Dublin, Trinity College MS 1357 (H. 4. 16)
Siobhán Barrett
Figure 1: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1357 (H. 4. 16), p. 57: A page from a text on uroscopy listing the twenty different colours of urine and what each signifies (image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen).
The main scribe of this paper manscript, dated 1563, is Eoghan Ó Fearghusa. A scribe called Cairbre has contributed to the work and he has signed the manuscript on page 92. The place of writing is given as Coill Néill in Baile Matha (p. 165). The catalogue of the Irish manuscripts in TCD (Abbott and Gwynn 1921: 184) suggests that this Baile Matha (also called Baile Mhic Mhatha in later sources) is a townland in the barony of Tirawley in Co. Mayo. Since the Ó Fearghusa family were physicians to the O’Malleys of Mayo, this is persuasive.
The manuscript contains several important texts, including an Irish translation of a fourteenth-century commentary by Gentile da Foligno on the metrical text Carmina de Urinarum Iudiciis (‘Songs of Urinary Judgements’), composed by Gilles de Corbeil; two versions of a text beginning Urina est colamentum sanguinis et humorum; a text on uroscopy based on Theophilus Protospatharius’ text De Urina; an Irish translation of De Pulsibus, also by Gilles de Corbeil; definitions and aphorisms from Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium Medicinae; and an abridged version of a pharmacological text, the Dispensatorium by Valerius Cordus.
Copies of the texts on uroscopy are found in other manuscripts, some of which have strong scribal and geographical connections with TCD 1357. These include Edinburgh University Library MS Laing iii 21(see our Manuscript of the Month entry March 2025); British Library Add. 15582 (see our Manuscript of the Month entry June 2025); and Royal Irish Academy MS 23 A 4 (469).
Further reading:
- Abbott, Thomas Kingsmill, and Edward John Gwynn (1921), Catalogue of the Irish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co), pp. 184–5
- Mac Firbis, Duald (1844), The Genealogies, Tribes, and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach, Commonly Called O’Dowda’s Country, ed. by John O’Donovan. Irish Archaeological Society
- Ó Cuív, Brian (1991), ‘The Irish Language in the Early Modern Period’, in A New History of Ireland. Volume 3, Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691, ed. by T. W. Moody, F. X Martin and F. J Byrne (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 509–45
- Ó Muraíle, Nollaig (2003), Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh. Leabhar Mór na nGenealach: The Great Book of Irish Genealogies, 5 vols (Dublin: Éamonn de Búrca)
- Ó Muraíle, Nollaig (2016), ‘The Hereditary Medical Families of Gaelic Ireland’, in Rosa Anglica: Reassessments, ed. by Liam P. Ó Murchú, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 28 (London: Irish Texts Society), pp. 85–113
- Wallis, Faith (2005), ‘Gilles de Corbeil’, in Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Thomas F. Glick et al. (New York: Routledge), pp. 198–9
- Wallis, Faith (2010), Medieval Medicine: A Reader. University of Toronto Press