Renaissance humanism and botany

Annals of Science

Volumn 33, Issue 6, 1976, Pages 519-542

  Reeds, Karen Meier ^a  

^a BRYN MAWR COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BOTANY; HISTORY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE;

BOTANY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE, EARLY MODERN; HISTORY OF MEDICINE, MODERN;

EID: 0017014801     PISSN: 00033790     EISSN: 1464505X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00033797600200481     Document Type: Article

References (146)

1. H. Beck, De stirpium, maxime earum, quae in Germania nostra nascuntur…libri tres…nunc in Latinam conversi, interprete Davide Kybero (1552, Strassburg), ‘ Praefatio ‘, cap. ix, x.
2. A very well-known example of such hmnanist rhetoric is F. Rabelais’s preface to G. Manardi, Epistolarum medieinalium tomus secundus, numquam antea in GaUia excusus (1532, Lyons). In these letters Manardi, a Forrara physician, criticized Marcellus Virgilius’s Latin translation of Dioscorides; he also tried to identify plants named by classical authors or found by himself on his travels. Otto Brunfels referred to the rebirth of ancient botany in the subtitle of his famous herbal, Herbarum vivae eicones (1530, Strassburg): ‘ in gratiam veteris illius, & iamiam ronascentis herbariae medicinae ‘.
3. These generalizations are based on a study (in progress) of botany in medieval universities. Records of university regulations and syllabi show that only a few treatises on herbs were taught, and those not very often. The small number of copies of books on herbs in personal or college libraries confirm this. It would be hard to name more than two dozen educated men in the Middle Ages who recorded their own observations of plants. While the early Renaissance botanists unquestionably exaggerated their own achiovemehts, their scorn tbr medieval botany was, I think, by and large justified. John Riddle has come to similar conclusions in ‘Theory and practice in medieval medicine’, Viator: medieval and Renaissance studies, 5 (1974), 157-184, especially pp. 171-184.
4. Renaissance herbals complained often about the inability of physicians and medical students to detect tim frauds of pharmacists and herb-gatherers. Roger Bacon (ods. A. G. Little and E. Withington), De retardatione aceidentium senectutis cure aliis opusculis de rebus medicinis (1928, Oxford), 150, said thirteenth-century physicians ‘cannot recognize their simple drugs [that is, herbs], but trust to ignorant apothecaries ‘. Erasmus (od. P. S. Allen), Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterdami (12 vols., 1910 1947, Oxford), vol. 2, 56, poked fun at the conservative Paris medical faculty who could not oven name the parsley in their salad. Brunfols (footnote 2), 13, alluded to the parsley anecdote.
5. The ‘ professional ‘ botanists of the sixteenth century included Luca Ghini, Valerius Cordus, Charles de l%cluso, Jean Robin, and perhaps Matthias do l’Obel and Prospero Alpine. They taught botany at various universities or supervised botanical gardens. Others, like Ulisso Aldrovandi and Pierre Bolon, made a living out of their knowledge of natural history, but not botany exclusively.
6. Piety as a motive for botanical studies was most often claimed by Protestant botanists in Northern Europe (K. H. Dannenfeldt, ‘Wittenberg botanists during the sixteenth century’, in The social history of the Reformation: essays in honor of Harold J. Grimm (ed. L. P. Buck and J. W. Zophy: 1972, Columbus, Ohio), 223-248).
7. For discussion of those other motives for taking up botany see A. Arbor, Herbals, their origin and evolution (reprint of 2nd rov. od., 1938: 1970, Darien, Conn.), 67, 104 ll0, 121-124, 206-207, 212-219, 238-239, 250-261, 266. The title page to Brunfels’s Herbarum vivae eicones (footnote 2), for example, depicts Dioscorides and Apollo, the Garden of the Hesperides and the Garden of Adonis--all labelled in Greek or Latin. On the humanist love of verse epigrams, see P. O. Kristellor, Renaissance thought II: papers on humanism and the arts (1965, New York), 13-14.
8. Medieval Latin had no term for ‘ botany ‘. Plants themselves were usually referred to by their medicinal use as simpliees, ‘ simple drugs ‘, as opposed to the elaborate ‘ compound drugs ‘ which were composed of many ‘ slmplos ‘. Strictly speaking, a ‘ simple ‘ was any substance-- vegetable, animal or mineral--which was used by itself as a drug, but Renaissance botanists commonly spoke of ‘ simplos ‘ when they wanted to suggest the medical uses of plants. The word probably came into currency when Galen’s treatise on simple medicines was trauslated into Latin in the Middle Ages as De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus or De simplicibus. (The date and translator are not certain; see Riddle (footnote 3), 172n60.) In less medical contexts, Renaissance botanists were apt to use herbae, plantae and especially stirpes, a word employed by Thoodorus Gaza in his translations of Thoophrastus’s botanical works. The phrase historia stirpium appears in the titles of several very influential sixteenth-century herbals. I have not boon able to pin down a use of the phrase res herbaria before 1538, when the Englishman William Turner published his Libellus de re herbaria (London), but I think that it was popular on the Continent before then. Latin words based on the Greek botan- root do not seem to have boon common before 1600, although Euricius Cordus named his colloquy on the study of plants Botanologicon as early as 1534.
9. S. D. Wingate, The medieval Latin versions of the Aristotelian scientific corpus with special reference to the biological works (reprint of the 1931, London ed.: n.d., Dubuque, Iowa), 55-72, 98-103, especially pp. 66-67.
10. C. Schmitt, ‘Theophrastus in the middle ages’, Viator: reed. and Ren. stud., 2 (1971), 251-270
11. Medieval and Renaissance Latin translations and commentaries: Theophrastus (Catalogus translationum ot commontariorum, vol. 2: 1971, Washington, D. C.), 239-322, especially pp. 244-246.
