2020 Essays

Collectors and Practitioners of Technical Knowledge: A Comparison of Wolfgang Sedelius and the Author-Practitioner of BnF Ms. Fr. 640

Oltrogge, Doris

Recipe collections are the major literary genre for the transmission of technical knowledge from Antiquity through the early modern period. Their flexibility allowed for the adaptation to a number of different uses in various contexts, from specialized workshop notebooks to encyclopedic compendia. This essay compares the author-practitioner of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 with a slightly older South German counterpart, Wolfgang Sedelius (1491/92–1562). As a monk and court preacher, Sedelius comes from a different social and intellectual milieu than the anonymous French author-practitioner. Although first and foremost a theologian, he was also broadly interested in mathematics, mechanics, artisanal techniques, chemistry, and medicine. His three surviving recipe collections, compiled over a period of about thirty years, document the personal approach of a scholar interested in a variety of technical and scientific fields. In his later manuscripts Sedelius interviewed and observed expert practitioners and personally experimented himself—approaches similar to that of the author-practitioner of Ms. Fr. 640, although their individual interests and expertises differ.