For March 1st, #lobsterinvasion, here is the lobster (locusta maris, sea locust) in the Ortus Sanitatis.
Improvement?
Of course, some of you might be familiar enough with the Garden of Health to think that some other illustrations are lobsters, but you would be wrong.
As anyone can see, this is an escinis, or sea urchin. Obvious! They lay bitter-tasting eggs and prevent ships from moving when they latch on to them.
This, on the other hand, is a celethy or shark! (The name is a corruption of selachi). Below it is a blue monster from the Ganges that drags animals into the water and eats them. Neither are lobsters.
Today we are looking at a natural history book from the incunabula period, meaning it was printed before the year 1501. Hortus sanitatis (also written Ortus sanitatis, Latin for The Garden of Health), is a natural history encyclopedia that was first published by Jacob Meydenbach in Mainz, Germany in 1491. Not much is known about the author, but the Hortus sanitatis is considered one of the earliest printed natural history books and it is encyclopedic in its approach, covering plants animals, birds, fish, and stones. It is illustrated with numerous woodcuts throughout. The copy I looked from UW-Madison Special Collections is uncolored, but there are hand-colored copies that exist. The frontispiece depicts what looks like alchemists and their jars of elixirs. Along with naturalistic woodcuts of plants and animals, the book also features many biblical scenes such as Adam and Eve. A notable aspect of the Hortus sanitatis is that it was one of the last herbals to only feature Old World plants and it is in the Medieval herbal tradition. We will discuss the impact of voyages of exploration on the science of botany in later posts.
The history of botany in the West can be traced back to ancient scholars such as Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Theophrastus (371-287 BCE) and Dioscorides (40-90 CE). One of the earliest surviving illustrated manuscripts of Dioscorides' text De materia medica (On Medical Material) is the Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides, an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript that also include some illustrations of animals along with plants. Botany for many of the Greek philosophers like Aristotle was a subject based on ideas and not on direct observation of plants. Systematic botany has its roots in the field of medicine because herbs are useful as healing agents.
Medieval botany loosely resembled that of the ancients but was mainly based on local folk practices. An important scholar of the medieval period is Albertus Magnus (1200-1280), a German Catholic Dominican friar, philosopher and bishop who wrote extensively on a wide range of topics that fall under the umbrella of “natural philosophy” which included the study of plants. Albertus Magnus is considered ahead of his time because he had some original observations and suggestions for the classification of plants while still being rooted in Aristotelian botany.
I am looking at the evolution of the printed herbal and how it influenced new ideas of direct observation and scientific processes. Herbals are thought to have reached their zenith in the 16th century with the three founders of botany, German physicians named Otto Brunfels (1488-1534), Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), and Hieronymus Bock (1498-1554). I will return to these Renaissance botanists, but I wanted to make sure that we featured an early printed herbal such as Hortus sanitatis that is still very much steeped in the Medieval worldview.
View more posts in the Summer Series: The Spectacle of Nature.
–Sarah, Special Collections Senior Graduate Intern
No, you’re not looking at a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. These hand-colored woodcuts come from Hortus Sanitatis, the first printed natural history encyclopedia. While the majority of the Hortus Sanitatis deals with real creatures, the author also includes information regarding magical creatures such as the ones in the photos above.
Johann Prüss. Ortus Sanitatis. Strassburg: Johann Prüss, c. 1497. Incunabula Q. 615 H7891497.
Oooh, of course you can! Let me quickly look up some of my favorite sources...
Thomas de Cantimpré has no less than 3 unicorns covered! That's 3 times the amount of unicorns! From top to bottom, you have the monoceros, the Indian onager, and the unicorn itself.
Albertus Magnus gives us this classic animal, looking somewhat heraldic.
This unicorn from the Ortus Sanitatis, though, is rather contemplative looking. And seems rather goaty too.
The rhinoceros (karkadan) from Middle Eastern manuscripts varies a lot, sometimes clearly a rhino and sometimes more fanciful. This version is from a copy of al-Qazwini.
