[Talk] Alain Touwaide - Villa Mondragone - 14 Oct. 2019

[MarcoP]

Did Touwaide actually use the terminology of capsule or was this just a translation choice?

Touwaide was speaking to a general audience, not specialists, so I am not sure if it matters a lot....

Rene is right of course. When Touwaide mentioned emoji, he did so with a big smile. Even if You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., he did not mean that they made their way into the VMS 

He was talking to a friendly audience of scholars and students of art history and philology, many of whom are familiar with his works. Also, Touwaide's words are filtered through someone like myself, I am incompetent of botany and my English is what it is. I wrote that my summary was to be taken with a grain of salt, but clearly that was not enough. I now begin to doubt if publicly sharing my notes was wise.  All those who have read at least a single recent book about herbals know who Touwaide is: his works are in all bibliographies. I thought introducing him would have been superfluous, but on this point I was clearly wrong.

I see a number of valuable things in Touwaide's talk. For instance, his interpretation of the pharma section as inspired by Galen comes from a scholar who has devoted to Galen several of his You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
His mention of a possible parallel with Schoenberg Dioscorides LJS 62 comes from one who has been studying Dioscorides manuscripts for the last 40 years. He is the author of 36 published works on the subject, from "L’authenticité et l’origine des deux traités de toxicologie attribués à Dioscoride" (1984), to "L’identification des plantes du Traité de matière médicale de Dioscoride: un bilan méthodologique" (1994) to "Al-Ghâfiqî’s Kitâb fî l-adwiya al-mufrada, Dioscorides’ De materia medica and Mediterranean Herbal Traditions" (2014).
His comparison of the VMS with BL Sloane 4016 comes from the author of a 512 pages book about the London manuscript (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). When he says that VMS plants appear to depend on the Tractatus de Herbis but are unrecognisable, I know his opinion is of the greatest value. These ideas are not new (more or less everything possible has been said, at one time or another), but when they come from an authoritative point of view they have a different weight (at least in my eyes).

I believe the best approach is trying to understand what he said and why, and see what use we can make of it. Many of his ideas are different from mine: I welcome this as an opportunity to challenge my opinions.