Lorsch Pharmacopoeia (The Bamberg State Library, Msc.Med.1)
Documentary heritage submitted by Germany and recommended for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register in 2013.
© The Bamberg State Library
Photograph of the Lorsch Pharmacopoeia. Opened manuscript, fol. 18v and 19r.
The Lorsch Pharmacopoeia (Msc.Med.1) in the Bamberg State Library is the earliest, reliably datable compendium of classical remedies in the Greco-Roman tradition from the (Latin) Early Middle Ages in Europe. It was fundamental in the reappraisal of medicine over the course of the Carolingian educational reform in the late eighth century. Its foreword provides the earliest and most comprehensive surviving intellectual discussion from the Carolingian age that seeks to justify systematically a positive reception of classical learning. The manuscript undertakes an innovative scientific approach to medicine, put forward under the premise of a positive and theologically based evaluation of humankind's physical environment.