Medicine: examining urine
The medieval Church
Medieval Surgery
Rural life: the lazy ploughman
Friar playing music
Dante's Divine Comedy
Harvesting acorns
Living and dead Princes
Golden Haggadah
Noah in the Holkham Bible
Apothecary shop
City walls
Lord at supper
Peasants work the land
The Last Judgement
Hundred Years War
Demons fall into Hell
Chronicle of the Black Death
Genesis picture book
Medieval encyclopedia
Sir Gawain & the Green Knight
Peasants' Revolt
Scottish freedom
English cookery manuscript
This encyclopedia was written by a London clerk named James le Palmer. The book must have been exhausting to complete - it has more than 2,000 pages and 800 illustrations, and it is not even finished. It covers subjects as broad as natural sciences, the history of man, theology, the liberal arts and religion. This illustration shows a variety of birds. As he tells us in the introduction, le Palmer consulted over 100 different texts in compiling his great work. This was the first time a book of this kind had been arranged in alphabetical order, a technique that would influence the way that future encyclopedias were created.
Shelfmark: Royal MS 6 E.vi