Bread of Dreams - Digest: '9. Ritual Battles and Popular Frenzies'

"With unintentional but certainly bitter irony, many went on saying and repeating that the one and only treasure of the poor - the thesaurus pauperum - consisted in the maintenance of their health. None the less, many of the poor preferred sickness and death to a state of health which forced them to live an insufferable life and bear the intolerable torment of hunger. [...]
The medicina pauperum (medicine of the poor) attempted to apply inexpensive therapies which made use of preventive and curative remedies, the composition of which did not require rare and costly ingredients. On the one hand, the two-way medicinal path led to the complicated
and very expensive triaca (theriac) for the rich, believed to be a powerful remedy for almost all sicknesses, a universal panacea; and, on the other hand, to the 'theriac of the poor', composed only of herbs. For those with 'strong stomachs and used to hard work', like peasants and porters, the great preserver of health was garlic, the 'theriac of the rustic', suited to rough and work-weary people, those selected in reverse, from whom - according to the science of the time - could only be born rustic and obtuse offspring, since 'no son is born who does not obtain his quality and  temperament from the food which his father ate before he was conceived.' From this  presupposition, which seems to have been widely shared, it was deduced that

'the meat of the cow, steer and pig, the bread of red wheat, beans,

cheese, red wine and other heavy foods cause strong semen and bad

temperament: the son that is conceived will have great strength,

but will be wild and of animal wits. From this results that

among men of the countryside it would be a miracle if one turned

out to be of acute intelligence and prone to study, especially

where such coarse foods are eaten. The opposite occurs among citydwellers,

whose sons we see have more intelligence and ability. '

[Giuseppe Rosaccio, Fabrica universale dell'huomo sotto titolo di Microcosmo dichiarata 

(...) (Venice: G. Imberti, 1627), pp. 45-46]"

[Giuseppe Rosaccio (1530-1620), Italian geographer and physician (Wikimedia Commons, dd. 11/07/2016)]

"Fortunately for the peasants of the plain and the cacamarroni (literally, 'chestnut-shitters') of the mountains, popular medicine was less poisonous and probably more effective than the medicine of the rich. [...] The poor of the city, in fact, were very often forced to devour foods that were 'fetid, putrid and verminous ... [filled] even with mice, worms, snakes or other most disgusting and abominable animals'. " [Giulio Cesare Luigi Canali, La carità del prossimo celebrata, spiegata e promossa in più ragionamenti [...], Bologna: Gaspare de Franceschi, 1763, (ch. 5, n. 3), II, p. 32]

"'Plenty' was the great absentee; rare were the days when songs could be sung to praise its return and the defeat of 'Famine' (a literary exercise as well, modelled on the very popular theme of the struggle between Carnival and Lent in which, as in all the forms deriving from folk rituals, archaic apotropaic virtues were obscurely presented). In 1597, Giulio Cesare Croce 

Giulio Cesare Croce 

[Giulio Cesare Croce (1550–1609) was an Italian writer, actor/producer of cantastoria [a theatrical form where a performer tells or sings a story while gesturing to a series of images: these images can be painted, printed or drawn on any sort of material] and enigma writer. He wrote more than 400 works in Italian and Bolognese dialect. To be a literary man in his period meant living at court, having patrons, or else being left to one's own devices for financial purposes. Croce was never a true literary man in the strictest sense of the word since he preferred laymen audiences to the court. In fact, he was principally a story teller and a blacksmith and most likely wrote for his own personal satisfaction. As such, his stories and inspiration come from the lower class, from the audiences at the market, who, if able to read, bought his works. This is in stark opposition to many contemporary authors who were inspired by the whims of their patrons. (Wikipedia, dd. 11/07/2016)]

- after the good summer harvest which seemed to spell an end to the seven years of tribulations during which he himself had been heavily hit [...] - exalted the return of plenty to Bologna, praising the vice-legate Orazio Spinola for his decisive and victorious intervention during the years of dearth. In the excited dialogue between Plenty and Famine, Spinola's intervention is described as fundamental to the safety of the community for which Croce presented himself as intermediary and spokesman: a bard assigned to the expression of the city's collective conscience. Victor at last, Plenty can let its ringing voice be heard:

A baker in front of his oven. From a 15th-16th century Book of Hours, attributed to Jean Bourdichon © Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon (Ms 5141, f. 11v-12).

'The bread has grown in size, just as your insolence

Had so lowered and diminished,

That with difficulty its presence was seen;

And if it was black, badly cooked and, worse, dense,

Now all the bakers have the order

To make it good, white, large and with care;

And all the granaries are wide open

And what was worth sixteen is now worth eight,

So that misers hang themselves from the pain;

Bread is no longer seen on display

Already spoiled, as it used to be,

But bright as snow, and well-baked;

The bean, which sat on the throne,

And which seemed like sugar to the artisans,

Is now little appreciated or valued;

Now, in these plains, thanks to God,

Goods abound, and all the countryside

Produces abundant grains in great plenty;

Such that Bologna will once again

Be glorious and great, and neither

Will there ever be heard laments and complaints:

Never more will there be seen atop the dung-heap

So many wretched, afflicted and lifeless people,

Wrapped up in the straw and refuse;

In the future, they will be strong men,

Proud and robust, they will gather vigour,

Not weak and half-dead like before;

A healthy colour will return to their faces,

Strength will be put back where it belongs,

And natural warmth to its rightful state... '

(Il solennissimo trionfo dell'Abbondanza, per la sua fertilissima entrata nella Città di Bologna; il di primo d'Agosto 1597. Con l'amaro pianto, che fà la Carestia, nella dolorosa sua partita, in Dialogo (Bologna: Gio. Battista Bellagamba, 1597), fols. 5r.-6v.)[e-book]

This portrait painted by Plenty corresponds to the octaves of Girolamo Accolti, the 'Allegrezza de' poveri sopra il crescimento del pane' (published in Rome and republished in Bologna: Vittorio Benacci, 1597) (Cheerfulness of the poor over the growth of the bread', in which is written 'Of wheat we have great plenty', octave 1,5), and 'Il gran lamento fatto da Nicolotto Fornar da Pesaro. Per non poter fare il pane piccolo e nero come prima. Con il grandissimo pianto della Carestia nell'uscir di Bologna' (Bologna: Vittorio Benacci, 1603) ('The great lament made by Nicolotto Baker of Pesaro. Of not being able to make the bread small and black as before. With the very great weeping of Famine on leaving Bologna'. Newly composed by Alessandro de' Monti),

'Since the bread has increased in size,
White and beautiful and even well-baked,
Fancy breads, twice baked,
And no one can be satisfied.
We poor bakers.
Scottish-style and side-table breads,
With the finest flour,
From evening to morning
We are forced to make... (fol. 1 v.)
Even the husk and the pollard
Are not sold, but are thrown away... (fol. 2r.)'

The bakers, much hated by the poverelli ('little poor') and singled out by everyone as profiteers and creators of hunger, frequently saw their shops attacked and plundered by the mob. Together with the usurers and tax collectors they were the first to face the popular fury, as in the attack on the oven of the Gasse district of Bologna in August, 1677.

