherein weaker heat leads to damag- ing moisture which then leads to even weaker heat. Cooled digestion also results in a reduced blood supply, contributing to, among other undesirable

things, a diminution of sexual vigor. 4 The entire spectrum of physiologi- cal changes caused by this degeneration in heat, moisture, and blood are the accidents — the preventable signs — of old age. Medieval medical theory holds that these accidents could be inhibited by replenishing the heat and

moisture lost to the process of aging. 5 Building on the understanding that restoration leads to a healthy digestion, which stimulates the production of benei cial moisture and plentiful blood, the De retardatione accidentium senec- tutis devotes most of its attention to methods, both common and arcane, which assist the augmentation of bodily heat and moisture.

Like most of the manuscripts described in Little’s edition, the Middle English translation is divided into a Proheme which addresses the reader followed by eleven chapters dealing with the causes of aging and with meth- ods by which to impede them (the De retardatione proper). Following these eleven chapters in the “English group” of De retardatione manuscripts (see Textual Afi liations section below) are three short tracts, on the general regimen for old people; on baths, medicinal oils, exercise, and bloodletting for the old; and recipes for medicines to aid mental function. The Trin- ity translation breaks these supplemental tracts down further, giving sep- arate headings for the sections on food, drink, baths, anointing, exercise, bloodletting, and recipes (which it calls medicine occultate), but appears to see them as part of the De retardatione as a whole: the explicit on folio 28r, after the “De medicinis occultatis” section, reads “Here endith the treatice of Frere Rogier Bacon of the rule of helth and accidentis of age.”

Much of the advice in the treatise is commonplace, taken from Greek and Arab authors. The Greek sources are usually quoted indirectly (tes- tante Avicenna, testante Isaac), whereas Arab writers are usually quoted “hon- estly and accurately” (LW xxxiii). “Aristotelian” quotations derive largely from the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum. Indeed, Withington dem- onstrates that authentic references to Aristotelian writings comprise a mere

i ve per cent of the total number of quotations while the Secretum secretorum accounts for twelve per cent. Almost i fty per cent of the citations belong to

4 The same humoral theory underlies the physiology in Ibn al-Jazz¯ar’s treatise on male sexuality, translated by Constantine the African as the Liber de coitu, the source in turn

of the Middle English Liber creatoris in TCC R.14.52 (ed. Matheson, chap. 8 below). 5 For general discussions of medieval medical theories of aging, see Hall 1971; Niebyl

1971b; McVaugh 1974; Demaitre 1990; Schäfer (2004) reviews ancient and medieval medical views on aging and its treatment as an essential background to early modern

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Avicenna, while extracts from the other Arab writers Rhazes, Haly Abbas, and Haly ibn Ridw¯an represent about twenty-i ve per cent. Isaac Israeli (or Judaeus), his pupil Ahmad ibn al-Jazz¯ar, and John Mesue (Damascenus) are responsible for the remainder (LW xxxiv).

The De retardatione is logically ordered, for the most part, although many observations are repeated in various chapters. The i rst two chap- ters deal with the physical and psychological symptoms of old age and the causes thereof. The problem being identii ed, the next nine chapters sug- gest strategies for combating the deleterious effects of aging. Methods of restoring natural moisture occupy chapters 3 and 4, one focusing on food and drink and the other on external restoratives. Chapter 5 considers the same subject from a negative position, identifying foods and conditions which hasten the aging process.

Chapters 6 through 9 are devoted to the maintenance of humoral bal- ance, the augmentation of innate heat, and the reinforcement of essential bodily spirits. In these sections, the author relies on established medical explanations of life processes. His simple advice bases itself on counteracting those conditions which accelerate the discomforts of the elderly. For exam- ple, unbalanced humours, especially cold, moist phlegm leading to melan- choly, are endemic to older individuals. This physiological inequity is allevi- ated by foods and practices exhibiting opposite qualities: cold and moist is treated with hot and dry, cold and dry with hot and moist, and so on.

Although the aged are afl icted with what appears to be plentiful mois- ture, far from being benei cial, their phlegm does not serve useful pur- poses, being manufactured in an inefi cient, cooled digestive system. This extraneous or superi cial moisture must therefore be regulated by sub- stances to warm the stomach and restore good concoction of food. Differ- ent kinds of medicines and foods have different therapeutic effects on the physiology of the elderly: to purge phlegm and take away white hairs, for example, chapter 6 recommends a number of vegetable- and mineral-based medicines, including a more detailed discussion of the occult medicines already listed in chapter 1 (see the Occult Medicines section below) and the use of hot oils to restore hair to its youthful tints; chapter 7 focuses on the restoration and strengthening of natural heat, especially through prox- imity to a healthy young person and the consumption of suitably tempered wine. Chapter 8 is devoted to medicines based on viper’s l esh, said to be of particular value in restoring the physical and mental faculties; chapter 9 discusses the unguents to be used in the morning massages recommended by many regimens for the aged, a practice said to ease movement and stim- ulate the virtus animalis from which all other bodily virtues arise.

In chapter 10, the author turns to cosmetic concerns, offering several therapies to reverse the characteristic drying, discoloration, and wrinkling (corrugatio) of the skin in old age: appropriate foods, the trifera sarracenica

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or salves for the skin. Chapter 11 promotes the De retardatione by laying out ways in which its pharmacological method goes beyond more traditional regimens for the elderly, while still acknowledging the complementarity of the two approaches. As noted earlier, the treatise is often followed by sev- eral supplemental tracts on geriatric regimen and on further recipes for anti-aging medicines, items which the Middle English version treats as parts of a single, more or less unii ed text.

Occult Medicines

As Withington observes (LW xlii), most of the advice in this treatise con- cerning the preservation of youth is banal and obvious, however cloaked it may be in obscure rhetoric. The overall regimen for the elderly resembles very closely what is considered today a healthy lifestyle. The physical body is comforted and reinforced by nutritious food that does not tax the diges- tion, moderate exercise, and relaxing massages and baths. The enjoyment of beauty in nature, song, and human pulchritude contribute to a positive and cheerful outlook, nurturing a mental and spiritual contentment. None of this information is original or exciting, even in the medical texts avail- able in the thirteenth century.

What creates the aura of secrecy in the text is the obfuscation of simple substances through metaphors and allusions. Early in the text (lines 307– 313), the author lists seven “hidden” medicines, reputed to have miraculous effects in prolonging youth and repairing the ravages of age. That which “lith in the bowels of th’erth” is simply gold, a “cordial” or heart medica- tion, as Chaucer observes a century and a half later (General Prologue 443). Because gold is a noble metal, it has afi nity with the most noble organ of the body: the heart. It therefore can be given to elderly patients in order to

strengthen cardiac function. 6 Even today, gold is administered as a medica- tion to suppress inl ammation in such diseases as rheumatoid arthritis.

6 John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum rec- ommends using gold i lings or gold powder in food and drink to combat leprosy

and, with the addition of borage and the “bone” or cartilage from a stag’s heart, to help “a ens swonyng and a ens cardeakle passioun.” Thin gold plates, heated red hot and quenched in wine, render the wine efi cacious against ailments of the spleen and other illnesses due to excess melancholy (On the Properties of Things 16.4; Seymour et al. 1975–1988, 2:829). On potable gold (aurum potabile) in med- ical alchemy or as a kind of dietary supplement, see Calvet 1995, 201–4 and nn.; Paravicini Bagliani [1994] 2000, 227–28 (Arnald of Villanova); Pereira 1998, 37–

40 (in connection with distillation and medical waters in the later fourteenth and i fteenth centuries); Crisciani and Pereira 1998 (relating potable gold, the elixir, the quintessence, and theriac to each other and to the fourteenth- and i fteenth- century search for universal remedies against the plague and other diseases); and

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Another material “swymmyth in the see.” Either ambergris or pearls may be indicated here (LW xxxix–xl), 7 although the recipes provided in chapter 11 refer to amber, probably understood as ambergris (it is described as an aromatic substance, lines 2015–2016). Known to the Arabs as “anbar,” ambergris was originally called “amber” in the West (OED, s.vv. amber, ambergris), where true amber (yellow amber or Prussian amber) and ambergris (‘grey amber’) were thought to have the same or similar origins. The linguistic similarity was supported by the observations that both were fragrant, rare, costly, somewhat similar in appearance and found cast up on seashores. The putative efi cacy of ambergris in medieval medical recipes for delaying the effects of old age probably stems from contentions in Arab

writings that the substance is benei cial to both heart and brain. 8 The medicine which “creepith vpon the ground” is the highly-regarded viper’s l esh, which originally seems to have been thought to have proper- ties neutralizing snake bite. Its inclusion in the occulta likely occurs because of the pervasive mythology surrounding serpents, and because of the fact that snakes regularly renew themselves through shedding their old skin. The potent medicine known as “theriac” or “treacle” (see MED, s.vv. tiriacle n., tiriake n. and adj., triacle n.; OED, s.vv. theriac sb., theriacle sb., treacle sb.), which originally contained both the l esh and venom of poisonous snakes in addition to honey, was viewed as a sovereign remedy for poisons of vari- ous sources, from snake and animal bites to ingested substances, infections in wounds, or pestilence. 9