12. C. Schmitt, ‘Theophrastus in the middle ages’, Viator: reed. and Ren. stud., 246, 265-275.
13. C. Schmitt, ‘Theophrastus in the middle ages’, Viator: reed. and Ren. stud., 266-267.
14. J. C. Scaliger severely criticized Gaza’s translation in his Commentarii et animadversiones in sex libros de eausis plantarum Theophrasti (1584, Lyon). Andrea Cesalpino remarked on ‘the many ambiguous and difficult statements of the ancients, …especially by Theophrastus ‘ in his dedicatory letter to Franeesco de’ Medici, De plantis libri XVI (1583, Florence). See also A. F. Hort’s comments on the difficulties of translating Theophrastus, in the Loeb Library edition, Enquiry into plants and minor works on odours and weather signs (2 vols., 1968, London), vol. 1, xv, xvii, xix, xxvi. Two Renaissance book hunters: the letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis (od. and trans. P. W. G. Gordan: 1974, New York), 148, 165. tu. Sabbadini, Le scopertc dci codici latini e greci no’ secoli XIV e XV (2 vols., 1904-1914, Florence: reprint ed. by E. Garln, 1967, Florence) vol. 2, 241 242, summarizes early humanist interest in Historia naturalis. 14 W. H. Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and other humanist educators (reprint of 1897 ed., 1963, Now York), 48, 173, 223n4. See also E. Garin (ed. Eckhard Kessler), Geschichte und Docu. mente der abendlgindischen Pddagogik (German trans, from Italian: 1966, Hamburg), 73, 168, 257, 268. W. H. Woodward, Studies in education during the age of the Renaissance (reprint of 1906 od., 1967, New York), 237; K. H. Dannenfeldt (footnote 6), 227 228. Iliny’s popularity at Wittenberg did not last, however; Melanchthon eventually came to prefer Aristotle for the arts students after all (P. Petersen, Geschichte der Aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen Deutschland (1921, Leipzig; repr. 1964, Stuttgart -Bad Cannstatt), 75ft., 103; see section 4 and footnote 71 below). ms G. Sarton, Appreciation of ancient and medieval science during the Renaissance (reprint of 1955, Philadelphia ed., 1961, New York), 79-86, summarizes the printing history. I have greatly condensed the detailed account in L. Thorndiko, A history of magic and experimental science (8 vols., 1923-I941, New York), vol. 4 (1934), ch. 66, ‘ The attack on Pliny ‘, 593-610. A. Castiglioni, ‘ The school of Ferrara and the controversy on Pliny ‘, in Science, medicine, and history: essays…in honour of Charles Singer (ed. E. A. Underwood: 2 vols., 1953, London), vol. 1, 269-279, gives a good overview of the debate, but confuses important details. is Plinianae defensio Pandulphii Collenucci…adversus Nicolae Leoniceni accusationem (14937, Ferrara), fol. b ii recto.
15. E. Stubler, Leonhart Fuchs, Leben und Werk (Mtinchoner Beitruge zur Gosch. und Lit. der Naturwiss. und Mediz., vol. 13/14: 1928, Munich), 240.
16. J. Riddle, ‘Dioscorides’, Dictionary of scientific biography (1970, New York), vol. 4 (1971), 119-123
17. ‘Medieval medicine’ Dictionary of scientific biography, 162-163, footnotes 21-26. Professor Riddle’s forthcoming study of the transmission of Materia medica in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum will be indispensable to any future discussion of Dioscorides in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Avicenna and Serapion appear often in catalogues of medieval university libraries, Dioscorides very rarely. Bologna booksellers in 1405 were required to have manuscripts of Avicerma’s Canon, Book II, and Serapion (and the first five books of Galen on simple medicines) for students to rent and copy.
18. Dioscorides was not mentioned in these regulations or any other medieval university regulations I know of. See C. Malagola (od.), Statuti delle Universitz e dei Collegi dello studio Bolognese (1888, Bologna), 274-276, 284-285; and E. Seidler, Die Heillcunde des ausgehenden Mittelalters: Studien zur Strulztur der spitscholastischen Medizin (Sudhoffs Archiv, Beiheft 8: 1967, Wiesbaden), 50, 55-60.
19. J. Riddle, ‘Dioscorides’ Dictionary of scientific biography, 121.
20. J. Riddle, Dictionary of scientific biography
21. R. Sabbadini Dictionary of scientific biography, vol. 1, 50, 69, 129, vol. 2, 263.
22. E. Barbaro (od. V. Branca), Epistolae, orationes, et carmina (2 vols., 1943, Florence), vol. l, 61; vol. 2, 14, 33, 52, 83. Barbaro studied Dioscorides on his own in 1484, began his translation by 1488, and spoke of it as ready for publication in 1489; it was certainly finished by the time his Castigationes was published. The Dioscorides translation may have circulated in manuscript before it was finally published thirteen years after Barbaro’s death: Joannis Baptistae Egnatii Veneti in Dioscoridem ab Hermolao Barbaro tralatum annotamenta…Dioscorides…De medicinalia materia ab eodem Barbaro Latinitate primum donati…corollarium libris quinque absolutum (1516, Venice).
