On the way to the authentic Hildegard. Remarks on the texts only preserved in the Florentine 'Physica' manuscript.

The recently discovered ms. of Hildegard's ‚Physica‘ (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashb. 1323) contains much more text than the Migne edition, based on Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 6952, does. Did the Florence ms. add or the Paris ms. omit? A comparison of all extant mss. and the editio princeps of 1533 reveals that the corpus of items and their order remain essentially the same, whereas the number of recipes and applications is in permanent decrease. We also observe an increasing reduction of explanatory remarks unique to Hildegard's medical doctrine. The more copious text of the Florence ms. must, therefore, be regarded as authentic, and it should be made the base of a future edition of the ‚Physica‘. - [Abstract]

Language: German