19-06-2024, 07:13 PM
Many thanks, Rene!
From your You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I find it interesting that Dioscorides himself complains about many inaccurate plant descriptions in herbals and lacking botany skills in physicians.
'In his original introduction Dioscorides states that many physicians provided superficial accounts of the properties and diagnostic uses of drugs, often confusing one plant with another. Pliny the Elder confirms that physicians of his day knew little about compounding medications, entrusting these matters to seplasiarii, who frequently supplied spoiled or adulterated drugs. We learn from Fuchs that even in the sixteenth century hardly any contemporary physicians in Germany valued accurate knowledge of medicinal plants. This information did not concern them and was beneath their dignity — they left the study of medicinal plants to the superstitious, the foolish and old peasant women.'
Dioscorides himself only partly managed to do better.
'Although not as naïve as many other herbal writers, he showed little scientific interest — concentrating rather on the practical uses of plants — and sometimes giving only brief descriptions, perhaps from other primary sources.'
I think we must consider the plant drawings in herbals more as decorations than practical information. What the plants looked like simply wasn't relevant. A physician would not go out there to collect plants, he bought the ingredients. Therefore there was little evolutionary selection pressure on the illustrations leading to quite fantastic or mislabeled plants. We see a strong decline in illustration quality during medieavl times compared to antiquity. This makes the almost identical illustrations in many Dioscorides copies over centuries even more remarkable. Since the books most likely were not copied directly but assembled from separate text and image sources each time, we can deduct that a collection of stock paintings (likely on wood), must have been copied and transmitted over a considerable timeframe. At least a millenium. The question is - how long did these pinakes exist, where were they located and when did they disappear? Were such or different collections of images like from Diebold Lauber's workshop available at the time the VM was likely created?
Also there appear to be much more Dioscorides copies or derived works:
'There are many surviving manuscripts of De Materia Medica after Codex Vindobonensis — an important example being the seventh-century Greek alphabetic Codex Neapolitanus, in the possession of a Neapolitan monastery for many years, and then presented to Emperor Charles VI in 1717. It was taken to Vienna and subsequently to the Bibliotheca Nazionale in Naples. The drawings in Codex Neapolitanus are from the same source as Codex Vindobonensis, but are smaller and grouped together on fewer pages. A good copy of the Codex Vindobonensis from the fifteenth century is in the Cambridge University library; there is a line of descent to a fourteenth century manuscript, Paris GR 2091; and a seventeenth century descendant at Bologna — these four forming the primary alphabetic group. The secondary alphabetic group includes eleventh- and twelfth-century manuscripts at Pierpoint Morgan, Mount Atlas and the Vatican (GR 284).
Next is the non-alphabetic Greek group, the best example the Paris Grec 2179 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, written in
ninth-century Egypt, its naturalistic illustrations dating the draughtsmanship to the second or third century CE. Later manuscripts of the same group reside at Venice (St Marks 273 of the eleventh century), Florence, the Vatican,
and Vienna.
The Ostrogoths and Lombards encouraged Latin translations. The ninth-century Dioscorides Lombardus in the Munchener Staatsbibliothek (with its direct descendant, a South Italian manuscript in Beneventan script, Codex Longobard, Munich 337) has an excellent text, making it the most important of the Latin manuscripts. It is illustrated with approximately 900 lovely miniatures, more than twice as many as the 387 in Codex Vindobonensis. Herbarium Apulei (Codex Cassinensis 97), a ninth-century manuscript herbal from the late Roman period (about
400CE) preserved at the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, is based partly on Dioscorides Lombardus. Dioscorides Vulgaris (Palimpsest Lat 16), a sixth-century manuscript now in Vienna, is the second primary Latin translation.
Up to the seventeenth century we find many commentaries and inferior later manuscripts such as Liber Dioscuridis de herbis feminis by Sextus Placitus Papyriensis. Dioscorides Lombardus was one of the source documents (with 22 others) for the celebrated botanical poem Macer floridus of 1161 by Odo of Meune. He recounts the virtues of 77 plants in verse dedicated to Aemilius Macer, a contemporary and friend of Ovid. Dioscorides Vulgaris led to a number of further versions, one with Anglo-Saxon glossaries.'
We should look at all the mentioned documents which likely predate the VM and compare illustrations. However there must have been even more inferior copies. The major Dioscorides copies were treasures which would not have been lent to a common scribe to copy from it for prolonged periods of time. I believe this was another reason to split text and illustrations. Rather than having to borrow a precious illustrated book, thus making it inaccessible to others, a copyist would acquire text fragments and consult image collections to compile a new book over a long period of time. This way several scribes could work on the same book. without obstructing each other. Each worked on his text and images. This explains why, despite the strong similarities in imagery, the main Dioscorides copies differ in composition and ordering. Some things were omitted, either because the text was not available or deemed unimportant, other things were added. The VM likely was compiled in the same process. Different persons worked on different source texts with or without images plus extra stock images plus own interpretation. The VM may have been extreme in this regard but overall the creation process probably was less unusual than we think.