23. G. Sarton Dictionary of scientific biography, 70.
24. J. Riddle, ‘Dioscoridos’ Dictionary of scientific biography, 121-123
25. G. Sarton Dictionary of scientific biography, 70-71
26. J. Stannard, ‘P. A. Mattioli and some Renaissance editions of Dioscorides’, Books and libraries at the University of Kansas, 4, no. 1 (1966), 1-5
27. P. A. Mattioli, ‘Sixteenth century commentator on Dioscoridos’, Biblioy. eontrib., Univ. of Kansas libraries, 1 (1969), 59-81. Beyond those details about early printed editions of botanical classics, I have ignored in this paper many questions about the impact of printing on humanist activities and on botany, but not because I believe them to be inconsequential. On the contrary, I agree wholohoartedly with Elizabeth Eisonstoin that the advent of printing is a central issue for Renaissance historians, and I hope to address it directly in future papers.
28. E. L. Eisonstein, ‘The advent of printing and the problem of the Renaissance’, Past and present, 45 (1969), 19-39
29. ‘The advent of printing in current historical literature: notes and comments on an elusive transformation’, Amer. hist. review, 75 (1970), 727-743.
30. Other widely-read and reprinted translators of Dioscoridos included Marcellus Virgilius, Janus Cornarius, AndrOs de Laguna, Jean Antoine Sarrasin and Jacques Goupyl. Ruel also wrote a herbal, De natura stirpium libri tres (1536, Paris), which was reprinted several times. See C. E. Dublor, La ‘ Materia mddica ‘ de Dioscorides: transmisi6n medieval y renascenscita (6 vols., 1953-59, Barcelona).
31. J. Stannard, ‘ Mattioli, sixteenth century commentator ‘ Past and present, 59-81
32. A. Arbor Past and present, 92-97
33. S. Savage, ‘A little-known Bohemian herbal’, Trans. Bibliog. Soc. (the Library), (2) 2 (1921), 117-131.
34. For example, Bologna, Montpellior, Nantes (imitating Montpellier’s statutes), and probably Salerno. C. Malagola (footnote 20), 275 276, 284; Cartulaire de l’Universitd de Montpellier (2 vols., 1890-1912, Montpollier), vol. I (ed. A. Germain and A. Vigie), no. 25, 68;’and M. Fournier, Los statuts et privil$ges des universitds franfaises (3 vols., 1890-91, Paris), vol. 3, 71-73. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Avicenna was preferred to Galen at both Bologna and Montpellier.
35. H. Schipperges, Ideologic und Historiographic des Arabismus (Sudhoffs Archly, Beihefte 1: 1961, Wiesbaden), 14-26, gives an excellent review of anti-Arabic, pro-Greek sentiments on the part of Renaissance humanists.
36. R. J. Durling, ‘A chronological census of Renaissance editions and translations of Galen’, J. Warburg and Courtauld Inst., 24 (1961), 230-305
37. R. J. Durling, J. Warburg and Courtauld Inst., 236ff. The phrase, Omnia turn antehac extabant, turn quae nunc primum inventa sunt, is part of the title of a collection of Galenic works in Latin edited by Conrad Gesner and printed at Lyon, 1548-1551.
38. I have selected these typical phrases from subtitles of editions of Galen listed in A catalogue of sixteenth century printed books in the National Library of’Medicine (comp. R. J. Durling: 1967, Bethesda, Maryland).
39. R. J. Durling, J. Warburg and Courtauld Inst, 243-291.
40. For reasons which I do not understand, the work was very popular in Lyon in 1547; throe printers put out two Latin editions and a French version.
41. P. Melanchthon, ‘Declamatio de vita Rodolphi Agricolae’, Corpus Reformatorum (ed. C. G. Bretschneider and It. E. Binseil, 28 vols.: reprint of the 1834-1860, Halle ed., 1963, New York), vol. 11, col. 442; W. H. Woodward (footnote 15), 87-103.
42. E. Barbaro (footnote 23), eel. 2, 61, to Pontico Faccino, Padua, dated July 1484. Hermolai Barbari…In Dioscoridem corollariorum libri quinque (1530, Cologne), fol. 1 recto, says t h a t ‘ Foelix Sophia of Padua showed us this iris in his garden ‘. Other references to Barbaro’s personal observations of plants can be found on fol. 15 verso, 38 recto, 44 verso, 45 verso, 48 recto, 49 verso, 54 recto, 57 recto, 62 recto. V. Branca, ‘ Ermolao Barbaro and late quattrocento Venetian humanism ‘, in Renaissance Venice (ed. J. R. Hale: 1973, Totowa, N. J.), 218-243, claims that Barbaro ‘founded the world’s first botanic garden’ at Padua (pp. 228, 239). I assume that he means the garden mentioned in the 1484 letter to Faccino (footnote 34). This, however, is hardly a botanical garden--at least, not in the sense that botanists use the phrase. To judge by the notes in Barbaro’s Dioscorides, the garden belonged to ‘ Foelix Sophia ‘; Barbaro spent only one summer in Padua. Historians of botany generally divide the honors for the first European botanical garden between Padua and Pisa in the 1540s (E. C iovenda, ‘Note sulla fondazione degli orti medici di Padova e di 1)isa ‘, Atti del VII Cong. Intern. di Storia della Medic., Roma 1930 (1931, Pisa), 488-509.
43. Other botanieally-mlnded travelers to Italy included Rabelais, Pondolot, Valorius Cordus, Bishop Guillaumo Pollicier, Joan and Caspar Bauhin. For an account of botanists in the Levant, see K. H. Dannonfoldt, Leonhard Rauwolf, sixteenth-century physician, botanist, and traveler (1968, Cambridge, Mass.), 5-12. The Spanish diplomat, explorer and naturalist Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviodo, who spent a couple of years in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century, used Pliny’s Historia naturalis as a model for his own Historia general y natural de las Indias, Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano (part I, 1535, Seville; part II, 1557, Valladolid) and the shorter De la natural historia de las Indias (1526, Toledo), which has boon edited and translated by S. A. Stoudomiro as Natural history of the West Indies (Univ. of North Carolina Stud. in lom. Lang. and Lit., vol. 32: 1959, Chapel Hill).
