L'art de la formule dans l'art de guérir. Edition et étude d'extraits en moyen-anglais des recettes médicinales des manuscrits MSS O.1.13 et R.14.51, Trinity College Library, Cambridge

Résumé En

The remedies or formulas used by healers to cure a patient crop up in numerous medical writings from the Middle Ages. Medicinal recipes can be commonly found (being gathered and added) in collections of medical books, where they fit a particular format, which is notably characterised by the use of precise rhetorical formulas. Medicinal recipes bear the influence of both religion and superstition. They are peppered with idiomatic formulas, quotations in Latin, which purportedly led to the patient’s recovery. Prayers or incantations were also sung at the patient’s bedside. The recipes themselves, often gathered in remedy books, are short standardised texts, and were as much useful for the amateur as for the professional healer, since their goal was functional and utilitarian. They appear to be mainly the consequence of translations and adaptations of more ancient texts belonging to the Greek, Latin and Arab traditions.