caa a22 4500 38631053X CHVBK 20180307111543.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198812 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0263675100003999 doi S0263675100003999 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0263675100003999 D'Aronco Maria Amalia The University of Udine The botanical lexicon of the Old English Herbarium [Elektronische Daten] [Maria Amalia D'Aronco] Recent research has established beyond question that, in the study of medicine at least, Anglo-Saxon England was far from being ‘a backwater in which superstition flourished until the mainstream of more rational and advanced Salernitan practices flowed into the country in late medieval times'. On the contrary, Anglo-Saxon medicine was at least at the same level as that of contemporary European schools. In ninth-century England the medical works inherited by ‘post-classical Latin medical literature (which included translations and epitomes of Greek and Byzantine medical authorities)' were not only well known, but served as the basis for original reworking and compilation, as the example of the Læceboc shows. More important, it was in pre-Conquest England that, for the first time in Europe, medical treatises were either compiled in or translated into a vernacular language rather than being composed in Latin or Greek. Ancient medicine made substantial use of drugs obtained from plants; and therefore, since the sources of Anglo-Saxon medical lore were in Latin (or in Greek: but invariably known through the medium of Latin), it is not surprising that most medicinal herbs used in the preparation of Old English prescriptions were not indigenous to England or even to continental Germany. And since such medicinal herbs were not indigenous to northern Europe, it is evident that, in using them, speakers of vernacular languages were obliged to create a vocabulary appropriate to denote them. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988 Anglo-Saxon England Cambridge University Press 17(1988-12), 15-33 0263-6751 17<15 1988 17 ASE https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100003999 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100003999 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- D'Aronco Maria Amalia The University of Udine NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Anglo-Saxon England Cambridge University Press 17(1988-12), 15-33 0263-6751 17<15 1988 17 ASE CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge