MKMOIRtS
ToRREY Botanical Club
Volume X
HISTORY
OF
PRE-CLUSIAN BOTANY
IN ITS
RELATION TO ASTER
BY
EDWARD SANDFORD BURGESS
Published by the Club New York 1902
PRESS OF THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY, LANCASTER, PA.
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY AND VARIATIONS OF ASTERS
Part I
HISTORY
OF
PRE-CLUSIAN BOTANY
IN ITS
RELATION TO ASTER
BY
EDWARD SANDFORD BURGESS
Issued 22 November 1902
PREFATORY NOTE
This first volume of Aster Studies is by limitations of size con- fined to the general historical treatment proposed — leaving the description of species to a volume soon to follow. The present volume traces the history of Aster to 1600, or through the con- tinuance of the ancient m.onotype conception of Aster; that is, until Clusius' polytype conception came into full dominance as embodied in the series of Aster species set forth by him in 1601.
It has been my aim to present the history of Aster from the Greeks to Clusius in such a way as to show its relations to other botanical thought and writing, and to disentangle the constantly recurring confusions with other blended genera. This involves notice of all important plant-writers before Clusius, constituting this volume a sketch of the History of Pre-Clusian Botany.
Such a history will, I trust, be the more acceptable because it seems to be much needed in English, our language being as yet without any extended work covering this field. Future interest in this subject among English-speaking lovers of learning will some time no doubt become so great as to call forth a full and exhaus- tive history of the earlier botany. The present work is but a step toward such a desired consummation ; but its plan has its advan- tages in the singleness of view gained by tracing one single aspect of the subject through the past.
In carrying out this plan, I have sought above all to turn on the light. I have therefore dwelt longer on many unfamiliar and almost inaccessible mediaeval writings than upon the better-known though earlier classics. With the rarer works I have added such simple bibliographic details as may be helpful to the inquirer ; but without intending the fullness required by the bibliographic spe- cialist. Where possible in these cases, I have mentioned the library where a copy may be seen in America ; making much use of familiar abbreviations such as MS., = manuscript ; ex. bibl. Colli., — from the library of Columbia University ; ex. libr. Bu., — from the library of the writer : etc., etc. Such citations may seem trivial to some, but not to those who have experienced with the writer the difficulty of getting access to a desired mediaeval work at the time wanted. E. S. B.
Normal College, New York City, Sept. 6, 1902.
V
CONTENTS
(See also Index of Subjects, Authors and Species, p. 421.)
Introduction to this Series of Aster Studies i
Brief Preliminary Sketch of the General History of Aster 9
Early Period 10
Dioscoridean Period 12
Clusian Period 16
Linnean Period 17
Segregation Period 18
PRE-CLUSIAN BOTANY IN ITS RELATION TO ASTER 20
The Ancient Type, Aster Atticus of Dioscorides 20
Identification with Aster Amellus of Linnaeus 21
Identification with the Amellus of Vergil 23
Digest of Ancient Description and Belief relating to Aster 25
Aster Description 26
Flower Structure 26
Time of Flowering 27
Color of Flowers 27
Stem and Branches 29
Root 30
Leaves 31
Achenes 31
Taste 32
Aster Habitats, Locahties and Situations 32
Early Regard for Aster 35
Aster gathered by flower-lovers , 35
Aster brought to shrines and temples 36
Aster in pastoral life 36
Aster Properties 39
Aster as Stomachic 39
Aster used for the Eye 40
Aster used ad i?igiten and for ulcers 40
Aster used for Epilepsy 44
Aster used for Sciatica 45
Aster used for Goitre and Quinsy 45
Aster used for Venomous Bites 45
Aster as used by Lower Animals 47
Aster used in Dyeing 48
Aster Temperament 49
Modes of Using Aster Remedies 50
Plasters and Salves 50
vii
viii Contents
Aster used internally 51
Aster used as an Amulet 51
Other Superstitious Modes of Use 54
Procuring Sleep or Forgetfulness 55
Parts used 56
Aster Names , . 57
The word Aster in Greek 57
Names for Aster A tticus 61
Plant-names derived from Aster 80
Punic Plant-names assimilated to Aster 82
Aster as Name of the Samian Earth 83
Aster Medicaments 88
Plant Writers before Clusius, Tabular Vitiw with date, subject,
language and nationality 93
Early Classical Writers.
I Hippocrates 102
Hyophthabnon and Rostrum porcinum 105
Polyophthalmon and Buphthalmon 107
II Aristotle and Nicolaos Damascenos iii
III Theophrastus ; Asteriscus 113
IV Nicander 115
V Cratevas (with Andreas) 118
VI Vergil (with Aemilius Macer) 123
VergiY s A7nelhis 123
Amellus as a Plant-name 129
VII Celsus ; his Asteriace 133
VIII Columella ; his Amellus 134
Dioscoridean Period ; Classical 138
IX Dioscorides 138
Aretaeus 138
Dioscorides Anazarbeus 139
Dioscorides Phaca and the Younger 140
Y^Xoszoxi^QS Aster Atticus 141
Dioscorides' Purple Violet 143
Dioscorides' Dacian Rathibida 145
Codices of Dioscorides 149
X Pliny 152
VXvsxy s Aster ox Bubonion 153
Pliny's Inguinaria 154
YXxxxy s Argemoti 155
XI Pausanias ; his As terion 157
XII Galen 193
XIII Oribasius 163
Later Roman Writers,
XIV Sammonicus ; his Chelido7iia J 65
Contents ix
XV Apicius Coelius ; his Viola, etc i66
XVI Theodorus Priscianus ; his Piilicaria 167
XVII Marcellus Empiricus ; his SarcocoUa, etc 168
XVIII Apuleius Platonicus ; his Astcrion 171
XIX Palladius ; his Citrago 173
XX Plinius Valerianus 176
XXI Isidorus I77
Early Byzantine Writers.
XXII Anonumos ; Anthemis 178
XXIII Actios 179
XXIV Paulus Aegineta 180
Arabic Writers.
XXV Rhazes : 182
XXVI Avicenna ; his Atratisus 182
XXVII Serapion ; Astarati, on 183
XXVIII Other Arabic Writers 185
Various Late Greek Writers.
XXIX Photius 187
XXX Simeon Seth 187
XXXI Stephanos Magnetes 188
XXXII Nicolaos Myrepsos 189
XXXIII Actuarius 189
Mediaeval Plant Writers ; Writers of the West 189
XXXIV Charlemagne's Capitularies 190
XXXV Charlemagne's Breviary of 81 2 191
XXXVI Rhabanus , 191
XXXVII Walafrid Strabus ; his Agrimonia'^ 192
Salernitan Writers.
XXXVIII Macer Floridus ; his personality and his poem 196
Macer's Magna Graecian names 205
Macer's Latin folk-names 207
Macer's Aster references 207
Macer's allied or contrasted plants 213
XXXIX School of Salerfio 214
Plant-Writers of Monte Cassino 215
Synopsis of Plant Writers and Physicians of Salerno,
848 ? to 1 500 216
XL Gariopontus 229
XLI Constantinus Africanus 233
XLII The Regimeji Salerni 236
XLIII Arnald de Villanova ; his Purple Violet 243
XLIV Plateario 246
Synopsis of the Plateario family 246
Matteo Plateario , 250
His Circa Installs 253
X Contents
Circa Instans, the focus of mediaeval plant-lore 253
Its oblivion 255
Synopsis of its Aster-relatives and other plant- names 256
Traces of the Salerno Botanical Garden, etc 260
Works derived from Circa instans 263
Immediate Latin derivatives 263
The Domian redaction 266
Bartolomeo's Tractatiis 267
French derivatives ; the Secres de Salerne, Arbolayre
and Le Grant Herbier. 272
English Derivatives ; The Crete Herbal 273
Later Latin and German Derivatives, from 1244 to
1783 274
German and Miscellaneous Plant Writers.
XLV Hildegardis 275
XLVI Albertus Magnus 276
XLVII Raimundus Lullus 278
The Kirani Kiranides 278
XLVIII Albertus and Henricus de Saxonia 280
XLIX Thomas de Cantiprato 282
L Bartholomaeus Anglicus 284
LI Vincent de Beauvais 292
LII Crescenzi 294
Crescenzi's Iringio or Irmcii 297
LIII Simon Januensis 300
His Asterion in the Clavis saiiationis 300
His Irringus in his Serapion 301
His search for Dioscorides' plants 301
LIV Matteo Silvatico or Pandectarius 303
His Eryngium or Alibimn 304
LV The Aggregator Practicus 305
Authors and works known as Herbarius 305
Editions of this Aggregator 308
The Aggregator's Iringus 309
The woodcut of Aster-Eryngium 310
LVI Conrad von Megenberg 312
The Buck der Natur 312
His O cuius porci, Flos-cainpi, Himelslilssel. 315
LVI I The Ortus sanitatis 317
Its Ynguirialis 318
Its Yringus 320
Its woodcut for Aster 321
LVI 1 1 The Gart der Gesundheit 322
Its Ynguirialis or Sternkratit 322
Its woodcut for Aster 323
/
Contents xi
LIX Giacomo da Manlio 323
His Ascaracon 325
Renaissance Plant Writers 326
LX Dioscorides at the Revival of Learning 326
Translations 326
Synopsis of Annotators, from 1480 to 1628, etc 327
LXI Hieronymus of Brunswick 330
His Himmelschlilssel 333
LXH Hermolaus Barbarus 334
His Aster, or Stella, as Alchetnilla 335
His Buphthalmum or Herba Paralysis 335
His Amellus as Chainomilla 336
LXni Marcellus Vergilius ; his Aster-colors 337
LXIV Ruellius ; his Aster compendium 337
Aster as Aspergida 338
LXV Manardi ; his He*ba Stella 338
LXVI Cornarius 339
LXVII Brunfels 340
He declines to identify Aster 341
His Garyophyllon 341
LXVHI Bock (Tragus) 342
His Stellaria compendium 343
His Aster or Uva Lupina (Herb Paris) 344
His Aster or Tinctorius Flos 346
LXIX Fuchs 348
He correctly distinguishes Aster from Eryngium 349
He issues the first correct figure of Aster 350
His Aster-description 351
LXX Dorstenius 353
LXXI Euricius Cordus 355
LXXII Valerius Cordus 355
Cordus establishes the identification of Aster 356
LXXIII Conrad Gesner 358
Gesner's Botanical Writings 359
Gesner on Polytype Genera 360
Gesner's Plant-names 361
" Conizoides,'' or Gesner s Aster 361
Gesner's Five Aster-species 363
Asters of Thomas Penny and of Rauwolf 363
LXXIV Anguillara 365
Anguillara' s Search for Dioscorides' Plants 365
Anguillara' s Botanical Garden 366
Anguillara rn persecution and exile 268
Anguillara' s 370
Anguillara as Source for Cratevas 371
xii Contents •
Anguillara's Aster-identifications ; his Pallenis 371
Anguillara's dw^e/ca/zmr^f 374
Anguillara's Filius-ante-patrem 375
Other plants so called 378
Plants known as Oculus Christi 379
Oculus Consulis 379
Garyophyllon 380
LXXV MatthioH 381
Matthioli's description of Aster 382
Matthioli's figures of Aster 385
Matthioli as a controversialist 385
Guilandini 386
Amatus Lusitanus 387
LXXVI Joachim Camerarius 388
His figures of Aster alpiiius L 390
Last appearances of Monotypic Aster,
LXXVII Rivius 390
LXXVI II John Lonitzer 392
LXXIX Adam Lonitzer 392
LXXX Peter Uffenbach 393
LXXXI Castor Durante 395
LXXXII Morandi 396
LXXXIII Parkinson 396
LXXXIV Salmon 397
LXXXV Quincy 397
Clusius and his Countrymen.
LXXXVI Dodoens 398
LXXXVII Lobel 400
Lobel's eight "Asters" 401
LXXX VII I Clusius 405
Clusius' life as a botanist 405
Clusius' writings 407
Tabular view correlating Clusius' eight Asters 414
Correlation of eight other Aster-names of Clusius. 415 Aster among Clusius' Contemporaries.
LXXXIX Cesalpino 416
XC Wolff 416
XCI Thahus 416
XCII Tabernaemontanus 417
XCIII Colonna 417
XCIV Dalechamp 417
XCV Alpinus 418
XCVI Gerarde 418
Polytypic Aster 418
INDEX OF SUBJECTS, AUTHORS AND SPECIES 421
INTRODUCTION
The genus Aster has been long admired for its beauty and di- versity. No lover of quiet natural beauty but feels its lingering charm. Few plants bear their wealth of bloom with a more un- conscious grace. No wonder that the all -expressing Greek should call the plant ''the many-eyed." Its ministry is not alone to the outer but to the inner sense, making one say with Emerson
Every aster in my hand
Goes home laden with a thought.
The suggestions inspired by the variability of asters have a profound significance. The very quality which makes the genus so vexatious to the searcher after quick and certain definitions of species, makes it full of keenest interest to the student of variation. Variation — which is Nature — reaches a maximum development in Aster. This is true in two ways, for few species vary so insen- sibly into each other while in their unchanged native state ; and few species are so rapidly modified under changed environment.
It was with these feelings that my studies of Aster were begun about 1886, and with the hope that continued observation in the field might bring a glimpse of nature in the very act of the varia- tion process, I have sought to determine the respective varia- bility of characters and to indicate what effects have been produced by environment. It is sometimes suggested that in Aster new species are being formed by development from the old with more rapidity than in most genera of the present. If there is even the possibility that this is actually the case, it follows that there is needed more than usual care and exactness in the limitation of Aster-forms as at present known, to aid comparative work in the future. That the genus should present extreme difficulties of classification is the natural result from its plasticity. Toward
Memoirs Torrey Botanical Club, Volume X.
(1)
2
Studies in the Genus Aster
their solution the foundation-work was admirably laid by Nees in 1832,* and for American species by Torrey and Gray f in 1841 — together with comparisons made by Dr. Gray with European her- baria, results of which appeared in his Synoptical Flora, in 1884. There still remained the need of continuous field studies and of extensive collections of closely connected forms, and also of wide comparison of material already existing in American herbaria. The need of a further revision of the species of Aster was evident from the number of unassignable forms already existing in collec- tions, from the number discoverable in the field, and from the ex- perience of botanists, especially of that master of the Compositae Dr. Asa Gray, whose own judgment regarding the asters, made to- ward the close of his labors, was that little satisfaction has been obtained as the result of prolonged and repeated studies." Never- theless, he has laid a broad foundation, and requires at the outset the profound acknowledgment of any subsequent investigators. Some may say it is a rash undertaking to attempt subsequent limitation of species in Aster. It seems, however, that the great amount of work done since should be reported and systematized, even though the gaps and the lost trails are many, That the work I now present should leave much undone is inevitable. Na- ture herself has not yet said her last word in the genus Aster, and he will do well who can keep up with her progress.
It is, therefore, my present purpose to put on record such con- tributions toward the knowledge of the asters as my studies in the field and elsewhere during the last fifteen years have enabled me to make. I plan to make impartial mention of all forms seen, not omitting those imperfectly known. Their omission might be a gain in symmetry and might prevent some inevitable errors in in- terpretation of their relationships ; but by mentioning even the ob- scurer forms their study in the future may be stimulated, and it is the advancement of knowledge which is the true aim of scientific study, rather than the symmetry of the immediate achievement. Many other forms as yet unknown will no doubt be discovered, especially when the further north and the mountains of the south
* C. G. Nees ab Esenbeck, " Genera et Species Asterearum." 1832. 1 Torrey and Gray's Flora of North America, Vol. II., part I. 1841.
Introduction
3
shall have been made the subject of more detailed investigations. Meanwhile, I present the results so far reached, utilizing the evi- dence derived from thousands of specimens of my own collecting and from field studies ranging from Canada to Virginia, with par- ticular concentration upon regions about the Potomac, about Lake Erie, the Massachusetts coast and New York City.
Many asters in the herbarium give but little hint of their orig- inal texture, or develop a new color in the pappus, or change in many other ways. My method has been, therefore, to make de- tailed field notes of characters as well as of conditions of growth. Many characters presented by early stages or by radical and lower cauline leaves, are lost at flowering time. I have therefore made it an especial object to secure the earliest spring growths and the intermediate stages.
Many asters have also seemed so variable that it has been questioned if the same rootstock would repeat the same characters at all in the growth of a second year. I have, therefore, kept the same plants under scrutiny for three successive seasons, sometimes for four years or more in succession, keeping certain sections under such repeated observation, including numerous localities near New York City ; on Martha's Vineyard ; near Newton, Mass., on the Charles River ; in the White Mountains ; in the Lake Erie region (at Niagara gorge ; in the Cattaraugus Indian reservation ; near Silver Creek, and near Dunkirk, N. Y.) ; also about the Potomac River.
Many courtesies have been received from the owners or cura- tors of various herbaria examined. I desire hereby to make special acknowledgments also to those who have kindly made collections for me, particularly to Mr. E. P. Bicknell, who has generously placed at my service his extensive field collections made about New York City. Mr. M. L. Eernald has made similar collections for me about Orono, Maine, Miss Nellie F. Harvey about Castine, Maine, Mr. James B. Graves about Susquehanna, Pa., Dr. Charles A. Graves near New London, Conn., Prof. Albert A. Ruth about Knoxville, Tenn., Miss Caroline A. Ripley in Missouri and Kan- sas, Mr. Charles Mohr in Alabama, and Mr. C. L. Beadle in North Carolina.
To the foregoing and to those who have sent me lesser con-
4
Studies in the Genus Aster
tributions, and to the curators of the herbaria to be enumerated, I desire hereby to make particular acknowledgment, not forgetting the courtesies also received from Dr. George Vasey and Dr. Sereno Watson in the past, and the aid received from Prof. T. C. Porter by consultation with his valuable herbarium before the lamentable fire of 1898.
I also owe especial acknowledgment to Dr. Edmund A. Baker of the British Museum, for comparing in my behalf the Gronovian herbarium, to Dr. L. M. Underwood for furnishing similar com- parisons in the Willdenovian Herbarium at Berlin, and to the late Mons. A. Franchet and to the artist Miss Ida L. Miner, for com- parisons and drawings from the Michaux herbarium and others in the collection of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris.
I also desire to commend the fidelity and care with which Miss M. E. Baker (Mrs. C. D. HenHne) of New York City has executed for me the drawings which illustrate fourteen of the Biotian species or varieties.
Larger herbaria collated include :
Cambridge, Mass., Herb. Gray, including part of that of Nees, and Herb. Klatt.
Cambridge, Mass., Herb. Walter Deane.
New York City, Herb. Columbia University, including Herb. Torrey and Herb. Meisner.
New York City, Herb. N. Y. Botanical Garden, including Herb. Gibbes and others.
New York City, Herb. N. Y. College of Pharmacy, including Herb. Canby.
New York City, Herb. Torrey Botanical Club.
Albany, N. Y., Herb. N. Y. State, in charge of Prof C. H. Peck.
Buffalo, N. Y., Herb. Buffalo Society of Natural History, includ- ing Herb. Clinton.
Philadelphia, Pa., Herb. University of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia, Pa., Herb. Philadelphia Botanical Club.
Philadelphia, Pa., Herb. Academy of Science, including plants of Schweinitz, Nuttall, Rafinesque.
Philadelphia, Pa., Herb. American Philosophical Society, depos- ited with the Academy of Science, including Herb. Muhlenberg, Herb. Pursh, Herb. Barton, Herb. Lewis and Clarke's expedition.
Introduction
5
Easton, Pa., Herb. T. C. Porter, and his Herb. Pennsylvania.
St. Louis, Mo., Herb. Missouri Botanical Garden, including Herb. Bernhardi, Herb. Engelmann, Herb. Buckley.
Washington, D.C., Herb. U. S. Department of Agriculture, with Herb. L. F. Ward and Herb. H. W. Henshaw.
Lincoln, Neb., Herb. University of Nebraska.
Columbus, O., Herb. University of Ohio.
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ASTERS
Aster History
9
BRIEF SKETCH OF THE GENERAL HISTORY OF ASTER
In this sketch of the past history of the Asters, my purpose is to supply, first, a brief outline of the history of the genus as a whole, reserving the history of each individual species for separate consideration later together with its description. There was a long period before the definite limitation of species, when for per- haps 2,000 years Aster was thought of as a single entity. Dur- ing that long period it is possible to treat the history of Aster as one. I plan also to present for that period a digest of the current be- liefs and superstitions regarding Aster, with a summary of the related applications of the name, and a glance at other names applied to Aster. My plan is to consider serially each writer who had something to say about Aster, and to say enough of him to make his relations to the development of knowledge of Asters in- telligible. The need of such explanations seems the greater be- cause there is so little available in English relating to the history of botany before Brunfels. This part of the work becomes therefore a sketch of the history of Pre-Clusian botany in its re- lations to Aster.
I call it botany, not in the sense of botany as a science, but for lack of any other term to indicate plant-knowledge, however un- critical and however often merging into folklore. I call it Pre- Clusian, because Clusius' * descriptions of the plants of Spain in 1576 ushered in a new era in the definite limitation of species in Aster. The principal work available in English on the history of botany, Garnsey's translation of Sachs' History, begins substanti- ally with Caesalpino, in 1583, and properly so, for that work is in- tended as a history of dominating botanical ideas. Caesalpino's greatness was not as a describer of Asters, but as a thinker, and as enunciator of the principles regnant in botany until Linnaeus. For accurate description of new Asters, however, as well as for
Clusius, Charles de I'Escluse, 1526-1609, who explored parts of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungarj' and the Netherlands for new and rare plants, 1550-1587.
10
Studies in the Genus Aster
that of hosts of other plants, the turning-point was also nearly coincident in time, having just been reached in 1576 in the work of Clusius, — who had begun his botanical studies in 15 50 and was searching for plants in the Alps as early as 1553 but who ripened his species well before publishing.
For the period before Clusius, Meyer's unfinished Geschichte der Botanik * is the well-known and masterly summary, and we can but regret that the life of the untiring author was cut off in the midst of his noble undertaking. Wherever possible I have used the authors themselves, seeking to make them tell their own story, using for this purpose besides my own library, that of Columbia University and of "the N. Y. Botanical Garden, with aids from that of Prof. E. L. Greene, from the Astor library, etc. Next to the authors themselves I owe most to Meyer ; and so far as they still remain serviceable, I have made use of Sprengel's Historia rei her- bariae (Amsterdam, 1807-8), Winckler's Geschichte der Botanik (Frankfort, 1854), Lenz's Botanik in alten Griechen und Romen (Gotha, 1859), Billerbeck's Flora Classica (Leipsic, 1824), and a multitude of other works of more restricted field.
Aster as a plant name has long been in botanical use, its contin- uous history extending through more than 2,200 years. Its appli- cation, especially its limitation, has been more or less indefinite, but seems always to have included one pivotal species, the Aster Amelliis of Linnaeus, the Aster Attiais of Dioscorides and of antiquity, the historic type of the genus, and a fairly early ex- ample, we may say, of a binomial plant name. This species pre- sents the generic characters fairly well, but owes its early preemi- nence particularly to the fact that nature had produced it in abundance near that center of ancient culture, the city of Athens.
Identification of classical references depends largely on con- tinuity of citation. Citation makes the Asterisciis of the Greeks a synonym of their Aster Atticns. It is in the form Asterisctis that the Aster makes its earliest appearance in written botany ; disre- garding for the present its still earlier probable appearance in med- icine, as mentioned by Hippocrates in the previous century under the different name polyophthalmon. These are the earliest occur-
*In 4 Vols., Konigsberg, 1854-1857, by Ernst H. F. Meyer.
Aster History
11
rences known to-day, though the fortune of the papyrus-hunter may still unearth some one of the many antecedent references that doubtless once existed.
The mention of the Asteriscus occurs in the History of Plants by Theophrastus, the father of botany," written perhaps about 320 B. C. ; stating, book 14, chapter 13, of certain small taper seeds that they resemble those of the asteriscus but are more slen- der. His casual manner of reference indicates that the plant and its name were no new thing to the Greeks of that day. His use of the diminutive also suggests that the name in the positive form had been long familiar, for it is a mark of the senescence of a word's life that it should drop into the diminutive ; like the use of ^z/^acute for acute or Augustulus for Augustus,
Allusions by the Greek and Roman poets are the next refer- ences that have comiC down to us. They bring us the first sur- viving trace of the power of the asters to charm, in the tribute paid them by the Ionian poet Nicander, about 160 B.C., saying of his
dcrripa (pcozcCoura,
Whoe'er indeed you may be that may gather the luminous Aster,
Or pluck the Helenium, place them on the roadside shrines of the gods, —
Yea, even on the images wreath them, and that when first you behold them ;
Pluck again and again these enchantments beautiful, and pluck the chrysanthemums.