44. C. Ibauhin, YTOHINA sou enumeratio plantarum (1596, Basel), preface; and HINA, Theatri botanici (1623, Basel), preface. The passage he quoted comes from Galen’s De compositione medicamentorum per genera, III, cap. 2. (I shall cite hereafter these works of Bauhin as ‘ Phytopinax ‘ and ‘ Pinax ‘ respectively). as In addition to the passage cited in footnote 37, we Galen, De antidotis, I, cap. 2, 5, and De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus, IX; Dioscoridos, Materia medica, prefatory letter to Aroius; and Pliny, Historia naturalis, XXV, cap. 1-5, XXVI, cap. 6.
45. This typical selection comes from Matthioli’s dedication to Maximilian II in his Commentarii, in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, de materia medics, reprinted in C. Bauhin’s edition of Matthioli, Opera quae extant omnia (1598, Frankfurt). The examples come mostly from Pliny.
46. Leonhart Fuchs included a short glossary of technical botanical terms in his De historia stirpium eommentarii insignes (1542, Basel), fol. 3 recto-verso, 4 recto-verso. He included explanations of such ‘ difficult words ‘ (vocum dicilium explieatio) as arbor, herba and fruetus. T. A. Spraguo wrote a series of very useful articles elucidating the meaning of Latin terms used by ancient, medieval and Renaissance botanical writers: ‘The herbal of Otto Brunfels’, J. Linn. Soc. Lend. Bet., 48 (1928), 79-124
47. ‘Botanical terms in Pliny’s Natural History’, Kew bull., (1933), no. 1, 30-41
48. ‘Botanical terms in Isidorus’, Kew bull., (1933), no. 8, 401-407
49. Plant morphology in Albortus Magnus
50. ‘Botanical terms in Albortus Magnus’, Kew bull., (1933), no. 9, 431-440, 440-459
51. ‘Technical terms in Ruollius Dioscoridos’, Kew bull., (1936), no. 2, 145-185
52. T. A. Sprague and G. Nolmes, ‘The herbal of Leonhart Fuchs’, J. Linn. See. Lend., Bet., 48 (1931), 545-642
53. I have not yet sOOn Peter Dilg’s article, ‘ Die botanischo Kommontarlitoratur in Italicn um 1500 und ihr Einfluss auf Deutschland ‘, in A. Buck and O. Herding (eds.), Der Kommentar in der Renaissance (1975, Bonn: Deutsche Forschungsgomeinschaft, Kommision ffir Humauismusforschung, Mittoilung I), 225-252.
54. L. Fuchs, J. Warburg and Courtauld Inst., preface: ‘ It is the case with many plants that no words can describe them so that they can be recognized. If, however, they are held before the eyes in a picture, then they are understood immediately at first glance ‘.
55. The chief exceptions I knew of are: (1) the herbal based on Sorapion made for Franccsco Carrara before 1403, perhaps by the Paduan monk, Jacopo Filippo (British Museum Egerton 2020); (2) the herbal of Benedetto Rinio, a Venetian doctor, and his artist, Amadeo Amaglio, whose paintings were partly copied from the Carrara herbal, partly original; and (3) Hortus sanitatis zu Deutsch, written by the Frankfurt physician Johan yon Cube, and printed by Peter Schoeffer at Mainz, 1485. See Wilfred Blunt, The art of botanical illustration (1950, London), chs. 3, 4
56. Otto Pacht, ‘Early Italian nature studies and the early calendar landscape’, J. Warburg and Courtauld Inst., 13 (1950), 30-33, plates 7c, 8 a b c, 10 a b. There is a very large literature on botanical illustrations in medieval manuscripts and early printed works. In addition to Blunt and Phcht, the following are especially helpful in suggesting ways to understand changes in botanical illustration at the beginning of the sixteenth century
57. A. Arbor (footnote 6), ch. VII, and her article, ‘From medieval herbalism to the birth of modern botany’, in Science, medicine, and history (footnote 17), eel. 1, 317-336
58. R. Herrlinger, History of medical illustration from antiquity to A.D. 1600 (trans. G. Fulton-Smith: 1970, London).
59. C. Nisscn, Die botanische Buchillustration, ihre Geschichte und Bibliographie (2nd. rev., augm. ed., 3 vols. in 1:1966, Stuttgart) provides a useful bibliography.
60. On Weiditz’s illustrations, see A. Arber, J. Warburg and Courtauld Inst., 206-209.
61. W. Rytz reproduced some of Weiditz’s original watercolors in a portfolio, Pflanzenaquarelle des Hans Weiditz aus dent Jahre 1529: die Originale zu den Holzschnitten ira Brunfels’schen Krduterbuch (1936, Bern), and described the odd circumstances of their survival in Das Herbarium Felix Platters: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Botanik des XVI. Jahrhunderts (Verhandl. Naturforsch. Gesellsch. Basel, eel. 44, l: 1933, Basel), 7-8, 76ff.
62. For discussion of these points, see the works cited in footnote 42.
63. E. Panofsky, The life and art of Albrecht Diirer (reprint of 1955 ed., 1971, Princeton), 44ff., describes the development of woodcut techniques in Germany in Diirer’s lifetime.
64. Dioscorides referred to Cratevas by name in the preface and body of Materia medica at least half-a-dozen times
65. Singer, The herbal in antiquity and its transmission to later ages, J. hellenic stud., 47 (1927), 1-52.
66. 46 Pliny marveled at the naturalistic feats of these and other Greek and Roman artists in Historia naturalis, 35, cap. 33-46.