[...]

The popular furore had entered some time ago into the 'museums' of realistic literature, whether it examined the immense reservoir of human activities and appearances with regard to trades and professions, or specialized in the typological analysis of the various faces of famine. In this excited atmosphere of social tensions, uprisings and looting, it is not surprising that G. B. Segni rifled a page by Garzoni  [Giovanni Garzoni (1419–1506) was an Italian humanist and physician from Bologna, where he was professor of medicine and teacher of rhetoric  (Wikipedia, dd. 11/07/2016)] (even more sensational plagiarism was committed with casual frequency during a century when copyright was an unknown expression), replacing it in a real-life scenario of social disorder and disintegration, even though it remains essentially an exemplum: a rhetorical model of the abstract theme of human frenzy.

Whoever would like to see the misery of this present famine and starvation in its most wretched form should go to certain cities and lands that are tyrannized, where the taxes could not be higher, and see bread put in the warehouses and storerooms which is as black as coal or as grey as a donkey's hide, and of such a mixture that even hearty eaters could not stand it, and so small it seems like the balls of zarabottana, and so expensive that those responsible are wished a thousand evils, and sold with such an appearance that it seems to come from the executioner's hand, and so often contested that clubs, daggers and pikes are necessary in order to possess it, and brought out in such low quantities that many poor families die from hardship and hunger, cursing the traitorous usurers, the villainous rich and the murderous tax-collectors who are to blame for such a wicked and cruel famine. He would then hear all the people scream; he would see the common people rioting, with good reason; the poor crying into the wind; the peasants from outside claiming greater power; the hospitals filling up; the doors of the rich echoing with miserable voices; the square full of acts of rage; the warehouses and storerooms surrounded by calamitous and unhappy people; the earth crying out and the air sighing, the sky weeping for so much dearth and such an unbearable famine. He would witness many thefts, much stealing, much plundering of granaries, many virgins raped for a piece of bread; many husbands become voluntary scoundrels for a penny, that he would recognize as true the saying of Regnicolo Foretano, 'In times of famine due to lack of bread, there is no better foodstuff than human flesh.' What Quintilian also meant when he said 'Non habitant simul pudor et fames' ['Shame and hunger do not dwell together']. He would see many rich people murdered, so much clashing of arms that everything would exhaust itself. The customs-houses would be ransacked, the warehouses emptied, the banks broken into, the bakers beaten or pilloried, or forced to walk the rope in public, or hanged by the neck, for behaving like gluttons and scoundrels. 

[Giovan Battista Segni, Trattato sopra la carestia e fame, sue cause, accidenti, provisioni e reggimenti, varie moltiplicazioni, e sorte di pane. Discorsi filosofici, (Bologna: Gio. Rossi, 1602)]
(Camporesi 1996, '9. Ritual Battles and Popular Frenzies', pp. 103-107)

De Middelnederlandse versie: 'Dit is van dat edele lant van Cockaengen'

"Die neringhe is menigherande
Die men doet in allen lande
Om dat lijff mede t'ondraghen
Hoert, wat ic u sal ghewaghen
Ick quam laesten in een lant.
Daer ic vreemt was ende onbecant.
Nu moechdi horen wonder groot,
Wat God den luden daer gheboet
In dat lant te wessen ende te sijn
Sonder arbeit ende sonder pijn!
Dit wort den luden wel becant.
Sach ye man beter lant
Dan dat lant van Cockaengen?
Die helft is beter dan al Spaengen
D'ander helft is beter dan Betouwen.
Men heft er wil van schonen vrouwen.
Dit is 't lant van den Heligen Gheest.
Wie daer lancst slaept, de wint meest.
Daer en derf nyemant doen werck,
Out, jonc, cranc of sterk.
Daer en mach nyemant yet gheborsten
Die wanden sijn daer ghemaect van worsten.
Daer sijn die veynsteren ende doren
Ghemaect van salmen ende van storen
Die tafelborden sijn struven in pannen,
Van bier sijn ghemaect die kannen
Die platelen die in den huse sijn,
Sijn van fijn guldijn.
Dat broet al shoen ter wijn
Alsoe claer als die sonnenschijn,
Die balkan, die daer in den huse leggen,
Sijn ghemaect van boterwegghen
Haspelen, spinrocken ende alsulke dinghen
Sijn ghebacken van crakelinghen.
Daer sijn die bancken ende stoelen
Ghebacken all van roffiolen.
Daer sijn die solreplancken oek
Ghebacken van claren pepercoeck.
Die latten sijn palinghen ghebraden,
Die huise syn gedeckt mit vladen,
Die syn geflochten sonder waen,
Daer lopen hasen ende conynen,
Wil herten ende everswynen
Van w ?
Die mach men vangen mitter hant
Sach oyt iemant beter lant!
Want schoen leyder syn daer oeck goitkoep,
Voer elke deur licht er eyn hoep,
Elkerlijc na synen sin
Daerto kous en ende schoen:
Die wil, die maech se aendoyn,
Al waer hi ridder ofte knccht.
Daer vint men tot allen straeten gespreit
Schone tafelen, die men nyemant weiderseit,
Eten, drincken mach men alle den dach
Daer en derf nyemant gheven ghelach,
Als men hier ten lande doet.
Och, dat lant van Cockaengen is so goet!
Het reghent daer in allen hoecken
Vladen, pasteyen ende pannekoecken.
in dat lant loept een ryvier
Van goeden wijn, van goeden bier,
Muscadel and oec clareyt
Romeny die men ontseit.
Die mach men drincken goeden cost
Wil men wijn of wil men most
Mit ghenghever ende mit muscaten
Sijn ghemaect aldaer die straten.
Veel ghels is daer goet tijt.
Daer en draecht man hat noch nijt,
So wat men daer in 't lant vint legghen,
Dat neemt men sonder wedersegghen.
Ende doet daermede sijn bederve
Recht of 't waer sijn eyghen erve.
Het is daer altijt of 't waer meye.
Daer singt elc voghel sijnre leye.
Daer coemt in die maent vijf weken
?? niet ghebreken
Ende iiij. Paes chen in 't jaer
Ende vier Pinte ren daernaer
?? nte Jans misse
?? ghewissen
Ende iiij. Kersdag he, dat is waer,
Ende eynen vasten in hondert jaer
?? mer enen halven dach
?? nye beter lant en sach.
Noch is daer een beter doecht,
Daer elck mynsche by is verhoecht.
In dat lant loept een Jordane
?? en die dier quamen
?? men dat water in haren mont
?? ouden alle worden jonc,
Recht of sy waren van twintich jaren
Dat seg ic u voerware.
Daer sijn trompen ende schelmeyen,
Daer sy op dansen ende op reyen,
Ende driven vroechden sonder ghetal.
Ick hoep 't hem ewelic duren sal.
So wie dat daer coemt in Gods namen
Die mach voerwaer wel segghen: Amen."


vertaling naar het Engels:

This is about that idyllic land of Cockaigne

"Of livelihoods there are plenty
That men do in all the lands
Of keeping body and soul together.
Hear this, what I have to say!
I came lately on a land
There it was strange and unknown.
Now listen well, for 'tis wondrous true
What God the people there has commanded:
In that land to live and to be,
Without work and without pain!
This word the people will believe.
Has seen anyone a better land
Than that land of Cockaigne?
The half is better than all Spain,
The other half is better than Betouwen.
Men have their will with beautiful women.
This is the land of the Holy Ghost;
Those who longest sleep, earn the most.
The whole day long no one does work,
Whether old, young, weak or strong.
There no one suffers shortages,
The walls are there made of sausages.
There are the windows and the doors
Made of salmon and of sturgeon.
The tabletops are made out of pancakes,
Of beer are made the jugs.
The plates that are in the house
Are all of the finest gold.
The bread lies next to the wine
Which is as clear as the sunshine.
The beams that in the house are laid
Are made of butter.
Hasps and spools and all such things
Are baked of crispy crackel.
There are the benches and stools
Baked all of meat pies
There are the roof planks overhead
Baked of finest gingerbread.
The rafters are of eels grilled,
The roofs are decked with sweets,
All about together we see
The hares and rabbits
With deer and wild boar
Of  ?
They let men catch them with their hand
Has seen anyone an better land!
Nice clothes are there very cheap,
In front of each door lying in a heap,
All may to their liking choose
Stockings and shoes:
It will make one dressed so fine
Whether they be squire or knight.
There can men in all the streets find
Beautiful tables for anyone to partake
Eating, drinking make men all the day
And no one ever has to pay
As all men here in this land do
Oh, that land of Cockaigne is so good.
It rains there in all fair parts
Sweets, pastries and cooked tarts.
In that land flows a river
Of good wine, of good beer,
Muscatel and fine claret,
Sherry for men as well
This may men drink at no expense
Whether wine or whatever they want
With ginger and with nutmeg
Are what they use to pave the street
Everything there is going well
There of riches man has no need.
So what men there in the land find lying
That may take men without asking twice.
And do it like it is deserved
Sure that it truly is their own.
It is there always no time but May.
There sings every bird its own song.
There comes in the month five weeks
?? not lacking
And four Easters in the year
And four Pentecosts right behind
?? Saint John's feast
?? wish for
And four Christmas hear, that is the way
And one fast in a hundred years
?? lasts only a half day.
?? never a better land was seen.
Nowhere is there a better place
There everyone there is blessed.
In that land flows the Jordan
?? who there come in numbers
?? men that water in their mouth
?? the old all become young
As though they were twenty years old.
That's a sight to behold.
There are trumpets and pipes,
There all are dancing and going round,
And going on without care.
I hope it forever will endure strong.
So those that there come in God's name
They may overall well say: Amen"

(http://www.thegoldendream.com/landofcokaygne.htm, dd. 23/04/2016)

Luilekkerland vs Aards Paradijs = Honger vs Mystiek

"waar verlangen naar geluk en onschuld bij devote zielen het beeld opriep van het aardse paradijs, hebben de verrukkingen van Luilekkerland bij behoeftigen door de eeuwen heen het aardsere verlangen gewekt aan hun misère te ontsnappen. In de verschillende verhalen richt men zich vaak tot de armen en wordt er verkondigd dat ook voor hen eindelijk het moment is gekomen om het er flink van te nemen: de legende van Luilekkerland ontstaat dan ook niet in mystieke kringen, maar bij al eeuwenlang hongerende volksmassa's." (Eco 2013, '10. Luilekkerland', p. 291)

De Fabels van Cocagne (Li fabliaus de coquaigne, 13de eeuw)

"Op een keer ging ik in Rome naar de paus / om penitentie te vragen, / en hij stuurde me op  pelgrimstocht naar een land / waar ik veel wonderbaarlijke dingen heb gezien: / hoor nu hoe de mensen leven / die in dat gebied wonen. / Ik denk dat God en al zijn heiligen het / meer dan in enige andere streek / hebben gezegend en gewijd. / Het is het land van Cocange, / waar de langslaper het meest verdient. [ ... ] / De muren van de huizen zijn gemaakt / van zeebaarzen, zalmen en haringen, / de dakspanten zijn van steur, / de daken van hammen / en de dakgoten van worsten. / Het land heeft veel attracties, / want alle graanvelden zijn omringd / door stukken geroosterd vlees en varkensschouders; / op de straten bakken / dikke ganzen zichzelf en draaien / om hun as en worden op de voet / gevolgd door witte knoflooksaus, / en ik zeg jullie dat je overal / op de paden en de wegen / gedekte tafels kunt vinden, / met witte tafelkleden erop: / iedereen die dat wil kan / vrijelijk eten en drinken; / zonder verbod en zonder tegenstand / neemt iedereen wat hij wil, / vlees of vis, / en wie er een kar vol van wil meenemen, / zou dat naar believen kunnen doen; / vlees van herten of vogels, / of je het nu gebraden wilt of gekookt, / zonder er ook maar iets voor te betalen, / en zonder na het eten de rekening gepresenteerd te krijgen, / volgens de gebruiken van dit land: / het is de onbetwiste waarheid / dat in die gezegende streek / een rivier van wijn stroomt. [ ... ] / De mensen zijn er heus niet slecht, / ze zijn juist moedig en beleefd. / Een maand telt zes weken / en het is vier keer per jaar Pasen, / en er zijn vier Sint-Jansfeesten / en vier oogsten, / elke dag is een feestdag of een zondag, / het is vier keer Allerheiligen, Kerstmis / en Maria-Lichtmis per jaar, / en vier keer Carnaval; / de Vasten vindt eens per twintig jaar plaats, / en het is zo aangenaam te vasten / dat iedereen dat graag doet; / van de ochtend tot de noen / eten ze allerlei heerlijkheden, / vlees of vis of iets anders / en niemand durft hun dat te verbieden. / Denk niet dat ik een grap maak, / maar er is daar niemand van hoge of !age afkomst / die zich moet inspannen om zijn dagelijks brood te verdienen: / drie keer per week regent het er / een stortbui van warme pasteien, / en die regen valt zowel op behaarde / als op kale mensen, dat weet ik zeker, / en iedereen neemt ervan zoveel hij wil; / en het land is zo rijk / datje op elke straathoek / beurzen vol geld vindt; / iedereen kan voor niks / aan maravedi's en bezanten komen, / maar niemand koopt en niemand verkoopt. / De vrouwen zijn beeldschoon, / wie dat maar verlangt neemt / dames en dametjes, / zonder dat iemand daardoor beledigd is, / en doet ermee wat hem behaagt / zolang hij dat wil, en naar believen; / en de vrouwen worden er niet om veracht, / integendeel, ze worden er zeer om geëerd, / en als het toevallig gebeurt / dat een vrouw haar oog laat vallen / op een man die ze begeert, / kan ze die in het openbaar beetpakken / en ermee doen wat ze wil [...]. / Er is nog een ander wonder, / en iets dergelijks hebben jullie nog nooit gehoord, / en dat is de bron van de jeugd / die de mensen weer jong maakt, / en nu heb ik jullie alles verteld."
 (De Fabels van Cocagne (Li fabliaus de coquaigne, 13de eeuw) in: Eco 2013, '10. Luilekkerland', pp. 296-298)

