Guild records have always been a vital resource for historians of guild and urban histories. Wragg's new volume moves beyond the roles of guild books as purely administrative records and demonstrates how the physical object played an important role in the ceremonial space of guild activities. As well as containing traditional corporate records, the guild book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York also contains a collection of selected medical texts and accompanying images. The manuscript, British Library Egerton 2572, has previously been studied either for its visual aspects, or as a guild record. Wragg's new volume addresses this issue by examining the book holistically, and includes both a study and a full transcribed edition of the guild book. By moving beyond traditional periodization, he demonstrates how the book was used over time both as an object for display and ceremony, and as an administrative document.
Wragg's study is divided into two halves. The first half covers his meticulous analysis of Egerton MS 2572, starting with the book's physical characteristics: the ‘medieval core’ created in 1486, its subsequent additions and how the book was used. These assessments are the basis of his argument that the guild book was created with the intention of continued, active, use as a repository of guild records. The second half of the book contains an extensive selection of images of the guild book and other manuscripts, presented as a visual explanation of how pictorial conventions of the guild book both followed and differed from contemporary examples. Also included is a full transcript of the manuscript alongside a sizeable appendix, providing a fruitful resource for historians studying medical images, guild book conventions and especially individuals within the Barber Surgeons’ Guild.
Chapter 2 places the book into its wider civic and guild context, and briefly outlines the landscape of medical provision in York and the guild's place within it. Wragg does not, however, touch on wider debates about how knowledge was put into practice outside of the guild, nor how this knowledge interacted with other practitioners or customers within the medical marketplace. He draws heavily from other York guild examples, such as the Merchant Taylors’ Guild and the Bakers’ Guild, to open his argument that the guild book was also a symbolic artefact that had a ceremonial use. Unfortunately, the exact ceremonial use or storage of the guild book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York remains speculative, based on other guild activity.
Wragg's central focus is on the book's role as a repository of medical knowledge. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the 1486 ‘medical core’ of the guild book. Each image – such as the bloodletting man, zodiac man and the four temperaments – is discussed individually in chapter 3 and then placed in context with similar images from other manuscripts. Chapter 4 takes a similar approach, looking at the written texts which include texts on astrology, plague tracts and a bloodletting poem. He argues that none of the texts or images was selected to explore new ideas, but to reinforce a popular broad agreement around medicine and health. The texts and images did not include annotations found in other contemporary examples, suggesting the book was not used for teaching. Furthermore, some texts and images contained extensive errors, rendering them unusable for astrological predictions or calculations.
In the fifth chapter, Wragg places the ceremonial use of the book within the wider context of the guild's need for a symbolic artefact and object. Wragg posits that the book acted as an alternative space in which to build and project guild corporate identity, as the group lacked their own guildhall. Chapter 5 also discusses the unique royal portraiture used within the guild book. The collection of royal portraits, added in the late sixteenth century, are explored alongside the London Barber Surgeons’ coat of arms, which are used to reinforce the legitimacy of the York Guild to practise medicine, even though it did not have its own royal approval or connections. Wragg concludes the 300-year history with the decline of the guild, and the continued use of Egerton MS 2572 at the end of the eighteenth century.
The strengths of this volume lie in the wider context of the medieval texts and images, drawing on histories of art and the book, to solidify Wragg's arguments that Egerton MS 2572 differed from both other guild books and medical manuscript collections. These differences are key in understanding the book as an object of display rather than as an educational tool or work of reference. One criticism of the book is that Wragg's explanation of why the guild needed a ceremonial object is not emphasized sufficiently until chapter 5, in which the reader is presented with the specific guild context with the book acting as a substitute for physical guild space.
Alongside the study, the volume contains a full edition of the guild book, including the guilds’ articles, oath, calendar and transcription of the medical texts discussed in chapter 4, a resource more accessible to researchers. The appendix is also indispensable to research of guilds or material objects as it includes a description of the manuscript's physical characteristics, including how folios were constructed and moved over time. Perhaps most importantly for guild historians, a list of the names entered into the guild book, alongside a key to their guild careers, is included.
This book is an informative and comprehensive guide to Egerton MS 2572 that sheds light on both the construction and demonstration of medical knowledge alongside more unusual displays of guild recording keeping. The volume is ambitious in its aims to both show the archaeological assessment of the book alongside a full transcript, which is particularly useful for research into guild records, both generally, and for those interested in medical guilds. Placing the guild in the wider medical, civic, and urban context, it shows how multiple approaches can be brought together to explain the wider role of texts as material objects.
