>Dear Colleagues,
>
>Does anyone have any information on the significance (symbolic or medicinal or
>religious or herbal, or otherwise) of onions (cipolle) in the time up to
and of
>Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75)? I am working on the Fra Cipolla story from
>Decameron and would much appreciate absolutely any hints or clues from the
>growing number of medievalists on our Mailbase.
Dear Paul,
Just a hurried reply with not much to offer: I checked Isidore's
_Etymologiae_ and Hraban's _De universo_, but came up with nothing, although
Jerome's Vulgate has "cepa" in Num. 11,5: "recordamur piscium quos
comedebamus in Aegypto gratis in mentem nobis veniunt cucumeres et pepones
porrique et cepae et alia". So you might try biblical commentaries like the
following:
PATERIUS
De expositione utriusque testamenti. PL 79, 683-1136
HRABANUS Maurus
Commentaria in Numeros. PL 108, 587-840
RUPERT von Deutz
De sancta trinitate et operibus eius, In Numeros.
Ed. Hrabanus Haacke, CCSL-Cont. 22 (Turnhout 1972),
p.915-1013
<GLOSSA ORDINARIA>
Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria: facismile reprint of the
Editio Princeps Adolph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/1, introduc-
tion by Karl Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson, Turnhout:
Brepols, 1992
HUGO von St. Viktor
Adnotationes elucidatoriae [sive Notulae] in Pentateuchum.
PL 175,29-56
PETRUS Riga
Aurora Petri Rigae Biblia Versificata. A Verse Commentary on
the Bible, Paul E. Beichner, C.S.C, Editor, Notre Dame 1965
(= PMS 19), vol. I, p.179-206: Liber Numeri (582 vv.)
HUGO von St. Cher
Opera omnia in universum Vetus et Novum Testamentum. Ko"ln
(?): Johannes Gymnicus, 1621
HEINRICH von Gent
Lectura ordinaria super Sacram Scripturam. Ed. R. Macken,
Louvain / Leiden: Brill, 1980 (= Opera omnia, XXXVI)
NIKOLAUS von Lyra
Postilla super totam Bibliam. Strassburg 1492, Repr. Frank-
furt a.M.: Minerva, 1971, 4 vol.
With regard to Boccaccio, a good place to look would be Albertus Magnus, _De
vegetabilibus_ (I don't have the number of the volumn in the _Opera omnia_,
although we are lucky to have them in Berlin; but I have a notice referring
to an edition by E. Meyer and C. Jessen, 1867). There are also several
pharmacological compendia which I would try to look up (Dioscorides, the
'Circa instans', Odo of Meun's _Macer floridus_), and for Boccaccio
especially Matthaeus Silvaticus' _Opus pandectarum medicinae_, but there are
no (or I don't know of any) modern critical editions, and the few references
which I have for older prints are incomplete and would not help you much in
your own libraries.
I will give it some more thoughts when I will have a bit more time,
Yours,
Otfried
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