["Maravedí was de naam van verschillende gouden en zilveren munten die tussen de 11e en de 14e eeuw op het Iberisch Schiereiland in omloop waren. Het was ook de naam voor verschillende rekenmunten tussen de 11e en de 19e eeuw." (Wikipedia, dd. 20/04/2016)]

["Bezant is een middeleeuwse term voor gouden munten die niet in West-Europa zijn geslagen. Daarbij kon het gaan om Byzantijse solidi, maar ook om Arabische of Egyptische dinars uit de diverse kalifaten. Marco Polo gebruikte de term om de gouden munten van het Yuan-dynastie aan te duiden. De bezant was dus niet een specifieke muntsoort, maar een aanduiding voor vreemde gouden munten." (Wikipedia, dd. 20/04/2016)]

Cuccagna festivals

Frans Hogenberg, Sugar banquet for the wedding of John William, Duke of Julich-Cleves-Berg, and Jakobea of Baden, (1587) (Getty Research Institute)

"There were whole settings of large arches with cheese, sausages, and breads, [...] Those were made for people to take away. A lot of times, at the top there were fireworks and things like that, so it was kind of a theatrical way of showing food.” At the signal of the powerful host, citizens would rush to these arches to scarf down or carry away as much as they could. The Cuccagna festivals date back to legends of the Land of Cockaigne, a mythical paradise on Earth, where idleness leads to plenty — a theme 'that sought to distract poor and hungry people from the hardships of their daily lives, if only for a moment'"

Francesco Orilia, Cuccagna arch of bread, cheese, and suckling pigs, made in honor of Duke Antonio Alvarez di Toledo, Viceroy of Naples, on the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, 23 June 1629, 1630 (Getty Research Institute)

"The food structures that often towered over crowds at public festivals were equally extravagant. A woodcut by one Francesco Orilia depicts a Cuccagna arch, a type of freestanding monument that became prevalent especially in Naples over the course of the 18th century. Although some were varnished and painted and not intended for consumption, most had foundations of wooden scaffolding, papier-mâché, and stucco that were carefully embedded with a variety of foods."

Remondini family (Bassano), Description of the Land of Cockaigne, Where Whoever Works the Least Earns the Most, 1606 (Getty Research Institute)

"On view is one early-17th-century hand-colored etching showing such a whimsical land, where meatballs bob in lakes, chickens rain down from clouds, hills are made of sugar cakes, and Spanish wine flows as a river."
(Claire Voon, 'Sugar Castles and Suckling Pig Arches: The Edible Arrangements of Baroque Europe', 2015, Hyperallergic, dd. 29/02/2016)

Bread of Dreams - Digest: '4. 'They Set Out into the World of the Vagabond''

"When the crises of existence became more acute, during the tense moments of food shortage [...], the threat of hunger's Grim Reaper, the divine punishment of which ranting preachers warned, lacerated the most deprived, the least protected and least secure, making their terrified faces turn pale. The 'famine of living' - as it was described at the time - upset the price curve, forcing the price of foodstuffs to a level inaccessible to urban artisans and labourers, while the withered countryside saw its cultivators (generally too numerous in relation to the low yield of the land) fleeing towards the heaven of the cities in order to beg - new mendicants - for bread from public charity." [...]
It is not really surprising then that the 'question of language', [...] should perform a mystifying role in this great national deceit, re-invented periodically in order to alienate [...] together with the language of the poor [...], the reality of a world which found difficulty in facing its harsh existence, what with 'storms' in the food supply, hygienic marasmus, servile conditions and precarious trades verging on beggary (costermongers, spinners, spirit-vendors, street-talkers, porters, latrine-emptiers,
tricksters ..., always on the point of sliding into the social temptation of vagrancy or beggary, when work - often unrewarding, always hard - did not guarantee even the necessary minimum, or when
hit by unemployment and the cost of living. [...]
(Camporesi 1996, '4 'They Set Out into the World of the Vagabond'', pp. 56-57)

"In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the rogue was experiencing his golden age, with his repertory of 'miserable frauds', his loitering and the 'fiction of broken limbs'. It was said in Bologna around the middle of the sixteenth century that 'the better one knows how to deceive, thebetter one succeeds.' In Genoa, begging, minor crime and roguery constituted a negative social model that worried the civil powers: the garzonastri ('young toughs') joined in with 'some of the vilest criminals, who - not having any trade and being sent on the hunt, it could be said, by fathers who cannot feed them, from around the age of ten to twentytwo, wandering through the streets of the city day and night - support themselves with thefts and vile deeds'. Rogues, on the other hand, represented
'a certain type of scrounger who, as enemies of work and resolved to live at the expense of others, go about asking for alms under various forms and pretences'. The business of living the life of a swindler was day by day becoming an ever more subtle 'art': beggar-philosophers and wandering sages discoursed on their privileged condition and perceptive, disenchanted experts speculated on the penetration of fraud to all levels [...], recognizing the primacy of the 'industry' of deception and theorizing on the universality of the 'imposture', its cosmic expanse, its infinite beauty and ubiquitous metamorphoses. Its indispensable pre-eminence in the formation of man and its unrivalled role in the techniques of expanding the intelligence were vigorously supported.

'And thanks to this variation the world becomes beautiful, the brain of one person is made more acute in the search for new ways of defrauding, and that of another becomes sharper in order to guard himself against it. And in effect, all the world is imposture; and it begins with the men of religion, and continues with the lawyers, the doctors, the astrologists, the worldly princes, those who participate at any time in all arts and trades; and day by day everything gets sharper and more refined. '

[Francesco Vettori, Viaggio in Alemagna (1507)]"

Giacomo Franco, Charlatans in St Marks square in Venice, 1610, engraving [Getty Images]

"The public square 'is none other than the Theatre of worldly events', a much vaster stage than the ambiguous space which constituted the inn (the shrine of meetings, pranks and deceptions). But even certain hospitals, at night, were transformed into gambling dens and card rooms by unreliable types, as can be observed in a few pages of the 'Speculum cerretanorum' [Teseo Pini], where a group of vagrants - wandering pedlars of sacred images - are caught playing dice on the reverse side of a panel depicting the Virgin Mary; or in the 'Serenata di Gian Pitocco' by Giulio Cesare Croce, in which the hospital becomes a safe refuge for wandering lovers.
The furtive shadows of dubious faces moved about on the stages of itinerant actors, sign of the  uncontrollable osmosis between fiction and its representation."
(Camporesi 1996, '4 'They Set Out into the World of the Vagabond'', pp. 58-59)

Hawthorn / Meidoorn (Crataegus Monogyna)