And lilies, and lay them as garlands on the tombs of the weary at rest.
First to draw and paint the Aster seems to have been Cratevas the Greek herbalist, perhaps 100 B.C., whose custom was to paint figures of plants and write their names and properties to ac- company each figure. Part of his credulous lore respecting the properties of his Aster has come down to us ; the original figure, which doubtless accompanied it once, has long since perished ; but something of its semblance after numerous copyings, probably still survives in certain illustrated manuscripts of Dioscorides.
Vergil, perhaps seventy years later, followed with the chief tri- bute which the Aster was to receive from Latin poetry, and Colu- mella, after another seventy years, bestowed on it its chief tribute from Latin prose. Soon followed the great treatises of Dioscorides and Pliny, the Greek physician and the Roman naturalist writing at nearly the same time, the Roman perhaps a dozen years the later, both including the Aster among their medical plants, and
12
Aster History
Dioscorides furnishing the first and only description of much detail prior to the revival of learning.
We may therefore say that the first real description of Aster which has come down to us is that of Dioscorides, of date perhaps about 65 A.D. Subsequent appearances of Aster in the writings of nearly 1,500 years rest mainly on the basis of Dioscorides' de- scription.
Monotypic Aster. — During the whole of Greek and Roman an- tiquity and during the mediaeval period prior to the revival of learning, only one aster (omitting Tripolium) was known to the consciousness of the race as expressed in recorded literature.
One, Aster remained essentially to those whose botanical labors were based primarily upon Dioscorides. Aster was still one entity to Brunfels * and Bock f and Fuchs % in 1531 — though a debatable entity, for which they were all groping to find the true prototype in nature. Aster seems still to have impressed Ruellius § as one in 1537, and Rivius || and John Lonitzer1[ in 1543.
It was still one to his son Adam Lonitzer** in 1557 when he issued his Kreuterbuch or herbal. Matthioli, the great commen- tator on Dioscorides, also treats Aster 2.s> one in his commentary ; ff but before his death in 1577 he was constrained to admit a second Aster, his Aster Atticus alter ^ %%
Polytypic Aster. — Meanwhile Fuchs and Bock had perceived the diversity of asters perhaps as early as 1539. They had turned from the exposition of Dioscorides to the exposition of
* Brunfels' ''Exegesis ... Simplicium Dioscoridae," page 29 of his " De vera herbarum cognitione," — forming part of Brunfels' " Nov. Herbarii Tomus II.," Stras- burg, 15 3 1-2.
f Hieronymus Tragus' "Herbarum dissertationes," 157 ; in Brunfels' "De.vera herbarum."
J Leonhard Fuchs' " Annotationes," 152-3 ; in Brunfels' " De vera herbarum." ^Ruellius' " De natura stirpium libri tres," 633 (book 3, c. 126). Basle, 1537- II Ryff's " Annotationes " to Ruellius' Latin translations of Dioscorides, 345. Frankfort, 1 543.
5[ Lonitzer's " Scholia " on Marcellus Vergilius' Latin translation of Dioscorides, fol. 67. Marburg, 1543.
Lonitzer's Kreuterbuch, fol. 177. Frankfort, 1557. ft Matthioli, Venice, editions 1544-60. XX Matthioli, editions 1563 and onward.
Polytypic Aster
13
Nature. They had been rewarded and had made discoveries. To Fuchs, at some time it would seem between his Annotationcs in 1 531 and the edition of his Historia Stirpium * in 1549, and to Bock, between his Dissertationes, also in 1531, and his Kreu- terbuch, which first appeared in 1539, there had come the per- ception that Nature has more than one species of Aste?' in store for the searcher.
Bock in his Kreuterbuch described two f asters by that name, one of which, his Aster Atticus flore medio luteo, is represented by the yellow chamomile, Anacyclus aureus L., common in south- eastern Europe. The other. Bock's Aster sed iion Atticus^ proved to be so different a plant as herb Paris, Paris quadrifolia.
Bock had published his Kreuterbuch in 1539 without figures, but with very superior descriptions : a first edition now^ so rare that it is doubtful where a copy is to be found. It was three years later that Fuchs followed with the first figure of Aster Atti- cus since the revival of learning ; its reduced copy was labeled Aster Atticus purpureiis in Fuchs' edition of 1 549 (figures only, the text being omitted ; ex. bibl. Columbia). So he now termed his plant Aster Atticus purpureus, to make a distinction from an- other, the yellow species for; a time called Aster Atticus luteiis Fuchsii, which became the Imda dysentericus of Linnaeus.
Fuchs had probably been anticipated in recognition of a second species of Aster by Anguillara. This modest Italian, underesti- mated and abused by his countrymen, but inspired by a wonderful devotion to Nature, had spent years of travel and exploration in Greece seeking to find the plants of Dioscorides in their nati\^e soil. After returning to Italy he had been made in 1 546 for a short time director of the botanical garden at Padua. Regarding Aster colors he had accepted the received and ancient text of Dioscorides as adopted in 15 16 by Ruellius, denominating the flowers " purple or yellow." Dioscorides, if he used the expression or at all, probably meant that the flower could be called purple or yellow, according as it was designated from the rays or from the
Fuchs' Historia stirpium, Basle, 1542, and onward. I Besides these, Bock described under the name Tiiictorhis Flos, at least three other plants deemed Asters by his successors, one of which was the true Aster Attieus of Dioscorides (fide C. Bauhin) not recognized as such by Bock.
14
Aster History
disk. Ruellius seems like those before him, to have taken Dios- coribes to mean with flowers which are either purple or yellow, each color at different times," or *'in different parts of the plant," or " in different situations," — without involving- the idea of the con- fusion of two species together, one yellow and the other purple. Anguillara, like Saracenus in 1 598, seems to have considered Dioscorides' description a blending of two species, and while in Crete and in Corfu, at some time probably during the ten years preceding 1546, he satisfied himself that he had found their living representatives. One of these was published * from his notes in 1 561 as ''Aster Attiais vents'' ; it is the Buphthalnmm spinosiun of Linnaeus, the Pallenis spinosa of Cassini.
The combined effect of Fuchs' and Anguillara's influence was felt in the choice of Aster-types accepted by Conrad Gesner, who admitted the leading species of both as Aster Atticus. Writing his De hortis Germaniae in the winter of 1560, Gesner termed that of Anguillara, Aster Atticiis vertis, and that of Fuchs simply Aster AttictLS. Editing Valerius Cordus together with his own work on German gardens the next year, 1561, Gesner makes Cordus ap- pear t as recognizing three Asters, that of Fuchs (which Cordus had so identified as early as 1539, — perhaps first of any of his contemporaries to so identify it) which Cordus, as now edited prints as Aster Atticus, while two others, AntJiemis tinctoruis L., and Anacyclus aureus L., appear j as his Aster Atticus also. But Valerius Cordus had been dead sixteen years, and these second and third asters may have been an accretion to his work after it came into Gesner's hands.
Gesner is perhaps the clearest example of early recognition of diversity among Asters ; indeed he believed that there is no such thing in nature as a monotypic genus ; after his death in 1565, four species of Aster were found figured or mentioned among his papers, two of which he had published as Aster in I 561.
* In Anguillara s Semplici, edited by his friend Marinello in 1561.
t Valerius Cordus' "Annotationes in Dioscoridis ... libros V Historiae stirpium libri IV posthumi et Sylva " — , edited by Gesner and including, as fol. 236-300, Gesner's " De hortis Germaniae." Rihel, Strasburg, 1561.
X Fide J. and C. Bauhin.
Polytypic Aster
15
Matthioli had hitherto recognized but one Aster. He had just published the fine 1560 Latin edition of his commentary, with his figure of the "true blue" Aster and with another of a plant* which he was proving had been wrongly called Aster. But now in 1 56 1 another appears at Strasburg, the yellow Aster of An- guillara and of Gesner, and in his edition of 1563 Matthioli promptly inserts it, under the name Aster Attiais alter, with a figure which was often repeated, by Bodaeus for instance, as late as 1644.
Meanwhile Clusius, making explorations in the same year, 1563, in Spain, had discovered, as he judged, a wholly different Aster, his Aster Atticiis supimis,^ which became afterwards known as Biiphthalnmin inaritiinitm L., and later as Asterisciis maritiimis, Moench.
Lobel, so long the friend of Clusius, followed close behind him in similar discoveries. Sojourning in France, at Montpellier, before 1 566, and at Narbonne in the years immediately following, he recognized a difference between the asters at the two places. One aster J at Montpellier had been the subject of observations by Clusius when studying plants there under Rondelet, in 1550. Two § at Narbonne may have been first pointed out to Lobel by his instructor at Narbonne, the otherwise little-known Petrus Pena. In 1570, when Pena and Lobel'joined in publishing their Adversaria, they included in it five different asters.
Finally, in 1576, when in the same yeai Clusius made a be- ginning of publication of his discoveries, and when Lobel repub- lished his Adversaria with its five || asters, and published two Tf other asters in his new Observatioiies, the era of Aster as a genus of many
* His Stellaria, our Alchemilla.
t Published in Clusius' " Rariorum ... per Hispanias, and in Lobel's " Stirpium observationes," both printed at the Plantin press, Antwerp, 1576.
\ This was the Pallenis spinosa of Cassini, Buphthabnum spinostaii L. Clusius called it in 1576, Aster Atticus priuiiis flora hiteo ; in i6oi he republished it as Aster Atticus legitinms. Pena and Lobel in 1570 called it Aster, sive Stella Attica Mons- pelienshwi, etc.
I Pena and Lobel, Adversaria : 147 term these Aster Italorutti and Aster miiior Norbonensitan, etc. The latter is Aster acris L.
II The three just noted and also their " Aster montanus duplex " and their "Aster montanus alter" ; being forms of Inula montana L.
^Lobel's "Aster Atticus supinus Clusii " and his "Aster conyzoides Gesneri " ; i. e., respectively, Asteriscus maritimns Moench, and Buphthabnum grandifloruvi L.
16
Aster History
species was fairly begun. These new Asters, so called, are of course not now included in the genus ; the first of them that still remains so was perhaps Aster alpiniis L., also published * by Clusius.
In the next year, 1577, occurred the death of Matthioli. He had begun as a maintainer of the unity of Aster ; he had lived to see two species accredited to Aster by Anguillara, by Fuchs, and by Gesner, and then he had adopted a second species himself ; he had outlived the discovery of others by Gesner, and had seen the number rise to seven in the Observationes " of Lobel, by which time more than a dozen different plants had been figured under the name of aster.
With the passing away of the great commentator on Dios- corides, there had passed away forever the old preeminence of classic dictum. The center of gravity of aster studies had swung over into a new realm. Observation of nature, in the way of the addition of new species, was now the leading impulse, a new direc- tion which in Aster seems to have been chiefly due to the stimulus imparted by Clusius.
Clusian Aster Species. — The genus grew up round the species ; developing in the mind of the sixteenth century as if by crystalli- zation upon the original Greek type as the formative point, newly discriminated forms appearing as ''Aster Atticus alpiniis,'' ''Aster non Atticus^' etc. For almost 200 years, descriptions of Aster species increased; Bobart, in 1699, completing Morison's Plan- tarum historiae," enumerated 48 species; Tournefort, in 1700, enumerated 52. Most of these species were European; the stu- dent of American asters will wonder that so long after parts of America were already the home of a considerable population, botanists of Europe were still issuing histories of plants in which there did not appear a single American Aster ; as in the great work of Jean Bauhin and his collaborators, in 1650. But toward the end of the seventeenth century, or even while Tournefort was writing, a number of American asters had begun to creep into notice, the slight beginnings of a stream which during the century following was to conie in like a flood. Some of our best known
* In Clusius' " Rariorum ... per Pannoniam," 1583 ; also under other names, in 1583, in Caesalpino's " De plantis " and in 1586 in Camerarius' epitome of Matthioli.
Clusian Aster
17
American species were among these ; as those of Hermann, his Aster Novi Belgii and A. piiniceits in 1687, his A. dianosiis and A. itndtdatus in 1698; besides that first of American species, A. cordifoliiis, pubHshed in 1635 by Cornut as Asteriscus latifolius autumnalis (Canadensium plantarum . . . historia, 65).
With 1700, supposed discoveries of asters had also begun in other continents, though the true range of the genus had not yet been effectually extended : Plukenet's Aster Indiciis'' of 1696 being later separated as Asteronioea ; and Ammann's Mexican ''Aster mirantius'' of 1664-8 as Clomenocoma ; while the first African plant to be described as an Aster, the '' Aster fruticosiis'' of Com- melyn, 1701, was at length referred to DeCandolle's Diplopappus.
This Clusian period had been an agglutinative one, with keener perception of resemblances than of differences. But it was already observed that many incongruous plants had been included ; the genus had become a great repository of species afterward referred to Conyza, Imda, Pidicaria, etc. Jean Bauhin and fol- lowers had already in 1650 cut off 27 or more species which had been by some referred to Aster ; but they had been severed as by an uncertain stroke, and the authors concluded presently that some ten species described as Conyza might equally well have been in Aster.
Linnean Aster. — A new era, that of the modern genus Aster, begins with Sebastian Vaillant, in 1720, in his communications to the French Institute.* Vaillant, cutting off the yellow-rayed species included in Aster by Tournefort and by the Bauhins, retained some 47 species, and remarked that " Aster is distin- guished from Solidago by not having yellow rays," so disposing at a word of a troublesome boundary -line which has perplexed not a few botanists before f and since.
Vaillant thus restricted the genus Aster to substantially the limits it has since borne. The genus was now for the first time established on such lines that the botanist working backward from
* ** Suite des Corymbiferes, ou de la Seconde Classe des Plantes a Fleurs com- posdes, par M. Vaillant "; in Histoire de 1' Academic Royale des Sciences (Paris) avec les Memoires ... de Physique " for year 1720, 277-340. Paris 1722.
t So John Ray, Historia plantarum, i : 265. 1686, writes, " Difficile admodum est notam aliquam assignare qua differat ab Astere Virga Aurea dicta."
18
Aster History
the present, would recognize it as the genus Aster of his personal acquaintance. But even yet most of the species did not bear binomial names, nor was a definite generic description evolved ; both of these achievements were the work of Linnaeus, 1737 and 1753. Succeeding botanists have since cut away a third of Lin- naeus' 30 species, but by means of previous authorities he cites, we may trace the history not only of their future but of their past.
American Species. — A great influx of American species formed the next feature of Aster history. Each new edition of Linnaeus' Spe- cies plantarum became a new milestone in its progress, and conspicu- ous additions were made by Clayton and Gronovius, 1 762 and earlier, by Lamarck 1 78 3, by Aiton's Hortus Kewensis 1789, by Willdenow 1804, and Nees 18 18, with whom the species of Aster reached 130, after which we may consider the present period to begin, charac- terized by strong tendency to segregation of numerous small bodies of long-known Aster species as separate genera.
To recapitulate, the following great epochal divisions in Aster history may therefore be roughly blocked out before proceeding to further detail :
I. The Early or nebulous phase, onward from before Theo- phrastus, about 320 B.C., or from Hippocrates, perhaps a hundred years earlier.
n. The Dioscoridean period, dominated by Dioscorides' one description, for about A.D. 65-1576, to Clusius and Lobel and to the death of Matthioli, the great commentator on Dioscorides ; the period of the monotypic Aster.
HI. The 67?/.y/V2:;/ or agglutinative period, i 576-1720, with rec- ognition by Clusius and Lobel, preceded by Gesner and Pena, of new species, chiefly European, but confused with yellow-rayed inuloid and other forms. Here the history of the genus Aster ceases to be the history of a single species, a history running through ages as a single thread ; and henceforward its details are best followed under the species affected.
IV. The Linnaean period for the genus Aster dominated by the successive editions of Linnaeus' Species plantarum ; beginning with Vaillant's limitation of the genus, 1720, by exclusion of yel- low-rayed species ; its binomial names dating from Linnaeus, 1753 ;
Modern Aster
19
and its culmination for Aster appearing in the work of Willdenovv, 1804, Pursh's Flora, 18 14, and in Nees' Synopsis," 18 18.
V. The Segregatio7t period, distinguished by the separation from Aster of numerous small sections as independent genera ; ushered in by Cassini, 1818, etc., extended by Lessing, 1832, and speedily culminating in Nees' Genera et Species Asterearum," 1832 ; followed by DeCandolle's Aster in the fifth volume of his Prodromus, 1836, and by Rafinesque in America, also in 1836. Partial reuniting followed in America at the hands of Torrey and Gray in their Flora of North America, 1841, and was maintained by Gray in his Synoptical Flora, 1884. A renewed impulse to segregation has latterly assumed strength, as manifested by E. L. Greene in his Pittonia, 1896, etc., and by Britton and Brown, Illustrated Flora, 1898.
20
Aster History
HISTORY OF PRE-CLUSIAN BOTANY IN ITS RELA- TIONS TO ASTER
1. The Ancient Type
The type-species of this wide-spread genus, Aster Amelliis L., has the historic right to be so considered, not only from its being identi- fied as the Aster of Dioscorides and as the earhest mentioned (excluding A. Tripolmni^ L., which many authors would separate from Aster) but also because of continuous citation as the aster for more than 1500 years following, before other species received descriptions. In later times, Tournefort,t evidently regarding it as type-species, and following the practice of describing the type- species of a genus first, placed it at the head of his numerous enumerations of asters. Linnaeus half a century later gave it a central position, following a practice of surrounding the de- scription of his type-species with allied species grouped before it as well as after, so that we find his type description imbedded among its congeners.
Linnaeus by his citations J indicated the identity of his Aster Amellus of 1753 with the ''Aster Atticus, caeriilens, vulgaris'' of his Hortus Cliffort, 1737, and of Tournefort, 1700, and of Cas- par Bauhin's Pinax, 1623.
Bauhin (Pinax, 257) identifies this Aster atticus coeruleiis vul- garis " with the figured ''Aster atticus, purpureus " of Fuchs, i 549, and with the Aster Atticus of Dioscorides and the Auiellus of Vergil, as. understood by Matthioli.
This historic type Aster Amellus, is a handsome, violet-rayed species, with heads resembling somewhat in size and habit the familiar A. spectabilis of our Atlantic seaboard. It is widely dis- tributed through southern and central Europe and into Asia, and
* The Greeks did not consider this plant to be an aster ; they gave it the name of tripolion, tplttoXlov ; it has a long history, running back to Theophrastus ; though not to Hesiod which some have claimed, confusing it with the uncertain Greek Tzokiov, or " herb poly."
I Institutiones, i : 481. 1700-3.
X Species plantarum, 1753.
The Ancient Type
21
seems, excluding A. Tripolium L., to have been the only repre- sentative of its race known definitely to Greece and Rome. Sib- thorp found it still growing near Athens. Why it was called Aster is plainly stated by Dioscorides, who remarks upon its " floral leaflets similar to a star," * and by Pliny, who describes it as bearing " capitula stellae modo radiata."
Identification of Dioscorides' Aster with Aster Amellus L. — With the revival of learning the earlier world of the 1 6th century was busy endeavoring to translate the plants of the an- cients into terms of the plants then growing by the Rhine or scat- tered through Italy, or elsewhere through Germany. There were many widely different attempts made to identify Aster Atticiis of Dioscorides. Some thought the comparison to a star was due to the shape of each leaf, with star-like lobes, and Hermolaus,t there- fore, identified the Greek aster with Alchemilla, the lady's mantle, which plant had been called in the middle ages Stella and 5/^^- laria from the radiate lobes of its roundish leaves.
Others imagined that the divergence of leaves from a stem was the star-like radiation sought, and, therefore, identified the Greek aster with an Asperula with narrow whorled leaves, the Asperula or Aspergula odorata of Dodonaeus and others, resembling the Ameri- can species of Galium in leaf form, and called Stellaria by many (Brunfels and Fuchs, 1531) or Hcrba stellaris (Dodonaeus) or Hepatica stellata (Tabernaemontanus), all names derived from the many star-like whorls of leaves.
Several other plants were called Stellaria also in the middle ages, and were, therefore, seized upon by different persons as the living prototypes of the aster of the Greeks ; including Plantago Coronopus ; Calcitrapa, the star thistle, with star-like thorns about its involucre ; Ritbia and relatives of the madder, with nar- row stem-leaves; as well as the Alchemilla, figured by Matthioli under the name Stellaria and rejected as not the true Aster Atticiis.
Others were content with a four- leaved star as their prototype. So Bock, followed by Theophilus Gotius, identified Aster Atticiis of Dioscorides with Paris qiiadrifolia, herb paris," its single whorl of leaves forming a four-parted star.
* Diosc. book IV., c. ilS, (pvXkdpia aarkpi bjuoia, — "petals just like a star," as I have heard a florist, a modern Greek from Athens, render it. t Hermolaus Rarbarus, lib. 17; and lib. 4, corollary 734.
22
Aster History
Others still, observing that the starlike radiation was placed by Dioscorides around the flower, not the stem, found such a flower- head in Eryngium, with involucral bracts like rays.* For this pre- vailing interpretation, traced to Serapion, the sponsor was Mat- thaeus Sylvaticus — known as the " author of the Pandects," or Pandectarius, and by that name considered and his identification condemned by Fuchs, 1531.
None of these identifiers paid any heed to Dioscorides' express statements that his Aster Atticus produced a flower constructed like the daisy ; and that its rays were purple ; and that its stem- leaves were oblong. But presently Valerius Cordus and Fuchs and Matthioli observed these neglected but perspicuous characters, and the characters led them direct to the plant accepted by Do- doens and Clusius in 1557, and which the world has since followed them in calling Astej- Atticus, or since Linnaeus, as Aster Amellus. Why that particular species of Aster rather than any other should have been the one identified, is to be seen at once when we observe that it is the only Aster species and also, I think, the only plant whatever, which at once fulfills the requirements of occurrence near Athens, of daisy-like flower-heads, purple rays, yellow disk, oblong leaves, and conspicuous pubescence. Botanists have ac- cepted the identification ever since ; and about 1786, Sibthorp had the satisfaction of finding it still growing near Athens.
The notes which Sibthorp left did not record a vernacular name for this Aster, but there appears to be good evidence that the very name used by Dioscorides still survives for it in the Attic vernacular, in the form astron, aaxpov. A Greek from Athens tells me of hearing it called darpov among the people about 1890 or earlier, when seeing it growing ''toward Megara." This form darpov has also begun to appear as its name in diction- aries of Modern Greek ; as in that of Scarlatos, 1874, and that of Kind, 1876. Other dictionaries give for vernacular for aster daKpoXoukoodov, daisy."
Lenz,t in 1859, cites it as ^alToxparvj:; in modern Greek and as the amellus, astro or astere attico of modern Italy.
* J. Bauhin, Historia plantarum universalis, 2 : 1047.
f Lenz, Botanik in alten Griechen und Romer, Gotha, 469. 1859.
The Ancient Type
23
The vernacular of modern Italy is directly stated by Berto- loni,* 1854, to use the name mnello for it. Matthioli called it amello in 1544 and Calceolarius f did so in i 566 ; but even if we exclude these as probably book-names, there remains its vernacu- lar use in the form amello on record in Targioni-Tozzetti's diction- ary of Italian vernacular plant-names, Florence, 1809 ; as well as Bertoloni's assertion in 1854, " Virgilianum nomen hactenus su- perest."
Identification with Vergil's Amellus It was Matthioli also who made the received identification of Vergil's Amellus with Aster Attiais, making it on the ground of the agreement of Vergil's description with that of Dioscorides, par- ticularly in the purple rays and erect and stiff stems, with branches only at the top, censuring on account of each of these features those interpreters of his time, who were seeking to prove that Vergil's Amellus was their Chelidonium minor, the lesser celandine, Ficaria ranunculoides Rth. Others confused both plants with Primula veris L. Guilandini, % 1558, Gesner and Crato, at about the same date, had each his theory. Hermolaus Barbarus had sug- gested the chamomile. Another identification was that of Thalius, with the Caltha palustris, confuted by Bodaeus y Stapel in his edi- tion of Theophrastus, 822-3 (Amsterdam, 1644) and again by Wedel, De Amello, Jena, 1686. Another identification which Bodaeus and Wedel refute was that made by unnamed correspon- dents with the Greek melissophyllon, the Melittis melissophyllou L., on the faith of an ancient gloss in which Amellus was rendered meliphyllon. But to render Amellus by this whitish-flowered labiate plant disagreed with Vergil's entire description of form and color.
Wedel, 1686, devoted his inaugural address at Jena to a far- fetched attempt to prove that Amellus is Melilotus officinalis Willd. claiming that Vergil meant by his purple leaves " or petals, simply ''shining foliage."
Lobel in 1570 marks the chief hesitancy § among authors of
* Bertoloni's Flora Italica, 9 : 257.
f Calzolari's " 11 viaggio di Monte Baldo ... di Verona,... si piante e herbe cbe ivi nascono," 8. 1566 (Valgrisi, Venice).
J Melchior Guilandinus' " Theon, ... adversus Mattliiolura," Padua, 1558. I Pena and Lobel, Stirpium adversaria nova, 147.
24
Aster History
repute regarding the identity of Vergil's Amellus ; and his hesita- tion was not as to whether or not it were an aster, but to which of three species it should be assigned, whether to his Stella Attica Mo7tspeliensium, his Aster Italorinn hiteum, or h-is Aster minor Norbonensium ; no one of which was really its true equivalent.
All recent writers seem to have agreed with Matthioli and Bodaeus in identifying Vergil's Amellus with the Aster Atticus of Dioscorides, the Aster Amellus of Linnaeus, even a name L' Aster de Virgile developing for it in French according to Fee ; * who cites Jussieu and A. P. DeCandolle as agreeing in this identification.
* Fee's Flore de Virgile, in Charpentier' s Oeuvr^s de Virgile, 4: 434. Paris, 1835.
Digest of Ancient Description
25
DIGEST OF ANCIENT DESCRIPTION AND BELIEF RELATING TO ASTER
The purpose of this digest is to bring into one comparative view what was written regarding Aster during its earHer or mono- typic history, free from attendant matter relative to writers and their works — which will be considered in due succession afterward. The present digest will afford interesting examples of development and of the growth of ideas as passed on from one writer to another, — forming as it does a section cut through time, and exposing to view in its succession of mental attitudes, such alternations as the progressive steps of growth of one period to be followed by atrophy in another.
For the purpose of this digest I use as complete or partial equivalents to Aster, i. e., Aster Amellus L., the Dioscoridean syn- onyms, those of Caspar Bauhin and other sixteenth century writers, and the TToXoofdolfjiov of Hippocrates, Pausanias' Asterion, the Ar- gemon of Pliny, bk. 26, c. 59, and bk. 24, c. 19 ; and some others for which see the tables of plant names.
Citations for Aster Amellus L. from authors later than Clusius are added for comparison of stem, color, habitat, etc.
The following abbreviations are used : D. = Diosc, F.=Verg. Bavaria, — For a young Bavarian girl who was accustomed to pick the flower. Aster Amellus L., on the hills near Passau, until about 1898, and knew it only by the name Himmelschliissel ; cited to exhibit German folk-belief.
Attica. — For a young Greek, who, 1890 and earlier, knew the flower as native near Athens, only as aoTPov and as included in darcpoAouXoudov ; cited like the preceding, to compare ancient folk- belief with the present, and to exhibit survival of ancient concep- tions.
Original descriptions of the plant occur in whole or in part in Vergil, Dioscorides, Pliny (a few sentences), Valerius Cordus — 1539, Fuchs 1542, Matthioli 1544, perhaps Dodoens 1554, per- haps Lyte in 1578, or in the 1595 edition, in Clusius 1583,
26
Aster History
Dalechamp 1587, Gerarde 1597, Parkinson 1629, and especially 1640, J. Bauhin 1650, Bobart's completion of Morison, 1699.
Most other writers who merely borrowed or echoed the work of their predecessors, do not appear in this summary, except as they modified or distorted the matter they compiled.
The text following constitutes a series of quotations ; but quo- tation marks are omitted except in a few cases where they may contribute to clearness.
ASTER DESCRIPTION Flower Structure Aster is a plant which bears a flower constructed like that of a Chamomile or resembling Anthemis * [that is, it is a Composite with conspicuous rays and a flattish yellow disk]. — D. wanef)
Each flower is just like a daisy, Attica, with a yellow spot in the middle. — Bavaria.
Our Amello bears flowers like our Camamilla and like Bellis, Matthioli ; after the fashion of Cammomill, Lyte ; like Marigold, Parkinson; radiato Bellidis majoris positu, /. Bauhin, Ray ; forma fere florum Calendulae, Morison.
The Aster-flower is a little head, xe(pdk:op, D., capitula, Pliny, Fuchs, etc., capitella, Ortns Sanitatis ; a green scaly head like unto those of knapweed but lesser, Parkinson.
It is surrounded by a split border, Ttzptayibki;, D.
per orbem incisuris divisum, Fuchs, etc.,
stellae ... comantibus circumquaque foliolis, Dalethamp.
a border of petals, Attica; of many narrow leaves, Bavaria ; many leaves, V., folia plurima ; little leaves, (fuXXdpca, D. \i. e., rays], frondicelle, Matthioli ; small leaves, Lyte ;
quae plurima circum funduntur, V.
Star-like Form. — The flower bears its little leaves radiating just like a star, lyzt dk (puXMpia darspi ofioca, D.; stellae modo radiata, Pliny, Fuchs, Ortus Sanitatis.
* Dioscorides who defines his Aster as having the flower-structure of Anthemis, had already described his "Avde^L;;-, bk. iii., c. 144, as having numerous circular heads, KE(j)alia TTEpi^epT], with a center which forms a gold-colored blossom, xP^^^'-^ovra avdrj, but on the outside orbicular in circuit, encircled, KvnTiorepo)-, with white or yellow or purple.
Digest of Ancient Description
27
The plant bears a star, Ortus, Gart der Gesundheit, Fuchs. Purple leaves in order and fashion like a starre. — Lyte.
Time of Flowering
It is a flower of the later season, and is seen when the meadows in the valley have been shorn, tonsis. — V.
We had to pick them when no one was looking, because we ought not to have broken into the grass where they grew ; they were to mow it for the cows ; 'twas in very hot weather, along in summer, perhaps in August. — Bavaria.
Amello blooms at the last of summer or beginning of autumn ; as Vergil indicates in saying "Tonsis in vallibus." — Matthioli. (Italian edn. of 1568.)
Floret aetatis fine, aut principio autumni, ut Augusto mense et Septembri ; durantque in magnam autumni partam ejus flores. — Dalechanip.
It doth most commonly floure in August — Lyte. In the end of summer, when the fields are mowed. — Parkinson. Florens Augusto, semine matura Octobri. — J. Bauhin. It flowers in August or September and in mild seasons will often continue till the middle of November. — P. Miller, 1797. Fl. Aug. to Oct. — Fl. Deiitschland.
Color of Flowers The flower of Aster Atticus is purple or yellow \i. e., we may call it either, according as we are most impressed by the color of the rays or of the just opened disk], nofxpttpouv -/j [r^hvov, D, (codices) ; but the purpled part is the most esteemed, to T:ofj(puf)tCoi^ TOO dvdoi)^. — D.
The flower is golden in itself, aureus ipse, but the rays have the purple of the dark violet, violae purpura nigrae, V.
The flower has a yellow spot in its center, and the leaves around it are blue, deep blue, like the heaven, and that's why its name is Himmelschliissel. — Bavaria.
They are blue or purple with yellow in the middle ; hke the cornflower, xuavo^; dvdo::, blue color, but not so dark — Attica.
Its flower is purple, purpureus flos, Columella, (who probabh* never saw the native plant and misunderstood his Vergil, applying ** aureus " to the general effect of the plant, instead of the rays).
28
Aster History
Probably Aster Amellus was in the mind of the author of the Hortulus ascribed to Vergil and printed 1492 — but not since? — when writing
Floras nitescunt discolor gramine,
Pinguntque terras gemineis honoribus, Its flowers shine there with two-colored sprays, And paint the turf with twin graces —
Vergilii hortulus. *
As the Hymmelschliissel " of many of the mountain people, and one of the chief blue flowers of his own Lombardy, Aster Amellus was probably at least a part of that coelestis colons" of which Jacobus de Manlii s vjvotQ, about 1450, interpreting Serap- ion as saying of Eryngium, by him blended with Aster Atticus, " Serapion ait Ascaracon, id est, centum capita est coelestis coloris."
" The leaves of the Hymmelschliissel are not colored white [as some say, applying the name to the daisy]." — Hiero7iymus of Brunswick, writing 1 490- 1 5 3 1 .
The purple and yellow of this herb are to be applied to differ- ent parts of the flower ; for the leaves are of a purple color, but there is a yellow central head in among these leaves in the manner of a Chamomile. — Marcellus Vergilius, 15 18 (fide Dalechamp, i: 860).
Our aster is purple and yellow. — V. Cordus, Fiichs.
For the middle part of the Aster blossom which I found near Jena has a yellow color, around which little purple leaflets are dis- posed as we see in the flower of the Chamomile ; by which arrange- ment it is both purple and yellow at the same time. — Valerius Cordus, 1539.
Our Amello has the middle yellow and that which is around it clear purple — mezo gialli, ed all'intorno porporei chiari. — Mat- thioli, 1558.
Duplicem floris colorem etiam Dioscorides innuit . . . Medio lutei, comantibus circumquaque foliolis diluta purpura nitentibus. — Delechamp, 1587.
Yellow in the middle and set round about with small purple leaves. — Lyte, 1595.
Faire blew flowers inclining to purple. — Gerarde, 1597.
* As printed by Koberger, Nuremberg, 1492.
Digest of Ancient Description
29
The outer border of leaves being of a bluish purple color and the middle thrum of a brownish yellow. — Parkinson, 1640.
Violaceo aut albo, disco medio fulvo. — ■/. Baiihin,/. Ray.
Disco in medio ex luteo fulvi coloris, cum petalis plurimis [12, 12, 10, 10, and 10 figured on 5 principal heads] purpuro- violaceis ambientibus. — Morison, 1699.
Violacea et lutea. — Nees, 1832.
Rays ein sehr schones blau-violettes," and ''sometimes with red rays." — Fl. Deutschland, Hallier's revision.
Stem and Branches
Each little stem, pa[^diov D, cauliculus Pliny, bears its blos- soms at the summit, en dxpoo i-^ov dvOe^i, D, in cacumine capitula, Pliny, in acumine, Ortus.
Amellus is an herb which forms a single tangled sod of roots and raises up a great forest of stalks, V.
herba...uno ingentem tollit de cespite sylvam.
Each little stem was slender and just had its flower at the top. — Bavaria.
Down at the ground many leaves, and then come up the sprays, two or three together sometimes, without any [large] leaf, and then at the top of the spray comes the flower, which has a large calyx. — Attica.
Our Amello is an herb which makes its stalks straight up from the root, " fa i gambi dalla radice diritti ;" — the stem is dark and purplish, and it gives birth to branches almost at the summit. — Matthioli.
Herba ista caules ab radice mittit rectos, solidos, ac lignosos, colore fusco lutescente ; e quibus circa cacumen ramuli oriuntur, in quorum summitate flores spectantur. — Dalechamp.
Sterrewurt hath a browne, hairie and wooddish stalke. At the top of the branches groweth three or foure shining floures. — Lytc.
Among which [leaves] riseth up an hairie stalke of a foote high, having at the top faire blew flowers. — Gerardc.
It hath many woody, round and brittle stalkes rising from the roote about two foote high whereon are set without order to the toppes many leaves, and is divided into sundry branches bearing single flowers like marigold. — Parkinson.
30
Aster History
Caules habet cubitales et sesquicubitales, tenues, teretes, duros, hirsutos, subrubentes. . . Caules circa fastigium in surculus divi- duntur. — J. Bauhin, and Ray.
Cauliculos promit erectos, rotundos, aliquantulum duros, frag- iles, asperos, nonnihil piloses cubitum altos. Flores in summitate virgularum emicant. — Morison.
It grows seldom more than two Foot high ; its Flowers are large, produced in great Tufts. — Philip Miller, 1733.
The stems grow in large clusters from the root, and each of them branch at the top into 8 to 10 peduncles, each terminated by a single large flower. — Miller Diet., 1797.
Stem usually meter, sometimes only m., or even i ^m. high. — Fl. Deiitschland.
A Woody Stem — The stem is somewhat woody, * guAwder, D. ; frutex, Coltunella ; lignosus, Fiichs, Matthioli, D ale champ ;■ wood- dish, Lyte ; wooddy, Parkinson; durus, /. Bauhin and Ray ; ali- quantulum durus, Morison.
Root
Vergil's reference to growth, ab uno cespite," implies such a mass of long and entangled fibrous roots, binding a sod to- gether, as were first in set terms described by Fuchs, 140, ''radix fibris multis capillata."
Its root is divided into many parts of a not unpleasant odor, an odor like that of a Garofano, a clove-gilliflower. — Matthioli.
The root is bearded with hairie strings. — Lyte.
The root is threddie like the common Daisie. — Gerarde.
The roote is composed of sundry white strings which perish not, but abide many years with greene leaves on their heads, and spring afresh every yeare. — Parkinson.
'■^ Some might suppose that what botanists now call a woody stem is meant and that Aster would not agree well. But woody was here meant in distinction from sopf. Dioscorides' idea of a shrub, Odjuvog, consisted of two essentials, a hard stem, and bushy branching ; he calls Marrubium, Stachys, Conyza, each ddfivoQ, a bush, and Ambrosia he calls dajuvloKoc, fruticulus ; Paronychia he calls Oa/xvloKiov ; chrysanthemum, 0a/uvn£i6f/g. Theophrastus classed plants as devc^pa, Od/nvoc, [SoTavot, trees, shrubs and herbs. Nicolaus Damascenus added a fourth class, Xdxava, vegetables. In 1598, Saracenus, translating Dioscorides, was dividing also into four classes, but his were arbores, frutices, virgulta et herbae. His usage was not uniform, but very commonly his "virgulta" were woody hard-stemmed plants for which Dioscorides used the word paf-idlov as with aster, and for which he was equally likely to use ddfivog.
Digest of Ancient Description
31
Radix tenuis, transversa jacet, a qua multa demittuntur fibrae, sapore amaro, nonnihil aromatico et calfaciente, quidam aiuntnon- nihil caryophylli resipiente. — Bauhin and J. Ray.
Radix fibrosa est et vivax. — Morison.
Radicem multifidam, odore non ingrato, et nonnihil caryo- phylli resipientem. — Dalechanip.
Leaves
Its stem leaves are oblong, unofi'/jxr^^ and hairy, oaaia, D, oblon- gus. — Pliny.
They are two or three in number [meaning in a rosette or oc- casional cauline swelling ?] . — Pliny, Ortus Sanitatis.
Many leaves down at the bottom, say three or four or more ; and those leaves long, but not so long as a finger. — Attica.
Our native aster has its stem clothed, vestitus, with oblong and crowded leaves. — Fucks.
The leaves are longish, " lunghette," like an olive leaf, but much smaller, hairy, inclining to be dark ; those on the branches are much smaller. — Matthioli,
Folia profert oblonga, acuminata, oleae figura, minora tamen, hirsuta, aspera, nigricantia, subamaro sapore, in caule minora sunt. Dalechanip.
The leaves be long, thicke, hairie, of a brown or swart greene colour. — Lyte.
A kinde of Aster, that hath many small hairie leaves like the common greate Daisie. — Gerarde.
Foliis amictos oblongis acuminatis, aspero et pilosis, interdum crenis paucis incisis. — J. Bauhin.
Folia oblongiora, praesertim juxta cauliculos enata, dura quo- que et asperiuscula, latiuscula et obtusa. — Morison.
Achenes
The little seed of the rush Gyo'tvoc, neAafxpavcafioc, bears a re- semblance to that of Asteriscus, only that this of the rush is more slender. — Theophrastus.
The seeds are small, rather long, not much unlike that of chicory, or Intyba." — DalccJianip, J. Bauhin, J. Ray.
The seeds are small, blacke, and flat, somewhat like unto Lat- tice [Lactuca, Lettuce] seed, Parkinson.
32
Aster History
Pappus. — Fuchs is perhaps the first to mention the pappus, saying of the flower of his native Aster, qui subinde in pappo abit," a phrase which had been the usual Latin version for Dios- corides' remark of Conyza, bk. 3, c. 136, iy.7za7i7tcoobp.zvov.
After flowering it becomes woolly, " lanuginosi," making its seed just like that of an Endive — endiva," Matthioli.
Flowers which at length turn into downe or cotton, and the plume is carried away with the wind." — Lyte.
''Which turne [in the time of seeding] into a woollie downe that fleeth away with the wind." — Gerarde.
In pappos evanescunt. — Morison.
These flowers abide long in their beauty and in the end wither and turne into a soft downe, . . . [and] seed, which with the downe is carried away with the wind. — Parkinson.
Taste
Dioscorides says nothing of any bitter quality in his Aster At- ticus but does so describe its relative Conyza, bk. 3, c. 136, as ur.o- TTcxpov, subamarus. Vergil was first to ascribe bitterness to Aster itself. Asper in ore sapor. — V.
The leaves of our wild Amello are bitterish. — Matthioli.
The whole plant hath a drying, binding and bitter taste, Ger- arde ; harsh and binding, Parkinson.
Sapore subamaro, Dalechamp ; sapor est asper, Bodaeus.
Sapore subaromatico et subamaro ac siccante [of the leaves]. — J. BanJnn, Ray.
The leaves and stalks being rough and bitter, the cattle seldom browse upon them, so that they remain in the pastures, after the grass is eaten bare, and making a fine appearance when they are full of flowers. — P. Miller, 1797.
ASTER HABITATS Localities
Type locality. — The Aster of Attica, Warrip '^^^"^^^^^C, D.
The ancient Greeks add that the Aster Atticus is known ab Atheniensi agro, because there on account of the thinness of soil, perhaps it grew better or more frequently. — Dalechamp, 1587.
He calleth it Aster Atticus of the place no doubt where it grew
Digest of Ancient Description
33
most plentifully or was of greater force, which was the country of Athens. — Parkinson, 1640. [So, essentially,] Bodaetcs, 1646.
About Athens hodie. — Sibihorp, 1797. I saw them growing together wild, from the roadside, out toward Megara. — Attica, 1 890.
On the banks of the river Asterion, near this Heraeum [between Mycenae and Argos, amid wild rocky hills] grows an herb which they also name Asterion. 'Aarepiojiia xai zrjv noau TomriM. — Pati- sanias.
Italian Localities, — Near the curving stream of Mella [the river Mela, flowing south from the Alps, near Mantua] , V. Planta est hodie non paucis [in Italy] cognita, Matthioli, 1544? At Monte Baldi, near Verona, Calzolaris, 1566.
I have gathered the Aster Amellus in dry hills near Bussoli- num, and Segusium, and in Vinodium at a place called Nirajessa. In hills about Turin within dry woods. In higher woods of Mont- ferrat not infrequent, beyond the town Mazius, cl. Bellardi Ber- ennio. Allioni, Fl. Piedmont, 1785.
Habui ex districtu Como ; Sarnica, Baldi, Tyrol, Bolzan moun- tains ; from hills at Solferino, from the Apennines at Semano and Fivizza and many other places. Bertoloni, Fl. Italica, 1854.
German Localities, etc. — Near Jena ; ego autem scio me verum Aster Atticum in montibus circa Jenam invenisse, et nascitur in petrosis montibus. — Valerius Cordtis, 1539.
Herbam cujus picturam exhibemus [is one now known in Germany] . — Fuchs, 1 542.
About the river of Rheine. — I^yte, 1595.
Also in Austria, Carniola, Germany, and Switzerland where I found it very common about Bienne. — Martyn, 1797.
In Germaniae saxosis nemorosis satis vulgaris. — Willdenozv, 1804.
In southern and middle Germany, Thuringia, Silesia, near Frankfort-an-der-Oder, on calcareous hills near Berlin, in Schrei, Salzburg, high Bavaria, Pfalz, Tirol, Schwabia ; but not in the Schwarzwald. — Fl. Deutschland.
About Vienna grows the tall rough form separated by Reich- enbach as Aster amelloides.
I used to pick them as a girl near Passau. — Bavaria, 1898.
General Range, etc. — In many medowes both in Italy and
34
Aster History
France. — Parkinson, 1640. In Italia, Sicilia et Gallia Narbonensi, passim obvius. — Ray, 1686.
Italiae, Bohemiae, Siciliae, Galloprovinciae, passim obvius. — Morison, 1699.
It grows naturally in the valleys of Italy, Sicily and Nar- bonne. — Philip Millei\
In Europae australis. — Linnaeus. Ubique per Germaniam et Asiam borealem et mediam ;" and with it, especially in Volhynia Podolia and Bessarabia, varieties with serratures and acute or narrower bracts. — Nees, 1832.
In Europae mediae et australis Asiaque occid. — DeCandolle.
Helv. Austr. Germ. — Belg. (Luxemburg), Gall. — Ital. bor. — Dalm. Croat. Hung. Transs. — Attica — Rossia med., mer. Ny- nian, 1854.
Situations
Characteristic Habitats. — It grows in the midst of rocks and rough places, fxiaov TiZzpCov xal totkou zpa-^icov, D. (interpolation, Sprengel),
It is found in the meadows ; it is found in shorn valleys, — in pratis, — tonsis in vallibns. — V.
It grows here and there among bushes and thickets, — passim in vepribus. — Pliny.
Growing in the unploughed turf, crudo cespite, in well-watered ground, irrigiw solo, in virgin soil, virgineo solo, — Colitniella [infer- ences from Vergil only ?] .
Nascitur inter petras et loca aspera. — Apuleins Platoniciis, c. 400 A. D.
Nascitur in petrosis montibus, — Valerius Cordus, 1539.
Nascitur in collibus, montibus altis, et sylvis. — Fuchs, 1 542.
Nascitur in asperis, incultis, et convallibus. — Matthioli, 1560; so J. Batihin, J. Ray.
Our Amello grows in the folds of the hills — "faldi," — Matthioli, Ital. ed'n, 1568.
Nascitur in collibus, et nonnunquam in pratis et sylvis. — Dale- champ, 1587.
Sterrewurt groweth upon small hillocks, barrowes or knaps, in mountaines and high places, and sometimes in woods, and in cer- taine medowes lying about the river of Rheine. — Lyte, 1595.
Digest of Ancient Description
35
In many medowes both in Italy and France. — Parkinson^ 1640. Nascitur in asperis incultis collibus et convallibus et pratis. — Morison, i6gg.
In asperis collibus. — Linnaeus.
They grew many together, in a dry place, up a hill, near Pas- sau, on a grassy slope, in the edge of a meadow ; and it was on the border of woods. — Bavaria^ 1898.
EARLY REGARD FOR ASTER Asters Gathered by Flower-lovers
You, whoever you are, gatherer of asters, Jlaz, ok r^c . . . (laTi() a Of) i (/' a;. — JV icander.
Plucking often these beautiful enchantments — no/JAxt dihco. xola. . . . dfiipycov. — Nicander.
Shepherds gather them, pastores legunt."^ — V.
We would pick them to wear, and to bring and put in the house. Just the year I left Germany I overheard the children talking of going up the hill to the meadow to pick them. — Bavaria.
Ctdtivated for its Beanty. — Aster Atticus est amoenus. — J. BaiiJdn, J. Ray.
Its rays are " sehr schon." — Fl. De^Ltschland.
It was cultivated in 1596 by Gerarde ; in 1804-1836, etc., it was in cultivation in many European gardens by name of Aster elegans.
" Aster Atticus ... is one of the most beautiful kinds . . . and is readily kept in compass [some other species had made him trouble by spreading among other plants] . . . and is a great ornament to the Gar den s . — PJdlip MiUer, 1733.
It makes a fine appearance when full of plants, and might well engage a poet's attention." — Miller' s Diet., 1797.
Their floivers Gloiv. — Shining asters, (fcorc'^oi^za. — Nieander.
Amellus, . . . sublucet. — V.
Flores nitescunt discolore. — V. hortidns.
Stellae. . . foliolis diluta purpura nitentibus. — Molinaeus' com- pletion of Dalechamp, 1587.
Its flowers are shining. — Lyte, 1595.
* Anthemis its near relative is mentioned in set terms as forming wreaths ; "in coronamenta reponitm- " as Ruel summarizes it.
36
Aster History
Asters brought to Shrines and Temples
Gather the asters ; place them on the roadside shrines of the gods,
Yea even on the images wreathe them and that when first you behold them,
dp£i/'af, elvoStoiai Oecjv TTapaKdiij3a7^e Grjaolq
Tj avTok PpeTaecaiv^ are TrpuTiarav h^ovraij Nicander.
Often the altars of the gods are festooned with its woven gar- lands,
Saepe deum nexis ornatae torquibus arae. — V.
[At the Argive Heraeum] they offer the plant to Hera and twine its leaves into wreaths for her.
rfj "Hpa Kol avT?/v oipovai, Kal otto tojv (pv/iTiuv avTT'/g crecpavovg irleKOvaiv.
Fausanias.
[By some it became identified with] the plant Argemon, which Minerva discovered. — Pliny.
Asters laid on the tomb, or on the memorial stones of departed heroes.
Gather the aster and helenium, . . . ,
Pluck again and again these enchantments beautiful, and pluck the chrysanthemums. And lilies, and lay them as garlands on the tombs of the weary at rest,
(jxrj/Mcacv i-KCifdhovza. yjifxbvT cov . — Nicander.
Aster in Pastoral Life
Shepherds know them. — Husbandmen know it, it is easily found by the searcher — agricolae facilis quaerentibus herba. — V.
Shepherds gather it — pastores legunt. — V.
It grows in wild places and is found by the shepherds of the flocks * — eupcaxezat ok rzapd l^o(7xo7^ npo^drcov, D. (interpolation ?)
The shepherds understand it best. — Aptdeiiis Platonicns.
It is best known to shepherds, pastoribiis maxime videtur. — j Ortus Sanitatis, etc.
* Growing among the shepherds, where, as one of their modern Greek folksongs sings,
" Night is black on the mountains ; Snow fills in the ravines ; Where ways are wild and gloomy, Through rocks abrupt and gorges, Where here upon the mountains Sequestered virtue dwells."
Aster as Known to Shepherds
37
The ancient pastoral life immortalized to us by Theocritus and Vergil still survives among the Greek shepherds of to-day ; a modern Greek poem pictures the Vlach * who " went and sat beneath the fir; who folded his flock by the bramble," ''where by the weird-haunted rocks he played upon his pipe." f In Aetolia Rodd heard shepherd boys singing while '' playing on their six- stopped pipes cut from a hollow cane in the old traditional way."
The survival of the ancient shepherd life in and near Attica is thus described by Rennell Rodd: "Whatever their race, their manner of life is the same. Their days are spent entirely in the open air, and in wet weather or dry they sleep with their flocks, covered with their rough frieze cloaks on the mountainside ; in the summer they explore the higher altitudes, and make their halting places in the lambing season under some dark vallonea's shade . . . Illness is unknown among them and they generally live to a very great age. . . . One may see the shepherds moving camp often on a November morning marching around the outskirts of Athens, when they move down from the high pastures of Cithaeron to win- ter in the lower slopes around the foot of Pentelikon. ... It is in this folk of the mountains and the open air, living their changeless life apart, with their tanned and faunlike faces, and the laughing look in their clear brown eyes under the matted curly hair, that the link to the older world is the closest. Their habits, their methods, their very dress, have hardly changed ; and living face to face as they do with the miracle of nature, the weirdness of mighty forces unaccounted for, and the evidences of strange phenomena which they cannot explain, still keep alive in them the mystery of the ancient Pantheism. (Rodd, 80 ; and again, p. 203), — The shep- herds of Parnassus who live all their lives in the open air on the mountainside, keenly sensitive to those impressions which affect all simple people who live face to face with nature at her wildest and ruggedest, still speak of supernatural appearances, as of the apparition of a monstrous he-goat among their flocks,"
That the story of the aster shining in the night should arise among them is quite in keeping, even though it may have grown
* Vlach. The modern Greek knows the shepherds as Vlachs because many of them are of Wallachian origin, — Rodd, Customs and Folklore of Modern Greece, So. 1 Rodd, Customs and Folklore of Modern Greece, 279,
38
Aster History
up in actual fact as a mere romancer's sophistication of the flower's name.
Shining in the NigJit. — The stars of this plant shine in the night ; so that those who do not understand, when they see this, suppose it to be an apparition {ipavraapio), but it is discovered and is understood by the shepherds of the flocks. — D. (Interpolation, fide Marcellus Vergilius, followed by Sprengel : and see supra ^
P- 37)-
This herb Asterion shines in the night just like a star in the sky, and anyone who sees it unaware of this fact may say that he sees a phantasm, and being full of fear he is laughed at, most of all by the shepherds. " Haec herba nocte tanquam stella in coelo lucet, et qui videt ignorans dicat phantasma se videre, et metu plenus irridetur, maxime a pastoribus." Apiileins Platonicns, quoted, with a parsimony of miracle, omitting et metu plenus irridetur," by the Ortus Sanitatis and credited by mistake to Pliny ; and in the Gart der Gesundheit quoted with the variation that it shines so bright that men weened it is a spectre (Gespenst) or a devil " (edn. 1485).
Hujus stellae noctibus collucent ; quare qui naturam stirpis ignorant, inane simulacrum se videre putant. Rnel, De Natura, 1536; Matthioli, 1554, 1560, etc.
Dorstenius, 1540, quotes this, p. 157, calling the spectre ''phantasma," adding that "Vergilius Marcellus confutes and re- jects this, as something superstitious, because in the most ancient Greek and Latin authors it is not found," i. e., not found in Galen nor in Pliny.
The spectre reappears as " una phantasma " in Matthioli's Italian edition of i 568 ; and in the form "the flowers shine in the night till they frighten men, who think they see the devil," in Adam Lonitzer's Kreuterbuch, 1557.
Fables ascribing this power of shining in the night to other plants were not unknown to the ancient world. Pliny, bk. 2 1, c. 36, cites the Greek herbalist Democritus as narrating the night-shining properties of a plant of Gedrosia (in ancient Persia), which he names Nyctegreton, the night-watcher, a plant ceremonially em- ployed by the Magi and the Parthian kings ; and others, he says, called it Nyctalops, " from the light which it emits at a consider- able distance by night."
Aster as Remedy for Burning Stomach
39
ASTER PROPERTIES
References to the Aster Atticus as a plant long in repute among herbalists occur in Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, and their commentators, especially in Ruellius, 1536, Euricius Cordus 1534, Matthioh, John and Adam Lonitzer.
Its old Greek name Bubonion testified to its ancient reputation for healing inguinal sores, a reputation still current among Arabic writers, as Avicenna and Rhases. Fuchs and some other early writers of the sixteenth century say it was not then kept by the apothecaries, but it continued to appear as a potent remedy as late as the edition of Parkinson in 1640, the second edition of Salmon's New London Dispensatory in 1682, and Quincy's Dispensatory in 1 721 ; * also in the various editions of Lonitzer's Kreuterbuch in Germany, 1553, and onward, modified editions derived from which were appearing in Germany as late as 1783. Some related species (Inula, once classed as Aster) are still so employed " for inflammatory buboes," — Foster's Encyclopaedic Medical Diction- ary, N. Y., 1890.
No other Aster species has had any extended medical history, though a number of American species have begun to appear in local or occasional medical use, fide Foster, 1890 ; their prop- erties however appear to be perhaps mild and certainly little tested.
In citing the various uses claimed for his Aster Atticus, I shall begin with the order of properties taken up by Dioscorides, etc., and then consider the manner of its use.
Aster as Stomachic Aster as a Remedy for a Burning Stomacli. — Aster Atticus is a remedy for a burning stomach, applied as a plaster. Q(pelei
* And this formed in Germany the basis of the Lexicon physico-medicum of 1787.
I Deemed perhaps an interpolation by Sprengel. Dioscorides repeating the above under his " purple violet " may have been intending to speak of Aster still. Its relative, the chamomile, Anthemis nobilis L., is still used also, as in Dioscorides' time, as a stomachic. Another relative (presumably) the Conyzites of the Geoponica, bk. viii., c. 10, was mixed with a Greek wine to give it stomachic efficacy, as there described "hoc vinum ictericis et stomachicis commodum."
" The modern Greek household remedies used for stomach trouble are j£i'Jpo?i/3av'oi', [rosemary] pretty near like balsam, i^eKopcpvIa the elder tree (which we less often call
40
Aster History
Dioscoridi aster ardenti stomacho . . . illitus confert. — Ruel, 1536.
Leaves of purple violet [meaning aster?] are a remedy, stomacho ardenti per se et cum polenta imponuntur. — Riiel.
Aestuanti stomacho prodesse Asterem. — Dodoens.
It is very good against the overmuch heat and burning of the stomake ; being laid to outwardly upon the same. — Lyte, 1595.
It helpeth an hot stomache. — Parkinson, 1640.
Aster used for the Eyes
Inflammations of the eyes, styes, etc., are cured by Aster ; QweM ok . . . dcpdaXiicov (pXey fiovdr: , D. (interpolation, Sprengel).
The inflammation in the eye called argemo * was cured by the plant argemon, Ruel ; see infra, under Pliny and under argemon.
Aster cures " epiphoras oculorum purple violet cures *'ocu- lorum inflammationes." — Ruel.
For a sty f on the eye, use Uva lupina, or Aster. — Bock.
Aster helpeth and swageth the rednesse and inflammation of the eies. — Lyte ; so Parkinson.
Aster Atticus was formerly employed in diseases of the eye. — Foster, 1890.
Aster Uses ''ad inguen " and for Ulcers
For htguinal Tumors. — Aster is a remedy for buboes, ' i^ipeAet xai /9oL>/?^/>v«c, F^. (interpolation, Sprengel).
Aster is of efficacy for tumors or inflammations in the groin. 'ApfjLcoCei ok . . . Ttpb^ jdo'jj^couaju (pXeyiJLOvdz, D. (genuine fide Spren- gel). '
Leaves of purple-violet [confused with Aster] for vulvae pro- cidentias, D. Euporista.
Aster . . . inguinum presantaneum remedium est, Pliny.
Inguinaria, or Argemon [is among remedies for tumors], Pliny.
'Ea/ufSovKog) x'^ifjofxrjAov (very valuable medicine it is, a flower, ground-apple or low growing it would mean, and has a very nice smell [chamomile]), ipcfivdvia, Kot/nf^deidy ( Gnaphalium Stoechas L. ) aa(t)d?iaKTpog, (a tree with very tiny leaves and long flowers that are yellow [Cytisus lanigerus DC.?] ) and rpiavliov.'" Attica, 1901.
* A small white-centered ulcer on the eye, first mentioned by Sophilus ? , for which Pliny and others prescribed the plant argemon, i. c, Aster Atticus.
■\ Cratevas recommended for this his plant aaapov. — Wellmann, Krateuas, 6.
Aster Properties ''ad inguen"
41
Bubonium . . . creditum est bubones sanare, Galen (tr.).
Herba chelidonia (probably confused with Aster then as later) is a remedy for ulcers and troubles in the groin, Sarnonicus.
Aster Atticus . . . bubones sanare credatur, (tr.) Galen, Oribasiiis, Aetios,^ Paiihts Aegineta,'\ Avicenna, Rhases, Serapion. So Fuchs, Matthioli and most writers of the i6th century; with Kreuterbuchs of Verzascha, etc., much later.
Uva lupina seu Aster" is prescribed for tumors in the groin by Bock, i 536.
Aster . . . inguinibus illitus confert, (and again) inguinum in- flammationi prodest, Riiel, 1536.
Purpureae violae [confused with Aster] ... imponuntur ... vulvave contra suppurationes, Ruel.
Stellaria [Alchemilla, confused with Aster] heals internal ulcers of the viscera; ''et... in vulvam indita, alba... profluvies jnirifice sistit," Matthioli, 1560.
Haec herba inguina sanet, JoJin Lonitzer, i 543 ; Adam Lonitzer, 1557 and editions of his Kreuterbuch following: some modified editions continued to 1783.
Inguinibus alhgata tantum medicinam in eo malo homini facial, Dale champ, i^Zj.
Laid to the botches or impostumes about the share or privie members, prevaileth much against the same, Lyte, 1595.
The leaves of Aster or Inguinalis stamped and supplied unto botches, imposthumes and venereous bubones (which for the most part happen in Ingnine, that is, the shank or share) doth mightily maturate and suppurate them, whereof this . . . name, Gerarde, i 597.
Likewise [good] for botches that happen in the groine. — Parkinson, 1629.
The purple leaves of the flower boyled in water was held to bee good for the paines and sores in the groine. It taketh away inflammations in those places. . . . The dryed flowers [should be] bound to the place that is grieved. Hung or tied to the place, it healeth the sores in the groine. — Parkinson, 1640.
* Actios' own favorite remedies, were applications which he called asters of very various composition ; see infra under Aster names.
f But Paulus Aegineta (representing Greek medicine of c. 620 A. D., or some 80 years later than Actios) for his ihviSLJvoKoilTj, used especially his cyparissus, Symphy- tum, bitter almonds, and a collyrion of highly complex composition, into which Aster did not enter-
42
Aster History
[Heals] botches, imposthumes and venereous buboes. — Salmon^ 1682.
See also Qiiincey s Dispensatory, Lon. 172 1 ; aiid see infra, under Bub onion, etc.
The herb and root of Aster Atticus were formerly employed in inflammatory buboes. — Foster, Encyclopaedic Medical Dic- tionary, 1890. Winklei', Real Lexicon, etc.
It was the purple or blue part of the flower that was
esteemed as possessing the curative power in heaHng buboes. Did this aid in developing that superstitious preference for blue of which Dr. Millengen in 1837 wrote "To this day, flannel dyed nine times blue is supposed to be more efficacious in glandular swellings !" (Curiosities of Medical Experience, 2 : 140. Lon.
1837-)
Related plants credited with similar powers, include hiida viscosa,'' xow^o. fizydhq of Dioscorides, which was formerly applied extensively to tumors. Some species of Inula are still applied to buboes, carbuncles, and sore eyes, and are used as stomachic. — Foster, 1890.
Conyza sqiiarrosa, once the herba conyza vulgaris of the shops," like its relative Aster Atticus, was recommended as an application to tumors by the Greeks \p., Euporista,. 167, edn. Kuhn] and was thought to drive away fleas [hence called flea- bane]. — Foster, 1890, The same reputation carried over, caused the development of the name Pulicaria, made a species of Inula by Linnaeus, later the type of the genus Pulicaiia.
Dioscorides' [genuine ?] Euporista recommends Buphthaltnum flowers for steatoma, a sebaceous tumor, bk. i, c. 157; Coiiyza and Leucanthemum, bk. 2, c. 69, for uterine inflammation ; AntJiemis for inflammations in the pudenda; Leont op odium, bk. i, c. 166, for similar ulcers and for wounds, as also Conyza folia, bk. I, c. 167, for which the last, the fleabane, held a reputation of long standing (first mentioned by Hecataeus Abderita, who fol- lowed Alexander into Syria 332 B.C. ; also by Theophrastus, Theocritus and Nicolaus Damascenus).
For Wounds and Inflaniniatoiy Sores. — Closely akin to the pre- ceding eflicacy and attributed to Aster or related plants.
" Sores or ulcers resulting from dislocations are to be cured by
Aster used for Wounds and Ulcers
43
application of the plant polyophthalmon [same as Aster Atticus ? and partial cause, by application of doctrine of signatures, from its name, for the reputation of Aster as a remedy for the eyes] or by such other dressings as are used for wounds ; but nothing of a very cold nature is to be applied." — Hippocrates.
Herba quae et [•io'jipOaAp.oc: dicitur, vim habens siccandi et eandem quam tussilago ; qua ad ulcera cum luxationibus con- juncta utitur, Hippocrates, 830," Foes, c. 1582, of polyophthalmon.
Porrum, the leek, is one of the six remedies for tumors and sores mentioned by Hippocrates as used by him in a certain case (see infra, under Hippocrates) ; and pounded onions are still common as a dressing for wounds in Greece to-day, Rodd, 165.
Achillaea, (Achillios of Cratevas, in the unpublished Vienna codex as cited by Meyer, 1. 255) ''when bruised, the whole plant pounded up with old axle-grease, cures old and desperate ulcers." — Cratevas.
Achillaea is a remedy used for wounds, and, its decoction, in labor, and, ab utero, subdita in pesso. — D., bk. 4, c. 36.
Plantago [sometimes called Aster; from confusion of their uses ?] heals ulcers, carbuncles, also the bite of a dog, epilepsy in children ; as an amulet, hung by a chain from the neck, its root dispels tumors — [hke Aster Atticus]. — D., bk. 2, c. 143.
Conyza leaves are used, laid on, for wounds. — D., bk. 3, c. 136.
Argemon \i. e.. Aster] cures ulcerating tumors. — Pliny.
Stellaria (Alchemilla) believed by many to be Aster Atticus, heals wounds and is sought by German surgeons and celebrated with wondrous praises, (mirisque laudibus), since they mix it with happy success in vulnerary potions. — Matthioli.
For Hemorrhoids. — Aster cures procidna sedi or hemorrhoids.
' Qcpehl. . . r«c TZpoTircoaec:; id pa:;. — D.
So does the purple violet [confused with Aster] . — D. So does Inguinaria or argemon [/. e., Aster]. — Pliny. Aster. ..sedi prociduae illitus confert. — Riiel. Asterem. . . sedi procidenti prodesse. — Matthioli. It. . . helpeth and swageth the inflammation of the fundament or siege. — Lyte.
It helpeth and prevaileth against the inflammation of the fun-
44
Aster History
dament and the falling foorth of the gut called Saccus ventris, Gerarde. So Parkinson.
In Labor-pains. — Aster aids those in labor-pains ; they say the purple part of the flower should be used ; one should drink it in water. fizd' udaro:; Tiodkv aovay-^r/o'c:; [^or^dc'tv. — D. (interpola- tion ?).
Aster also aids those in labor pains even if the plant is used dry, if it be taken up and held in the left hand, and if it be tied on to the groin. — D.
Cited by translators and commentators of the i6th century, without addition ; and onward, to Parkinson, 1640.
For Hernia. — Aster Atticus was formerly employed for hernia, — Foster, 1890. Germanis Bruchkrautt, qui ad herniam puer- orum, utuntur." — Ryff, 1543-
Several of the preceding efficacies have been claimed to cover hernia as well ; and especially the one following. Confusion with Pliny's Inguinaria e., Aster] on account of similar properties led some to identify the modern genus Herniaria with Inguinaria.
Aster used for Epilepsy For Epilepsy in Children. — They say the purple part of the flower is a remedy for epilepsy in children, kKtA'/ji^'iacz nolowv, D. [Its relative Conyza was used for epilepsy too. — D., bk. 3, c.
136.]
The purple violet [confused with Aster] is so too. — D.
The medical use of Asterion is for epilepsy — ''ad caducos." — Apideius Platonicns, c. 400.
The purple violet blossoms . . . et morbo regio opitulantur. Lat. tr. of Mesnes.
Aster is of aid, infantibus comitiale malum sentientibus. — Riiel, 1536 ; for " caduco morbu." Dorsteniiis, i 540.
The blew of the floure, drunken in water, is good to be given to young children, against the squinancie and the faUing sicknesse. — Lyte ; in the main repeated, Gerarde.
It helpeth children also that have the falling sicknesse. — Park- inson.
It is good against the epilepsie in children, chiefly the flowers. — Salmon, 1682.
Digest of Ancient Belief
45
Aster used for Sciatica
Aster is a remedy for pains in regions of the hips, in coxendicis, if worn tied on. — Piiny.
The purple part of the flower is of aid in sciatica, coxendicum doleri. — Riiel.
PHny addeth that being bound to the place, it is profitable for the paine in the hippes. — Parkinson, 1640.
It was worn as an amulet for sciatica.* — Adams, 1847.
Aster used for Goitre and Quinsy (For Cratevas' broncocele seems to have included as much.) Aster, using the green plant pounded up with old axle-grease, is a remedy for broncocele, wjt'/i yjcopa. y,07z€iaa fizzd bquyytbu Tiolaco'j^ notec Tipb^ ^poYy^oxTjhxou^- Cratevas, cited in D. Turgentia guttura discutit. — Ruel, Matthioli. It is good for squinancie. — Lyte.
It is also good for swolen throats. — Parkinson, 1629. It helpeth those that are troubled with quinsies, ... it con- sumeth swellings in the throat. — Parkinso7i, 1640. It is good against the quinsie. — Salmon, 1682.
Aster used for Venomous Bites
For the Bite of a Mad Dog. — Aster is a remedy for the bite of a mad-dog, the green plant pounded up with old axle-grease, Cra- evas in D. (interpolation, Sprengel).
Et rabiosi canis morsibus imponebat. — Rtiel, Matthioli.
They are held to be good for the biting of a mad Dogge, Parkinson, 1629 ; it helpeth them that are bitten by a mad Dogge, as Cratevas saith. — Parkinson, 1640.
Dioscorides' (genuine?) Euporista, bk. 2, c. 113, edn.
Kuhn, pp. 313, 314, in the Theriaca for a mad-dog's bite, recom- mends the use of 23 plants, among which Aster does not occur ; allium, cepa, silphium, plantaginis folia, apiastrum or fizhaaofullov [deemed usually, Melissa officinalis L.] occur, and others of little connection here.
Pliny, bk. v., c. 6, rejoices in the recent discovery of a cure
* Pliny, bk. 25, c. 49, vaunts the virtues of his Iberis \_Iberis a mora L. ? ] as an application for sciatica, " mixed with a small proportion of axle-grease " ; it had recently received the fanciful name Iberis, he says, in verses praising its efficacy writ- ten by the physician Servilius Democrates (and quoted by Galen, bk. x., c. 2).
46
Aster History
for mad dog's bite, in case of a soldier of the pretorian guard, healed in Lacetania (Spain) by drinking extract of dog-rose root ; of which Riley remarks " yet this dreadful malady is still incurable notwithstanding . . . the virtues of Scutellaria lateriflora, Alisma plantago, and Genista tinctoria, as specifics for its cure." Again, bk. 25, c. 77, Pliny mentions the Alisma plantago in this connec- tion, still found in Greece (Sibthorp) and ''till very recent times esteemed as curative of hydrophobia," though without reason.
Walnuts were another vaunted remedy ; Mithridates the Great, uneasy on his throne, had in his private cabinet a recipe in his own handwriting,* of which two dried walnuts were the base, closing pathetically, If a person takes this mix- ture fasting he will be proof against all poisons for that dayT This we are told by Galen v/as regularly taken by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Walnut kernels," continues Pliny,t "chewed by a man fasting, and applied to the wound, effect an instantane- ous cure it is said of bites inflicted by a mad dog."
Magic formulae were also used, and a signet ring inscribed Pax, max et adimax," was thought for the bite of a mad dog " to be irresistible." %
Of the serious practice of the ancients in hydrophobia, Dr. Millengen comparing the two great physicians notes that Dios- corides seared the wound with iron heated to whiteness ; others first excised the wounded part and then applied fire or caustic. Celsus considered submersion in water the only remedy. "J
Fo7' snake-bites, especially viper-bites, " The flower of Aster Atticus," darape^ dzTcxoi) to dvdo:^, is one of the 72 plant remedies §
* So found by Cneius Pompeius after the defeat of Mithridates, Pliny, bk. 23, c. 77. t Riley's Pliny, 4 : 515.
J Dr. Millengen's Curiosities of Medical Experience, 2 : 404. Lon., 1837.
I Among which were 5 Compositae, "the Aster Atticus, Helichrysum, Helenium, Costus and Leontopetali radix " of the Euporista.
The spurious book of Dioscorides Trepi loj36Xo)v (edn. Kuhn, 26 : 77-80) mentions 32 remedies for snake bites, among which Aster does not occur ; Eryngium occurs, and some Compositae, but none of the five just cited from the Euporista. Again, pp. 85-87, for viper bites in particular, 17 plants are recounted, including abrotanum, scilla, cepa, porrum, etc., and melissophyllum, but no Aster, and this treatise on poisons (thought by some to have been written by Dioscorides the Younger, perhaps 100 A. D.) ends with- out mention of aster or anything which could be mistaken for it.
The Geoponica, bk. viii., c. 10, says of the probably related Conyzites, that its wine " contra reptilium morsus prodest," and this plant is also praised for reptile bites by Dioscorides [the Younger?], bk. v., c. 63, and by Galen.
Digest of Ancient Belief
47
listed as efficacious against viper bites when used either in wine or in food ; so catalogued in the Euporista attributed to Dioscorides, bk. ii., c. 115; the immediate succession being asclepiadis radix ; d(TTspo^ dznxou to a.vdo<: ; atractidis flores et folia [three others] ; gentianae radix ; asteris samii [the white earth of Samos ; see Aster names], etc., etc.
Aster-blossom added to a drink is a remedy against serpents ; — bibitur et adversus serpeittes. — Pliny.
Aster Fumes put Serpents to Flight. — Aster puts serpents to flight if its fumes are h\xxx\^(\.-z-Cratevas in D. Incensa serpentes fugat. — R2Lel, Matthioli. It driveth away serpents if it be burned. — Parkinson.
The protective power of fumes of special plants is still a part of the folk-belief of Greece ; so the modern Greek fumigates his house by burning branches of dry olive, to ward against the evil eye." — Rodd, 162.
Compare also Pliny,* "The odor even, of Lysimachia, puts serpents to flight." Other plants of magical efficacy against serpents, mentioned by Pliny in the same connection, are his Plistolochia {Aristolochia Plistolochia L.) of which he says ''in- deed it will be quite sufficient to suspend this last over the hearth, to make all serpents leave the house" ; and of his Betony \_Be- tonica alopeciirus L. ?] he quotes the belief that if a circle of it is traced around a serpent, it will lash itself to death with its tail." Pliny similarly attributes to serpents an abhorrence of the beech tree and the ash tree. Compare also, Bartholomaeus, etc., infra.