7 The De retardatione mentions pearls later in its i rst chapter (line 352 in the ME text). When Roger Bacon draws on the De retardatione for the ingredients of the

elixir, in “The Bodies of Adam and Eve,” he distinguishes between the thing “that swymmyth in the see” (pearls) and the thing “that is cast out of the see” (glossed by Bacon as “ambra, whiche is sperma cete or sperme of the whale” or ambergris):

ed. Tavormina, chap. 9, lines 531–532, 540–541 below. Richard Browne, the seven- teenth-century translator of the De retardatione, glosses the substance from the sea as coral (1683, 21).

8 Ambergris would be used in the centuries following the De retardatione as the central ingredient of poma ambrae, balls of ambergris and other substances whose

odor was believed to ward off plague (Riddle 1964); thus, John of Burgundy rec- ommends the use of a pomum ambre in the De epidemia plague treatise whose trans- lation appears later in TCC R.14.52 (ed. Matheson, chap. 12, line 115 below).

9 On the classical, medieval, and early modern preparation and use of various forms of theriac, frequently though not universally incorporating vipers’ l esh, see

G. Watson 1966, with attention to the post-classical periods and England in part III (94–152); McVaugh (1972) discusses the study of theriac and its preparation at Montpellier ca. 1285–1325. Belief in the curative power of snake-meat or of other supposed products of snakes’ bodies continued to play an active role in medicine and science well beyond the Middle Ages, sometimes in potential competition with theriac itself, as Baldwin has shown in relation to the Asian “snakestones” studied

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The plant that “thriveth in the air,” or rosemary, taken internally, stimu- lates a weak heart and defends against dropsy. It is also reputed to lighten depression and to comfort the nerves. Used externally, it alleviates the symptoms of gout. Since the plant was considered to be hot and dry in quality, it was a natural ingredient in medicines aimed at counteracting the cold and excessive moisture of old age. A medieval wonder drug, it makes an appearance in recipes dealing with a variety of complaints, from

scaly skin to heart problems. 10 The substance which originates in the mine (mynieres, Lat. minera ‘a mine, ore; i g. source [of something valuable]’) of the “noble” beast is probably human blood, although human warmth or breath may also be implied. From the tale of Abishag and the elderly King David in biblical narrative (Vulgate 3 Kings 1:1–4; AV 1 Kings 1:1–4) to the myth of the Fisher King cured by the blood of a pure virgin, the therapeu- tic properties of human warmth/breath/blood were legendary. Because in the medieval system of humors, blood rules in the body, it stands to reason that infusion of new blood could cure or revitalize an aging or ailing phys- iology. It is signii cant that although the translator alludes to the “noble animal” in his summary of efi cacious substances, it never appears in the recipes themselves. Presumably, its power sufi ced to work on its own; the infrequency and obscurity of references to this ingredient of human ori- gin may also rel ect some anxiety over the ethics or scandal of using human blood or encouraging extra-marital physical intimacy (see LW xl–xli and Textual Afi liations section below). 11

The material culled from “bestis of long lif” consists of cartilage some- times found in a stag’s heart. According to a story in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder (8.50), stags identii ed as belonging to Alexander the

10 The medicinal, cosmetic, and magical virtues of rosemary were powerful enough to warrant the composition of individual treatises on the plant, both in Latin and

several European vernaculars, including English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and Catalan; see Zimmermann 1980, Fery-Hue 1997, and Explanatory Note 136.

11 On the primacy of human blood in alchemical procedures discussed by Roger Bacon in several of his works, see Newman 1995, 79–99. Newman argues con-

vincingly that Bacon’s ideas on using blood as the essential element of the elixir vitae were derived from the pseudo-Avicennan treatise De anima in arte alkimia and then inl uenced his interpretation of a passage in the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum. When Bacon encountered the De retardatione, which he cites directly in the “Corpora Adae et Evae” extract from the Opus minus and Opus maius (ed. Tavormina, chap. 9 below), he might have interpreted its references to the minera nobilis animalis ‘the mine [or ore] of the noble animal’ as another authority recom- mending the use of blood in the elixir. The “Corpora Adae et Evae” includes the minera nobilis animalis in its list of occult medicines taken from the De retardatione (chap. 9, lines 514–522), but does not explain the phrase in any detail, in contrast to its more forthright glossing of the other occulta.

The Accidents of Age

Great were found living a century later. From this legend grew a belief that stags were particularly long-lived creatures. Medical theory, which assumed assimilation of properties from ingested materials, had but a short step from this legend to the supposition that the cartilage found in a stag’s heart could facilitate longevity (see Explanatory Notes 101, 224). 12

The plant of India, erroneously translated as the plant which is “planted in the day,” is lignum aloes, considered to be a safe and warming purgative for the sedentary, phlegmatic constitution of the elderly. 13 Elimination of superl uous bodily humors, especially phlegm, i gures large in regimens for the aged, yet purges are frequently harsh and debilitating. The aloe plant facilitated the necessary evacuation of poisonous l uids without put- ting undue stress on an aging physiology. 14

Translation Strategies

In their detailed analysis of the translation strategies employed in two later texts in the Trinity manuscript (chap. 5 above), Päivi Pahta and María José Carrillo Linares point out that translations of medical texts in the Middle Ages “form a two-level continuum on the scale from literal to free transla- tion” (98). Like the De spermate and De humana natura discussed by Pahta and Carrillo Linares, On Tarrying the Accidents of Age falls decidedly on the side of literalism, to the extent that the meaning of the material is often obscured by its i delity to Latin syntax. Even gibberish sections in the Latin are rendered as faithfully as possible. This i delity is compromised, how- ever, by two very important failings of the translator: he is not a secure Latinist, and he appears to be ignorant of the complexities and some of the more technical terms of medical theory. Thus, in addition to the usual

12 One of the l yleaves to the Trinity manuscript contains a note in a later hand describ- ing “How Long Nine Manner of Things Shall Live,” in which the lifespan of a hart (the

red deer stag) is calculated as 244 years; see Headnote to chap. 9, 339 below. 13 Like rosemary, lignum aloes was considered to be hot and dry, hence a suitable

antidote to the excessive cold and moisture of old age. One of the most common secondary ingredients of the “amber apples” mentioned in n. 8 above was lignum aloes; see Riddle 1964, 113.

14 In addition to discussing the De retardatione’s occulta in the “Corporae Adae et Evae” extract noted above (n. 11), Bacon cites those ingredients elsewhere in his

works as well. See, for example, the De erroribus medicorum in LW 173 (lignum aloes), 174 (rosemary), 176 (lignum aloes, gold, pearls, cartilage from a stag’s heart), 177 (viper’s and dragon’s l esh), and 178 (tactus puellarum, rosemary). For a translation of the De erroribus medicorum, see Welborn 1932, and for a contextualization of the treatise in Bacon’s broader philosophical thought, see Getz 1997. Though some- what dated, Withington’s discussion of the occulta in the introduction to Little and Withington (xxxi–xliv) is still informative.

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errors attributable to the scribal history of the translator’s exemplar or to the mechanical quality of the translation, the text abounds in passages that corrupt or negate the meaning of its Latin source.

For detailed examples of the translator’s negotiation of his original, we refer readers to the Language Notes in the edition below. Among his more interesting habits and errors, we would highlight the following:

1. Characteristic translations of particular words: licet = “liefully”; cutis = “nayle” (!); ut = “as” (in almost all contexts, whether idiomatic English or not).

2. Unfamiliarity with medical or physiological terms and names: (eu)chimus/(eu)chimia ‘good moisture/juices in foods’ rendered by forms of chewen (94, 198, etc.); muscillago ‘mucus’ translated as “mersh-malow” (508, 515); spica celtica ‘Celtic spikenard’ as “hevenly eeris” (1205); Plinius ‘Pliny,’ possibly encountered in an abbreviated form, as “philosophre” (as if philosophus; 741, 748) and “many” (as if plurimi; 1233).

3. Analytical translation (sometimes with faulty analysis) of prei xed Latin words: consistere = ‘(evene) withstonde’ (40, etc.); superi ciei = “vpon the sight” (as if super + faciei; 116); planta Indie ‘plant of India, lignum aloes’ = “planted in the day” (1139, etc.); investigandam ‘to be examined, investigated’ = “in steppyng” (as if in + *vestigians; 629); confert = “evene berith” (947); subiacet = “wndirlith” (954); incorpora ‘combine, incorporate’ = “in the bodies” (2066).

4. Doublet translations that may suggest uncertainty about the sense of

a word: iudicandum = “to shewe or deme” (as if unsure whether the Latin word was indicandum or iudicandum; 8); nutrientium = “norissh- ynges or norices” (206); ab = “from of or of that” (456–457); tremori = “tremelyng dreede” (as if combining tremor and timor; 948); neruos = “nerves and synewes” (1146–1147). Doublets (occasionally triplets) that offer less and more familiar equivalents to Latin words also occur, as elsewhere in Middle English translation practice (cf. Pahta and Carrillo Linares, chap. 5, 104 above): investigatio = “investiga- cioun or goyng in” (46); euacuationibus = “evacuaciouns, voidynges, or vomytes” (96–97); illiniatur = “illynied or smered” (1559–1560).