Jonston covers around 9 different unicorns, some of which are horny in more ways than one! (Trust me. Look them up, I've posted them before). These ones look like standard maned unicorns.
Ambroise Paré had a lot to say about unicorns (and mummies, and the plague, and anything else vaguely related to public health). Here is the pirassoipi, a two-horned unicorn (a bicorn?) from Italy
And you know what? I've been sticking to vintage illustrations but here's Rudolf Freund's spectacular historically-accurate unicorn!
Earlier this month I outlined an Independent Study I am doing with the Head of Special Collections, Max Yela, where I am exploring the European tradition of plant and animal illustrations in books. I named the Summer Series “The Spectacle of Nature." As a refresher, I am investigating illustrated natural history books in the West, starting in the manuscript tradition through the advent of printing in the 15th century. From there I will track how illustrated natural history books have changed over the centuries. My goal is to form a foundation for my thesis research in the popularization of natural history books in the 19th century, when new printing technologies made books cheaper and more accessible to a wider consumer base.
Today I am highlighting the Physiologus, a collection of animal legends compiled by an anonymous author in Alexandria, Egypt around the 2nd century CE. The word “Physiologus” can be translated as “naturalist,” or more accurately, “allegorist,” someone who interprets the hidden meanings of the natural world. The Physiologus was originally written in Greek, with early translations appearing in Latin around the 4th century, and Ethiopian, Syrian, and Armenian around the 5th century. These translations increased the popularity of the stories, which were incorporated into Isidore of Seville’s encyclopedic work Etymologies (ca. 623). Illustrations and stories from Physiologus formed the primary basis of medieval bestiaries (book of beasts).
The Physiologus is a compilation of folklore from various traditions including Indian, Hebrew, and Egyptian legends, that were passed down through ancient scientific writers such as Pliny the Elder. These legends were then filtered through a Christian framework of the world. Natural things like plants, animals, and stones are shown as representing qualities of Christ. For example, the Physiologus describes the serpent growing old and losing its vision. To restore its eyesight, the serpent will fast for forty days and forty nights to shed its skin and renew itself.
My interest in the Physiologus is its visual representations of plants and animals, and how those depictions became iconographic over hundreds of years. The earliest surviving illustrated copy is the Bern Physiologus from around the 9th century CE. I’ve included illustrations of the lion and elephant from the digitized Bern Physiolgus from Europeana.
Many illustrations that first appear in copies of the Physiologus later appear in medieval bestiaries, and even early printed books.
One of my favorite examples is the pelican bird. From Michael J. Curley’s English translation:
“Physiologus says of the pelican that it is an exceeding lover of its young. If the pelican brings forth young and the little ones grow, they take to striking their parents in the face. The parents, however, hitting back kill their young ones and then, moved my compassion, they weep over them for three days, lamenting over those whom they killed. On the third day, their mother strikes her side and spills her own blood over their dead bodies (that is, of the chicks) and the blood itself awakens them from death.”
The illustration shows the mother pelican rejuvenating the chicks with her blood. I included three visual examples of this: A woodcut from UW-Madison's copy of Ortus sanitatis (Latin for The Garden of Health) from the 1490s, a woodcut from the 1587 G. Ponce de Leon edition of Physiologus from the Newberry Library in Chicago (scanned from Michal J. Curley’s book), and the 1953 Book Club of California edition of Physiologus illustrated by Mallette Dean, which we have featured in several Fine Press Friday posts. Francis J. Carmody‘s translation for the Book Club of California is a composite of Greek, Syrian, Ethiopian, and Latin.
I will explore other illustrated natural history books from the manuscript tradition in upcoming posts before moving on to early printed zoological and botanical books.
View more posts in the Summer Series: The Spectacle of Nature.
–Sarah, Special Collections Senior Graduate Intern
Scholarly works that I consulted while researching the Physiologus:
Curley, Michael J. Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Kay, Sarah. Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Morrison, Elizabeth, and Larisa Grollemond, eds. Book of Beasts: the Bestiary in the Medieval World. Los Angeles: Published by the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019.
