Lincoln Cathedral manuscript MS91, The ‘Thornton’ Romances is one of the best known items in the library. Compiled by Robert Thornton, a Yorkshire landowner, between 1430 and 1450, it is a compilation of secular, religious and medicinal texts. This hugely important manuscript includes the only surviving medieval versions of several important Middle English romances, such as the alliterative Morte Arthure. Commencing at f.280 is a herbal, the Liber de Diversis Medicinis.

One remedy in the herbal is for ‘euyll at pe hert’ (ills or diseases of the heart – or maybe stomach, according to one translator). The original author suggests that you should:

‘tak pe rutes of fenkell, pe rutes of percell, pe rutes of horsehelm, pe rutes of radik, pe lefes of longe de cerfe, lyuerworte, centorie, mogworte, modirworte, waybrede, puliol, nept, mynt, fifleues and saueray, of ilkan a handfull, and do per-to a little sawge and wormode and pe flour of violet or pe leues and pe flowers of pe roses and a vnce of licorece or mare and hony and, if he or scho be feble, do per-to mare hony to mak it swettere pat pay may better drynk it’.

The painting shows many of these ingredients – fennel, parsley, radish, pennyroyal, mint, savoury, liquorice, roses and so on – growing in a medieval garden complete with gilded bees and skep taken from Lincolnshire’s Luttrell Psalter. And, because no series of medieval paintings should be without one, there is a unicorn in the distance. Unicorn horn was considered to have many therapeutic properties, protecting against convulsions and epilepsy and being used to cure fevers, plague, and bites from mad dogs and serpents, amongst other things.

Image size 24 x 14,5 cm