Aster as Used by Lower Animals Aster as a Remedy to the Toad. — Dorstenius, in 1 540, remark- ing that some had connected the Aster Atticus under its name Bubonitim with the Toad, bufo, narrates that " some feign that to toads Inguinalis is a great medicine, that in battles fought with spiders the toads are conquered and wounded and smitten by them. And they say that toads and other venomous creatures — aliaque animalcula venenosa — make their home for the sake of this herb in stony places [where it grows] , and with this herb they refresh themselves and heal themselves."
* Pliny, bk. 25, c. 55 ; in Riley's tr., 5 : 119.
48
Aster History
Dorstenius adds of this mediaeval story that **it is not only in- eptuvi ac falsimi^ but also is contrary to all the authority of the ancients;" /. e., is unmentioned by them.
Aster as a Remedy to Swine. — As Aster Atticus or Inguinaria was by some called Argemon, fide Pliny, it was liable to acquire the reputation of healing swine which came with that name from the Greeks, Pliny saying of Argemon that the one digging its medicinal root must do so without use of iron and with use of the formula, ''This is the plant Argemon, which Minerva discov- ered, which she found a remedy for swine, for all such as should taste of it." — Pliny, bk. 24, c. 19. See infra, und^r Argemon and under Pliny.
Aster a Remedy to Bees. — [As the 9th, last and most fully de- scribed of the remedies for languishing bees ; ioWow'mg gal bannm'\ . Boil its roots in odorous wine, and place it as food in full baskets in the doorways of the hives.
Hujus odorato radices incoque Baccho, Pabulaque in foribus plenis adpone canistris. — V.
Best of remedies for this flux among the bees is the root of Amellus ; boiled with old Aminean wine, the roots are to be pressed out, and the liquor thus weighed out is to be given to the bees. —
Columella.
Aster a source of Honey to Bees. — The wild flowers most friendly of all to the bees are the Amellus, acanthus, etc. — Col- umella. Amellus, i. e., Aster, thus heads this list, afterwards quali- fied by making three classes of wild flowers frequented by bees, thyme being the only member of the first class, Amellus, acanthus, asphodel and narcissus forming the second, armoracia and innu- merable others " making the third, the third class being particu- larly a source of wax.
Apes susurro murmurant gratae leni
Cum summo florum vel novos rores legunt. Bees murmur pleasingly their light susurrus, Culling from topmost flowers or latest dewdrop.
— Vergiliiis, hortuhis.
Aster Used in Dyeing
Flos tinctorius primus, tinctoribus Spirensibus Schartenkraut dicitur. Bock. — /. e., by the dyers at Speier it is called Groinplant,
Digest of Ancient Belief
49
or by some rendered Saw-wort or Notch-plant ; and see infra, under Bock. — Anthemis tinctoria, its near relative, as well as per- haps both CJirysanthemum segetum and C. covo7tamis, have been used in dyeing. The use suggested by Bock three centuries be- fore was suggested again by Wallroth's separation of a form of Aster Amellus by the name of Aster tinctorius.
Aster Temperament
The so-called temperament or nature of a plant was a very consequential part of mediaeval description, and to a less degree, of that of antiquity ; and aster was diagnosed as follows :
It is not of very cold nature. — Hippocrates, under the name polyophthalmon.
Habet vero non minime et refrigerans quiddam ac reprimans, ut mixtae sit facultates uti rosa verum id non astringit. — Galen.
Est autem mediocriter digerantis facultatis, quin videlicet et modice calidum est, nec vehementer, nec ita desiccat ut contendat, maxime quam etiamnum molle ac recens fuerit. — Galen.
Habet etiam quod discussorium, ut mixtarum virium sit, velut rosa, sed bubonium non ita astringit. — Actios.
It is possessed of mixed powers, being discutient and cooling. — Panhis Aegineta.
Habet aut qo dyaphoreticum. Habet etiam nomino refrigera- tivo qd reperessi, ut mixte sit potentie sicut rosa, non tamen sic stipticat. — Orttis, 1498 edn.
Est autem mediocriter diaphoreticum, neque vehementer neque intense desiccat. — Orttis, again in 1498 edn.
Temperamentum. Mixtae est potentiae, uti rosa refrigerat enim, non tamen vehementer, et digerit atque exsiccat, quod scilicet illi amara insit qualitas. — Fuchs, edn. 1551.
Ceterum Aster Atticus digerentis ut Galenus tradit ; mediocriter est facultatis, modice videlicet calidus, et non vehementer desic- cans ; maxime cum etiamnum mollis ac recens fuerit. — Dodoens.
The nature. It doth refresh and cool, and is almost of tem- perature like the rose. — Lyte, 1595 edn.
The nature. It is of a meane temperature in cooling and dry- ing. Galen saith it doth moderately waste and consume, especially while it is yet soft and newly gathered. — Gerarde, i 597.
50
Aster History
It hath not only a digesting but also no small cooling quality, and refreshing, being of a mixt property like the Rose. — Parkin- son, 1640.
Temperate and dry in 1°. — Salmon, 1682.
MODES OF USING ASTER REMEDIES Plasters and Salves
Applied as a plaster, or ''emplastron," '/.aTaTzlaoabiiivov, for the stomach, D., for buboes, Galen, Aetios, Ortns.
ir.tnlaTTbfxzvov, Paulus Aegineta ; in cataplasmata impositus, Aetios, Lat. tr. of 1542; supplasmatum . . . cataplasmatum, Ortus ; emplastri modo apposita, Jolin Lonitzer ; impositum, Dodoens ; laid to, Lyte.
Externally the leaves in a cataplasm maturates and suppurates botches. — Salmon.
The purple violet [/. e.. Aster?] leaves ''per se imponuntur, et cum polenta." — Ruel.
Rubbed on as a Salve. — Aster or Bubonium is believed to heal buboes if rubbed on as a salve, — illitum. — Galen.
Aster was prescribed illiius in nearly all its uses by Ruel, 633. So the leaf of Argemonia, perhaps there confused with Aster, was a cure for inflammations if rubbed on. — Ruel, 429.
Aster . . . used in oyle to anoint the place. — Parkinson.
Pounded up zvith Hog' s grease. — The green growing plant, pounded up by itself and mixed with old axle-grease,* is a remedy
* Pliny, 28, 37, Riley's tr. 5 : 324 4- , remarks : " Fat is held in highest esteem,
that of swine in particular The older it is, the better. The Greek writers have
now given it the name of ' axungia ' [L. axis, an axle, and ungo, to anoint], or axle- grease, in their works The distinguishing properties of swine's grease are emol- lient, calorific, resolvent and detergent A peculiar kind of plaster is made of it
for the cure of inflammatory ulcers, 75 denarrii of hog's lard being mixed with loo of
litharge The ancient physicians also set a high value on the medicinal properties
of hog's-lard in the unmixed state, to anoint ulcers with it, etc The ancients used
to employ hog's-lard in particular for greasing the axle^ of their vehicles, that the wheels might revolve the more easily, and to this in fact it owes its name of ' axungia.' When hog's-lard has been used for this purpose, incorporated as it is with iron-rust, it is
remarkably useful as an application for diseases of the rectum and of the pudenda
It is still the usage for the newly-wedded bride, on entering her husband's house, to touch the door-posts with it, that no noxious spells may find admittance."
Digest of Ancient Belief
51
for the mad-dog's bite and for goitre in the throat — noczc T.()hz, Ir^aaodrfATOUc, xat [i^io'i-^o'/rjlcxou^. — Cratevas in Dioscorides.
Similarly, tiisa in axiingia, Cratevas prescribed Argemonia as a remedy ad strumas, if rubbed on, especially while in the bath.
Similarly, Cratevas in his article Achillios, as quoted by An- guillara in his Semplici (agreeing with Dioscorides on Achillea except in this addition), reminds one strongly of his preparation of Aster : The whole plant [Achillea] bruised with old axle-grease, cures old and evil ulcers ; dry, bruised so, and mixed with honey^ it is anacathartic."
Asteris Attici recens herba cum axungiae senio tusa, etc. — Matthioli, Lat. ed'n. — Cratevas Herbarius says, Pestle it green with hog's grease, against the bite of a mad-dog, and equally for tumors of the goitre. — " Che pesta verde insieme con Grascia de Porco^ conserisce al morso de i Cani arrabbiati, & parimente a i tumori della gola." — Matthioli.
And being green, stamped, and laid to the botches or impost- humes . . . [it] prevaileth. — Lyte.
If an oyntment be made of the greene hearbe and old hog's- grease . — Parkinson.
Aster used Internally
Used in Decoction to Drink in Water. — Drinking the decoction of the purple rays in water is an aid to those in labor-pains, and for epileptic fits in children. — D.
The purple leaves of the flower boyled in water . . . good for the pains. — Parkinson.
Used made np in Pills. — Ad caducos. Herbae asterii baccas [pills ?] eis datas manducandas Luna decrescente, cum erit in signo Virginis, — Apuleius Platoniciis, c. 400.
Quoted almost literally by Dorstenius, 1540, but made to apply to one in labor, who must also suspend the plant itself around her neck.
Aster used as an Amulet Tied on at the Groin. — Aster drives away pain in labor, — xeptafdhv rCp I^od^mv, arjilhwazt r^c oowr^^, D. Inguinum medi- cinam . . . jubent et juncta cinctus alligari. — Pliny. Prodest et coxendicis dolori ad alligata. — Pliny. Creditum est bubones san- are, tum illitum tum inguini alligatum. — Galen, Ortus.
52
Aster History
a/Ml 'Aai TiEpcaTLTOfxevov. It cures buboes even when appended as a periapt." Paiiliis Aegineta, tr. by Adams.
It is applied ppinatum " and assumptum." — Ortus. Juxta inguinum cinctus alligari. — Ruel. Alligata, inguinum medeatur. — -John Lonitzer. Buboni ad alligatum. — Dodoens.
Suspended from the Neck. — Etiam quod suspensum bubones sanare credatur. — Galen. Et ipsam herbam habeant in collo sus- pensam, remediabuntur. — Apideins Platojueus, Dorsteniiis.
Merely held in the Hand. — If the dry plant is taken up in the left hand of the one in labor-pains, etc., D.
Inguinaria, . . . ut profit inguinibus, in manu tantum habendum est. — Pliny.
Merely Carried About. — Some say that this herbe putteth away all tumors and sweilings of the siege, share or fundament, yea, when it is but only carried about by a man. — Lyte.
Similar ancient uses as amidets were recorded of Argemonia radix — perhaps by the confusion of Argemon with Aster. Ut profit inguinibus in manibus tantum habenda est : " see Ruel^ de natura, 429.
Asplenon herba, aWA^yvov /?oray>y, (=Asplenium Ceterach L., or Scolopendrium officinale L.) pro inhibendum conceptum, D. Eu- porista, bk. 2, c. 95 ; and also, for same purpose, Tamaricis lig- num, iJLO[)LXYj(: quXov.
Philaeterium radix, etc., against scorpions and other venom- ous creatures, Etiporista, bk. 2, c. 132.
Plantaginis radix, for tumors, Euporista, bk. 2, c. 155.
Myrtle : "to prevent ulcerations from causing swellings in the inguinal glands, it will suffice for a patient to carry a sprig of myrtle about him which has never touched the ground or any implement of iron." — Pliny, bk. 23, c. 81.
Other Ancient Amulets of Star-form. — The preceding amulet- plants were all used for purposes similar to those for which Aster was recommended as an amulet. The starfish was used more generally against all spells ; because of superstitious belief in the potency of the star form ? which may be also a reason for the as- cription of such potency to the star-like aster-blossom ; heedless of the fact that our destinies lie not in our stars but in ourselves. Of the use of the star-fish Pliny says, bk. 22, c. 16, "It is as-
Digest of Ancient Belief
53
serted also, that if the fish called the sea-star is smeared with fox's blood, and then nailed to the upper lintel of the door, or to the door itself with a copper nail, no noxious spells will be able to obtain admittance, or at all events, to be productive of any ill effects." — Rile/s tr. 6 : lo.
Chapter i 5 5 of the second book of the Euporista ascribed to Dioscorides is so good an example of the later superstitions re- garding amulets that I quote it entire, in Latin form. It probably illustrates well the superstitious use of Aster Atticus, and to the common plantain of which it speaks the name Aster had itself been sometimes transferred, by 400 A.D,, either from this community of use or of properties or from the radially-outspread leaves.
"Cap. CLV. Ad strumas amuletiratione alliganturplantaginis radix, sinistra manu eruta et pelli illigata, lapathi agrestis radix eo- dem modo, uti et asphodeli radix, itemque eryngii. Pronuntiato vero prius eiusce nomine cujus gratia exquiritur, erui debet sub- vesperum, a vicesima octava luna usque ad tricesimam, itaque adalligari."
Amulets in Modern Greece. — Similar beliefs regarding amulets (not to mention the horsechestnut and the bean carried in pocket, or the string tied round the arm, in America to-day) have a strong hold still upon the modern Greeks, as seen in the following ex- amples :
" A potato suspended in a bag to the person was recommended as a prophylactic against rheumatism." — Rodd^ 165.
Garlic, axopoo:; in ancient and in modern Greek, is still " highly relished and believed to have mysterious health-giving properties. It is also a sovereign prophylactic against the evil eye. The baby, or the pet goat, is quite safe against this evil who wears a kernel of garlic in a little bag tied around the neck." George Horton, on Modern Athens, Scribner' s Magazine ^ Feb., 1901.
" People in Greece often carry or wear an amulet, especially farmers and those in the country, and especially in old times, most of all about the time of the war of liberation and for the hun- dreds of years of fighting before that ; and many old songs that date from that time or earlier, praise the amulet which the warrior carried and which made him invincible against his enemy though standing alone amid eighty shooting at him. Such an amulet is
54
Aster History
called a fjAaxzbv^ and is prized more and more with its age. If it has been handed down in the family from a grandfather fighting in the mountains [like the grandfather of the ex-soldier speaking] , a grandfather that was also saved by it, then it is valued most. It may be of various kinds, I think. It is honored for what it had done, rather than for what it is. Instead of (pulaxzov, * watcher over me,' they also call it sometimes tI/icou gu/.ov, ' revered wood,' from the great honor they pay to it." — Attica, June, 1901.
Other Superstitious Modes of Use Taken up zvitlioiit use of Iron andzvitli Prescribed Fornmla. — By those who identified Aster and Argemon, its medicinal power to allay tumors and to heal diseases in swine was secured only if the plant be taken out of the ground without the use of iron, and with the words *'This is the plant Argemon, which Minerva dis- covered, which she found a remedy for swine, for all such as should taste of it." — Pliny.
Ruel, quoting the knowledge of the ancients about Argemone, De natura, 428-9, cites the above, saying of the plant " an eadem eum argemone [Argemonia, Papaver and Adonis] nescio," and adding, from what ancient author does not appear, that Minerva's Argemon was taken in drink either in milk or in wine, and was, in either form, to be added to swill for swine to drink — in colluvieni potnris. — Riiel.
50 of myrtle which is to be carried as an amulet against inguinal ulcers ; it must never touch iron, says Pliny.
Using the left hand, in taking up the root from the ground, in plucking the flower or plant, or in holding the plant.
The dry plant taken up and held in the left hand of the one suffering labor pains, and tied on upon the groin, drives away the pain. — D.
^Yjpbu ok duacf)edkv zfj dpiazerja yscnc zou fUyoupzo^, etc. — D. Inguinum medicinam, sinistra manu decerpi jubent. — Pliny. Sinistra manu decerpi jubent. — Ruel ; and again,
51 arescat flos sinistra manu dolentis decerpatur, adallige- turque, sic dolores avertens malo liberabit. — Ruel.
Pluck it with the left hand. — Dorsteniiis, i 540. Si sinistra dolentis manu decerpatur. — Dodoens, edn. 161 6. The dried
Digest of Ancient Belief
55
flowers to be taken into the right hand of the patient [inadvert- ence for left\. — Parkinson, 1640.
There were other left-hand plants besides Aster ; of one of the chief, our verbena, Pliny remarks, Peristereon must be taken up with the left hand," and so fixed did this belief become as to oc- casion for it the name Aristereon,* or ''the left-hand plant /<^r excellence^' from dpcazefjo::, the left hand, Lat. sinistra.
These associations of left-hand plants with good fortune agree with the Roman idea respecting divination, in which sinister = favorable, explained as *' because the Romans on these occasions turned the face towards the south and so had the eastern or fortu- nate side on the left, while the Greeks, turning to the north, had it on their right." — Harpers. But these plant associations of good fortune with the left trace to the Greek, where they ought, by this theory, to have been ominous of ill-fortune.
Time of Gathering, or of Use. — Luna decrescente, cum erit in signo Virginis. — Apiileius Platonicus.
Procuring Sleep or Forgetfulness
The ancient Greeks ascribed to plants of stomachic properties the power of inducing sleep, or bringing good dreams but preventing nightmares, and of producing forgetfulness. When recommending Aster as stomachic, all this was doubtless implied to many, f The modern Greeks still hold firm faith in such plants ; as shown in the folk-poem cited by Rodd, J 271,
" I shall cross the plain, the mountains, and ask the wild things in them, Can they not find me a drug that will teach me to forget you ?"
Earlier Greeks had one plant which they named on account of this potency, the uvetpodoretpa, the dream-bestower.
Modern Greek fairy-tales perpetuate the same idea ; as in the story of '' The Princess who went to the Wars," § where the Prince " opened the chamber-door and flung a sleeping-herb upon the
^ So named in the Orphics, in Aelian's Natural History, and by Eustathius.
f The beliefs of many had not even this foundation ; witness Pliny's use of the cuckoo amulet to produce sleep, and the bat's head dried, to prevent it (book 30, c. 48); and Democritus' use of the chameleon to procure dreams.
J The Customs and Lore of Modern Greece, by Rennell Rodd, Lon. 1892.
I Geldart's Folk-lore of Modern Greece, Lon. 1884.
56
Aster History
Princess," upon which she slept during a long journey to his own country.
Rodd, 165, describes the "beautiful-sleep bringer " of the Cretans : In the island of Crete a plant which is common by the roadside, with whose botanical name I am not familiar, but which is known in the island as yMloxocfjirjdeca, * the giver of good sleep, was pointed out as largely used by the good wives of the villages as a household remedy for indigestion and sleeplessness, and many were the stories told of its wonderful efficacy on patients whose maladies had defied the usual medical remedies."
Helenium or elecampane, the Aster officinale of some later botanists, was credited, says Pliny, with similar power when taken with wine, having in fact a similar effect to the nepenthes, which has been so much vaunted by Homer as producing forgetfulness of all sorrow." — Pliny, 21, 91.
Perhaps it was from some tradition of Aster as a sleep-producer that Bock, 1536, attributes to his " Uva lupina seu Astera " power *'to produce sleep if eaten."
Parts Used
The whole plant, green and fresh, bypbv, for buboes, D., Aetios ; recens, Ortus ; verte, Matthioli ; fresh, Parkinson ; so the whole plant, for the mad-dog's bite and for goitre, using it green and fresh, yXaypd, Cratevas, recens, Matthioli, Riiel.
The whole plant, dry, as an amulet, D., etc.
The leaves, for buboes, Salmon.
The root, for bees, V., Cohunella ; for swine, Pliny, and for human use, for ulcers, Pliny, under name Argemon.
In early days the whole plant, kraut," and root,
''wurzel," were kept in stock by the apothecaries under the name Herba et Radix Aster Atticis. — Flora Deiitschland.
*Rodd's KaAoKOLfii/dtia, if it is the plant which Sibthorp found called naXoKoifj-idiK/ - in Greece, is one of the Compositae, Gnaphaliwn Stoechas L., "now used for the stomach," Attica ; the Helichrysum of Dioscorides, 4, 57, who tells us how the an- cients laid it among garments to keep moths away (and to impart its pleasant odor, Pliny, 21, 96) ; and says, as in case of its relative Aster, it was used to drink in wine for snake bites, and for abdominal troubles. Because of its golden mass of bloom, its coma or tresses, in the words of Dioscorides, it was by some called Chrysanthemum, and because of its duration Amaranth. With it, he adds, they crown the shrines of the gods. Pliny reminds us how faithfully this custom was followed by one of the Ptolemies in Egypt.
Digest of Ancient Belief
57
The purple rays preferred when in full flozver, to nopipoofji^ou To^j dudou::, the purpled part of the flower, is the best (for labor- pains, in decoction ; and for epilepsy), D.
So Dioscorides again, in the same words, of his purple violet [meaning Aster?], D., bk. iv., c. 120.
Dioscorides, distinguishing his yellow, white and purple species of Anthemis, remarks there again the purple flower is the best" (Antheinis rosea DC).
So of the different kinds of the orchid Satyrion (now Serapias). Brunfels, i : 1 10, on Satyrion, quotes ex Aggregatore Herbario " [de Dondis, Aggregator Paduanus ? or the unknown Aggregator Practicus ? see infra'] as ascribing to it properties like those of Aster in curing ulcers, tumors and hemorrhoids, and particularly *'quod habet flores purpureos."
Perhaps this preference for the purple part of the Aster, which incHned toward blue, may have lent its aid to the development of that superstitious preference for blue, of which Dr. Millengen writes : To this day, flannel dyed nine times blue is supposed to be more efficacious in glandular swellings." (Curiosities of Med- ical Experience, 2: 140. Lon., 1837).
ASTER NAMES The Word Aster in Greek
Aster, Greek darrif) and sometimes darpov, a star, usually oc- curring in this sense in the plural, daxpa ; from the root of the equivalent ' Eng. star, Gothic stairno, Lat. Stella {i. e., sterula) , Sansk. staras, Zend, star ; the root conjecturally the Aryan star = strew, from the thought of the stars as sprinkled over the sky.
Aster in transferred sense, as name of the plant identified as Aster Amellus L., occurs about 160 B.C., Nicander's Georgica, (in Atheneaus 15, 683); Pliny, 27, 5; and with local modifier making it in effect a binomial, in the form Aster Atticus, 'Aavrjp \4TTr/6^, Dioscorides, 4, 118 (or 120 or iio in various editions); which binomial continues as its name in most subsequent writings, till Linnaeus, 1753. The plant was so named from the resem- blance of its radiate flower-head to a star, as both Dioscorides and Pliny declare, apparently independently of each other.
58
Aster History
The word Aster on passing into Latin was used chiefly of the flower, not for a star, for which the Romans had already their own name Stella.
Aster in modern colloquial Greek, while still used for a star, is not used for any flower, Attica ; being replaced by dcrrpov in the sense of the flower. It has been used in French as Astere, "the Aster,"(Martyn, 1797).
Stars of the sky find a quick response in the poetry of most peoples, but especially from that of the ancient Greeks ; as in Homer, Iliad, xi., 62.
oco^ 0 kx PS(picov dvaipalusTM o6ho^ dazrjp. ''Such as the star of fate, SiriuS, when it shines forth from the clouds."
So in that celebrated line of the Iliad, viii., 555 or 551. a»C ^' iv ohpavCo dcrzpa cpaecvrjV dficpl aekrjvrjv
which Tennyson rendered literally
" As when in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful,"
and which Eustathius, the great Homeric commentator of the 1 2th century, illustrated by citing Sappho's immortal lines about the stars, which begin
"The stars around the lovely moon," —
^Aaripe^ pthv dfupt xdXav az)Avvav.
This remained still true of the Greek mind two thousand years after, and recounting the objects of nature that affect us most, we find the star still mentioned first of all ; as in a Greek i6th cen- tury poem* by a Cretan beginning
Ma T dar/jp, — where the order of mention is star, sky, sunrise, sunset, earth, sun and moon. — The same preeminence remains in modern Greek ; the star is the source of the first rhym- ing distich, Wtt oXa r darpa, z'ohpavou^ among Rodd's series, which he translates.
Of all the stars in heaven, but one is like to thee,
The star that comes at midnight and makes all others dim.
* The Erotocritus of Vincenzo Cornaro, quoted as an early example of rhyming 15- syllable meter, Rodd, 211.
The Word Aster in Greek
59
*'Is there a Greek living to-day," says Rodd, ''who does not know TO Tipcozo aarpo, by [the modern poet] Joannes Polemos?" remembering how he used to hear this song of star-praise in Athens — ''sung by students to the soft throbbing of a guitar," —
" The first of all the stars of night In heaven is softly gleaming."
Modern Greek also makes much use of the star by transfer and composition ; it calls a thunderbolt darponeXixc, "the starry axe."
