Ps.-Mesue’s Antidotarium sive Grabadin and Renaissance Recipes Collections: A Preliminary Overview of the Fortleben of an Authoritative Pharmaceutical Text

The aim of this paper is to offer a first sketch of the reception and use of Ps.-Mesue’s Antidotarium sive Grabadin in printed and manuscript collections of recipes produced between the 15th and the 16th centuries. With that in mind, a selection of printed collections (Nuovo Ricettario Fiorentino, Antidotarium Bononiense, Pharmacopoeia Augustana) as well as some manuscript compendia produced in Florence between the 15th and the 16th centuries are analysed, in order to assess the role played by the Antidotarium as source, the reputation as reliable tool it enjoyed, the ways in which it was copied and used, and its role as a witness of the changes in pharmaceutical cultural background and practice. By doing that, the paper also addresses some more general questions, such as the perception and use of Medieval pharmaceutical works in Early Modern recipes collections, the strategies of selection, elaboration, and display of the recipes derived by the them used by compilers, and the complex interplay between printed and manuscript collections. Last but not least, it stresses the necessity of a thorough analysis of the recipes included in the collections and of a precise identification of their sources, and of a better cataloguing of the manuscript witnesses, in order to provide better information about the constant exchange between printed and manuscript writings.