67. 47 Pliny, Historia naturalis, 25, 4.
68. 48 Galen, De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus, 6, proemium.
69. Sebastien de Monteux, an opponent of Fuchs, argued in favor of the proposition ‘ Pictures of simple medicines are deceptive ‘ (Picturas simplicium medicamentorum esse fallaces) in his Annotiunculac.ac medicinae doctoris in errata recentiorum medicorum per Leonardum Fuchsium Oermanum collecta (1533, Lyon), annot. 4, 7, fols. iii, v.
70. 60 This praise of Weiditz is found in Joannes Sapidus’s Latin epigram in Brunfels’s Herbarum vivae eicones; it is the only evidence in the herbal to the artist’s identity.
71. 51 Leonhart Fuchs included a short glossary of technical botanical terms in his De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (1542, Basel), fol. 3 recto-verso, 4 recto-verso, preface, had some justification for this argument, since Galen did occasionally say explicitly that he had omitted the descriptions because Dioscorides had sufficiently explained them; see, for example, De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus, VI, ‘ Abrotonon ‘.
72. 52 Bock was moved by other considerations as well. The publisher-printer Wendel Rihel had in fact offered to have pictures drawn from living plants, but Bock thought it would make the book too expensive
73. Rihel’s ‘ Letter to the reader in H. Bock, Kreiiter Buck (1546, Strassburg), reprinted in E. Stiibler (footnote 19), 233. Bock also feared that pictures would distract the reader from the descriptions, which were so clear and expressive ‘ that no painter could represent them better ‘, as Conrad Gesner praised them in his ‘ Praefatio de rei herbariae scriptoribus ‘ to Bock’s 1552 edition (footnote 1). Bock revealed his strong Protestant beliefs in his final objection to pictures: they would tend to take the place of the text in just the way that priests, refusing to interpret Sacred Scripture to the people, had insisted that pictures be the books of the laity (H. Bock, New Kreiiter Buch (1539, Strassburg), preface; A. Arber (footnote 6), 151-152).
74. 53 See Bock’s prefaces to the later, illustrated German editions (1546, 1551, Strassburg) and the Latin edition of 1552 (footnote 1). L. Fuchs (footnote 40), preface, also appealed to the fact that the Greeks had taught painting to their youths.
75. 54 For an early example of humanist collecting
76. see Poggio Bracciolini, the letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis, 166-167, 190.
77. Carpaccio depicted a shelf full of curiosities of art and nature in his painting of St. Augustine in his study, discussed by M. Levey, Early Renaissance (1967, Pelican paperback), 93, figure 49.
78. See also F. J. Cole, ‘ The history of Albrecht Diirer’s rhinoceros in zoological literature ‘, in Science, medicine, and history (footnote 17), vol. 1, 337-356.
79. 65 Erasmus wrote The godly feast (Convivium religiosum) in 1522. Gardens were stock settings for dialogues and story-telling in classical and Renaissance literature. Since Erasmus took some details about the interior decoration of the house from his own friends’ houses, it may be that the gardens were not entirely drawn from his imagination C. R. Thompson (trans, and ed.), The colloquies of Erasmus (1965, Chicago), 46-78, especially pp. 46-47, 51-52
80. J. C. Margolin, LHdee de nature dans la pensee d’lHrasme (Vortrage der Aeneas-Silvius-Stiftung an der Universitat Basel, vol. 7: 1967, Basel), 6-7.
81. 56 G. Sarton, Introduction to the history of science (3 vols., 1927-1947, Washington, D. C), vol. 2, 1177 mentions a late fourteenth-century collection of dried plants kept by a Silesian phy- sician, Thomas of Sarepta, but I have been unable to find Sarton’s source. The literature on the history of herbaria is full of debates over the inventor of the, technique; see C. Nissen (footnote 42), vol. 1, 244ff. for bibliography.
82. 57 A. Arber Wittenberg botanists during the sixteenth century ‘, in The social history of the Reformation: essays in honor of Harold J. Grimm, 138-143, gives a good account of sixteenth-century herbaria and Ghini’s role in teaching the technique.
83. 58 W. Rytz, Herbarium (footnote 43), 37-44, describes the reactions of Montaigne and other visitors to Platter’s herbarium and other collections in natural history and art. For Aldrovandi
84. see L. R. Lind’s introduction, ‘ The life and works of Ulisse Aldrovandi ‘, to his translation, Aldrovandi on chickens: the ornithology of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1600), Volume 2, Book XIV (1963, Norman, Okla.), xvii-xxxvi;
85. L. Frati, Catalogo dei manoscritti di Ulisse Aldrovandi (with A. Ghigi and A. Sorbelli: 1907, Bologna), especially Manuscript 41; and Aldrovandi’s autobiography, ‘ La vita d’Ulisse Aldrovandi’ (ed. L. Frati), in A. Baldacci, E. de Toni et al., Intorno alia vita e alle opere di Ulisse Aldrovandi: studi (1907, Bologna), 1-27.
86. 59 W. H. Woodward, Vittorino Vittorino da Feltre and other humanist educators, 108, 223, 237-239
87. W. H. Woodward, Studies in education during the age of the Renaissance, (1906) 15, 99, 123-181, 183, 202, 230, 240, 285.
88. See also Gargantua’s letter to Pantagruel in F. Rabelais (ed. Abel Lefranc et al.), Oeuvres de Francois Rabelais (6 vols., 1912-1955, Paris), vol. 3, Panta- gruel, roy des dipsodes, ch. 8, 98-109, in which Gargantua urges his son to acquire la congnoissance des faictz de nature.
