Mappae clavicula

The mappae clavicula is a medieval Latin text containing manufacturing recipes for crafts materials, including for metals, glass, mosaics, and dyes and tints for materials. The information and style in the recipes is very terse. Each recipe consists of the names of the ingredients and typically about two sentences on combining the ingredients together. A small minority of the recipes go to about six sentences. The text comes with a short preamble, and other than that it is just recipes. The number of recipes was expanded over the course of the medieval centuries, and some medieval copies have deletions as well as additions, so it is better thought of as a family of texts with a largely common core, not a single text. Most of the Mappae Clavicula recipes are also in medieval Latin in a text known as the Compositiones ad Tingenda (English: "Recipes for Coloring (or Tingeing)").^[1]

^ "Notes on Some Manuscripts of the Mappae Clavicula", by Rozelle P. Johnson, year 1935. A Review of Compositiones variae from Codex 490, Biblioteca Capitolare, by Lynn White, year 1940. Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, by William Eamon, year 1996, pages 32-36.

[1] "Notes on Some Manuscripts of the Mappae Clavicula", by Rozelle P. Johnson, year 1935. A Review of Compositiones variae from Codex 490, Biblioteca Capitolare, by Lynn White, year 1940. Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, by William Eamon, year 1996, pages 32-36.

[1]