T/ie transfer from the direct use of the word Aster to the meta- phorical was easy, and we find it applied early to a person ; as in Euripides' "Thou Star of the Muses," dGzrjp Mouacop^ and perhaps earlier in Sappho's song,
" Thou art, I think, an evening star, of all the stars the fairest." 'Aazipcop Tiduzcov 6 xdh(TZ0(;.
Comparison to a star, rather than metaphor, was perhaps more common to the Greeks ; like Wordsworth's famed comparison of Milton,
" Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart."
In the poet Plato (slightly antedating the philosopher, and writing 428-389 B.C.), the metaphor becomes for perhaps the first time distinct and fully evident ; as in his lines,
\4azipo.^ ecaaOpei^ dazrjp ipto::' side yeuocpir^u
O'jpapo:;, noAldcQ ofip.aatv ec^ ae j^AeTTco.
Stars do you gaze on, star of mine ? would that I might become Heaven, and so with many eyes look down on you in turn.
Another of Plato's star-metaphors is again a fragment of two lines only, but of a beauty such as to make Tennyson speak of
Jewels five words long.
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle forever —
It reads :
\4(TZ7jp Tipcv fihj elapjie^ evl ^codlacv 'Ewoz, vuv de davwv )Ap.7iec(; ^'Eajrepo^ eu (f Ocfievoc^.
Shelley rendered it :
Thou wert the Morning Star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled, — Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendor to the dead, —
60
Aster History
and adopting it as an address to Keats, prefixed the Greek lines to the original Pisa edition, 1821, of his Adonais.
From its use as metaphor, for one of beauty or fame. Aster passed among the Greeks into use as an occasional personal name. Such an Aster in Sparta was father, says Herodotus,* of that " Anchinolus, son of Aster — a man of note among the citizens " whom the Spartans sent at the head of an army against Athens with orders to drive out the Pisistridae. Another Aster was put to death by Philip of Macedon, and of him Plutarch tells us, " He was a skillful archer, one of the garrison of Methone, who when Philip was besieging the city, aimed an arrow at him with this inscription on it * Aavrjp ^iXtKTiw davdac[iov nkfiizzt ^eXor^' or * A star sends a deadly dart upon Philip,' — and deprived him of an eye. Philip sent back the arrow into the town with the inscription on it Wa-kpa 0iAc7:-n:o^, rjv /Aj^rj xfjejurjasra!. When the place was taken Philip crucified Aster."
Most of the Greek personal star names were however given some terminational addition : as Asteria, mother of Hecate, Asterope, wife of Aeacus, Asteropea, daughter of Pelias, Asterodia, wife of Endymion, Astraea, goddess of justice, Astraeus the Titan, Asterius the giant of Miletus, whose body lies ten cubits long under its sepulchre in the isle of Asterius ; Asterion the river god of Argolis, and his daughter Astraea ; and a whole series of less mythic men, from Asterion king of Crete who espoused Europa, and that other Asterion son of Minos whom Theseus slew, and Asterion (son of Cometes) the Argonaut who was immortalized, about 600 B. C, as a charioteer on the chest of Cypselus,t — to Asterion the sculptor, son of Aeschylus.
Aster appears also as a plant name, Apuleius Platonicus, as synonym of Plantago major; from confusion with Aster Atticus it may be, on account of similarity of medical use ; or indepen- dently, from the radiately spreading leaves.
Aster also appears as an animal name, Oppian using it for a bird bearing a starlike circle or spot on its head ; and more often it occurs as a starfish, derrrjp OoldaacoQ ; in Aristotle, Plutarch, Op- pian ; in Pliny ; and in Tzetzes ad Lycophron, 680 (fide Dindorf 's Thesaurus Stephani, Paris, 1831).
* Rawlinson's Herodotus, 3 : 268. I Pausanias, edn. Siebel, 6 : 31.
Names for Aster Atticus
61
Aster also occurs once as a place-name ; but a more common place-name was Asterion, name, says the Pseudo Plutarch, of Mt. Cithaeron, and of the island of Tenedos, the river of Argolis, etc.
Other uses of the word Aster unmodified are given as three by some dictionaries (as Stephanus) ; as name of the medicinal white-earth of Samos, q. v., infra ; name of a compound medica- ment, a poultice ; and name of a stomachic. The last is a form of the use as medicament, and that use, and the use for the white- earth, being apparently derived from the use for the plant Aster as a similar remedy, will be treated separately.
Names for Aster Atticus
With the following names used for Aster Atticus or confused with it, are added the ancient synonyms for the other Aster then known, their Tripolium.
Alant. — Ger. for elecampane, a word of obscure origin, Kliige ; but apparently from its Greek equivalent, llivtov^ Lat. Helenium. Alant occurs in Mid. and High German. Alantidiiim also in sense of elecampane (fide Meyer) occurs in the Physica of St. Hil- degardis, about 1 1 50. Ala is equivalent, in Sp. and Portu. (fide Kluge). — The lack of fixity in application of the word is however in- dicated by present Ger. alantbeere, black currant. — In some way the name Alant seems early to have been confused with Aster or to have been so inclusive as to cover other Asters than elecampane, elecam- pane itself being an Aster to many, as of Tournefort, and the Aster officinale of others, as Allioni, 1785. Probably from such a sup- posed equivalence of Alant and Aster came the application of Alant in the form Ellend to Eryngium, which was long confused with Aster in the middle ages, from Serapion to Fuchs. See El- lend, infra. Ellend surely has but a superficial resemblance to elend, wretched, foreign : and has been current as German for Eryngium for at least 400 years.
Alibium. — Avicenna, Serapion, Matthaeiis Sylvaticus, FucJis, 1531, Euricius Cordns, 1334-, Bock, 1536. Arabic name for Aster in Latinized form, from alhiben=inguen, according to Fuchs 1 53 1, who censures Matthaeus Sylvaticus for identifying it with Eryngium. See infra under Fuchs.
Amello, among Italians, MattJiioli, 1554? 1568, and after;
62
Aster History
Calzolaris, Verona, 1 566. In the Italian vernacular, Targioni- Tozzetti, dict'y, 1809; Bcrtoloni, Fl. Italica, 9 : 267. 1854.
Amellus, V, only in dative, Amello^ V, and Serviiis ; for which some MS. give Amillo ; and in the genitive, Amelli, Columella, twice. See infra, under Vergil, for origin.
Antipater (/. e., plant in which the branch rises above the parent ; see Filius ante patrem) seems to have been used to in- clude Aster by Hermolaus Barbarus and by Brunfels.
Anthemis, av^£/i^c, distinguished from Aster by Dioscorides; but compared as if deemed the nearest in resemblance of the kin- dred plants ; confused with Aster sometimes among later writers if not by other Greeks ; especially in case of A. tinctoria L. and A. rosea DC, thought by Sibthorp to be the "avdspx:: fiqhvdvQr^ci and the " Avdzfu:^ Ttopcpupdvdr^' respectively of Dioscorides. The latter is now called nanouvc, Sibthorp, 1796. — "There are white and pink and dark red kinds of Tzanouvt ; it grows wild all about ; it has stem and leaves like a daisy, but the flower is different, for every bud has 3—4 petals and no more, Attica, speaking chiefly of Anthemis rosea DC, which has few, sometimes 5, short broad pink rays, the whole long-stalked remote head, less than a half- inch across, and very different in nature from the Aster Atticus confused with it.
Argemon, dpyzfiov (also apjefio^, and dpyziicL) name (from Gr. dpyb^i, Hom. dpjzvvbz, white, shining) of a small white-cen- tered ulcer of the eye, so called by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galen, Pollux, etc. ; which inflammation we may distinguish in the plural as argema.
From the fact that it was used as a remedy for argema and other troubles of the eye, the name Argemon seems to have been applied among various Greeks, to Aster. It became confused with Argemone or Argemonia and later with Agrimonia. See full treatment infra, under Pliny.
Perhaps Aster had disappeared from the list of remedies for argema before Aetios"^ wrote, about 540 A.D., his chapter 26 De Argemo, in his Sermo iii., ''Argemon est ulcusculum circa iridis circulum factum, partem albi, et partem nigri occupans, et album
* Actios, 341, edn. Froben, 1542.
Names for Aster Atticus
63
apparens. Quum igitur profundius et sordidum factum fuerit, . . . [treat it with] obducentibus pharmacis."
AscARACON ( i. e., Aster Atticon), a form of the name used by Serapion and by him identified with Centumcapita, and with Eryn- gium, cited by De Manliis, 170, as Ascaracon, but perhaps mis- printed, and doubtless intended for what Matthioli printed i 560 as Astaraticon, Arabic for Aster Atticus."
AsPERGOUTTE MENUE. — Fr. for Astcr Atticus, Ryff, 1543 (see the next); Dodoens, 1^^^-1616, Lobcl, 1576; Gerarde, 1597 (as Aspergoutte menne).
AsPERGOUTTE MiNEUR, the Fr. name for Aster Atticus, Mat- thioli^ 1560; but perhaps only in actual use for Aspergula, which was by some confused with Aster Atticus.
AsPROLOULOUDON, d(T7:poXouXouoov ; literally white-flower ; in application = daisy, and used chiefly of white-rayed compositae, but without excluding the similar species with colored rays ; and some- times used of Aster Amellus, fide Attica and Scarlatos.'^ Only col- loquial. " Daisies about Athens are of several colors, white and yellow, red and purple." — Attica.
Variants are to xonpoXouXoudov, colloquial, meaning dunghill- daisy, i. e., the waste-lands flower ; cited as equivalent oi darrpoXou- loudov, by Scarlatos, 1874.
Also, uexpoXouXoudov, flower of the bier, from vexpb^ a corpse ; used of whatever kind of flower is put around a dead body." — Attica. ('' In the streets of Athens to-day bodies of children are borne to the grave half buried in flowers," and otherwise exposed to view, no coffin being used in this funeral procession. — Horton in Scribner' s Mag., Feb., 1 901). Jannizaris gives uexpoAo'jAouoo, colloquial only, as equivalent of Eng. marigold " ; "but instead it means whatever flower was used. They are laid loose all about the body; no special kind of flower, but more especially geranium leaves and plants and most of all basilikon, which has more smell than geranium even." — Attica, 190 1.
daTzpoXouXoudov is cited by Scarlatos as the common colloquial equivalent for the ancient Greek plant names di^Ospc::, di^depLou, dvdepcou, Xeuxdvdepov, jueXAudsfJLOu, yjpdi^dsjjLOP, x'/^pdude/iov, ypuaoxotvrj xaXXta.) also apyzpcovrj, dazeptv [sic; ' Aorrjp meant?] dazcpla (7:0a)
* Modern Greek Lexicon by Scarlatos Byzantios ; Athens, 1874.
64
Aster History
[here referring evidently to Pausanias' 'Aarsfiuoua ovofid'^ouat yjj} TTjV Tibav Ta'jTTjv. See infra, under Pausanias.] The last three names at least had been names of Aster in ancient Greek.
ddTcpoXouXoDoov is cited by other dictionaries as follows : Le- grand, Mod. Gr. and Fr., 1882, " daKftolouXoodo, marguerite paque- rette." — Jannizaris, "Eng. & Mod. Gr., as actually spoken," N. Y. 1895; "daisy, a(T7tpoAo'jXoudo, colloquial only." — Contopoulos, Mod. Gr. Lex., Smyrna and Lon., 1868, darcftoXouXoooov = Xzo- xdpds/iou, = daisy." — Sibthorp ascribes darrp 0X06X00 a as present name of Bellis perennis L.
Its component, dcr7[f)o^, white, is seen in Aspropotaino, mod. Gr. name of the river Achelous ; Aspromonte, the white-crowned mountain, (often snow-capped, being nearly 7000 ft. high), in Cala- bria, Italy, where Calabrian Greeks have preserved a Greek dialect perhaps since they were Magna Grecian colonists ; Aspramonte, the mediaeval form of the word, name of an Italian epic (Milan, 15 16) celebrating a defeat of the Saracens by Charlemagne near the mountain. Asprocephalus, danpoxiipalo'^, is the mod. Gr. name of a common white- flowered umbellifer of the genus Ammi.
The other component, XouXouoov, a flower, is a word not apparent in ancient Greek but very prevalent in the modern ; not from the Turks, who say tchitchek, a flower : not in Albanian or Slavic so far as consulted : claimed instead to be a native growth. The word exists in many forms ; as shown in these citations :
XouXouda, in a Greek song which Pashley * heard Mdpzc\ fioo fjtk rd XoOXouoa, ^ AnpiXi fih rd' pbda, \ i. e.y — March brings me the daisy, April brings the rose.
Form XiXouda occurs in a song quoted by Rodd, 270, " O/M rd XiXouda rrj^ j-i^c, rdvd^ rou Tto.paddaoo,
"All flowers that are found in earth and the blooms of Paradise The angels brought together to fashion this thy form."
Form X.ouXobdta is the right form ; sound the Q like th'mthis. danpoXouXoudia, that is the true Greek for daisy and many other flowers." — Attica, 1901.
* Pashley, Travels in Crete; Cambridge and London, 1837. f Tov Md/j-iov, Mod. Gr. for March.
% TpiavTd(jjvA?iOi> is their more common name for rose. — Pashley, Attica.
Names for Aster Atticus
65
Form ao'jAo'joc, a flower, Contopoulos, 1868.
Form XoDAouddxc, which has been cited as a mod. Gr. specific name, is not so but means 'one Httle flower,' and is what any Greek girl might say if anyone asked her what blossom she held in her hand," Attica.
Compare also mod. Gr. Aooodx:, indigo (Contopoulos, 1 868).
Compare also form XouAd'/jou which appears first, it seems, in Steplien Magnetcs,^ about iioo A.D., in Latin version as Lu- lacium and Lulakion : supposed by Meyer to mean Scolymos be- cause of a form dyptoAo\))AyaiV (in Dufresne's Glossary of Mediaeval Greek) attributed to Scolymos or Artichoke. AooAaxcov, however, requires to have its similarity to Persian Lildk, lilac, explained.
AsTARATicoN. — Arabic form of Aster Atticus, Matthioii, I 560.
Aster Atticus (aster actions, Ortus, Caesalpino ; atratisus, Avicenna),\h^ true Aster K\X\qV, Parkinsoii^ 1640. This binomial first occurs in Dioscorides, bk. 4, c. 118, and in the Euporista at- tributed to Dioscorides, bk. 2, c. 115. Gorraeus, about 1550, put the reason for the specific name in these words : " quod autem in Atheniensi agro Optimo et frequens nasceretur, '.Jrr^xoc appellata fuit."
Similar geographic binomials in Dioscorides are his Acantha Arabica, which Sibthorp thought to be Oiiopordon Arabiciim L. ; and his Batos Idaia, ^dzoc, ^Ibaio.^ " quia copiose in Ida nascitur ; " = Rubus Idaeus, L. ; D. bk. 3, c. 38.
The development of such a binomial is seen arrested just short of the preceding stage in Damocrates, the bucolic poet, in at least four different examples, as his olaijiiou zr^^ \im'x>^C,t of the hyssop of Attica."
Binomials similar to his Aster Atticus, but not geographical, are quite numerous in Dioscorides and include as examples, some of them transliterations from the Latin, — (in this partial list I pre- cede the Greek form by its Latin translation) :
Symphytum petraeus, Zhfupuzov nzTpalov^ 4, c. 9.
aliud (another) " dUou, 4, 10.
* See Meyer, iii., 375.
f Grk. Bucolic Poets, edn. Didot, 115, line 71 ; cf. line 25, and pp. 121, T27.
66
Aster History
Polygonum aviculare, IJoAuyouou dppev^
(female) drjAoo, (perhaps, Hippuris vulgaris).
4, 4 4, 5
Veratrum album,
" nigrum, Viola purpurea,
agrestis, Strychnus hortensis, " somniferum,
furiale, " Halicacabum, (probably Physalis Alkekengi). Equisetum sp., ^dXc^ t/uvdXcc:,
(by transliteration, Salix equinalis).
Oi)pdTpoijp.dX[^ooii, 4, 148
Bepdzfjoufji ptypoofJL, 4, 16; 4, 149 "/ov nopipupouv^ " dyp:ov,
d.Xcxdxa^ov,
4, 120 4, 120 4, 71 4, 73 4, 74 4, 72
4, 46
Iris agrestis (Xyris), Artemisia tenuifolium, Trixago palustris, Lilium regium, Lychnis coronarius, sylvestris,
" IpcQ dypiarcq, 4, 2 2
" Apzeptaia AenroipuXXoi^, 34, 118
0pi^dyoj TiaAoijaTpcQ, 3, 115
Kptvov [^aacAcxov, 3, 106
Auy^ut^ oTecpavwjiaTcx'j , 3, 104
Similar binomials from Dioscorides the younger or the author, perhaps 100 A. D. of the alleged 5th and 6th books of Dioscor- ides, one or both, include
^' lov daaoTLOoecou, ^' lov Tzptojirfiov^ ^' lov dypcov, and pcoXa noup- TToupea, or four species of violet ; edspa nXoo^tdrcxa, xovuC^a pzydkq^ etc.
The Pseudo-Dioscorides, author of the Euporista, before 350 A.D., in one paragraph, bk. 2, c. 115, mentioning his 72 efficients against viper-bites, uses 12 or more binomials, of which 10 are plant-names, viz.:
dxdvQq Xeux'j^ dpiaroX.oyia fiaxpd, ^poiovia Xeux'/j, opiyavoQ ^jpaxXecoztx'^ y xu/jKUOu yjfjtepou^
vdpdo^ ZupcaxoQ^
^pucovia pLsA.acvay ddTYjp dzTLxb^,
XUpiVOV djpLUOV
It will be observed that the chief difference between these binomials and those of Linnaeus is simply that of his universal
Names for Aster Atticus
67
application of the system ; those of the ancient Greeks being used only in the cases where they desired to distinguish two or more plants felt by them to be closely related.
Why then did the Greeks use the binomial for Aster Atticus? The first to use the binomial was the physician, Dioscorides ; the poets did not use it. Doubtless it was used to distinguish it in medicine from the other great Aster of medical use, Aster Samius the white earth of Samos, and to distinguish it from the numerous medical preparations called Aster, for which see infra.
AsTERiON, i. e., little Aster, little star, darspcov, the same as Aster Atticus, D. (interpolation ?), Apnleins Platonicus, Simon Janiiensis, Ortus. ** I have not heard darifjcou for a flower in mod- ern Greek," Attica.
Asterion occurs in Dioscorides for two other plants ; for
Canna sativa, and for Spondylium.
Asterion, from their star-like spots, was also given by the
Greeks as name of a kind of spider or Phalangium, Nica7ider, Ther. 725, and to a lizard.
Asterion. — darzincov ; Paiisanias, bk. 2, c. 17 ; the same word as the last, assimilated to the pronunciation of the river darepicov ? by which he found it growing (but deemed by Bock, 1536, to be so different a plant as Marrubium).
AsTERiscus, little aster or little star, dazzptaxoz, TheopJirastiis, 4, 13 ; -Z^. (interpolation ?) 4, 118; occurs also Apuleius Piatonicns, c. 60 (fide Stephanus' Thesaurus); also listed as '^'Jfrreptaxo^ xac dffzifJiou o dazYjf) drrrxo:;, Astericum," in Lexicon MS. ex Cod. Reg., 1843 (Paris ; fide Stephanus) ; spelled Asteriscon by Gerarde^
1597-
Modern botany uses Asteriscus as the name of a composite
genus* (separated in part from Buphthalmon L.), so named by transfer from a variable use in the i6th and 17th centuries for many small-flowered plants, which were by others classed in Aster ; Cornut, 1635, publishing Aster cordifolius L. as an Astcriscns.
Modern Greek does not retain Asteriscus as a flower-name (fide dictionaries ; nor in popular unwritten use, Attica^ but retains it in the use (ancient Greek, English, etc.) of asterisk, and as the
*0f which A. aquaticus (L. ) Moench was found in Greece by Sibthorp.
68
Aster History
special name of a star-like mark on the plate placed under the sacrificial cup, in the Greek communion-service.*
Ancient Greek also used the further diminutive d.oTef)iaxcov^ a little star, the boss, or knob on a helmet."
AsTRON, dazpov, Scarlatos' Diet, of Mod. Gr., 1874; Rind's do., 1876 ; (larpov is the name we Greek people call the flower," Attica, 1901 ; ''dazpov, a star, and a kind of flower, like danpoloO- Aouoo," Scarlatos, 1874; ''dazpov, a star, masc, and Aster blume, fem.," Kind, Diet., Mod. Gr. and Ger., Leips., 1876.
Atratisus. — Avicenna's name representing Aster Atticus after passing through transliteration into Arabic and again into Latin, FucIls, in Brunfels' De vera, 1531.
Attica Stella, used foi Aster Atticus by Matthioli, edn., I 560 ; (in distinction from Stella for Alchemilla) and Pena and Lobel, 1570.
Baltocrates, ^alzo'/pdzTiC, modern Greek name cited for Aster Atticus in Leiiz, Botanik in alten Griechen und Romer, 469. Gotha, 1859. — If correctly cited it might have a meaning like the English " Pond-beauty," if from Byzantine Greek l^dXzrj, a pool, and xpdzoc, strength, power, glory, — Probably it has no connec- tion with Baltos, modern name of part of Aetolian Greece. An explanation offered is that j3a2zoxpdzrj7 is j^aAz/j + xpazr^po;:, " the pool of the rock-basin," Attica ; if so it may have been intended by the original Greek informant as specifying the locality, not as nam- ing the plant.
BoBAS. — From repute curative of inguinal buboes ; Clusiiis, I 564, found the Spaniards of Castile using the name for what he [and they ?] deemed to be Aster Atticus, and modern botany calls Pallcnis spinosa Cassini. Bobas is cited as the Spanish name of Aster Atticus, by Lobel, i 576 ; J. Baiihin, 1650 ; Gcrarde, i 597.
Boos OPHTHALMON. — Early form of Boupthalmon, q. v.; Diodes? Galen.
Bovis ocuLUM. — Herinolatis Barbanis ; see Oculus bovis, the more common form.
BouBOS. — jSouj^o^, muet," is given as a modern Greek plant- name by Legrand, 1882; probably with no connection with the
■^Lowndes, Mod. Gr. and Eng. Lexicon, Corfu, 1837.
Names for Aster Atticus
69
ancient j^o'jjdoju, and j^o'jfl (01^:01^, which he cites as still surviving (in literary Greek only?); and if not, then with no connection to the similar Spanish Bobas. — If 7nuet was misprint for muguet or muguette, it becomes a synonym for Convallaria, and Aspergula, and for nutmeg ; all were so called by Lobel.
Britanica, or Herba Brittanica. — A name from Dioscorides, became confused with Aster, Jide J. Bauhin ; and gave name to Inula Britannica L., which Sibthorp, who found it in Greece, deemed mv^j^a rpira, D.
Bruchkrautt. — Ger., Ryff, on account of use for hernia," 1543; Dodoens, 15 54-1 6 16; Lobel, 1576; J. Bmihin, 1650.
BuBONiON, /?oL»/9<:^;:^rov, = the Groin plant," Riley, so named from its repute as a cure for inguinal tumors or buboes, (Gr. ^9ol>- {icov, the groin) : D. (interpolation ?) Pliny, Oribasins. ^9ol»/5^/jv, the groin, is given as still in use by Contopoulos, 1868 (though his printer reduces it to grin^.
BuBONiUM, Latinized form of the preceding ; all late mediaeval and renaissance writers, Ortits, etc. ; with transfer to a related Inula of similar repute. Tabernaemontanus, i 588, used it as name Bubonium for two or more species, one of which appeared later as the Aster Bubonium, Scopoli, Inula BuboniiLni Jacquin, and is now known as Inida salicina L. and /. spiraeifolia L. Desfontaines claimed that it was the true Bubonium or Aster of Pliny.
The umbelliferous genus Bubon L., was named from a sim- ilar reputation but without confusion with Brdwniuni.
The preceding, it will be noted, have no affinity with bufo,
the toad, or: bufonius, sheltering toads (as the {^.m[\\3.\' Juncjis bufonius L.) ; from disregarding this difference a whole fable about the Aster relieving the wounded toad grew up in mediaeval German}^ (see Dorstenius).
Nor have they any more affinity with the modern Greek
plant-names /9o/>/9of, ^6X[^o, f-iopfioc:, etc., for species of Hyacinthus which are names derived from its bulbous root.
Buchkraut, in Ger., Lobel, 1576, misprint for Bruchkraut.