5. Errors that appear to arise from misinterpreted abbreviations; many of the likely abbreviations are quite commonplace in medical texts, suggesting that the translator was relatively unfamiliar with the subject matter: melancolic- read as “moche” (as if mult-; 1164, 1900); malencoliam read as “malice” (995); fe., an abbreviation for fen, a divi- sion in Avicenna’s Canon, read as “feuers” (1012); the title of Rhazes’ Ad Almansorem read as Almagest (1537); frigide read as “deedis” (as if facte ; 1094); and so on.

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6. Misinterpretation of grammatical endings, notably i nal -o and -io on nominative singular forms of abstract feminine nouns, read as if indicating a masculine/neuter dative, and translated with preposi- tional phrases beginning with “to the . . . ”: e.g., restauracio = “to the restauracioun” (93), and so on throughout (e.g., 95–96, 163, and 177). We have not found examples of the misinterpretation of nominative forms in -is or dative singular forms in -i as genitive singular forms like those reported by Pahta and Carrillo Linares (chap. 5, 111–12 above), though such forms may occur here and there in the text.

In at least a couple of instances, it appears that the translator was able to learn and correct errors as he progressed through the text, though he generally did not return to correct earlier mistakes. Thus, in chapter 3, the translator misreads forms of corruptio as if they were forms of corpus, -oris, translating the Latin word as Middle English “body”; after several such

errors, however, he begins translating correctly with corrupcioun. 15 Through most of the De retardatione translation, the translator repeats his errone- ous rendering of nominative singular nouns ending in -o/-io as if they were dative singular forms, translated “to the . . . .” Similar errors occur in sub- sequent translations in the i rst 104 folios of TCC R.14.52, but appear to

decline in frequency. 16 If the same person translated all the unique works on fols. 1–104, as Pahta and Carrillo Linares have persuasively argued above, then the decrease in errors suggests that practice helped him improve, though not perfect, his output.

A pair of related phenomena in the De retardatione text may cast fur- ther light on the translator’s procedure and his relation to the Hammond

15 See Language Notes to lines 645, 750, and 809. Before his series of mistransla- tions of corruptio in chap. 3 of the De retardatione, the translator had handled the

word successfully once (in line 332), followed by a case of wavering between the translations ‘corruption’ and ‘body’ near the end of chap. 2 (line 645), so the mis- translations at the beginning of chapter 3 cannot be attributed to simple igno- rance of the Latin noun. Since the word corpus occurs much more frequently in the De retardatione than the word corruptio, the translator may have leapt to the more familiar but erroneous word through his inattentiveness to the overall sense of the text (evident in his verbum a verbo literalism), possibly exacerbated by similarities between the shapes of the Latin words or their abbreviations.

16 See, for example, the mistranslations of nominative -o and -io nouns in lines 172– 173, 342–343, and 359–361 (pulmo, altitudo, animatio) and the correct rendering of

such nouns in lines 255, 268, 283, 449, and 515–517 (ambulatio, transumptio, obliuio, conceptio) in the De spermate treatise that follows the De retardatione (ed. Pahta 1998). The error becomes rare in later translations in folios 1–104 of the Trinity manu- script, though it occurs at least once in the Commentary on the Hippocratic Prognos- tics (line 1427 and Language Note).

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scribe. At several points, the scribe leaves blank spaces in his text (see Tex- tual Notes to lines 933, 1050, 1154, 1186, 1513, 1558, 1857). These blanks could mean that he was unable to make out the word to be copied, but since several of the missing words could have posed translation difi culties or did in fact pose such difi culties elsewhere in the text, they may rel ect gaps left

by the translator and carried over by the scribe. 17 Several other words and phrases have been written in compressed script, as if to i t in a space origi- nally left blank but not quite large enough: wele chewed (94), chewyng (198), chewed and (239); to stopped (934); plente of heris aboute priues (946–947); brennyng or hote (1414). The i rst three examples of this compressed writing (rel ecting the i rst three occurrences of the technical Latin word euchimia in the text) may have originally been left blank until the translator settled on forms of the verb chewen as his best guess for euchimia. For the scribe to know how to i ll in those blanks, however, he must have been working with the translator or had access to the Latin original in order to know that the blanks corresponded to the word later rendered as chewed, chewyng, and so on. For the other examples, see the relevant Textual and Language Notes.