89. 60 F. Rabelais, Oeuvres Vittorino da Feltre and other humanist educators, vol. 2, La vie tres horrificque du grand Gargantua, chs. 23-24, 215-244
90. The translation is by J. M. Cohen, The histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1955, Penguin Books), bk. 2, chs. 23-24, 88-92. Rabelais was apparently the first to use the word ‘ herborize ‘ (arborizer) in French (Oeuvres, vol. 2, 239nl80).
91. 61 Rabelais himself played a part in the introduction of the Greek medical classics into the teaching at Montpellier. In 1530 he attracted a large audience to his lectures on Galen’s Ars medicinalis and Hippocrates’s Aphorisms, in which he criticized the Latin translations and checked them against a Greek manuscript. In 1537 he returned to Montpellier after six or seven years absence (during which he wrote Pantagruel and Gargantua) and lectured on Hippocrates directly from a Greek text. F. Rabelais, Hippocratis ac Galenis libris aliquot, ex recognitione Francisci Ftabelaesi (1532, Lyon), dedicatory letter; Rabelais’s signature and comment in the manuscript, S4, Liber lectionum et clavium (Archives of the Medical Faculty of Montpellier), 27 September 1537: D. Franciscus Rabelaesus, pro suo ordinario elegit librum Prognosticorum Hippocratis, quern graece interpretatus est.
92. 62 C. D. O’Malley, ‘ Medical education during the Renaissance ‘, in The history of medical education (ed. C. D. O’Malley: 1970, Los Angeles), 89-102.
93. 63 The Basel faculty hoped in 1570 that both anatomy and botany would be taught ‘ as much by ocular demonstration as by precepts ‘ (non tarn praeceptis quam oculari demonstrationc studiosis enarrandi): A. Burckhardt, Geschichte der medizinische Fakultat zu Basel 1460-1900 (1917, Basel), 360. Similar phrases can be found in the regulations of other sixteenth-century medical schools and in prefaces to herbals.
94. 64 C. D. O’Malley, ‘ Medical education during the Renaissance ‘, in The history of medical education (ed. C. D. O’Malley: 1970, Los Angeles), 93-94
95. C. Sehmitt, ‘ The Faculty of Arts at Pisa at the time of Galileo ‘, Physis,’ li (1972), 243-272, especially p. 245.
96. E. Stabler Leben und Werk (Miinchener Beitrage zur Gesch. und Lit. der Naturwiss. und Mediz., vol. 13/14: 1928, Munich), 169-172.
97. 66 K. Schrauf (ed.), Acta facultatis medicac Universitalis Vindobonensis (3 vols., 1904, Vienna), vol. 3, 232-236.
98. 87 A. Germain, ‘ La medecine arabe et la medecine grecque a Montpellier ‘, extr. from Mem. Soc. Archaeol. Montpellier, (1879), studied this shift in detail. His ‘ Textes justificatifs ‘ should be cheeked against the original records of lectures in S4, Liber lectionum et clavium and S8, Liber congregationum (in the Archives of the Medical Faculty of Montpellier), since Germain made several errors and omissions.
99. 68 The regulations are printed in A. Germain, La Renaissance a Montpellier (1871, Montpellier), 109-118, 135-139. For Bishop Pellicier, one of the most interesting humanist-naturalists of the sixteenth century]
100. C. Revillout, ‘ Les promoteurs de la Renaissance a Montpellier ‘, Mem. Soc. Archaeol. Montpellier (2) 2 (1902) 14-383 especially pp. 273-278. He is the Bishop of Montpellier who undertook to obtain the French copyright privilege for Vesalius’s Fabrica corporis humanae mentioned in the letter from Vesalius to Oporinus translated in C. D. O’Malley, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels 1514-1564 (1964, Berkeley, Calif.), 325-326.
101. 88 L. Sabbatani, ‘L’Istituto di Farmaeologia della TJniversita di Padova ‘, Mem. e docum. per la storia della Univ. di Padova, 1 (1922), 397-425; and ‘ La Cattedra dei Semplici fondata a Bologna da Luca Ghini ‘, Studi e mem. per la storia dell’ Univ. di Bologna, 9 (1926), 13-53.
102. 70 E. Chiovenda In Dioscoridem corollariorum libri quinque, 495-503 nl8
103. C. Sehmitt The Faculty of Arts at Pisa at the time of Galileo ‘, Physis,’ li, 248-251, 254.
104. 71 Die Statuten der Universitdt Helmstedt (ed. P. Baumgart and E. Pitz, Veroffentl. der Nieder- sach. Archivverwaltung, Heft 15: 1963, Gottingen), paragraphs 137, 139, 163-171, 217, 337, 339-346.
105. 72 L. Sabbatani, ‘ Cattedra ‘ Les promoteurs de la Renaissance a Montpellier ‘, Mem. Soc. Archaeol. Montpellier, 398-400.
106. 73 The regulations drawn up in 1570 provided for a third professor of medicine who would teach botany and anatomy (A. Burckhardt (footnote 63), 360). The faculty’s consideration of the students’ petition in 1578 can be found in Bl, Liber conclusionum universitalis, Univer- sitatsarchiv Basel (kept at the Basel Staatsarchiv), fol. 60 verso-61 recto, ‘ Deliberatio de tertio Medicinae professore ‘. Caspar Bauhin was appointed the first professor of anatomy and botany in 1589 after he had taught botany unofficially for eight years.
107. 74 See the references in La Renaissance a Montpellier (1871, Montpellier), 109-118.
108. Pellicier’s manuscript notes on Pliny survive in part in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Fonds lat. 6808, 4°. In his ‘ Praefatio de rei herbariae scriptori- bus ‘ (footnote 52), Gesner praised Pellicier’s commentary on Pliny and hoped it would be pub- lished. Pliny was most often taught in the arts faculties of northern Protestant universities.
