HERB - Re: Culpepper and beginning period books

[Kathleen Keeler]

Moira
  Please ask stupid questions, make everyone clarify their thinking.

> I have perhaps a very stupid question - but are not Culpepper and Gerard
> primary sources

yes (assuming you have an unedited edition, I think)

>  The last time I submitted something to
> A&S they told me that neither were "period".  Is this correct?

As in, not published before 1600, true.

But I have argued that the printing press made copies available so we have more
surviving from
then than earlier, and that ideas change slowly, so they are likely to
represent period views.

What we've been discussing here, tho, is whether they do indeed represent
conventional Medieval thinking or are either Renaissance works, representing
emerging post-period ideas, or whether the author was a kook and so represent
nothing in particular.  Hard to know, worth discussing.

But, what is the goal of the particular A&S herbal project is clearly the key?
You can use American herbs after 1492 but not before.  Different plants grow in
Scandinavia than in Greece:  a 10th C. persona living in Norway shouldn't work
with bananas even tho they are clearly Period and known from ancient times.

    None of the printing press stuff is Period for me because my time is 1200.
But I don't read Latin and all the herbals of my time are in Latin, so I have
only 2ndary sources (from an historian's viewpoint, meaning the SCA has its own
slant on primary and secondary sources) and so I need to consider the quality
of the translation every time I use something period for me.  Herbals in
English close to modern English have the benefit of cutting out the
translator-middleman.

So I would say good references depend on what you are trying to do.

Agnes, Mag Mor, Calontir
kkeeler1 at unl.edu

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