Even more interesting is the word farmacie/farmacy (lines 873 and 877), which appears to have been inserted into spaces originally left blank but slightly too small for a seven- or eight-character word. Further along in the text, however, we i nd a blank where the Latin text again has farmacia (line 1050); and i nally we i nd farmacia being translated as farynacioun(s), writ-

ten at the scribe’s normal size and spacing (lines 1917, 1925). 18 One scenario 17 The gaps and their source text are as follows:

line 933: approx. 15-character space; Latin cardiacis et tremori cordis et timorosis et ‘for people with heart disease and for heart tremor and for the timorous’ (a few lines later, timorosos is translated with the nonsense word cynorose; a line or two further on, tremori is translated as tremelynge dreede, suggesting uncertainty between tremor and timor).

line 1050: approx. 5-character space; Lat. farmacia. See discussion below. line 1154: 6- to 7-character space; Lat. coctum ‘cooked, concocted (physiologically).’ line 1186: 3- to 4-character space; Lat. nigello ‘nigella sativa, black cumin.’ line 1513: 6- to 7-character space; Lat. chimum ‘moisture, juice.’ line 1558: 4- to 5-character space; Lat. grossum simile ‘something similarly thick.’ line 1857: 2- to 3-character space; Latin amido ‘crushed hulled wheat, grits’ (a culi-

nary term that might have been unfamiliar to the translator). 18 The word farynacioun is also used to translate Latin farmacia in the “De XII por-

tis” section of the De spermate text edited by Pahta (1998, lines 847, 907, and per- sonal communication), providing further support to the hypothesis of a single translator for all the texts on fols. 1–104.

The Accidents of Age

that might explain these facts would be if the translator had left spaces for the unfamiliar word when he i rst encountered it and then made a (faulty) decision about how to translate it later in the text, followed by the scribe copying the blank spaces and then consulting with the translator, or at least with the translator’s exemplar, to see how to i ll in those spaces and making

a different (this time correct) decision about the English word to use. On the other hand, if the scribe were himself the translator, then one would need to assume — another admittedly reasonable scenario — that on return- ing to i ll in these spaces, he realized what the word should be but did not remember the blank at line 1050 or his erroneous translations in lines 1917 and 1925. In any case, it again seems clear, as in the case of the euchimia translations above, that the scribe had sufi ciently ready access to the Latin original, whether directly or indirectly, that he could i ll in a number of spaces he originally left blank, compressing his script when necessary to accommodate words longer than the allotted space.

Marginal Annotations

The Middle English On Tarrying the Accidents of Age was annotated by at least i ve writers. The i rst layer of annotation, nearly 150 notes written by the Hammond scribe himself, consists almost entirely of authorities cited in the text or Latin tags from the source text. In the edition that follows, these notes are enclosed in angle brackets and included in the text. Two annotations by the main scribe fall outside the normal catego- ries of authorities or Latin tags from the source (unless they were mar- ginal notes already occurring in the Latin exemplar): quomodo arator . . . & currentem (fol. 13r) and the English gloss Aire (fol. 11v). These marginal notes by the Hammond scribe are usually decorated with paraphs in alter- nating red and rose ink.

A second hand adds ten notes to folios running from 6r to 13v, early enough in the manuscript’s history that these notes were included in the alternating series of red and rose paraphs. The script is slightly tighter than that of the Hammond scribe, with a particularly distinctive form for the letter e (with a concave upper stroke). Half of the annotations in this hand are simple “nota” comments, usually in the form nota bene nota, but the other half make slightly more substantive comments on the text. We have included these notes in the text, since they appear to have been part of the original production process leading up to the decoration with paraphs, but enclosed them in double angle brackets to distinguish them from the main scribe’s annotations. Matheson suggests (personal communication)

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that the hand bears some resemblance to, though probably not identity with, that of John Vale as preserved in holograph documents reproduced by Kekewich et al. (1995, frontispiece and illustrations 3, 8, 9, and 11); Pahta notes similarities between this hand and that responsible for texts on folios 255r–256v (chap. 1, 11 above).

