The Art of Craeft: Laecraeft in the Cotton Vitellius C iii. Herbarium of Pseudo-Apuleius

Abstract

This thesis analyses the medieval mentalities towards healing in the mid-eleventh century, as demonstrated by the Herbarium of Pseudo Apuleius, (BL Cotton Vitellius C.iii)- a mid-eleventh century Old English translation of two Latin sources on the uses and properties of healing herbs.1 The argument here presented is that to the medieval mind, healing was seen as a transference of craeft (power) from plant to healer, healer to plant, wherein the plant did what the healer could not do alone and the healer did what the plant could not do by altering its physical state so its potential and purpose could be exercised. Nature emerges as both healer and helper to the human healer- curative in its own right but unable to exert this power without the help of a human. Thus healing was a mutual exchange of craeft between two powerful agents. Healers emerge as potent facilitators of connections between humans, humans and plants, and contributed significant to medieval understandings of the self, the world, and how these factors were reciprocally affective.