109. K. H. Dannenfeldt
110. Statuten Die Statuten der Universitdt Helmstedt, paragraphs 217, 337, 339-341.
111. The only formal lectures on Theophrast us’s botany that I know of were delivered at Bologna by Ulisse Aldrovandi in 1560 while Aldrovandi was still a lecturer in philosophy. After his appointment in 1562 to teach ‘ about the history of plants, animals and fossils ‘ (de Vhistoria delle piante, animali, etfossili), Aldrovandi lectured mostly from Dioscorides (L. R. Lind (footnote 58), xxii-xxv; and ‘ La vita d’Ulisse Aldrovandi ‘ (footnote 58), 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18). O. Brunfels (footnote 2), Appendix, outlined the differentiae which Theophrastus used to categorize plant genera. It is hard to see what purpose this digest of Theophrastus was supposed to serve. My guess is that Brunfels wanted his Appendix to be a little anthology of passages from the ancients in praise of plant study and he could not leave out Theophrastus.
112. Rondelet’s students, Charles de l’Ecluse, Pierre Pena and Matthias de l’Obel, occasionally refer to Theophrastus in their recollections of Rondelet’s informal teaching. Valerius Cordus ‘ gave demonstrations and interpi’etations of the plants of Galen, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides ‘ to students at Wittenberg while he was himself a student (K. H. Dannenfeldt (footnote 6), 230- 231, 235). There are also some references to Theophrastus in the volumes of letters on botany written by Basel students and professors and their correspondents. For example, one hasty note from Caspar Bauhin to the dean of the medical faculty asks for the loan of Scaliger’s com- mentaries on Theophrastus: Universitatsarchiv Basel, Fr Gr I 12, no. 16 (Universitatsbibliothek Basel, Rare Book Room).
113. 78 The author of the recommendation is not known, R. Thommen, Geschichte der Universitdt Basel 1532-1632 (1899, Basel, Beilage IV, 323-324).
114. 79 Liber congregationum, 30 May 1567: Et bene observatum est studiosis desiderari cognitiones simplicium medicamentorum…[Doctores] elegerunt Dominum Joannem Hucherum qui hora octava matutina docebit librum sextum Galeni ubi agitur de materia medica. Hucherus taught Book VI again in 1571.
115. 80 De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus was taught at least ten times at Montpellier between 1538 and 1600. On five occasions, the lecturer specified that he would teach Books IV and V, Book V alone, or Book V and the following books; Hucherus was the only one who taught Book VI by itself. See entries in S 8, Liber congregationum (footnote 67) for 1557, 1560, 1564, 1567, 1571, 1572 and 1573. Two other instances of a preference for the first, theoretical half should be noted: 1) the 1405 regulations at Bologna explicitly excluded Book VI from the medical curriculum; 2) several sixteenth century editions of the treatise contain only Books I-V Durling (footnote 29), 243, 291; and C. Malagola (footnote 20), 275-276).
116. Galen, De simplicibus medicamentorum facultatibus, VI, proemium and passim.
117. 82 For example, Pierre Pena and Matthias de l’Obel, Stirpium adversaria nova (1570-71, London), 335, tell how Rondelet, ‘ by exploring both the manuscript and the thing itself’, sorted out the apparent disagreements among Dioscorides, Galen, Pliny and the Arabic author Mesue over the identity of Ponticum minor. Rondelet blamed the confusion on a careless scribe’s interchanging the descriptions of the leaves of Ponticum maior and minor. Bishop Pellicier, who taught Montpellier students informally, impressed Pena and de l’Obel (p. 237) by reading aloud from an old Greek manuscript of Dioscorides, collating it with a sixteenth-century Latin translation as he went along, and proving that Dioscorides’s Chrysanthemum was the same plant as the ones called Caltha and Calendula.
118. 83 Staluten De simplicibus medicamentorum facultatibus, paragraphs 139, 165, 169-171. See also Universitatsarchiv Basel Q2, Liber decretorum medicamentorum et observationum (1571-1S04), fol. 5, 12 September 1575: ‘ Statutum uti vere et Autumno Professorum aliquis cum studiosis medicis in vicinos menses Rei herbariae in huius natalibus spectandae ergo excurrat comite Decano, et guotquot alii ex studiosis medicis volent. Florenus e fisco in communi sumptu doctorum suppediretur. Studiosi sua curante quadra ‘. (The faculty treasury paid the doctors’ expenses; the students were expected to provide their own dinners.)
119. The best descriptions available in English of such informal field trips are in Beloved son Felix: the journal of Felix Platter, a medical student in Montpellier in the sixteenth century (trans. Sean Jennett: 1961, London), 64-65, 69, 74, 88-89, 128
120. Pena and de l’Obel, 133, 154, 156-157, 221-222, 231, 312, 350-351
121. K. H. Dannenfeldt Pena and de l’Obel, 231-232, 239
122. Dannenfeldt, 27, 30.
123. A. Germain Dannenfeldt, 36
124. Liber congregationum, fol. 65 recto, 86 recto- verso, 94 recto (1574-76).
125. E. Chiovenda Dannenfeldt
126. C. Sehmitt Dannenfeldt, 254-57.
127. The dates for the founding of public botanical gardens are very uncertain. For Bologna, I have followed TJ. Aldrovandi, ‘ Vita ‘ 25;
128. A. Burckhardt Dannenfeldt, 145-146
129. Montpellier, L. Guiraud, ‘ Le premier jardin des plantes francais: creation et res- tauration du Jardin du Roi a Montpellier par Pierre Richer de Belleval (1593-1632) ‘, Archives de la ville de Montpellier: inventaires et documents, 4 (1920), 265-396
130. R. C. Howard, ‘ Guy de la Brosse, the founder of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris ‘ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1974, Cornell), 35ff. and 79-80, footnotes 2-5. I am indebted to Dr. Howard for a copy of her thesis.