The remaining marginalia are recorded in the Textual Notes of our edition. The most active annotator after the main scribe is the writer some- times called the “principal annotator” of the manuscript, annotations in whose hand can be found throughout the manuscript, probably written over some period of time in the late i fteenth to early sixteenth century. This annotator is also responsible for many of the additions made on folios left blank by the main scribe (see Mooney 1995, 55–63, items 14–16, 23–25, 28–30, 45, 49, 61; Pahta, chap. 1, 11–12 above; Green and Mooney, chap. 11, 478–79 below, where he is labeled the “principal annotator” or “annotator 1”). He is responsible for approximately i fty notes in our text, in a some- what sprawling or careless script; the initial caps in his notes are often high- lighted with yellow wash similar to that found on capitals in the text proper. The notes focus on particular ailments or symptoms of old age, therapies, and medicinal substances mentioned in the text, and occasionally use the stylized Nota symbol drawn as a capital N with legs of different lengths, a double horizontal cross-stroke (similar to a capital H), and sometimes a sus- pension mark above the letter.

Two other annotators can be identii ed, both relatively late. About ten notes are in the hand of Henry Dyneley or Dyngley, who writes his initials and the date “1573” on fol. 28r and his full name and a note about the date of Easter in 1573 on fol. 269r, along with other notes scattered through the manuscript (see Pahta, chap. 1, 12 above). His hand is heavier than those of other annotators, with characteristic forms of g, b, r, i nal f, ini- tial h, and other letters. He tends to focus on treatments (“with oylles,” “þe i rste medycine,” etc.) and sometimes on the general content of the accompanying text (“boistous l esche,” “good. better, and best”). The note begyne heree at the bottom of fol. 28r, though written with a i ner-tipped pen, seems to have the same forms of r, g, h, and possibly b and e. The last series of annotations are a set of chapter numbers (“cap. 2,” “cap. 3,” “cap. 4,” etc.) written in a small, i ne hand, indicating the second through sixteenth chapters of the De retardatione in its 1590 Oxford edition and its 1683 English translation by Richard Browne. Two further notes (“Jacinkt” on fol. 5r and “Rubarbe,” underlined, on fol. 14v) and three Nota sym- bols (fols. 14v, 27r) may be by other annotators, or may be by the princi- pal annotator.

The Accidents of Age

Textual Afi liations of the Accidents of Age

The following analysis of the relation of the Accidents of Age and its direct Latin source to the larger textual tradition of the Latin text is based pri- marily on the information about that text in A. G. Little’s 1928 edition. The conclusions drawn from that information are necessarily provisional, given the limitations of the edition in light of recent discoveries about the author- ship of the text and the existence of a substantial number of manuscripts unknown to Little, many of them showing different — and apparently ear- lier — developmental stages of the text and the suite of treatises that often accompany it (Paravicini Bagliani 1991a, 305–12).

Fortunately, the Trinity translation of the text clearly belongs to the manuscript tradition, of English origin, in which the De retardatione is attrib- uted to Roger Bacon and is followed by a series of other gerontological and medical treatises, some by the De retardatione author (on internal evi- dence) and some by Bacon himself, always in the same order. Although Little did not collate all of the manuscripts in this tradition, his apparatus does include most of them, and basing the analysis that follows on his edi- tion should allow a reasonable degree of coni dence in the relationships

suggested by that apparatus. 19

Little identii es two major versions of the De retardatione, a shorter ver- sion represented by two manuscripts (PV, possibly the earlier form of the text; see Paravicini Bagliani 1991a, 298, 310), and a longer version found in his base text (B = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 438) and i ve

other collated manuscripts (EOSCanM). 20 The longer version can be bro- ken down further into two families, SCanM and BEO (plus Ch, a direct descendant of E that Little generally does not collate). SCanM and its sub- sets do not contain a number of short to medium-length passages found in BEO; whether those passages are omissions from a text antecedent to SCanM as Little thought (LW xix–xx), or additions to an ancestor of the

BEO family is not yet clear. 21

19 For a full listing of manuscripts and early printed editions, see Paravicini Bagliani 1991a, 292–302; for more detailed descriptions of the manuscripts col-

lated by Little, see LW viii–xxi.

20 For identii cation of the individual manuscripts represented by these sigla, see the Editorial Practice section below.

21 Paravicini Bagliani describes the SCanM group as “tre manoscritti importanti”; their signii cant variations from Little’s base text help support his call for a reex-

amination of the complete textual tradition of the De retardatione (1991a, 310, 322).

