All posts by Amanda Herbert

The Uses and Abuses of Medieval Manuscripts in Reformation England

By Nikianna Dinenis

A familiar image of the English Reformation is one of destruction, of Henry VIII dissolving nine hundred monasteries, scattering their rich manuscript collections to the four winds, and transforming the English landscape into a graveyard of Catholic belief and practice. 

In her new book Reading Practice, Melissa Reynolds presents us with a different sixteenth-century world, one in which medieval manuscripts, far from lost or obsolete, were part of the fabric of everyday life. From the fifteenth century, the literate gentry and middling classes had started to build collections of devotional texts and works of natural history, helping them to navigate the vicissitudes of the divinely ordered world. These manuscripts had long lives; they were family books, passed down through generations, evolving in the hands of new owners, who over time annotated, amended, augmented and censored the texts they inherited, reflecting the new ages in which they lived. While monastery walls decayed with disuse,  folios of religious and medicinal works were kept alive by new generations of Protestants. 

In his 2006 Marking the Hours, Eamon Duffy followed English Protestants as they scrawled across their fifteenth-century Catholic Books of Hours. Ignoring the myriad decrees enjoining them to destroy their old prayer books or urging them to buy the 1545 official Protestant royal primer, many otherwise devout reformists preferred instead to include Catholic books in their new religious practices. There was no one way in which they did so. Over the course of the 1530s and 40s, one reformist reader, possibly the London clergyman John Brygandyne, amended his fifteenth-century Hours by deleting certain popish prayers. At the same time, he added traditional Catholic prayers to a guardian angel; he also drew illuminated initials to imitate the decoration of his original Hours. In a more conventional case of censorship, another owner deleted prayers to the Virgin and sacrament from a fifteenth-century Marian primer. But even this begs the question of why he or she still used it. Perhaps, as Duffy considers, Catholic manuscripts helped people adjust to change through a comforting consistency of habit. 

The same goes for books of natural history, Reynolds shows, which had as much to do with religion as prayer books; people’s relationships to their bodies and the divinely ordered natural world were fundamentally intertwined with religious belief. And again, Protestants preferred to amend or update their fifteenth-century manuscripts, rather than discard them or seek the same knowledge in printed books. After all, Protestants still believed in prognostications, in reading the heavens for godly signs, building upon the rich fifteenth-century culture of almanacs. 

But Reynold’s work shows us that the arc of continuity is only one part of the story. The medieval past was also mined for raw materials out of which to concoct a new Protestant future and worldview, not all of it savoury. 

Collecting manuscripts of natural history was part of a project of English Protestant national identity formation. Men like Timothy Bright, an aspiring, Cambridge-educated physician, and author of several medical works, wrote a treatise in 1580 which extolled “the sufficiencie of English medicines.” He used old English manuscripts of natural history to present a case against foreign medicines by showcasing that English plants and remedies had been revealed to the English people for centuries by a God who favored them, and their health, on account of their piety. Bright collected medieval knowledge to rewrite English national and natural history as a narrative of the teleological march to Protestant truth. 

And there was a dark side to the Protestant fascination with its medieval past, Reynolds tells us. When sixteenth-century readers went looking for the secrets of nature that their ancestors had known, they discovered a world of charms and amulets, material that had provided much of the contents of medieval lay prayer and practice. Many of these charms and remedies related to female physiological matters like childbirth and menstruation and contained recipes for abortifacients. In the fifteenth century this knowledge had circulated freely, but in the active and persecutory hands of sixteenth-century readers, they became newly associated with popery and shrouded in a language of discovery that accompanied all pursuits of manuscripts in an age of print. Readers imagined having stumbled upon a forbidden “secret” female knowledge, and saw a world that needed to be reformed, not only through the censoring of charms on a page but through the vigilant expunging of its practitioners off the page, leading to the first the woman hanged for witchcraft in England in 1566 who was accused of having killed her unborn child with “a certain herb”. 