131. 88 C. de l’Ecluse, Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum historia (1575-76, Antwerp), 475, 491, and Pena and de l’Obel, 312, 350-351, recollect plants they had seen in physicians’ gardens in Montpellier. Conrad Gesner compiled a list of private gardens in German-speaking countries, whose owners welcomed students (Horti Germaniae (1561, Strass- burg), translated by D. Fretz as Konrad Gessner als Gartner (1948, Zurich)). Aldrovandi, ‘ Vita ‘ mentions many gardens he has visited in Italy
132. F. Morini, ‘ La syntaxis plantarum di U. Aldrovandi ‘, in Intorno alia vit Aldrovandi, 195-217, prints notes by Aldrovandi on public and private gardens in Italy, Germany and France (pp. 202-206).
133. C. Bauhin, Pinax, preface. Two letters to Bauhin from his students refer to his practice of showing his hortus siccus to students (Universitatsarchiv Basel, G2I2, vol. Ill, no. 367, (mid-December 1613), and no. 408 (29 March 1621)).
134. A. Germain, ‘ L’apothicairie a Montpellier sous l’ancien regime universitaire’, extr. from Mem. Soc. Archaeol. Montpellier, (1882), 7-18
135. R. Thommen ‘ L’apothicairie a Montpellier sous l’ancien regime universitaire’, extr. from Mem. Soc. Archaeol. Montpellier, 255 and Beilage I, p. 301, paragraph 7; and C. Bauhin, Pinax preface.
136. 91 Bauhin’s prefaces to his Phytopinax and Pinax (footnote 37) and his Animadversiones in historiam generalem plantarum Lugduni edilam (1601, Frankfurt). His Gatalogus plantarum circa Basileam sponte nascentium (1622, Basel) was a guide to the plants growing wild within a mile’s radius of Basel; the book was pocket-sized and had blank pages interleaved, so the student could take it along on herbationes and enter notes in it easily.
137. 92 A. Arber, ‘ L’apothicairie a Montpellier sous l’ancien regime universitaire’, extr. from Mem. Soc. Archaeol. Montpellier 55
138. T. A. Spraguo, ‘ Brunfels ‘ 81-82
139. O. Brunfels ‘ L’apothicairie a Montpellier sous l’ancien regime universitaire’, extr. from Mem. Soc. Archaeol. Montpellier, 68.
140. 93 W. Turner, The names of herbes (reprint of 1548, London ed., 1965, The Ray Society), fol. H i recto; pp. 135-225.
141. C. Bauhin, ‘ L’apothicairie a Montpellier sous l’ancien regime universitaire’, extr. from Mem. Soc. Archaeol. Montpellier, subtitle Index…plantarum circiter sex millium; and A. Arber, 8, 114-116. Bauhin had specimens of four thousand plants in his hortus siccus.
142. 95 One notable exception was Garcia d’Orta, who published his Goloquios dos simples, drogas he cousas medicinais da India at Goa in 1563. His first-hand experience with oriental plants and drugs led him to challenge Galen and Dioscorides in an unusually forthright way, asserting to his readers that ‘ you should give more credit to me as an eyewitness than to those fathers of medicine who wrote from false information ‘. He added that, were he in Spain rather than India, he ‘ would not dare to say anything against Galen and against the Greeks ‘ (C. R. Boxer, Two pioneers of tropical medicine: Oarcia d’Orta and Nicolas Monardes (Wellcome Historical Medical Library Lecture Series no. 1: 1963, London), 13-15).
143. At Montpellier, for example, in 1575 and 1576 Doctor Dortomannus lectured on Valerius Cordus’s Historia stirpium lib. IIII rather than on Dioscorides. In 1578 his colleague, Doctor Momminus, was asked to teach about simples from ‘ whatever author he wished ‘ and to bring the plants ‘ before the eyes of the students so they may compare those which grow in this region and those which come from elsewhere ‘ S8, Liber congregationum, fol. 83 recto, fol. 101 verso: ‘D. Momminus simplicia medicamenta tractabit ex autore quern volet: eademque ob oculos ponet studiosis, quarumque in hoc regione potuerunt comparavi, vel aliunde habere ‘. Bauhin took it for granted that his students ‘ were in the habit of using ‘ the herbals of Bock. Matthioli, Fuchs, Dodoens, de l’Obel and J. Theodorus (Tabernaemontanos) to investigate the plants native to Basel; see his Catalogus (footnote 91), preface.
144. Galen’s and Dioscorides’s precepts on method were also applied outside botany. Rondelet, for example, introduced his lectures on urine by citing Galen and Dioscorides: ‘ Galen said that things should be taught as they were made or arranged in nature; Dioscorides followed this plan in describing herbs: first the leaves come forth, then the stems, later the flowers, seeds, etc. Therefore, here we will teach first about healthy urine and then about diseased urine ‘ (Tractatus de urinis ante hac non editus (1610, Frankfurt), 4).
145. Galen, De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus, VI, proemium. Dioscorides condemned alphabetical arrangements in his prefatory letter to Materia medica. Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century also recognized the difficulties and conveniences of ordering plants by the alphabet (A. Arber (footnote 6), 166; L. Fuchs (footnote 40), preface).
146. A. Arber 143-145. Criteria often used for grouping plants together included the general appearance of the plants, characters of leaf or fruit, medicinal properties, other uses, habitat, or foreign origins. The terms genus and species did not, of course, have their modern technical meanings.