Sederi Yearbook 30



Sederi 30
Sederi 30 — 2020
EDITOR
Ana Sáez-Hidalgo
REVIEW EDITOR
María José Mora
ISSN 1135-7789

 

Isabel de la Cruz-Cabanillas, “The Secrets of Alexis in Glasgow University Library MS Ferguson 7.” SEDERI 30 (2020): 29–46.

 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34136/sederi.2020.2                                                         Download PDF

 

Abstract

This article deals with a handwritten, hitherto unexplored copy of a printed text, The Secrets of Reverend Alexis of Piedmont, held in Glasgow University Library, MS Ferguson 7, which dates to 1565. The manuscript includes a collection of secrets by an anonymous compiler from the English translation of De’ Secreti del reverendo donno Alessio de Piemontese, a highly popular book of secrets published in Venice in 1555 and immediately rendered into other languages, including English. The handwritten compilation proves to be a dynamic artifact which is personalized to suit the compiler’s needs and ultimately becomes an independent new product.

Keywords: early modern manuscript studies; Books of Secrets; MS Ferguson 7; Secrets of Alexis of Piedmont; Girolamo Ruscelli; William Warde.

 

 

References

Alonso-Almeida, Francisco. 2013. “Genre Conventions in English Recipes, 1600–1800.” In Reading and Writing Recipe Books 1550–1800, edited by Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell, 68–92. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Barbierato, Federico. 2011. “Writing, Reading, Writing: Scribal Culture and Magical Texts in Early Modern Venice.” Italian Studies 66 (2): 263–76. doi: 10.1179/174861811X13009843386710.

Bela, Zbigniew. 1999. Alexego Pedemontaná táiemnice. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Medycyna Praktyczna.

Cruz-Cabanillas, Isabel de la. 2017. “Genre and Text-Type Conventions in Early Modern Women’s Recipe Books.” Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas 12: 13–21.

Dawson, Giles E., and Laetitia Kennedy-Skipton. 1966. Elizabethan Handwriting 1500–1650: A Guide to the Reading of Documents and Manuscripts. London: Faber and Faber.

Dodoens, Rembert. 1578. A Nievve Herball, or Historie of Plantes: wherein is contayned the vvhole discourse and perfect description of all sortes of Herbes and Plantes: their diuers & sundry kindes: their straunge Figures, Fashions, and Shapes: their Names/Natures/Operations/and Vertues: and that not onely of those whiche are here growyng in this our Countrie of Englande/but of all others also of forrayne Realmes commonly vsed in Physicke. London: by Mr. Gerard Dewes.

Eamon, William. 1984. “Arcana Disclosed: The Advent of Printing, the Books of Secrets Tradition and The Development of Experimental Science in the Sixteenth Century.” History of Science 22 (2): 111–50.

Eamon, William. 1985. “Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Science.” Sudhoff’s Archiv 69 (1): 26–49.

Eamon, William. 1994. Science and the Secrets of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Eamon, William. 2011. “How to Read a Book of Secrets.” In Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800, edited by Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin, 23–46. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Eamon, William, and Francoise Paheau 1984. “The Accademia Segreta of Girolamo Ruscelli: A Sixteenth-Century Italian Scientific Society.” Isis 75 (2): 327–42.

Ferguson, John. 1906. Bibliotheca Chemica: A catalogue of the alchemical, chemical and pharmaceutical books in the collection of the late James Young of Kelly and Durris. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons.

Ferguson, John. 1959. Bibliographical Notes on Histories of Invention and Books of Secrets. 2 vols. London: Holland Press.

Glasgow University Library. Catalogue of the Glasgow University Library. Accessed July 8, 2020.

http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/265620.

Pennell, Sara, and Michelle DiMeo. 2013. “Introduction.” In Reading and Writing Recipe Books 1550–1800, edited by Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell, 2–22. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Petti, Anthony G. 1977. English Literary Hands from Chaucer to Dryden. London: Edward Arnold.

Piemontese, Alessio. 1562a. The Secretes of the Reuerende Mayster Alexis of Piemovnt. Containing excellent remedies against diuers disease, woundes, and other accidentes, with the maner to make distillations, parfumes, confitures, dyinges, colours, fusions, and meltinges. A worke well approued, very profitable and necessarie for euery man. Newely corrected and amended, and also somewhat enlarged in certaine places, whiche wanted in the fyrst edition. Translated oute of Frenche into Englyshe, by William Warde. Translated by William Warde. London: Roland Hall for Nycholas England.

Piemontese, Alessio. 1562b. The thyrde and last parte of the Secretes of the reuerende Maisster Alexis of Piemont, by him collected out of diuers excellente Authors, with a necessary Table in the ende, contayining all the matters treated of in this present worke. Englished by Wylliam Warde. Translated by William Warde. London: Roulande Hall for Nycholas England.

Piemontese, Alessio. 1563. The second parte of the Secretes of Maister Alexis of Piemont, by him collected out of diuers excellent auctheurs, and newly translated out of French into English, with a generall Table of all the matters conteyned in the sayde Booke. By Wylliam Ward. Translated by William Warde. London: Roland Hall for Nicholas Englande.

Piemontese, Alessio. 1565. Glasgow University Library MS Ferguson 7.

Preston, Jean F., and Laetitia Yeandle. 1999. English Handwriting 1400–1650: An Introductory Manual. North Carolina: Pegassus Press.

Rey-Bueno, Mar. 2005. “Primeras ediciones en castellano de los libros secretos de Alejo Piamontés.” Pecia Complutense 2 (2): 26–34.

Saguar-García, Amaranta. 2012. “Una edición desconocida del Libro de los Secretos de Alejo Piamontés: Juan Perier, Salamanca, 1573.” In El pasado ajeno. Estudios en honor y recuerdo de Jaime Moll, edited by Guillermo Gómez Sánchez-Ferrer and Amaranta Saguar-García, 59–80. Córdoba: Academia de Cronistas de Ciudades de Andalucía.

Stijnman, Ad. 2012. “A Short-Title Bibliography of the Secreti by Alessio Piemontese.” In The Artist’s Process: Technology and Interpretation, edited by Sigrid Eyb-Green, Joyce H. Townsend, Mark Clarke, Jilleen Nadolny and Stephanos Kroustallis, 32–47. London: Archetype Publications.