A charm blacked out by a later reader, in a manuscript studied by Reynolds. London, Wellcome Library, MS 409, f43v. Public Domain Mark
A charm blacked out by a later reader, in a manuscript studied by Reynolds. London, Wellcome Library, MS 409, f43v. Public Domain Mark

In the sixteenth century, the Catholic past was less a discarded relic than a living, evolving, presence in Protestant homes, where in the hands of readers, it provided material for new imaginative visions of the natural and supernatural world. 

Nikianna Dinenis is a PhD student at Princeton University, where she works on women’s reading practices in Reformation Germany.

On Medical Manuscripts in Reynolds’ Reading Practice

By: Caleb Prus

Euricius Cordus (1486-1535), Fur die newe, hievor vnerhorte und erschrocklich todtliche Kranckheyt und schnellen todt, die English schweyee-sucht geant (Strassbourg: 1529). Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.
Euricius Cordus (1486-1535), Fur die newe, hievor vnerhorte und erschrocklich todtliche Kranckheyt und schnellen todt, die English schweyee-sucht geant (Strassbourg: 1529). Image courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.

In 1485, during London’s first epidemic of the sweating sickness, the physician Thomas Forestier complained to Henry VII about certain “false leeches” healers deceiving the public through “writing of the kind[s] of powders and of medicines.” These “unexpert men” were not university-educated physicians like Forestier but ordinary tradespeople “carpenters and mill keepers”who boldly posted their medical writings on the city’s gates and church doors. How did people like carpenters and mill keepers, once excluded from specialized knowledge, come to participate in the exchange of written medical information alongside elite physicians? And why was Forestier so alarmed that the writings of common tradespeople had become more persuasive to some Londoners than those endorsed by esteemed medical authorities?

Melissa Reynolds’ Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print answers these questions by tracing the cultural and historical development of what she calls the “practical manuscript.” Of the impressive 182 medieval manuscripts surveyed in her study, most contain some form of medical recipe, treatise, or charm that would have been available to the literate public. Their broad appeal is evident in the diverse array of manuscript ownersfrom priests like Peter Cantele, to prominent families such as the Pastons and Tyrynghams, to amateur surgeons like Nicholas Neesbett. These books were prized not only for the knowledge they contained but also for their material, social, and intellectual value. As Reynold notes, “acquiring and possessing knowledge was often more important than organizing or analyzing that knowledge” (34). In a time of crisis, simply owning a practical manuscript, regardless of whether it was authored by a carpenter, a mill keeper, or a learned physician, might have provided Londoners with a sense of security.

Reynolds ultimately uncovers the significant role of practical manuscripts in shaping premodern medicine. One of the most compelling aspects of Reading Practice is her exploration of the shift from reliance on established textual authority to a culture of experimentation. In the fifteenth century, compilers of practical manuscripts showed great deference to authority, often without much concern for verifying authenticity. However, as the century progressed, readers like Nicholas Neesbett began to claim their own authority by incorporating experiential knowledge. They were willing to experiment—adding a word to a charm or modifying an ingredient in a recipe—in order to better meet their practical needs. This transition not only reflects a pragmatic approach to medicine but also marks an important step towards the empirical methods that would later define early modern science and medicine. It was this everyday medical writing of the “non elite,” that helped to make “the hard-won but fleeting knowledge of experience durable.” (95).

Medical recipes and charms for horses, First quarter of the 15th century, MS Dd.4.44, Cambridge University Library.
Medical recipes and charms for horses, First quarter of the 15th century, MS Dd.4.44, Cambridge University Library. You can link through to the whole source by clicking here.