BuPHTHALMON. — Bo'jipdalaov , of Diodes and Galen, treated under Hippocrates, has dropped out of use from modern Greek. Retained in modern botany as a name of composite genus B up li thai mum. L., two Greek plants were so classed by Sibthorp,
70
Aster History
B. aquaticum L. (now in Astericus) and B. spinostun L. (now Pallenis) both occurring in Zante and elsewhere, the latter then known at Zante as '/.apipoy^opzov or ''bur-grass." See under An- guillara, etc. The [iouipdalfiov of early Greek mention, at least of Dioscorides, was deemed by Sibthorp to be the Chrysantheinuvi segetum of Linnaeus, known in Greece now as zCcrCcfJ-Qoko, (like C. coronariuijt) and in Laconia as y-ouy-ou^aytd/^
BuPHTHALMUM. — Brunfels 3 ; 8, last line, '* Buphthalmum et bovis oculum appellent " speaking of name Herba Paralysis ; here his Buphthalmum perhaps includes Aster, Bellis and Leucan- themum (and others ?). See Oculus.
Calamaris, or Calioremares, xalcoofidp-rj^, D, Latin name of Aster Ti'ipoliuin L., perhaps in sense of sea-grass, from calamus a reed.
Caricamon. — A name in Serapion for Aster Tripoliuni L. (due perhaps to transliteration of its name xalcoopidpyj^^, Sprengel).
Centumcapita, hundred-heads," name used by Pliny and writers later to the Renaissance for Eryngium. After the confu- sion between Eryngium and Aster Atticus was begun by Serapion's blending of the two, and was beginning to cause uncertainty among the compilers, the name Centumcapita probably some- times covered Aster, as in De Manliis, c. 1450 (in Brunfels' De vera, 170. i 53 i) saying of Serapion's Ascaracon [Aster Atticon] '' est coelestis colons, . . . [in distinction from Centumcapita alba] sed centumcapita alba est species spinae/' and perhaps in Hierony- mus of Brunswick' s Apodixis, 193, under Manstrew, in Latin Centum-capita . . . oder Ellend . . . mit hymmelblaw farben." This or- the other Centumcapita (Eryngium) is by Platearius in Circa instans called wrongly Affodillus, fide De Manliis, 170.
Chamomile. — Camomile, -yapLaipLTjlov, D., '^afiofxrjXa mod. Gr. — Chamomilla [Bock 1536) and Camamilla, Ital., Matthioli, etc. ; = Matricaria chamomilla L., thought by Hermolaus Barbarus, 1492, to be perhaps the Amellus of Vergil; rejected by Wedel, 1646. The Chamaemelum aureum of contemporary writers was
^ Modern Greek uses, however, many other plant names compounded with (iovg-, as I3nu^v?i0v, or ftov^vMa, "oxwood," elder-tree, [Sovjudxcov, oxhane,^' jSovKpdvLov, "oxlip," cowslip, ftovy'Aoaoov, "oxtongue," bugl oss, ySowro/vor, Butomus ; Lowndes gives all of these, Contopoulos a few.
Names for Aster Atticus
71
deemed by Bock, 1536, to be yellow Aster Atticus ; v\^^ infra, under Bock. J. Bauhin, 2 : 1045 quotes Bock as calling Aster Atticus Chamaemelum tertium."
Chelidonium, see Herba chelidonia.
Chrysanthemum, y^()ua6.vdeiiov, D., C. coronarium L. [Pijiardia coronaria Less.), not properly ever a synonym for Aster Atticus, but became confused with it on part of those at the Renaissance who thought Aster included yellow rays ; confusing with Aster chiefly C. coronarium L., the crown daisy, " frequent about road- ways throughout Greece and the islands, and known to-day as T^C^rCc^l^oXa ; and in the Archipelago as fiavraliva,'' Sibthorp.
T^iT^tn^bla I have heard, but it is not the common name for chrysanthemum that I know ; I hear chrysanthemum called dzvopd-^c, little tree," Attica. Legrand, 1882, gives Mod. Gr. ypuaavdefiov as now equivalent to English marigold ; probably meaning Corn Marigold and Crown Daisy, old names for Chrys- anthemum segetum and C. coronariuvi L.
CoNYZA, xoi^u^a, distinguished from Aster by Dioscorides, but much blended with it among later writers, and perhaps among many of the Greeks ; " xouu^a jusc^cop, D, is Erigeron viscosum L., xovutCol hodie, frequent m Greece and the Archipelago," Sibthorp, now Pulicaria viscosa (L.) Cassini.
DoDECAMiNiTis, ocoozy.afiimTtz, the twelve-minutes' flower, quick- closing flower; name found by Anguillara about 1 529-1 539 in use in Zante for his Filius-ante-patrem (q. v.), i. e., Tragopogon.
Ellend (a form of Alant, the Elecampane, Inula Helenium, the Aster Helenium and Aster omnium maximus of early German and French writers) seems to be used for Aster Amellus L., Apodixis, I93> 1531- See Alant, supra.
Espargoutte, Fr. (see Aspergoutte, its more usual form), J. Bauhin, 1650.
Estoillee, Fr. for Aster Atticus, Lobel, 1576.
EsTRALLA-DA, Sp. for Astcr Atticus, y. Bauhin, 1650.
EsTRiLLE, Fr., Gerarde, 1597.
FiLius ANTE PATREM, scems to havc included Aster when used for a Buphthalmum-like plant by Brunfels, 1536; and when by him made a synonym for his Antipatcr ; and was thought an equiv- alent by Anguillara, at about that date. See Anguillara, infra.
72
Aster History
Garyophyllon ; Brunfels 3: 45 (1536), distinguishes ist, the common Garyophyllon of Pavia and other parts of Italy (Dian- thus), and 2d, the common Garyophyllon also called Cheiri (Cheiranthus Cheiri), 3d, another Garyophyllon cerulea, . .. vul- gari nomine Roemisch Negelin, etiam si, odore minus grato." The third may possibly include Aster.
Groin-plant, the, name made for it by Riley when translating Pliny, rendering Herba higuinalis.
Helenium. — Usually kept distinct from Aster, whether applied to elecampane or to other plants ; but sometimes blended with it, as by Philip Miller, 1733, who writes ''Aster.. .It is also called Helenium of i^/;oc the Sun, or as others say, of Helena the Daughter-in-law of Priamus." See Alant and Ellend.
Herba Inguinalis, see Ingidnalis.
Herba Chelidonia, Sammoniais, 693, " Herba chelidoniae ferturcum melle mederi " [to be used for ulcers, etc.] may be in- tended for Aster Atticus or confused with it : as the Chelidonia minor was long claimed to represent Amellus ; see infra, Vergil.
So Sammonicus' Chelidonia, line 764, used for " Igni sacro," — q. V. See Matthioli, who observes that this " small celandine " can- not, because a flower of the swallow's coming in spring, be the Aster Amellus L. — Several swallow-songs are still current in Greece, as one which says "Wake up, Chelidon, wake up and say 'Wake up little bush [plant of small celandine] and make your flower' " Attica, 1 901.
Herba Paralysis ; a name much used in the middle ages for Primula, which was by some writers confused with Aster Atticus and with Amellus, and which was also called Hymmelschliissel in Germany {Apodixis, 1531). Aster may perhaps have been in- cluded (with Bellis perennis) in the " Herba-Paralysis minor" of de Manliis, c. 1450, "cuius flos similis Camomille est." The Herba Paralysis of Hermolaus Barbarus is Primula veris ; he uses MargaritiLin for Bellis.
Herba Stella, a form for Stellaria, i. e., Aster, and other plants. Herba Stella is a synonym cited by Dodoens, Pemptades, 109, for Plantago major L. Herba Stella is cited as a name common in Italy for Plantago Coronopus Manardi, 1523, Anguillara, 1561, Gesner, 1561 ; Dodoois, 1583 ; the Stella maris of Tabernaeinon- tanns, 1588.
Names for Aster Atticus
73
Herba Stellaria of some, Parkinson, 1640.
Herbe de l' estoille, Fr. for Aster Atticus, Fuchs, I 551.
HiMMELSCHLUSSEL is the name used by everybody at Passau for this flower \_Aster Amelhis L.]. It grew up a hill in a dry place on a grassy slope, at the edge of a meadow where we ought not to have gone in for it, because they were to cut the grass for the cows ; so we had to go in when there was no one looking. It was on the border of woods. The plants grew a foot or two high, one flower at the top of a slender stalk. The color was blue, not very dark, just about Hke the sky, and that is why it is called Him- melschliissel, because it is of the blue of the heaven. Each flower has a yellow spot in the middle. The httle blue leaves all about the yellow spot were a little broader than in the picture [Martyn's, colored] . There wasn't any of it growing about home except that one place ; and everybody knew that that was the place to go to, to pick it. We would wear it, and would keep it in the house in water. It blossomed at a very hot time in the summer ; per- haps in August. The year I was leaving home [1898] I heard the little children say they were going out to pick it. — There is but one other flower in Germany there [a Hieracium ?] , I can faintly remember, that is Hke it, I mean it has the same shape ; it is pale yellow and grows up like the dandelion ; but it is not just like the dandehon, its stalk is more thin. — Sternkraut is a name I never heard, nor Megenkraut, nor Schartenkraut." Bavaria.
H YMMELSCHLUSSEL, name apparently intended for Aster Amell us L., and for Primula veris, by Hieromymus of Brunswick, c. 1490 ?, in Brunfels' De vera, 190. 1531.
Hyophthalmon, or Latinized, Hyophthalmum, uoipdaAfwu, D., (interpolation) ; so quoted by translators and commentators, but overlooked in dictionaries, even in Stephanus' Thesaurus, even in the Didot edition of 1865, until it was noticed by Coumanoude, appearing in his Greek Lexicon of Uncollected Words, from ancient and modern writings, Athens, 1883, as follows :
ooipdaXfw:, plant also called Aster Atticus, in Latin Inguinalis, Apul. herb. 61."
The only copy of Apuleius accessible contains no synonyms whatever for its '*6i, Asterion," i. e., ''Aster Atticus;" but this may be the defect of the edition.
74
Aster History
The word u:, a sow, which was understood to enter into this name, is now archaic in Greece, youfwuua and axcjoif a taking its place coWoqu'idiWY, Jannai'is, 1895.
Explanations of Hyophthalmum were "id est, suis oculus," Bock, I 536 ; "id est, suillus oculus," John Lonitzcr, i 543 ; " quod suis vel porci oculum," Bodaeiis, 1646.
For my explanation of Hyophthalmum as originally merely a part of the word polyopJitJialinon, see infra, under Hippocrates.
Inguinalis, sc. herba ; or Herba Inguinalis ; D. (interpolation ?) Pliny & Apiileius Platonicus in some MS. Dorstenius, i 540, does not entitle his plant Aster at all, but names his chapter " De In- guinali," continuing " Inguinahs magna sit medicina," etc. From its use applied ad ingiien, for tumors, etc. Varied into such forms as Inguinaria, Pliny, Inguinialis and Ynguinialis, Ortus, Unguinialis, Gart der Gesundheit. In Italian, Inguinale, used by Matthioli in his Italian edition, 1568, as his principal alternative for the name Aster Atticus.
Inguinaria, form of Inguinalis (q. v.) in Pliny, still used in description as late as Rondelet, in Lobel, 1576, and as Morandi, 1744; meaning the same plant, as most writers judge ; Robertus Constantinus, in his Greek lexicon (Geneva, i 592), deemed it differ- ent, saying " Nam alia est inguinaria quam argemonem vocari tradit Plin, 26, 9, cujus vis excellens ut bubonio ad persananda inguinum vitia." Some, as Billerbeck, adopting this idea of a different In- guinaria from Inguinalis (though the mediaeval Ortus, etc., made them the same) have identified Inguinaria with the modern Her- niaria hirsuta L.
Ion porphyroun, lov Tiopcpopobv^ Viola purpurea, purple violet. This name, it appears probable, was not only used for Viola odorata L., as by D. and Pliny, V. and Columella, but also for Aster Atti- cus L., by some in Greece, from which the ascription of Aster — properties to Viola which we find in D., 4, 120, was a natural result. See infra under Dioscorides.
The modern Greeks of Athens still use wv as name for the true violet, Viola odorata L., not only among the educated but among the unlettered, Attica.
Iringus, also Iringo, Iringion, Eryngo, Eryngium, Iringi, etc., Irringus, of Simon Jatiuensis, Irincii et Salvinca of Piero de Crescenzi
Names for Aster Atticus
75
(also as Salvida), Iringum Dodoens. Seems to be used for Aster, Apodixis, 193, 1 53 I ; as perhaps in part by De Manliis^ c. 1450. A figure derived from genuine Eryngium was used for Aster Atticus in Ortns, 1498, and in Gaj't dcr Gesiindheit, 1485. Klein Megerkraut, Ryff, i 543.
Klein Sternkraut, (for Aster Alpinus L.) Camerarius\ 1586?
Krotterkraut, Gart der Gesttiidheit, 1485 = Toadwort," from Krote, a toad, in allusion to the mediaeval fancy of its re- lieving the poisoned toad when fighting spiders, narrated by Dor- stenius, i 540.
Mans-trew or Mannes-trew (a German name for Eryngium), seems to be used to cover Aster as well, Apodixis, 193. 1531-
Marigold. Legrand, Mod. Gr. and Fr. Diet., 1882, lists as a plant-name [^oo'^wvcov, soud, plante," soud being a French name for marigold. Probably Aster Atticus was meant, (called Purple Marigold, q. v., as English book name, by Parkinson, 1640) and probably this l3oo[^ojvcov is only a book name taken up from Dioscorides.
Megerkraut. Klein Megerkraut, Ger. for Aster, Ryff, 1543. yi^gQY'kvdiUt, Dodoe?is, 1 545-1616; Lobel, 1576; Gerarde, 1597; /. Bauhi)i, 1650. See Wegenkraut, p. 80.
Melissophyllon or Meliphyllon (= Melissa officinalis L.; others say Melittis melissophyllon L.), given by an ancient gloss as equiva- lent to Amellus of Vergil ; either because already confused (being both honey-yielding plants) with Aster ; or because the scholiast, regarding Vergil's remarks about the bees only, would identify Amellus with balm ; concerning which sqq infra, undtr Pall adins ; and Simeon Seth, who said of it, " Bubones laedit," as if of Aster.
Merida, or Meris, fJ-'fj^nz, D., name for Aster Tripolinm L., perhaps has not reached us in original form.
MuGUET, Petit, given as French for Aster Atticus by Fuchs, i^^i, J. Bauhin, 1650. Lobel, 1576, gives Muguet and Mug- uette as names of Convallaria, Aspergula and of nutmeg. Evi- dently those who identified Aster Atticus with Aspergula were the means of the misapplication of Muguet to Aster.
Oculus bovis, translation of Buphthalmum, and applied espe-
76
Aster History
cially to Leucanthemum, but apparently sometimes with wider scope and covering Aster ; as Hermolaiis Barbams, 1492.
OcuLUS Christi. — Lobel, i 576, gives this as the Montpellier name for Aster Atticus ; but intends the plant Pallenis, though misquoted as meaning Aster Aviellus L.
OcuLUS Christi minor {^Inula montana L.) or Aster Inteus, Dalechavip, 1587.
Oeil de Christ (/. r., Oculus Christi, in 15 50 current name of Pallenis spinosa at Montpellier, Fr.; see infra, under Angiiillara) ; cited as French name for Aster Amellus L., Foster's Encycl. Med. Diet., N. Y., 1890 ; but perhaps Pallenis was still intended.
Petit Espargoutte, Fr. (see Aspergoutte), J. Baiihiii, 1650.
Petit Muguet (Convallaria and other plants are called Mug- uet). Fr. for Aster Atticus, FiicJis^ I55i ; /• BauJiin, 1650.
PoLiON, Poly, Tzbhov, a doubtful plant, said to be Teucriiwi Potion L., famed from Hesiod onward, confused by Pliny with Aster Tripoliiini L. The ribhov 'AcppodizTj:;, polion Veneris, of the Egyptian "Prophets" cited by Dioscorides' interpolator, was Dioscorides' Periclymenum, Lonicera Caprifolimn L.
PoLYOPHTHALMON, ;to/'jo^^«//7,(;v, = the plant many-eyes ; occurs but once as a plant name, in Hippocrates, Art. 830, interpreted as being the ^io'Jif do.Afj.ov of Diodes by Galen ; which it may have in- cluded ; but probably included also the Aster Atticus of Dioscorides, and may have been its synonym originally written where uofOaAfiov appears in the present existing MSS. See p. 73. Tiohjoipdalfw: as an adjective, many-eyed, occurred in ancient Greek in literal sense though a rare word, as in Diodorus Sicuus, and in Pollux ; its poetic equivalent r^oAuofiftaToz is used of Argus by Lucian ; and in the sense of " the vine bearing many buds," 7:oA'j6(f daX(io^ afmekor occurs in the Geoponica, 5, 8, i. Both words are listed as adjec- tives in use in modern Greek by Legrand, 1882, and Contopoulos, 1868; but no existing plant-names from them are now known. Similar compounds included the d.aTZpobfitiaToz^ of the Orphic Hymns, v'jxror br^ daTZ(>o6iJ.pLaacv bfjifurjv, " the dusk of night with its starry eyes;" the modern xooy6(/>da2fwz, blue-eyed, and yaJMyofj.fjAr/^C, colloquial for blue-eyed {/annaris) :
Greek names in dif OaA/wr have as a whole become rare or little- used, uifdalfwz itself is lost in many parts of the Grecian region.
Names for Aster Atticus
77
as in the Cretan form of Greek which retains it only in the form ipdapfibz, sorcery, the evil eye, the [ifia/jvAa. [= fascination] of other parts of Greece.
But to the ancient Greek, to compare a flower to an eye was a most natural impulse. Dioscorides says of his chrysanthemum, its flower-head is owOaAiwzcdco:; yjr/.XoTzo7^ ; /. " oculi effigie or- biculatus " ; and his name fiir'jif daAtiou he pauses to explain as be- cause the flower is dipdaAiwE.cdr^. Ancient plant names formed to compare the flower to an eye were often fanciful ; as
dwOalfm:; tt'jOmuo::, name among the " Prophets " in Egypt for Stoechas, B., 3, 28.
oipdaXfib^ TUif covo:;, ApiilcijLS, PL, 42.
^ooifdaAiiov, Galen, [^o'jifdaAiwv, D., ox-eye, also called [io^j:: ofxfxa in the Anthology, Ciob(pdaAiJ.ov, D., 4, 89. The same plant was known in Persian as Khaudschaschm, i. c, oculus bovis, says Avicenna, fide Sprengel, Diosc, 26, 561. In Italian it had be- come Occhio di Bue, and in Greek Buftalmo, Matthioli, 1 568.
l3o'j(fdaAfwi^ and ^(odipOaA/iop were also used, D., 4, 88, as names of houseleek.
PoTAMOGETON, TTozafjioyscTcop , D., = Hver-dweller ; a name for Aster Tidpoluim L., D.
Psyche, <l'^^y^f} ; = the breath, the life, the soul ; a name for Aster Tripoliiini L., D., applied in consequence of the reputation of its flowers as transitory, changing color three times in one day and then perishing ; see D., 4, 133 ; and Lobel, De Tripolio.
Purple Marigold, Parkinson, 1629 and 1640, forms this as an English name for his Aster Atticus due to use of name corn marigold" for its relative ChrysantJieninvi segetiiui L. ?
Purple Violet, for Aster Aniellus L., see Viola.
Rathibida, padi^cda^ D., interpolation ? Rathibia, Bock, i 536. Rathibis barbarum est, it is known among the barbarians as Rathibis," John Lonitzer, 1 543 ; otherwise it retains the form of D., Dacian name for Aster Amellus L. ; /. e.^ in the old Thracian tongue of the natives of Dacia ? See infra, under Dioscorides.
* So Strangford in his Vocabulary of Cretan Greek, in Spratt's Travels in Crete, 1865 ; citing such equivalents as Cretan epurag for Mod. Or. diKra/jo-, dittany ; and Cretan aaohvoc;, a pig, for Mod. Gr. Kolpog ; adding that "dictionaries have hitherto made it a point of honor to suppress or ignore the so-called ' vulgar ' Greek."
78
Aster History
RoEMiscH Negelin ( = Romaii Pink), a name for a blue Gary- ophyllon, Bnuifels 3:5; the context suggests that he may have meant Aster.
ScARTENKRAUT, in Ger., Dodoeiis, 15 54-1616 ; /. e., Sharewort, from same original as A-S scare, the pitbes.
ScHARTENBLUMEN, Adam Lonitzev, 1557, his leading name for Aster Atticus, forming title to his cap. 83.
ScHARTENKRAUT, is the name used for Aster Atticus by the dyers at Speier, Bock, 1536, fide J. Bauhin, 2: 1045, twice re- peated ; and again enumerated as a German name, as if used 1650 ; seems not to be the same as present German Schartenkraut, saiv- zvorty named from scharte, a notch ; but to be from the same root with share, as follows ; at least it was so understood in the sixteenth century.
Sharewoort, Eng. name given by Gerarde, 1597, intended as equivalent to Schartenkraut and to Inguinaria ; from English share, the groin, Middle Eng. schare, A-S scare.
Stack YiTES, (JTa-^oirrj^, D., name for Aster Tripolimn L., of doubtful application, formed from azdyy:^ a row, a spike.
Starwort, Gerarde, 1 597, and onward ; his spelling being Starrewoort with each of his four figures, Starwoort in the text occa- sionally.
Stella, name including Aster Atticus, Herniolaus Barbarus, 1492 (because identifying it with Alchemilla, vulgo Stella dicta"), Matthioli, 1568, etc.
Stella Attica, Jolni Lonitzer, i 543.
Stella Attica Monspeliensium (= Pallenis, which they considered to be AsiQY AWacus), Pena a?id Lobel, 1570. Stella di Athene, Matthioli, 1568.
Stellaria, as name of Aster Atticus, Orttts, 1498, Euriciiis Cor- dus, it^^d^, John Lonitzer, 1543, Matthioli, 1560, etc., Dodoens, 1583, Salmon, 1682.
Stellaria was used as name of Alchemilla [Hermolaus Bar- barus, I4g2, Ruellius, 15 16; Fiichs, 153 1, Matthioli, etc.). Inula Bubonium, Jacq., /. e., I. salicina L., Plantago Coronopus L., Dodoens, Carduus Theophrasti of /. Bauhin, Myacantha or Calci- trapa of /. Bauhin, Perdicium and Rubia, also Leontopodium alpinum.
Names for Aster Atticus
79
Stellaria Dalechampii was perhaps a Spergula, or Rubia ; see p. 80.
Stellula (a translation of asterion and asteriscus), John Lonitzer, 1543.
Sternblume, Willdenow, etc., modern book name.
Sternkraut, Gart, 1485; Fuchs, edn. 1551 ; in Fuchs, edn. 1545, printed Braun Sternkraut, apparently for Blau Sternkraut. Sternkraut, Ryff, 1543, Matthioli, 1560, Adam Lonitzer, 1557, Lob el, I ^y6, J. Bait hill, 1650.
Klein Sternkraut {A. Alpinus) Camerarhis, 1586? Berg Sternkraut weiblein [Inula montana L.) Tabcjniae- niontanus, 1588 ; his Berg Sternkraut mannlein (= Brittanica, y. Bauhui) being not different, Linnaeiis.
Sternkraut was also used for Aspergula, Cornarius, 1529 ; for Herb Paris, Bock, 1536.
Sterrecruyt, Flemish, Dodoens, i 554-1616, /. Bauhin, 1650.
TiNCTORius FLOS I, Bock's name, 1536, for purple Aster Atticus.
Tri FOLIUM, Pliny, zpcTioXcov D.y = Aster Tripoliiwi L., and of Dodoens, etc.
TuRBiTH, Arabic name for Aster Tripolium, so used by Serapion ; by Tournefort used as name of a genus including Thapsia garganica L., ddi^'ca D.
TuRPETHUM, Arabic, name originally of some wholly different root, was substituted for the preceding, and became greatly con- fused ; Leonicenus devoting himself to clearing its application, and Matthioli to exposing errors of Brasavola, Mainardi, Collenucio, Fuchs, etc., regarding it.
Unguinialis, Gart, 1485, see Inguinalis ; sometimes confused with Unguinaria or Unguinalis — a name for Parietaria, from its use ad unguen, whence the old name Whitlow-wort.
Viola purpurea ; Aster Atticus seems to have been by some called ;ov, or Purple Violet ; and to have been blended in med- ical repute with Viola odorata in the Viola purpurea of Pliny, of the Secres de Salerno, Arnald de Villanova, Matthioli, etc. See infra, under Dioscorides and Arnald.
Vergil's Sternblume, Willdenow.
Wagstrow, Ger.,y. Baiihin, 1650.
80
Aster History
Wegenkraut, Ger., roadside flower ; " is not Megenkraut [old name, as printed, for Aster] meant for Wegenkraut?" Bavaria, Ynguinialis, form of Inguinalis (q. v.) in Ortits.
Plant-names derived from Aster AsTERCUM, see Astericum.