Hawthorn / Meidoorn (Crataegus Monogyna): fruit

[Hawthorn / Meidoorn (Crataegus Monogyna): "The fruit of hawthorn, called haws, are edible raw but are commonly made into jellies, jams, and syrups, used to make wine, or to add flavour to brandy. A haw is small and oblong, similar in size and shape to a small olive or grape, and red when ripe. Petals are also edible, as are the leaves, which if picked in spring when still young are tender enough to be used in salads."
(Wikipedia, dd. 23/02/2016)]

European Hornbeam / Haagbeuk (Carpinus Betulus): fruit

European Hornbeam / Haagbeuk (Carpinus Betulus)

[European Hornbeam / Haagbeuk (Carpinus Betulus): "An important constituent of hornbeam is tannin, which gives it effective antibiotic, astringent, and healing properties. [...] Hornbeam is well known for its ability to relieve mental fatigue and physical tiredness. Its medicinal properties help in boosting energy levels and increase vitality. Hornbeam flower essence is commonly used for treating problems like stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other related disorders. Hornbeam also helps in keeping the mind active so that one can perform routine tasks without getting tired easily." 

(Home Remedies for you, dd. 23/02/2016)  (Wikipedia, dd. 23/02/2016)]

"When bread became scarce or absent in the great houses, if not in the courts themselves, it was easily remedied by accompanying meat with more meat, but when severer than usual hunger entered into peasant houses, they attempted to survive by resorting to surrogates for flour and by devoting themselves to the tiresome search for the herbs and roots necessary for survival. As Tomasino de' Bianchi, a chronicler of Modena in the second half of the fifteenth century, writes: 'they take hawthorn fruit, then chaga [the fruit of the hornbeam (...)]; they dry and grind them and they take three parts of this flour and one of wheat flour and they make bread ... many children are sent to the woods to look for this fruit.'"

Patience Dock / Spinaziezuring (Rumex patientia)

Patience Dock / Spinaziezuring (Rumex patientia)

[Patience Dock / Spinaziezuring (Rumex patientia): "These plants are edible. The leaves of most species contain oxalic acid and tannin, and many have astringent and slightly purgative qualities. Some species with particularly high levels of oxalic acid are called sorrels, and some of these are grown as leaf vegetables or garden herbs for their acidic taste." 
(Wikipedia, dd. 23/02/2016) 
"De jonge bladeren worden als bladgroente gegeten in Oost-Europa met name in Bulgarije, Macedonië en Servië. In Roemenië wordt het ook gebruikt in soepen." 
(Wikipedia, dd. 23/02/2016)]

Persicaria / Adderwortel (Persicaria Bistorta)

Persicaria / Adderwortel (Persicaria Bistorta)

[Persicaria / Adderwortel (Persicaria Bistorta): "Reeds in de 15e eeuw werd de plant gebruikt in de geneeskunde. Het kruid was al eerder beschreven maar dan onder andere namen. De plant werd gebruikt tegen scheurbuik en als wondkruid of bloedstelpend middel. Door de vorm van de wortel kon het volgens de signatuurleer toegepast worden bij slangenbeten en ander gif. Een oude naam voor het kruid was dan ook Serpentaria. Het is nog steeds één van de beste samentrekkende kruiden. In het verleden werd de plant veel als groente gegeten, met name de spruiten en het jonge blad. Ze werd ook gebruikt bij het leerlooien." 
(Wikipedia, dd. 23/02/2016)]

Field Thistle / Akkerdistel (Cirsium Arvense)

taproot thistle

[Field Thistle (alternative name 'lettuce from hell thistle') / Akkerdistel (Cirsium Arvense): "Like other Cirsium species, the roots are edible, though rarely used, not least because of their propensity to induce flatulence in some people. The taproot is considered the most nutritious. The leaves are also edible, though the spines make their preparation for food too tedious to be worthwhile. The stalks, however, are also edible and more easily de-spined." 
(Wikipedia, dd. 23/02/2016)]

Rapeseed / Koolzaad (Brassica napus)

Rapeseed leaves

[Rapeseed / Koolzaad (Brassica napus): "Historically, rapeseed was mainly produced as a source of lubricant for machinery due to its high levels of glucosinolate, a bittering agent which made the oil unpalatable, and erucic acid, a toxic substance associated with cardiac lesions. However, in 1973, Canadian agricultural scientists bred strains of rapeseed sufficiently low in these substances to make the crop palatable and safe for both human and livestock consumption." (Wikipedia, dd. 23/02/2016)]

"On a day in 1484 this same chronicler noted that a group of thirty women and children had entered one of his fields, 'gathering roses, patience-docks, persicaria, field thistle, poppy, rape leaves ... and they mixed everything together with a bit of oil or fat and with vinegar, water and salt in the pot, and they ate it."
(Camporesi 1996, '4 'They Set Out into the World of the Vagabond'', pp. 61-62)

Bread of Dreams - Digest: '2. Elusive Bread'

"The distress of the few in the face of the crazed surging in the streets, of the innumerable devourers of refuse - the 'grub-men' and 'insectmen' - and the anxiety of the groups in power regarding the great, threatening numbers, the uncontrolled proliferation of the wretched and the spectre of a negative society that, reluctant to be integrated, waves the banner of a society in opposition, all stimulate the obsessive image in Bonifacio's sonnets of the rising tide; water that rises irresistibly in order
to bring about the final suffocation. The tension between the castes is transformed into this metaphorical series of verses from which seeps the fearful contempt of the eaters of white bread towards the eaters of dark bread or those who went without bread altogether: the picchia-porte
('door-knockers') or matta-panes' ('bread-crazy') who expanded the great cloud of scoundrels and rogues',  as threatening as a raging storm of locusts.
In reality, beyond the literary effect and ritual dramatization of tumult and fear, the turbulence of the very poor, while capable of causing anxiety and dread, never went beyond a bit of unorganized looting, incapable of being transformed into anything more than a furious but short-lived rebellion."
(Camporesi 1996, '2 Elusive Bread', p. 35)

"Liberation from the male di vivere ('sickness of living') was not pursued politically, but by means of direct-release techniques, such as the great use of alcoholic beverages, sexual practices ('wild' and unrestrained) and ritual feasts (the private or group transgression of the civil or religious norm}.Dreams stimulated not revolutionary ferments but voyages into fantastic evasions. The utopias, even the most radical, dissolve into doctrinal and sapiential story-telling. Even the great myth of the Land of Cockaigne - whether in its general desire for fair community ownership of material goods and property, or in the dream of eternal youth and love, not socially controlled, of non-institutionalized eros - never remotely entails authentic political and social renewal. [...]"

