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MarcoP · 03-09-2016, 05:42 PM

(03-09-2016, 04:04 PM)-JKP- wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(03-09-2016, 11:31 AM)Marco wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

Can anybody shade some light on the "+" signs at the top of Clm 671 f44r?

That's where you make the sign of the cross while saying the incantation out loud. These are healing charms/spells. Notice they often invoke historic names passed down through the ages. Once charms became Christianized, the old Levantine and Greco-Roman names (usually gods and goddesses) were gradually supplanted with Christian names but some of the pre-Christian names are still included in the later medieval spells.

Thank you, JKP!
I have browsed some more ms Clm 671: it contains quite a few “+” signs.

I cannot understand much of f36v, but it does look like an incantation:
“+en+en+orto+da?en+adonay
+pantheon+Ema[n]uel+El?+Eloi”
[Image: attachment.php?aid=522]

Here is what I understand of the incantation at the bottom ("against the bite of a rabid dog"):
“Con[tra] mo[r]sum Canis rabidi ???
+chyran+chyrian+affaran+kaf=
affaran+stralia?+”
[Image: attachment.php?aid=521]

These look like a random mix of Greek and Latin words. I can understand a few of the words, but I am not sure all are meaningful.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could be a mix of a German recipe and a Greek / Latin incantation.
Do we know of other examples of such mixes?
In general, if it is a recipe and/or incantation (whatever the meaning of lines 2 and 3), the first line should provide a “title” or “application” for the remedy: what it the recipe for? Johannes Albus and Davidsch interpret the last words of the first line as such:

Albus: “umen[do] putriter” (for wet rot)
David: “vinom purifier” (the “purification” i.e. neutralization of venom, if I understand correctly)

I have read the little that I can see on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of the paper about Clm 671 I previously linked (“Fifteenth-Century Medicine and Magic at the University of Heidelberg”, Elisabeth I. Wade-Sirabian). Here are some passages that I find interesting. They provide some ideas on a kind of people that might have written something similar to these marginalia:

[In 1421] a fifteen-year old student, Conrad Buitzruss, enrolled at the University, and during his five years in Heidelberg, Buitzruss, or “Bynczruzs” as his surname is spelled in the university's record, kept a notebook, a fascinating collection of texts that juxtapose a number of diverse subjects, and is now housed as Clm 671 in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. This notebook contains an extraordinary array of entries on medicine and magic that document supernatural beliefs and practices regarding the prevention and healing of diseases.
…
Included in the manuscript's 182 folios are astronomical and astrological texts, notes on time-keeping, and most interestingly, a collection of instructions about how to fulfill domestic tasks, such as producing ink, catching fish, conserving wine, and preparing food.
…
Buitzruss included formulas of ritual magic in his compilation, referring both to Christian charms (which combine folk superstition and religious piety), and necromantic rituals.
…
Buitzruss's notebook also indicates his interest in collecting information on women's reproductive functions: he brings together, for example, methods for confirming virginity, gauging fertility, and for discovering the sex of an unborn child.