Importantly, these manuscripts did not vanish with the rise of the printing press. Reading Practice tracks the afterlife of these texts well into the sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, highlighting their continued circulation among a variety of owners. Collectors like Henry Dyngley and Thomas Dib—whose surviving libraries are only now being reconstructed—demonstrate that these manuscripts retained their value long after their original production. They were cherished by royal astrologers like John Dee and Simon Foreman, by royal surgeons like Sir John Ayliff and John Gerard, by barber-surgeons like John Smerthwaite and William Gale, and by tradesmen like William Thorowgood and John Young. This remarkable survival mirrors the journey of many medical texts themselves as they transitioned from manuscript to print. As Reynolds argues, the medical content of practical books changed very little between 1400-1600. It wasn’t until the 1550s, when printers began to publish new works that evoked experiential authority, that the landscape of medical knowledge began to trend toward newer methods of empiricism.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Reading Practice could not be more relevant to modern readers. Reynolds reminds us that in the premodern era “English people were largely on their own to work out what they believed, what they valued” (201). The explosion of written medical knowledge in practical manuscripts, accelerated by the advent of print culture, made navigating this flood of information more daunting. Today, as we sift through health advice in increasingly unmoderated online spaces, we find ourselves in a similar predicament. Just as early Londoners turned to church doors in search of medical wisdom, we now rely on our screens to guide us through the sprawling digital marketplace of information. And just as Thomas Forestier once felt powerlessness in a “free-for-all” market of medical texts, today’s physicians struggle to maintain an authoritative voice in the deluge of online data. 

Caleb Prus is a 3rd-year MD candidate at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He holds a MSt in English (650-1550) from the University of Oxford and a BA in English Literature and Chemistry from the University of Rochester. His Master’s dissertation, supervised by Dan Wakelin, studied the use of Middle English bloodletting texts by John Tyryngham, a fifteenth-century Londoner. He has presented his research at the Leeds International Medieval Congress, the Kalamazoo International Congress on Medieval Studies, the American Association for the History of Medicine Annual Meeting, and the Corner Society for the History of Medicine.

Culinary Texts in Context: Continuing the Conversation

By Sarah Kernan and Helga Müllneritsch

Culinary Texts in Context began as an idea for collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were interested in working together, given our shared interests in early modern recipe books, and the new emphasis on Zoom calls and digital resources presented a great opportunity for us to easily collaborate, despite one of us residing, at the time, in Sweden and the other in the American Midwest. After several emails and Zoom calls, we excitedly began planning a collected volume from a decidedly international and collaborative perspective. Upon receiving wonderful proposals for contributions, we were able to construct a fresh take on recipe book scholarship: research from European manuscripts spanning a range of languages, social classes, professions, and perspectives. We have been excited throughout the process of writing and editing to reframe the recipe books genre as a European one, not just English. The wealth of research on English recipe books has provided a wonderful basis for examining European manuscripts; Culinary Texts in Context now highlights European exempla and invites researchers to more fully engage this large body of texts. We are thankful to Lino Mioni, Anil Paralkar, and Thomas Gloning for sharing their thoughts about our collected volume and its contributions to the study of recipe books. Here, we will reflect on these essays and our hopes for future scholarship. 

Mioni brings his expertise in considering collections of texts to his examination of boundaries and recipe books within our volume. That is, boundaries in the research of recipe books as well as boundaries of definitions of the genre. Recipe books have so much to offer scholars; the possibilities for research are exciting and promise to break down traditional scholarly silos. Mioni rightly hopes that our expansion of scholarship to include a broad geographical area will further promote research of and with these books.

Paralkar’s contribution hones in on an important component in the creation of culinary texts, evident after we collected and read all of the contributions to our volume. We expected that European recipe books would provide insight into broader cultural interactions, particularly through the rapid spread of ingredients during the early modern period. However, we realized that multiple examples from manuscripts around Europe revealed how recipe transmission was an equally important marker of exchange. The cultural flow that Paralkar describes was present in a surprising number of recipe books, spanning manuscripts compiled from a single region or kingdom to those collected from international sources. As records of action and embodiment, recipes can reflect interest in other cultures and ideas. These recipes were transmitted to recipe book writers through many channels and their inclusion signified the knowledge, authority, and social networks necessary for acquiring and using such far-flung ingredients and preparations.