Angelo Beolco, Due dialoghi di Ruzzante, 1556

"The bread of the poor, of those dressed in rags, the unemployed, and especially of those who produced it, the peasants, victims of a paradoxical social and economic logic, was a bread forever fleeting, as elusive as a slow-motion nightmare of interminable length. In lean years, the time of
the next harvest was dreamed of, in longing expectation, beginning in late autumn: of summer and its fruits, the season in which one could re-experience the taste of the pan novelo ('new bread').
The character of Menego in Ruzante [Angelo Beolco (1502 – March 17, 1542)]'s Dialogo facetissimo, performed during the famine of 1528, counts on his fingers the months that separate him from 'the fleeting bread': 'January, February, March, April, May and half of June as well, until wheat. (Sigh!) Oh, we shall never make it!
Blast, but it's a good long year, this one. I know the bread flees from us, indeed it does, more than sparrows from the falcon.' [...] The comic stamp of the dialogue [...] also serves to dispel the terrible adversary, hunger, by exorcizing it with laughter. [...] tragic buffoonery invented by those whose flesh is tortured by the wedges of hunger. This cruel image, borrowed from the torture chambers, was
then quickly transferred and rendered innocuous by the absurdity of the expedients devised to try to avoid, or at least mitigate, the hard laws of necessary consumption and physiological fate, proposing the use of astringents like the sorb-apple, or the surreal strategem of plugging 'la busa de soto' ('the hole underneath'). In that way the excrement, not being able to leave the body, could keep the bowel full thus neutralizing hunger. [...]
Ruzante reaches the most powerful effects of macabre humour when Menego, outraged in heart and flesh by his rival in love, imagines his own destruction, by self-devourment: 'But nevertheless I shall kill myself ... And i will be even better, because I myself shall eat me, and so I shall die well-nourished, in defiance of the famine'.  The grotesque effect is surprisingly successful and of an irresistible humour (at least for us); except that the weighing and the interpretation could be modified,
keeping in mind that episodes of this sort - here only imagined for the amusement of the noble listeners - were actually taking place outside the theatre. The accounts by the missionaries of St Vincent bear witness to the tragic reality of autophagy in France during the seventeenth century.
The shortage in the food supply from which Ruzante departs in order to construct his Dialogo facetissimo et ridiculosissimo, 'performed at Fosson in the year of the famine, 1528', corresponds dramatically to the notarial acts of the time [...], which furnish a vivid counterpoint to the theatrical game created in order to delight the powerful patron and master, intent on expanding this vast landed patrimony, taking advantage of the misery which forced small landholders and lease holders already afflicted by heavy debts, to sell him their lands at a low price.
It remains an enigma how an audience could enjoy this theatrical action which caused the starving poor (even in the fiction of the stage) to become the means of entertainment and amusement for those who, if not actually the causers of hunger, took generous advantage of the calamities which fell heavily on the people. "
(Camporesi 1996, '2 Elusive Bread', pp. 36-38)

Bread of Dreams - Digest: 'Introduction'

"meanwhile, at the lower level of 'civil' society - in the subordinate world of instrumental and 'mechanical' beings, tyrannized by their daily use of 'vulgar breads', in which the mixture of inferior grains, often contaminated and spoiled by poor storage, or, as happened not infrequently, mixed (sometimes deliberately) with toxic and narcotic vegetables and cereals - the troubled rhythm of an existence verging on the bestial contributed to the formation of deviant models and delirious visions. [...]
Among the most common and popular foodstuffs that permitted the transition from a human condition on the verge of the unliveable to a drugged and paranoid dimension was poppyseed bread (the poppy was cultivated in vast areas of Europe with what today would be called industrial methods). It was a bread disguised and flavoured, and in addition spiced with coriander seeds, anise, cumin, sesame-seed oil, [...] In areas where it was cultivated, even the flour of hemp-seeds was used in the kitchen to prepare doughs and breads which 'cause the loss of reason' and 'generate domestic drunkeness and a certain stupidity'. One could doubtless regard this as having been directed not so much from above (as is somtimes supposed), as desired and sought by the masses themselves, consumed as they were by disease, hunger, nocturnal fears and daytime obessions.
The collective journey into illusion, [...] helps to explain the manifestation of collective mental delirium, of mass trances, of entire communities and villages exploding into choreal dancing. But it could also be the path which allows us to catch a glimpse of a two-sided mental model of the world [...] where the layers are overturned, the universals reversed, the world ending up head-over-heels, with head on the ground and feet in the air. The result of an altered measuring of space and time, based on a non-Euclidic geometry and a magical, dreamlike perspective [...].
The spectre of this vampirish society of people possessed becomes visible, fleeing the painful recognition of the brevitas vitae and the fear of death, while trying desperately and cruelly to prolong life by sucking young blood, opening and closing the veins of its own and other's bodies. This society is possessed by a corporeal culture neurotically sensitive to the internal circulation of the humours and convinced of the absolute primacy of good human blood [...]
The purging of the blood and the ridding of impurity [...] were the decisive moments of every therapeutic activity based upon the expulsion of corruption and evil [...] if the blood is not purged, it causes lycantthropy and fears and ugly thoughts, such that one sees men rave and become spellbound in foul and filthy places, among graves and corpses, becouse the infected spirit desires things similar to itself.'"

heks met incubus

"Seen from this perspective, the image of a febrile and sleepless society comes into view, attempting to resist the nocturnal visitations, the presence of the night-dwellers (incubi [demons in male form who lie upon women in order to engage in sexual activity with them, what may result in the deterioration of health, or even death], goblins [evil grotesque dwarf-like daemons], vampires, witches and werewolves), and to protect itself from the painful aggression of the dreadful and horrible dreams by means of a whole magical pharmacology that induced forgetfulness and serenity [...]."

Wormwood / Absintalsem (Artemisia Absinthium)

Wormwood / Absintalsem (Artemisia Absinthium) 

["Wormwood / Absintalsem (Artemisia Absinthium): Aan de knoppen van Absintalsem wordt vanouds een geneeskrachtige werking toegeschreven. Het bittere aftreksel van deze knoppen vormt een belangrijk bestanddeel van de dranken vermout en (klassieke) absint. De smaakstoffen die daarbij een rol spelen zijn absinthine en het naar menthol ruikende terpeen thujon. Zoals alle alcoholhoudende dranken, kan absint bij langdurig en frequent gebruik leiden tot verslaving en zenuw- en hersenbeschadiging." 
(Wikipedia, dd. 22/02/2016)]

"Wormwood for example (Artemisia Absinthium)[...] was considered the mother of all herbs [...] from which all others descended as offspring. 'A medicinal herb', of entirely feminine virtue, many call it the matricaria, especially women, for whom it is itself a treasure. They use it with cheese, eggs, etc., to make tortelli during the feasts for Holy Mary [... ] [a] regulator of the female cycle (and because it was governed by the moon), protector of the reproductive organs and feminine fertility, the matricaria [...] was associated [...] with the supernatural power of the mother of the Omnipotent, and then reconsecrated in the Christian baptism of herbs with the Virgin's name. It was ritually eaten as a food filled with enigmatic powers (in their form, too, these stuffed tortelli resembled a half-moon), on the day when it emanated the greatest therapeutic energy. [...]"

tortelli 

"The cuisine of the imaginary, dream-inducing diet, sacrilegious gastronomy (cannibalistic, vampirical and dung-eating), human ointments and plasters, profane oils and sacred unctions, 'mummy' fragments and cranial dust, medicinal powers de sanguinibus, breads filled with seeds and powders bestowing oblivion, expansive and euphoria-producing herbs, narcotic cakes, stimulating roots and aphrodisiacal flours, aromas and effluvia of devil-chasing plants and anti-dotes for melancholy (balneum diaboli), and 'seasoned' and 'fostered' spells created a network of dreams, hallucinations and permanent visions. [...] It was observed how real massacres and imaginary battles, wild warriors and avenging angels were 'depicted in the air', because [...] 'nature is wise and devilish' and 'future things are foreseen in the air'. An aerial theatre that prefigured to men 'signs' of things to come: a symbolic reading of the future conducted with eyes raised upwards. [...]"