From your You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I find it interesting that Dioscorides himself complains about many inaccurate plant descriptions in herbals and lacking botany skills in physicians.
'In his original introduction Dioscorides states that many physicians provided superficial accounts of the properties and diagnostic uses of drugs, often confusing one plant with another. Pliny the Elder confirms that physicians of his day knew little about compounding medications, entrusting these matters to seplasiarii, who frequently supplied spoiled or adulterated drugs. We learn from Fuchs that even in the sixteenth century hardly any contemporary physicians in Germany valued accurate knowledge of medicinal plants. This information did not concern them and was beneath their dignity — they left the study of medicinal plants to the superstitious, the foolish and old peasant women.'
Dioscorides himself only partly managed to do better.
'Although not as naïve as many other herbal writers, he showed little scientific interest — concentrating rather on the practical uses of plants — and sometimes giving only brief descriptions, perhaps from other primary sources.'
I think we must consider the plant drawings in herbals more as decorations than practical information. What the plants looked like simply wasn't relevant. A physician would not go out there to collect plants, he bought the ingredients. Therefore there was little evolutionary selection pressure on the illustrations leading to quite fantastic or mislabeled plants. We see a strong decline in illustration quality during medieavl times compared to antiquity. This makes the almost identical illustrations in many Dioscorides copies over centuries even more remarkable. Since the books most likely were not copied directly but assembled from separate text and image sources each time, we can deduct that a collection of stock paintings (likely on wood), must have been copied and transmitted over a considerable timeframe. At least a millenium. The question is - how long did these pinakes exist, where were they located and when did they disappear? Were such or different collections of images like from Diebold Lauber's workshop available at the time the VM was likely created?
Also there appear to be much more Dioscorides copies or derived works:
'There are many surviving manuscripts of De Materia Medica after Codex Vindobonensis — an important example being the seventh-century Greek alphabetic Codex Neapolitanus, in the possession of a Neapolitan monastery for many years, and then presented to Emperor Charles VI in 1717. It was taken to Vienna and subsequently to the Bibliotheca Nazionale in Naples. The drawings in Codex Neapolitanus are from the same source as Codex Vindobonensis, but are smaller and grouped together on fewer pages. A good copy of the Codex Vindobonensis from the fifteenth century is in the Cambridge University library; there is a line of descent to a fourteenth century manuscript, Paris GR 2091; and a seventeenth century descendant at Bologna — these four forming the primary alphabetic group. The secondary alphabetic group includes eleventh- and twelfth-century manuscripts at Pierpoint Morgan, Mount Atlas and the Vatican (GR 284).
Next is the non-alphabetic Greek group, the best example the Paris Grec 2179 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, written in
ninth-century Egypt, its naturalistic illustrations dating the draughtsmanship to the second or third century CE. Later manuscripts of the same group reside at Venice (St Marks 273 of the eleventh century), Florence, the Vatican,
and Vienna.
The Ostrogoths and Lombards encouraged Latin translations. The ninth-century Dioscorides Lombardus in the Munchener Staatsbibliothek (with its direct descendant, a South Italian manuscript in Beneventan script, Codex Longobard, Munich 337) has an excellent text, making it the most important of the Latin manuscripts. It is illustrated with approximately 900 lovely miniatures, more than twice as many as the 387 in Codex Vindobonensis. Herbarium Apulei (Codex Cassinensis 97), a ninth-century manuscript herbal from the late Roman period (about
400CE) preserved at the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, is based partly on Dioscorides Lombardus. Dioscorides Vulgaris (Palimpsest Lat 16), a sixth-century manuscript now in Vienna, is the second primary Latin translation.
Up to the seventeenth century we find many commentaries and inferior later manuscripts such as Liber Dioscuridis de herbis feminis by Sextus Placitus Papyriensis. Dioscorides Lombardus was one of the source documents (with 22 others) for the celebrated botanical poem Macer floridus of 1161 by Odo of Meune. He recounts the virtues of 77 plants in verse dedicated to Aemilius Macer, a contemporary and friend of Ovid. Dioscorides Vulgaris led to a number of further versions, one with Anglo-Saxon glossaries.'
We should look at all the mentioned documents which likely predate the VM and compare illustrations. However there must have been even more inferior copies. The major Dioscorides copies were treasures which would not have been lent to a common scribe to copy from it for prolonged periods of time. I believe this was another reason to split text and illustrations. Rather than having to borrow a precious illustrated book, thus making it inaccessible to others, a copyist would acquire text fragments and consult image collections to compile a new book over a long period of time. This way several scribes could work on the same book. without obstructing each other. Each worked on his text and images. This explains why, despite the strong similarities in imagery, the main Dioscorides copies differ in composition and ordering. Some things were omitted, either because the text was not available or deemed unimportant, other things were added. The VM likely was compiled in the same process. Different persons worked on different source texts with or without images plus extra stock images plus own interpretation. The VM may have been extreme in this regard but overall the creation process probably was less unusual than we think.