Salsamenta pictavensium: Gastronomy and Medicine in Twelfth-Century England

This article presents a collection of culinary recipes from a manuscript produced in England from the later twelfth century. The suite of ten recipes for ‘Poitou sauces’ or ‘Poitou relishes’ (salsamenta pictavensium—literally ‘of the Poitevins’) to garnish various kinds of meat, fish and fowl are introduced and analysed, with an appended edition and translation. These are, to date, the oldest extant medieval recipes for such sauces, and in their role as gastronomic enhancements, the earliest surviving medieval culinary recipes. The historical and cultural contexts for the recipes at Durham Cathedral Priory are explored: the nature of the community for whom the recipes were written, its choices of library acquisition, its relationships with the bishopric, and attitudes within the community towards food and medicine in a monastic setting. The Poitevin designation of the sauces is also considered. Above all the article investigates the question of the relationship between gastronomy and medicine in the twelfth century, and seeks to demonstrate that any distinction between medical and culinary recipes suggests a false dichotomy, particularly in the case of salsamenta. The authors argue against the position that medieval cuisine is, in its origins and essence, applied dietetics, and suggest that in the twelfth century salsamenta belonged in the first instance to gastronomy, but were in the process of being appropriated as medicines by the authors of the new literature of therapeutics

Magnifying Grains of Sand, Seeds, and Blades of Grass: Optical Effects in Robert Grosseteste’s De iride (On the Rainbow) (circa 1228–1230)

In his treatise On the Rainbow (De iride), composed nearly four hundred years before the first known telescope, the English polymath Robert Grosseteste identified three striking optical effects: distant objects can be rendered close by; close-by large objects can be rendered small; and distant small objects can be rendered large. In the context of the history of optics, the first effect is especially striking. Grosseteste did not give details of the mechanisms underlying these effects but did mention the passage of rays through refraction in “diaphanous” or transparent bodies. While making no final claim that Grosseteste himself necessarily knew of or used lenses, this essay examines the coherence between the three optical effects described in Grosseteste’s treatise and two candidate proposals for the deployment of a single convex lens. A convex lens, deployed in different ways, is shown to produce all three of Grosseteste’s optical effects, in a manner strikingly aligned with the language that he uses to distinguish changes in the location and size of objects. The implications of this coherence for interpretations of On the Rainbow are discussed throughout the essay

Bernard of Clairvaux, Material and Spiritual Order, and the Economy of Salvation

This article explores themes connected to the spiritual and the material, especially in connection with order and economy, in the thought of the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090/1–1153). It argues that these themes are particularly useful to an analysis of Bernard’s articulation of the challenge of human existence in a fallen world, and the proper role of the Church, its leaders and members, in response to wider concerns for Christian salvation and the material circumstances of twelfth-century Europe. Three treatises provide case studies for this approach, contextualised with discussion of economy in the Christian tradition, and its implications more widely in Bernard’s writing