Jheronimus Bosch, Hooiwagen-triptiek, zijpaneel links, ca. 1515, 136 x 45 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, cat. 13

Pieter Bruegel, De aartsengel Michaël in gevecht met de apocalyptische draak, 1562, 117 x 162 cm, Brussel, KMSK, inv. 584

"The people of the town and city as well; lived immersed in a world of expectation, in a suspended and bewitched condition, where portent, miracle and the unusual belonged to the realm of the possible and the everyday: the saint and the witch (in her own way, a saint of a different type) reflected the two ambiguous faces, the face side and reverse of the same neurotic tendency towards the separation from reality, the voyage into the imaginary and the leap into the fantastic. [...] The saint - eccentric wizard of ecstasy in a body consumed by penance and privation, his mind altered by fasts, like certain hermits kept alive by roots and herbs (but which ones?) - was equipped with shamanistic powers (trance, levitation, knowledge of the language of animals...). The 'immeasurable treasure of most holy poverty' possessed by the father of the Fraticelli produced the same effects of an upsetting withdrawal from reality, and in the process stimulated the same sense of the real and the impossible, as experienced by those who, suffering and subdued by an involuntary poverty, victims of an alienating indolence, fell into shocking hallucinations and stupefied contemplations of unreal worlds. [...]
In Florence during November l509, a wandering charlatan known as 'the Spaniard' - who often climbed up on to a bench to sell his prayers following his text with an example, like a good preacher - began his market-performance of the supernatural in this way:
'In order that you will believe that this comes from a saint who performs miracles, and that what I tell you is true, come and lead me to a hot baker's oven, which I will enter with this prayer.' And so he was led to this oven, at the Holy Trinity, with the people behind and many of the leading citizens ... On arrival at the baker's he said: 'Give me some uncooked bread' and threw it in the oven to show that it was hot, and then he stripped down to his shirt and dropped his trousers to his knees, and in this way he entered till high up, and stayed there awhile, and picked up the bread and turned around inside. And note, the oven was hot, he brought out the bread, and he didn't harm himself at all. When he had got out of the oven, he was given a torch and he lit it, and lighted as it was, he put it in his mouth and kept it there until it was extinguished. And many other times on the bench, over the course of several days, he took a handful of lighted tapers, and held up his hand for a length of time, and then he put them burning into his mouth, so that they went out. And he was seen to do many other things with fire: raising his hands into a pot of oil that was boiling on the fire, was seen many times by all the people. And thus he sold as many of the prayers as he could make; and I say that among all the things I have ever seen [the observer is Luca Landucci, a Florentine spice merchant] I have not seen a greater miracle than this, if it is a miracle. [...]
The boundaries between the real and unreal, possible and impossible, sacred and profane, abstract and concrete, holy and cursed, purity and filth, and idecency and sublimity are extremely fleeting and uncertain. [...]"

"Western Europe, at least until the seventeenth century, has the appearance of an enormous house of dreams where the diurnal regime becomes confused with the nocturnal, and which is master of surrealistic mythologies [...]. The Europe that, as Jacques Le Goff has splendidly perceived, turned repeatedly to 'agents of oblivion' more than to the professional witch, domina herbarum et ferarum, and that had the first innovators of the artificial delights and narcotic sweetness accompanying a concocted and directed diet of dreams in the women of the home: the mothers, grandmothers, aunts, godmothers, the wet-nurses who nursed the infants, and the domestic casters of charms.
At least until the end of the eighteenth century the habit of administering an infusion of poppies steeped in water to slightly restless children survived in the Italian countryside. This custom was widespread in France as well, since Josephe Raulin, towards the middle of the eighteenth
century, described as 'always suspect the narcotics which ... all too commonly are given to children to calm them', and the celebrated author of the 'Avis au peuple sur sa sante' (1760), the Lausanne doctor Samuel André Tissot, recognized that 'les remèdes tirés de l'opium ... sont d'une absolute necéssite [aux enfants].' [...]"

Black Nightshade / Zwarte Nachtschade (Solanum Nigrum/Hortense)

 

Black Nightshade / Zwarte Nachtschade (Solanum Nigrum / Hortense)), Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii [...], Basileae (In officina Isingriniana), 1542, Renaissance Herbals /Smithsonian Libraries

["Solanum Hortense [nachtschadefamilie cfr tomaat, aubergine, aardappel etc] was a traditional European medicine used as a strong sudorific, analgesic and sedative with powerful narcotic properties, but was considered a "somewhat dangerous remedy." 
(Wikipedia, dd. 22/02/2016) 
"De niet meer in gebruik zijnde naam Hofnachtschade - bij Dodonaeus [Rembert Dodoens (1518 - 1585)]Hofnascaye - behoeft wel enige nadere toelichting: uit de naam Hofnascaye is op te maken dat de plant in de tuin of het hof gekweekt wordt. We laten hier Dodonaeus aan het woord: ‘Onder de geslachten van Nascaye oft Solanum is het eerste en gemeynste Tam, dat wij in dit Capittel beschrijven sullen: de andere zijn wilt.’ Boven de [...] afbeelding staat als benaming ‘Tamme oft Hof-Nascaye.’ Hij noemt haar dan ook Solanum hortense. Hortense beduidt in de tuinen gekweekt. De woorden Tam en Hof duiden erop dat zij gekweekt werd, maar merkwaardigerwijs vermeldt hij dit niet. Ook niet dat zij vroeger gegeten werd, hoewel hij de geschriften van Dioscorides [ca. 40 - 90 na Christus] wel degelijk kende. Deze laatste noemde de plant Strychnos en schreef dat zij als salade gegeten werd. In de tijd van Dodonaeus was de plant reeds uit de hoven ontsnapt en wijd verspreid want, deelt hij mede, ‘Nascaye wast op veel verscheyden gewesten, niet alleen in de hoven, daer het den naem Tamme oft Hof-nascaye voert, en daer het dicwijls onder ander cruyden vermengt pleegt te groeyen, maer oock wel neffens de wegen, aen de canten van de velden ende bouwlanden, bij de hagen ende heggen, omtrent oude muren ende weegen, vervallen huysen ende puynachtige steenachtige oft rouwe gruysachtige plaetsen.’ Volgens Valerius Cordus en K. Gesner (zestiende eeuw) werd zij in die tijd nog aangeplant en als groente genuttigd. Hierbij valt op te merken dat, volgens ons, niet de giftige bessen werden gegeten maar alleen de bladeren." (H. Kleijn , Planten en hun naam, 1970) "Solanum: is afgeleid van het Latijnse solari = pijnstillen, kalmeren of tot bedaren brengen, vanwege de pijnstillende werking van enkele soorten van het geslacht. Nigrum: duidt op de zwarte kleur van de bessen. Zwarte nachtschade: de bes is zwart, daaraan heeft ze het eerste deel van haar naam te danken. Het woord nachtschade komt van het middeleeuwse woord nachtschaduwe. Vroeger dacht men dat de plant toverkracht had en nachtmerries verdreef." 
(F. Kok, Waarom brandnetel?, 2007) (Etymologiebank, dd. 23/02/2016)]