Gloning approaches the volume from his perspective as a linguist, acknowledging the multitude of perspectives presented in the volume as well as its wide spatial and temporal range, noting that it inspired him to approach manuscript recipe books from a new perspective. He raises the interesting question regarding what the essential topics in the analysis of culinary and medical manuscripts are, and which topics which can be explored separately in specialised studies. Seeing the volume as a starting point from which to embark on many more studies, the call for working from the broad and systematic to the individual study of certain aspects of the manuscripts is an important one. We hope to incentivise more work on collections of manuscript recipe books, especially if they are part of a wider collection, investigating the reasons for their inclusion. Furthermore, Gloning touches upon an important topic concerning projects dealing with manuscript recipe books and culinary and medical history; he mentions a now-abandoned project of his own, in which he aimed to provide a bibliography on the history of cookery, food and beverages. This is, unfortunately, the fate many similar projects suffer. It would be worthwhile to think about how to gather information on those projects, similar to webrings of the past.

In Culinary Texts in Context, the nine contributors introduce us to a variety of digital projects that they either use or have created themselves.

We share these in the hope that the projects will have a long digital life and inspire even more digital recipes projects. These projects allow for more accessibility and international collaboration, so that research practices, insights, and data need not be limited to linguistic or national borders.


Sarah Peters Kernan is an independent culinary historian. She holds a PhD in medieval history from The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on the production and use of cookbooks in medieval and early modern England. She is a member of the editorial team for the Recipes Project. Sarah has been especially active as a public historian, working with institutions and organizations like The Met Cloisters, Manuscript Cookbooks Survey, and the Culinary Historians of Chicago. She collaborates frequently with the Newberry Library, assembling modules on food history topics for Digital Collections for the Classroom, teaching Adult Education classes on food history topics, and developing culinary history programming.

Helga Müllneritsch is an assistant professor in German at National Taiwan University with a research interest in female agency, manuscript cookery books, and book history in the long eighteenth century. Her thesis, ‘Memory, Education, Circulation, Prestige: Form and Function of the Austrian Manuscript Cookery Book in the Long Eighteenth Century,’ focuses on the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century manuscript cookery book as object, its function, and female authorship and ownership. Helga was awarded her doctorate by the University of Liverpool in 2019.

Stovetop Solidarity: “Recipes for Semi-Starvation” and Antipoverty Organizing in American Cities

By Kimba Stahler

Flipping through recipe cards or a cookbook is not the apolitical exercise some might think. Whether picked by workers earning a fair wage in a safe environment or transported by truck drivers fighting for a better union contract, ingredients politicize meals.

Historically and recently, American consumer boycotts have moved the picket line to the checkout counter. Refusing to buy meat in 1935, Delano grapes in 1969, or Starbucks coffee in 2024 meant standing against high prices, labor rights violations, and corporations’ political machinations.

Ingredients contain another critical political dimension. Given food’s ability to gather, meal preparation and consumption are central to grassroots movements. One progressive student organization in the 1960s, the Students for a Democratic Society, devised a meal-time strategy in their “interracial movement of the poor.” From 1964 to 1966, that community organizing campaign established projects in fourteen Northern, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern cities. Full-time staff and summer volunteers organized locals while living in the same derelict housing as their constituents. But they didn’t just live locally: they ate locally too, serving similar dishes to the families who lived in these neighborhoods full-time. Over 500 white middle-class young people circulated and followed what they called “recipes for semi-starvation.” By adhering to welfare recipients’ budgets, they cooked up community and solidarity.

Community organizing and the “recipes for semi-starvation” brought together Americans who lived in two different societies. Many Students for a Democratic Society members grew up in the suburbs with access to pocket money and went on to college classes after finishing high school. Antioch College freshman Christopher Overs felt confident that summer organizing in Cleveland, twenty-five miles from his suburban home, would not jeopardize his fall tuition. Similarly, Elaine Lipshutz, a sophomore at Radcliffe College, could dedicate her school breaks to the Boston project, headquartered a twenty-five-minute walk from campus, rather than waged labor. Relocating these relatively short distances, Overs, Lipshutz, and hundreds of others entered another social world.

