Preface

Just as the Summarium Heinrici A 12th-century encyclopedic textbook often associated with Hildegard's intellectual circle—the textbook of Hildegard von Bingen—gained decisively new contours for its edition through the accidental discovery of the Erlangen Codex and its scribe Eigilo von Bingen (attested therein around 1300), so too did the discovery of the Florence manuscript in 1983 form the only secure basis for the edition of Hildegard's Physica Hildegard's primary work on natural history and the medicinal properties of plants, animals, and minerals. Petrus Becker OSB Order of Saint Benedict, the long-serving and meritorious librarian of St. Matthias Abbey in Trier, had received a tip from a Belgian brother about an untitled codex in Florence that contained a mark of ownership from his abbey. Requested sample copies gave Petrus Becker the certainty that it was indeed Hildegard's Physica, and—as quickly became apparent—the best-preserved copy of what had previously been a very sparse and disparate tradition. The present text edition is therefore based, with only minor restrictions, on the Florence Codex as the lead manuscript, while additionally documenting the entire tradition.

Petrus Becker, the recently deceased identifier of the manuscript, gave his discovery a special touch in a 1998 letter, the anecdotal character of which is worth quoting verbatim:

"On a trip to Rome, I interrupted the journey in Florence to visit the Laurentian Library original: "Bibliotheca Laurenziana" and examine the codex myself, but I could not find the entrance to the library. I then had to travel on quickly to reach Rome by evening."

Thanks to the provision of high-quality copies of all textual witnesses of the Physica by the respective libraries, the philological philological: the study of language in oral and written historical sources development of the text could begin in the 1990s. The discovery of two further manuscripts in 1985 proved particularly significant for establishing a two-part branching of the stemma A "family tree" of manuscripts showing how they are related to one another:

– Ursula Heierle verified a manuscript in a bibliography from the Vatican under the keyword 'Hildegard' as a Physica text, which shows the greatest possible agreement with the Paris manuscript and thus supports the hypothesis of a version contained in both manuscripts—