"In the seventeenth century the botanist to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Paolo Boccone, a tireless traveller, noted that the women of Moravia 'in order to induce sleep in babies who cry in the cradle or in bed, place beside the baby a bunch of solanum hortense, upon which the baby quickly quiets down and falls asleep. The cause of this effect must be attributed to the narcotic effluvia, and also because the pores of the babies are susceptible and they are more capable of receiving the effect of these plant effluvia than adults. The belief that the emanations and effluvia of the volatile aromas and essences passed rapidly through the pores of the skin and were absorbed almost instantaneouslywas one of the commonplaces where learned knowledge and peasant doctrine coincided perfectly. From Albertus Magnus, who believed that the effluvia of opium, thorn-apple and crocus could be absorbed even at a distance, it passed to Ambroise Paré, who none the less took a critical position on this matter in De vulneribus sclopetorum, and to Fallopio, Fioravanti, Cardano (of the De subtilitate), and Robert Boyle, author of a singular Tentamen porologicum, who (as in another of his works, the Specificorum remediorum concordia cum corpuscolari philosophia) not only upheld the therapeutic benefit of wearing medical substances hung from the neck, but solemnly declared to have been cured
of a haemorrhage simply by holding in his hand moss taken from a human skull.
In this general faith in the simultaneous absorption through the skin's pores, the greases, oils, ointments, plasters and poultices occupied a privileged position in the transmission of pharmacological messages, both harmful and beneficial. [...]
Society of old was made up of a swarm of people, oiled, smeared, anointed and spiced, violently odorous and unbearably smelly, where everyone was in turn anointed and anointer, and where the sense of smell dominated heavily[...]."

"In this regard at least, Campanella's City of the Sun is not at all utopian, resembling rather a normal report on the customs of an ordinary European city:
'They eat what is most beneficial and suitable according to season ... The Solarians make great use of fragrances ... [they] chew some marjoram, parsley, or mint and rub it on their hands. The folk use incense ... they often wash their bodies with wine and aromatic oils ... they observe the stars, inspect herbs ... they use prayers, fragrances, head comforters, sour things, gaiety, and fatty broths sprinkled with flour. In preparing tasty dishes that are a delight they have no equals. They make great use of mace, honey, butter, and many aromatic herbs ... they know a secret, marvellous art by which they can renew their bodies painlessly every seven years.'"

Mandrake/Alruin (Mandragora Officinalis)

Mandrake/Alruin (Mandragora Officinalis)

["Mandrake/Alruin (Mandragora Officinalis)

(nachtschadefamilie): De alruinwortel bevat giftige alkaloïden (scopolamine, atropine, apoatropine, hyoscyamine, cuskhydrine, solandrine, mandragorine en andere hallucinogene tropaanalkaloïden). De plant werd vroeger als narcoticum en pijnstiller, en deels ook als hallucinogeen middel gebruikt, onder meer in heksenzalf." 

(Wikipedia, dd. 22/02/2016)]

Henbane/Bilzekruid (Hyoscyamus Niger)

Henbane/Bilzekruid (Hyoscyamus Niger)

["Henbane/Bilzekruid (Hyoscyamus Niger) (nachtschadefamilie): De gehele plant is zeer giftig. De belangrijkste gifstoffen zijn de zogenaamde tropane alkaloïden scopolamine, hyoscyamine, atropine. De vergiftigingsverschijnselen zijn een opgezwollen buik en hevige krampen. Hierop volgt eerst verlamming en ten slotte de dood.In de volksgeneeskunde werd deze narcotische (pijnverdovende) en hallucinaties opwekkende plant als krampoplossend middel en bij astma ingezet. De bladeren, en ook de gemakkelijker doseerbare zaden, werden voor hun roesopwekkend effect gerookt. Tot in de 17e eeuw werd bilzekruid gebruikt als smaakstof voor bier." 
(Wikipedia dd. 22/02/2016)]

(Black) Poppy (Papaver Somniferum)

(Black) Poppy (Papaver Somniferum)

["(Black) Poppy / Papaver (Papaver Somniferum) produces edible seeds and is also the source of the crude drug opium which contains powerful medicinal alkaloids such as morphine and has been used since ancient times as an analgesic and a source of narcotic, medicinal and recreational drugs." 
(Wikipedia, dd. 22/02/2016)

Poplar / Populier (Populus)

Poplar / Populier (Populus) 

["Poplar / Populier (Populus): De binnenbast van de (zwarte) populier kan gegeten worden. De bast kan gedroogd en verpoederd worden zodat het een meel wordt. Van dit meel kan een brood worden gebakken. Het is noodvoedsel. Galen of Galenos von Pergamon, een arts uit het oude Griekenland meldde reeds een medicinaal gebruik van de knoppen van de bloemen van de zwarte populier. Deze worden gebruikt ter pijnbestrijding. Ook vandaag de dag kunnen we de knoppen van de zwarte populier tegen komen in een pijnstillende balsem." 
(Mens en gezondheid, dd. 22/02/2016)] 

"In this aromatic world of sensitive skin and magnetic pores, in order to prevent nursing infants from falling victim to 'terrifying dreams', 'hideous dreams', and 'fantasies' that 'by inciting dreams disturb the sleep', the wet-nurse, for her part, had to maintain a strict diet, eating 'lettuce in broth or in boiled salad and poppyseeds: sedative substances that were transmitted to the infant along with the milk. And furthermore, every night the anointing ritual took place beside the cradle: the infant was smeared from one temple to the other with a poplar ointment [in which poplar buds were mixed with black poppy, mandrake and henbane], rancid oil and a little opium, and a bit of vinegar, spreading this on the nostrils as well. A more effective remedy', advised the Roman doctor Scipione Mercuri, who died in 1615, 'is to boil lettuce seed and white poppyseed, with a little saffron and vinegar, in the rancid oil, spreading this over the temples with a cloth. A small amount of white poppy syrup taken through the mouth will also help. '

Thus prepared and 'seasoned', the infant was entrusted to the dark arms of the night. The initiation into controlled dreaming and the artificial ease of opium-induced sleep began with swaddling clothes. From infancy to old age narcosis ruled supreme."
(Piero Camporesi, 'Introduction', Camporesi 1996, pp. 17-25)