148 Everest/Tavormina

T should probably be afi liated primarily with the BEO family, as it agrees with BEO in containing most of the material omitted in the PV and SCanM groups. Not surprisingly, there are numerous small variations between Little’s critical text and the Latin exemplar that can be inferred from the Middle English translation. Many of these discrepancies can be paralleled in the variants recorded in Little’s textual apparatus or explained by way of commonplace scribal errors (see the Language and Explanatory Notes to the edition below), though those parallels do not sug- gest any direct ancestry for the Latin manuscript used by the Trinity trans- lator. However, there are some omitted passages in T that coincide with PV omissions or SCanM omissions and that appear to be more signii cant than simple coincidental scribal error. 22

The most interesting of these omissions — using the word without prej- udice to the question of whether the gaps represent lost material or mate- rial added later in the tradition — are a passage in Little’s edition that is generally read as a reference to Bacon’s Scientia experimentalis (i.e., the Opus maius, part 6) and three passages on the mysterious ingredient lapis quadra- tus nobilis animalis or ‘four-sided stone of the noble animal.’ Crowley (1950, 24), followed by Paravicini Bagliani (1991a, 290), suggests that the passage cross-referencing Bacon’s work (LW 54/13–20; omitted in PV, SCanM, and T) is a later interpolation to the original text. The passages on the lapis qua- dratus (LW 58/2–4, 24–27 and 60/2–18, all in chapter 7; omitted in PV and T) are generally thought to refer, albeit cryptically, to the medicinal use of human blood or to the rejuvenating effects of intimate contact with a healthy young person of a perfectly tempered complexion. As such, if they were part of the original De retardatione, they might have been seen by later copyists as overly esoteric or of dubious moral quality and thus in need of excision. On the other hand, given that they are absent from the very early manuscript P (which also contains an attribution to the “dominus castri g[o]et” now credited with the authorship of the De retardatione), it seems at least as likely that they were added to the original text by someone with interests in the more arcane aspects of longevity therapeutics. In either case, the fact that T usually follows Little’s BEO group but agrees with PV

22 Over eighty passages in Little’s text do not occur in PV, some of them longer than a page in the printed edition; T shares approximately twenty of these omis-

sions, about half of them relatively short (one to eight words long) and the other half ranging from one to seventeen lines. SCanM have many fewer common omis- sions in comparison to Little’s base text B than the PV group, only two or three of which are shared by T, though T’s readings sometimes also agree with variants in PV or SCanM.

The Accidents of Age

and/or SCanM on certain substantive omissions may indicate that the Trin- ity translation, despite its faults, will need to be taken into account in the full critical edition of the De retardatione called for by Paravicini Bagliani (1991a, 322).

Editorial Practice

In addition to the general editorial practices described in the Preface to this volume, we use double angle brackets in the text to indicate marginal annotations by a second hand, written before the red and rose paraphs were added to the marginal notes. The relatively few marginalia in other hands are recorded in the Textual Notes.

The Middle English text is collated against Little’s edition of the De retardatione (cited as L), with selected variants from his textual apparatus,

with the following sigla (dates based on Paravicini Bagliani 1991a, 284–85, and for E, on Getz 1992b, 143 n. 15):

B = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 438 (s. xv. init.; Little’s base text)

E = Oxford, Bodleian Library, e Musaeo MS 155 (s. xv. med.) 23

O = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 211 (s. xv ex.) S = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. Selden. MS B.35 (s. xv, though

Little and Crowley take it as s. xiv ex.; some variants from S given below are taken directly from a microi lm of the manuscript)

Can = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Can. Misc. MS 334 (s. xv ex.) M = Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS I 210 inf. (s. xv ex.) P = Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 6978 (s. xiv init.)

V = Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. MS 4091 (s. xv) Ch = Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 11366 (s. xv; a direct descen-

dant of E)

23 E was copied in the i fteenth century at least partly by John Cokkys, an Oxford physician (d. by 1475); it contains several alchemical texts (a number of them attrib-

uted to Bacon), along with the De retardatione and some genuine Baconian texts, including the two excerpts edited in chap. 9 below. See LW xi–xiii; BRUO 1:457; Talbot and Hammond 1965, 134–36; Getz 1992b, 143 n. 15; Getz 1997, 356–57. Voigts notes certain similarities between E and manuscripts in the “Sloane Group” of medical/scientii c manuscripts (1990, 34 n. 41).

ON TARRYING THE ACCIDENTS OF AGE

(De retardatione accidentium senectutis)

[fol. 1r] The treatice of Freere Rogier Bacon of th’order of Menours of tarieng

and withdrawyng the accidentis of age and of elder men

[Prohemium]

Lord of the world, whiche of the most noblest stokk hast take the spryng

5 and the bigynnyng: higheste God to whos goodenes and holynes al thynges wonne and opteyned doeth com by. I thynk and have thought

of many werkis evene pleasaunt to thy highnes. 1 I have stied on high and

I have founde an hard thyng but often fallible to shewe or deme. I have serchid th’entrails and bowels of th’erth: and ther have I founde the