A summer organizing in inner cities introduced undergraduates to the estimated forty million impoverished Americans, a demographic hidden from their childhood neighborhoods. Living in derelict housing in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, Boston, and other cities, they talked with their new neighbors, white and Black families that postwar affluence had left behind. Many were un- or underemployed men and single mothers receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a program referred to as welfare. In discussions of daily struggles, the white students offered possible political solutions and invitations to tenant councils, unemployment unions, and welfare rights meetings.

Charlotte Brooks, “Image from LOOK – Job 65-2559 titled Divorced mother,” 18 Oct. 1965. Photograph shows divorced single mother Vi Erker eating dinner with her son Gary, Saint Louis, Missouri. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ds.08295

Voluntarily enduring poverty, progressives built community bonds and signaled their commitment to ending economic injustice partly through food. Both short-term volunteers like Harpur College student Judith Bernstein and full-time staff such as University of Michigan alumnus Carol McEldowney reckoned with the disparity between middle-class and low-income plates. Breakfast sometimes consisted of a single egg or an ounce of corn flakes topped with reconstituted milk. Between community meetings, they stuffed day-old bread with liverwurst and lettuce. After a long day of door-knocking, they often sat down to a dinner of liver and onions, creamed chicken over biscuits, or split pea soup with a salad dressed simply with a mayonnaise and ketchup mixture.[1] Their menus and their tireless efforts persuaded some locals that they were sincere and reliable social justice activists.

Eating what their neighbors could afford, the students came face-to-face with the political implications of welfare. Poor families could rely on the social safety net established by the New Deal and the War on Poverty. As countless learned firsthand, however, financial and material assistance programs afforded a bare minimum, placing countless commodities out of reach. The Cleveland project whittled their daily food allowance to forty-three cents per person, replicating the budget welfare programs provided.[2] Features of middle-class tables, like orange juice, were far too costly. “Don’t buy it unless the group shows signs of scurvy,” project leaders instructed.[3]

Through the Students for a Democratic Society’s organizational and culinary efforts, they established and revived grassroots antipoverty organizations that helped a national movement for economic justice to flourish. Their efforts most fruitful efforts were with single mothers who received welfare. They assisted the Citizens United for Adequate Welfare in Cleveland and Mothers for Adequate Welfare in Boston, organizations that channeled numerous welfare recipient activists into the National Welfare Rights Organization. While organizing at the grassroots, Students for a Democratic Society leaders used cuisine to establish interpersonal and political relationships between the sons and daughters of postwar affluence and less fortunate Americans.

[1] Recipes for Semi-Starvation, n.d., box 29, folder 2, Students for a Democratic Society records, 1958-1970, Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections, Madison, Wisconsin (hereafter SDS records).

[2] Hugh to O and C, July 29, 1964, box 24, folder 5, SDS records.

[3] Recipes for Semi-Starvation, n.d., box 29, folder 1, SDS records.

 

Kimba Stahler is a Humanities Without Walls Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities Institute at Penn State University. She is a historian of US women’s and gender history and social justice movements. She specializes in twentieth century antipoverty and feminist movements. Her research interests include participatory democracy, alliance formation among grassroots activists and organizations, and identity politics. 

For Kimba’s dissertation research, she conducted oral histories to uncover how members of the Students for a Democratic Society living in Cleveland constructed that organization’s most successful grassroots organizing campaign during the 1960s. Using those oral histories, she produced a story-telling podcast entitled “Visions of Democracy” that encourages listeners to think about the various forms that democratic participation takes. Her current book project, tentatively titled Rats in Common: The Untold History of Cleveland’s Interracial Welfare Rights Movement, explores how white middle-class political organizers and poor white and Black single mothers forged productive political relationships out of their shared commitment to radical forms of American democracy.