AsTERiACE, d<TTSf)ca/rj, Celsus, 5, 14: may be the name of a plant, Meyer ; is name of a simple medicine, Harper s Lat. Diet. : is perhaps the same as Aster in the sense of collyrion or compound medicine, editors of Celsus. The circumstances seem to indicate that the last interpretation is correct ; see infra, pp. 85, 88-92.
AsTERiAS, drrrepio.':, does not appear in Greek as a plant name, but as an animal name, Aristotle's History of Animals so nam- ing a kind of weasel, yulzhz, 5, 10, i, and two birds, a 'Aipxo^, 9, 36, I, and an ipwdtb-, 9, 14, 23.
In modern Greek it stands as name of the starfish, as in Linnean zoology.
In Renaissance botany it appeared as a plant-name as the " Asterias sive Stellaria Dalechampii," perhaps meant for a Rubia ; at leat J. Bauhin so used it, 1650.
Astericum, darepr/ov^ or astercum, ''the star-like plant"; name applied to the pellitory, Parietaria officinalis L., which was in pure Latin called urceolaris. Harper' s Lat. Diet, as in Pliny, 22, c 17, beginning " Perdicium sive Parthenium * (nam sideritis alia est) a nostris herba urceolaris vocat, ab aliis astericum, folio similis ocimo, nigrior tantum, nascens in tegulis parietinisque." Pliny then details its medicinal use and its potency for suppurated ab- cesses (like Aster ?) and adds the story of the slave held in high esteem by Pericles, falling from the roof of the temple on the Ac- ropolis where he was at work, who was made whole again " by this plant, the virtues of which had been disclosed to Pericles by Minerva in a dream ; the slave of whom the famous bronze statue called Splanchnoptes exists." Plutarch makes two separate stories of this, bringing Minerva to Sylla to point out where the Parthe- nium or Virgin's-plant grew. It still grows on the Acropolis and in chinks close to the Parthenon : as on walls everywhere else in
* Not the Parthenium usually so termed as of D. and of Celsus, Matricaria Par- thenium L.
Plant-names Derived from Aster
81
Greece, where it is still called rzeftor/Ax:, or the partridge-plant, as in time of Pliny ; and is also known by the name dus/jj')x/.c:zc (fide Sibthorp), the key turned by the wind " ; but not any longer by its name in Dioscorides of kl^cur^, " the plant drawn out.'
Robertus Constantinus in his notes on Theophrastus pro- posed to amend dcrzsrncFxoz by dozspr/MV ; but no one seems to have adopted the suggestion and I see no reason for it. See i)ifra, p. 114. Brunfels (2 : 18) makes Astericum the same with Im- peratoria of his day (and of Linnaeus), and not the same with Meu which it had been considered (Athainante Mcuni L.).
Asterion, (laTk(uov, = little star, starlike-leaf, or Aster-like plant. In the first sense, supplied to Aster itself
In the second, it occurs as a synonym for hemp, Cannabis sativa L. , D., bk. 3, c. 161, a scholiast there remarking that the reason for the occurrence of the name Asterion for Cannabis is from the division of its somewhat radiate leaves.
In the second sense it also occurs as a synonym for Hera- cleum Sphondylinm L., D., bk. 3, c. 90, the lipovduhov of the Greeks, with radiately divided leaves. Matthaeus Sylvaticus inter- preted this Asterion as = Artemisia, fide Ducange (Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis, Leyden, 1688).
Asterion also occurs as an animal-name, denoting a certain kind of spider, or phalangium, with starlike spots, Nicandcr, Theri- aca, 745, where a species of Tetragnatha is meant, according to Walck.
Asterion is said to represent a white-spotted lizard, Pliny, 29, 4.
Asterion also occurs in Myrepsus, 21, 2, in the phrase " asterii in mari invenii," meaning probably the starfish, the Latin stclla, the Stella marina of Pena and Lobel.
AsTERiPHON, a form of the Carthaginian Astertiphe, q. v. (Chamaemelum), as cited by Ruel, D., edn. 1549.
AsTEROPE, d(7zef)0T[-/j, star-faced ; a name in Egypt of the plant Marrubium, D.; perhaps however merely a contraction of its Car- thaginian name Atierberzia, q. v., assimilated to Greek form.
AsTRiA, d(7Zf)ia, cited in MS., Lexicon in Cod. Reg. Paris, as a synonym for Helxine, l/c^v^ of D., Diicangc.
AsTRiON, d(TZ()cov, Byzantine Greek for httle star," occurs as synonym for Plantago Coronopiis L., D., bk. 2, c. 158 (interpola-
82
Aster History
tion ?) Manardus seems to have made both the same as Aster, 1523. Astrion may have been applied to Coronopus from the radiately spreading tufts of leaves ; or may have been a partial as- similation of its Carthaginian name atirsipte, q. v. (i. e., atir, atar, astir, = herba ; assimilated with aster and then used in diminutive).
Punic Plant Names Assimilated to Aster
A number of Dioscoridean synonyms are from Africa, listed as names used among the " Aippoc or people of the Roman province of Africa, of which Carthage was the chief city. Many of these names begin, in their Greek form, with d.a-ct() or aztp, astir or atir, — equivalent, fide Bochart, to Jierba, and not from Gr. aster, .but Ar. atar, Jierba. Bochart, Huguenot orientalist, 1 599-1667, made a study of these names, as quoted by Sprengel (Dioscorides, 25, 532 ; 26, 466, 559, 589, etc.). Bochart and Sprengel, calling them Punic names, assumed them, because in use at Carthage, to have originated in the Punic speech of the Carthaginians. Com- parison with Hebrew roots resulted in the ensuing meanings.
Aster chillos, or Aster choiloth ; aazy^i) y^dko::, dazrjp yocAod of MSS. of Z>., 4, 36 ; = herba Achillis, Bochart fide Sprengel, Dioscorides, 26:589; name for Achillea, including Achillea Millefolium L., called also in Greek ycAcoipoAXov, the thousand-leaf plant ; as if the original ascription to Achilles' discovery was an afterthought due to the name yilcov already in use, from its much- divided leaves.
AsTERENK, a Persian name for Mandragora ; also from astir ?
Astertiphe, d(TTrjf)TC(pTj^ = herba pomi, propter mali odorem, Bocliart ; name for Anthemis, i^., 3, 144, including the chamomile, claimed to mean ground-apple and to be so named from the odor ; and for chamomile Apuleius cites Ovalidium as Gallic, interpreted by Bochart as from Gallic oval, Ger. apfel, :±= apple. Cf p. 133.
AsTiRCOC, arrrY^/^ox, 4, 94 = herba efficax, Sprengel's Diosc, 25: 593; name for Potaviogeton zostcraefolius Schmach. fide Sprengel ; D. remarks that **the Afri " or Carthaginians also call it Potamogeton alter, and the Dacians xoaddfw..
Astresmunim, d(TTfJS(Tfio!JvcfjL, D., 4, 7 1 ; = herba Esmuni, i. e., herba Aesculapii, Sprengel, Diosc, 25 : 565 ; name for Strychnon hortensis, fide Sprengel, the Strychnon of D.
Punic Aster-Names
83
Atieirkon, a'cet()'Aov, D., 2, 152; = heiba nervorum, Bochart ; df)sy^ve'jfj.ovo::, D., codex C, emended by Saracenus to o'jfx/.i^ ^jy^'^- Hovo^, ichneumonis caudam ; occurs as name of the plant amon;^- the ' Prophets" or Egyptian magicians ; = Plantago lanceolata L., say some, or Plantago inaritiimnn L., fide Sprengel.
Atierberzia, (j-cz()fii()'C^ca, D., 3, 409; = herba benedicta, Sprengel, Diosc, 25 ; 455, deeming it so named "because most adverse to sterility ; cf Hippocrates de Sterilit, 19." = Ilodacov of the Greeks, dcTrsfioTZYj of the Egyptians, D.; = Marrubiuin viil- gare L., and other species, Sprengel.
Atirsipte, dTc()atv.TYj D., 2, 147 ; = herba pieis, Bochart ; name of Plantago Coronopus L. which the Greeks called xo()coi^6- Tioo;, and dazficou ; an Arabic name for it, atariabelni (Sprengel, D., 26, 466) is apparently formed from atar = herba. Bochart explained atirsipte (itself but a doubtful approximation to the origi- nal word intended) as lierba picis, Woodpecker's plant, in the sense of herba hyeniis^ herba perennans ; Sprengel, claiming that Bochart was here combining a Hebrew and a Greek root, objects with de- corous propriety to the " connubium ebraicae et graece." See Astrion, p. 81 ; — which, like Coronopus, may have been a name appHed to it from its radiate tufts of leaves.
Atirtopuris, d.Tc[)z67:o'ji)C'-, D., 2, 217 ; = herba unguium, be- cause the leaves are like claws, Sprengel, D., 26 : 489 ; name of the Greek Telephium, TrjAi(pcov ; = Sediini Telephinni L.
Aster as name of Samian Earth" Aster, dar/jf), Theophrastus, or Aster leucos, dorrjft Xzuxor:^ Are- taeus, or Aster Samius, daTrj() ^afuo^, in Pliny, Dioscorides the Younger, or D., bk. v., Galen, Euporista, Actios, etc. A white earth of peculiar texture used as an astringent, obtained from quarries at Samos, prepared as quoted from Pliny infra, sold in small tablets stamped with a seal, and valued for properties which repeat those of Aster Atticus as follows
1. For sores and discharges of the eyes, Pliny, D. v.
2. For incipient buboes, Galen.
3. For any purpose where a moderate refrigerant is desired. Galen, who calls Aster Atticus a moderate refrigerant.
4. For ulcers, in water and wine, etc., Pliny, D. v., Galen.
84
Aster History
5. For poisonous bites, of serpents and of other animals, Pliny, D. v., EiLporista.
6. For inflammations, especially of the groin, and testes, and those of the mammae, Pliny, Galen.
7. In labor (applied to stop a flow of blood), D. v., Aretaeus.
8. To drink in water and wine as a stomachic, D. v.
9. Tied on as an amulet, worn by women as a fuXaxrrjpioz (to promote conceptionjand parturition), D. v.
All of these resemblances in use lead to the conclusion that Aster Samius received its name because of similarity in properties to Aster Atticus ; rather than to the conclusion that Aster Samius was so called simply because a star remedy or a first-quality rem- edy, as Riley implies in his Pliny, 6 : 298, remarking of Aster Samius that it is Star ' earth apparently." Another possible reason for the name Aster Samius might be found in its stamped packets if they bore the stamp of a star ; but there is nothing to indicate that they did, or that if they did, the use of that stamp may not have been due to the name Aster already in vogue for the remedy. There were many earths used medicinally and to some extent interchangeably ; but it is worthy of note that the particular earth among them all which had strongest resemblance to Aster Atticus in properties was the earth to which the name Aster was given, as Galen takes pains to make very plain.
All of these earths differed from Aster Atticus in having a highly astringent property. Most of them resembled it in being as Galen puts it, " excellent moderate remedies without great heat or cold . . . and of all these the best is Aster."
It appears, on the whole, probable, ist, that the flowers and whole plant of Aster Atticus, receiving name from its star formed blossoms, were in use by name Aster for buboes and ulcers, as an eye-salve and stomachic and anti-toxic, and also as an amulet, for centuries before Cratevas, who so mentions it, circa 100 B.C. ; 2d, that the name Aster became applied as a consequence (as early as Theophrastus) to certain earths used for many similar proper- ties, notably as an amulet (the " stone " or harder masses found in them) and for inguinal and ophthalmic inflammations. Among the many earths of similar appearance and use, it was the especial name of that white earth exported from Samos ; though those authors
Aster Sam i us
85
who considered many or all of these earths as equivalents were likely to use the term Aster for the others also ; as Aretaeus may have intended. By time of Pliny it became fixed as name of the Samian only. 3d, after use of the word Aster for some time as name of the stamped Samian tablet used as an application to ulcers, etc., the word came to be used by physicians as name of compound preparations of their own with similar purpose, the Aster-medicaments which have great vogue in the writings and practice of Galen and Actios, and of which perhaps the first indi- cation is in Celsus' mention of his remedy asteriace (see p. 80). The progression of use of terms in this sense seems to have been : Asteriace, the aster-like medicament, /. c., the poultice compounded to do the work of Aster Samius ; Celsus, about 30 B.C. By the time of Nero, Andromachus and Asclepiades, physicians of his court, seem to have used Aster out-and-out and unmodified, in this sense of a compound medicament, with or without the actual presence of Aster Samius in it. By the time of Galen, a century later, various such Aster-medicaments were becoming distinguished from each other by specific names. By the time of Actios, 540 A. D. , the reaction upon Aster Samius of the use of Aster as a medica- ment-name had caused Samos to be frequently forgotten, and the Aster Samius was called perhaps half of the time Terra Asteris, /. e., the earth that is used as a base for the medicament called Aster. 4th , after use of the term Aster for medicaments of properties similar to Aster Atticus, as indicated in 3, the name Aster probably became applied to miscellaneous medicaments by ambitious physicians in the general sense of Star-remedy or First-class remedy, through the reflex influence of Aster in the primary meaning of " star in the sky."
Citation of the principal descriptions of Aster Samius follows : Aster, in Theophrastus' Lapides, 64, circa 320 B. C, explained as a Samian clay used as sealing-wax " /. e., stamped, being doubtless the white Terra Samia or Aster Samius exported m small stamped* tablets.
* " Nature having, according to the doctrine of signatures, marked certain plants with their purposes, and labelled them, ancient physicians began making medicines with the seals appropriate, and carried signets often worn on the thumb, on which were engraved their own names or the names of the nostrums they vended, as on one, aromaticum, another, melimcm, a collyrion prepared with glue from the island of
86
Aster History
Aster leitcas, clarrjO Asnxoc, Aretaeus Cappadocis, De curatione, 98, 19, 20, writing about 55 A.D. (but ignored for centuries, and named by Dioscorides, Actios and Paulus Aegineta only among the ancients), who here mentions ddzrjp /s^xoc as " a white earth, also called Samia ; or Eretria or Sinopica or Lemnia " ; and men- tions it bk. 2, as an astringent in his chapter 2 on " Curatio sanguinis refectionis." Aretaeus' phrase, 98, 19, is jrj d,[)iGrfj Zapla xal ^ E()ZTf)C(iz^ yju dazTif) xdpra huxoz.
From Pliny ; "Of Samian earth there are two varieties ; one known as Collyrium ; the other by the name of Aster. To be in perfection, the first kind should be fresh, remarkably smooth and glutinous to the tongue ; the second being of a more solid con- sistency, and white. They are both prepared for use by being calcined and then rinsed in water, some persons giving the prefer- ence to the first. They are both of them useful for discharges of blood from the mouth, and are employed as an ingredient in plasters of a desiccative nature. They are also used in the prepa- ration of ophthalmic compositions. All these earths are well washed in water and then dried in the sun, after which they are again triturated in water and left to settle ; this done they are divided into tablets." — Pliny^ 35, 53-55.
" Earth of Lemnos, the best is found in quarries of Lemnos and Cappadocia ; it approaches very nearly [as a pigment] to minium [red lead] and was as highly esteemed among the ancients as the island that produces it ; it was never sold except in sealed packages, a circumstance to which we are indebted for its addi- tional name of sphragis [a seal] . It is with this that they give the undercoating to minium, and in the adulteration of minium it is also extensively employed." Pliny, 35, 14, * adding its extensive
Melos. The earth of Lemnos was sealed with the figure of Diana, and to this day the bolar argils brought from Greece bear various seals and characters ; hence the bolus Armeniae and the bolus ruber are called terra sigillata.^'' Millengen, Curiosities of Medical Experience, 2 : 139. London, 1837.
The term terra sigillata occurs 1779 in a London recipe for a preparation to be used as a mouth-wash, beginning " Take Mace, Cinnamon, Cloves, Pellitory of Spain, and Terra Sigillata or Sealed Earth, of each half an ounce," in "Spirit of Wine," with "Spirit of Scurvy Grass and Water." The Toilet of Flora, 91. Lon. 1779.
* There were many other "earths " also, used medicinally and in painters' mixtures, etc., as described by Pliny, bk. 35. Even Attica produced its peculiar earth, " Atticus sil " or ochre, of violet color, Ruel. 634.
Aster Samius
87
medical use " for the eyes and bleeding, and against poisons and stings."
From Dioscorides {the younger, lOO A. D. ?), 5, 172-3, ''Of Samian earth (lautaz yrj^) the white is much preferred, smooth and adhering if touched to the tongue like glue, juicy, soft and friable ; which is the kind that some call collyrium. For there are two kinds of this, namely that which is now mentioned, and that which is called Aster, (xalo''jnzvo::\\azYj()), lumpy or full of clods, and dense in feeling like a whetstone (tioxvoc; ojc dxovfj). It is used like the Eretrian earth and has similar strength ; it stops a flow of blood ; and bleeding from the vulva in labor ; if given with the flower of the wild pomegranate {ahv l^a/jwano)). It also allays inflammations of the testes and of the mammae if rubbed on with rosewater ; and it moderates sweats ; and finally it is a remedy against poisonous bites and against deadly drugs, if taken to drink in wine.
" The Samian stone {Samius lapis in Samia terra) is found in Samian earth, which goldsmiths use for polishing and brightening gold. It exists in two kinds, white and gray. It has an astrin- gent and refrigerant power, on account of which it is used to drink, for stomach troubles ; it is also efficacious as an aid to foster the organs of the body and to protect them from injury ; it is a remedy, applied with milk, for discharges from the eyes and for ulcers. It is believed also when tied on by women as an amulet {(poAax- T'/jpcov') to promote parturition and conception."
From the Euporista, ascribed to Dioscorides ; among the 72 plants to be taken in drink with wine, against viper-bites, occurs
or, as Saracenus renders it, asteris samii drachmea ii — /. e., Take of Samian earth of the kind called Aster, two drachms.
This is the only ancient reference of which I am sure in which both Aster Atticus and the Aster Samius occur in the same con- text, their place in the long list being but five items apart, that part of this list of snake remedies reading, in translation,
Asclepiadis radix, flos Asteris Attici, Atractylidis flores et foHa, Piper, Pistachia, Balsam, Gentianae radix, Asteris Samii drachmae ii, Daucus, Quercus, Iris, Helenium decoctum, etc., etc.
88
Aster History
Front Galen, " De terra Sainia. We use moreover that other kind of Samian earth more, which they entitle Samhirn astera, for stopping hemorrhage, just as with the earth under the Lemnian seal [Lemnio sigillo). Aster Samius is used for ulcers, with the juice of arnoglossum (= Plantago major L., sometimes called Aster, says Apuleius, perhaps from this use for ulcers like Aster Atticus and Aster Samius) in uster and wine and vinegar. But the Lemnian earth seems to me not a little more efficacious than the Samian [for ulcers]. The Samian is fit and efficacious for incipi- ent buboes (bubonas incipientes) and where it is desired to use a moderate refrigerant (refrigerare mediocriter). For the Samian Aster is tenacious and viscous, f and the Lemnian seal {Leinnia spliragis) has some little degree of the same character. Women also use as abstergents, the Sehnusian earth and the Chian ; they are the most excellent remedies for the fiery burn of an ulcer. They are excellent moderate remedies without great heat or cold ; which is true of Sehnusian, Chian and Samian earths. It is said, moreover, that the species of this which they call Aster excels the remaining earths, because it has a certain viscous and tenacious quality, and either the Chian or the Sehnusian earth is inferior to the Samian in treating tumors of the breast, or the early develop- ment of buboes on the testes or the groin. "J
Aster Medicaments
Aster as name of a medicament, a collyrion, poultice or com- pound medicine, seems to have come into use as name of a com- pound to replace the simple Aster Samius, and seems to have become confirmed in use by its connoting a star. Galen and Actios are chief existing authorities for this use of the word Aster.
Galen made use, for ulcers, etc., of a composition which he called Aniketos Aster, dvrArjToci dazrjf)^ or in Latin Aster inex- superabilis. Galen's statement of its use is as follows :
Aster inexsuper alibis, ad doloris vexatione, pustulas, staphy- lomata, ulcera sordida, et serpentia. Facit ad inveteratos affectus et cicatrices exterit."
*Edn. Kuhn : 12 : 178 -|-, Trept lautac
f " Tenax enim et viscosus est Samius Aster."
X *' Ad phlegmonas in mamillas, testibus atque inguinibus incipientes."
Galen's Aster Medicaments
89
The components which he used included terra Samia, myrrh, opium and tragacanth ; and mineral ingredients, as Cadmia usta et lota, stibium, plumbum, spodium " etc. Galen, 12,
761.
Aster phannacon. — Another Aster medicament for ulcers used by Galen and before by Asclepiades, is the " Aster pharmacon " of Galen, 13 : 735 ; where Galen, writing in c. 13 Concerning em- plastra which Asclepiades * prescribed for ulcers," describes as best of these one called Phannacion of mineral substance, and next, his Asteros phannacon, also mainly of mineral composition, pre- sumably with a basis of the Aster Samius ; it was compounded with aerugio, chalcitis, oil, etc. ; its description beginning Wariitoz (papfj-a'Aov ... iarc ok diaiperrxyj dyadrj, or Asteris medicamentum ad idem accommodatum, ... etiam discutit.
Aster stornachicos, another of Galen's aster medicaments, is thus described : *' Aster stomachicos, facit ad eos quibus cibus in ventre accessit ad tormina, destillationes, dolorem capitis, spuentes sanguinem, tabefacentes, affectiones circa vesicam et uterum." Give in pastilles. Contains mandragora, myrrh, balaustion, crocus, anise, opium, storax, seeds of apium and hyoscyamus, Hyssopus Creticus, and castorium. Galen, 13: 164.
Aster anodynes. — Galen also describes a long series of ano- dynes, to some of which he gave the name Aster ; in his work on the composition of drugs and medicines, his 7:epi a'judicrew^ (pap^Axcoiy ; its fifth chapter, concerning anodynes beginning This class of medicaments for relieving pain, the earlier physicians made and called by the name Anodynes, dvcoo'jvo^y Among these standard anodynes of which Galen gives name and composition were, ( i ) that prescribed by the physician Andromachus,* with opium, hyoscyamus, etc. ; (2) that of Marcellinus, " add to the preceding dried roses, crocus, anise," etc. ; (3) the Seed Anodyne, *'anodynon ex seminibus," with seeds of apium, ammi, anise, fennel, opium, cassia nigra, etc. ; (4) that of Achillea, including most of the pre-
* Among numerous physicians of this name, the one Galen refers to was probably the one most celebrated of all, Asclepiades of Bithynia, who acquired a great reputation as a successful physician at Rome, about 50 A. D. Gumpert published the few exist- ing fragments of his writings in 1794.
Physician to Nero ; see infra, under Dioscorides.
90
Aster History
ceding ingredients and nard, piper, etc. (5) Xenocrates' anodyne with gentian and with some of the preceding ingredients ; (6) the anodyne called sphragis, the signet-stamped anodyne with mandra- gora, opium, crocus, etc.
Galen's Aster anodyne. — Seventh of this series of anodynes is Galen's own Aster anodyne, of which he says : " Another anodyne called Aster,t banishing pain, which I use for any flux and all in- ternal troubles and indigestions, and for the bladder, for dysentery, for suffocationes uteri, for fluxum muliebrem, stomachi fluxionem, sanguinem rejicientes," etc. The composition of this Aster ano- dyne was nearly as complex as its efficacy ; —
Croci obol 3, seminis hyoscyami > 6, seminis apii > 6, anisi > 4, styracis > 4, seminis dauci > 4, castorii > 2, opii >3, myrrh > 2, quidem etiam mandragorae succi > 4, ut vero Xen- ocrates,* etiam piperis albi > 6, cum aqua fac pastillos triobolares. Dato ex aqua." Galen, 13 : 91.
Many other anodynes follow, including that of Lycomedes, with dried roses and myrrh ; that of Rufus % ; the anodyne Resiccatoria, with rose-leaves and flowers of Juncus odoratiis ; the anodyne Mi- rabilis, dvwdovo^ dojjfxo.aTrjc:, made with seseli, tussilago, chamae- pitys, and sylvestris, rheum Ponticum, with poppy-seeds, etc.; and finally, omitting many of less note, his
''Aster itnsiir passed, a drug accurately compounded as an Anodyne, Sleep-producer, All-usefull.
"\4(TT7jf) dvixYjTOCi^ ipdpfxoxov liztTZTeuyfikvov dviodDvov^bnvoTZoiov , TToXo'^prjaTovJ' " Aster alter inexsuperabilis, medicamentem accom- modatum sedans dolorem, inducens somnum, multi usus'ad varios affectus. Nam et stomachi morbos mirabiliter sanat a ructibus acidis, aegris concoctibus, torminibus volvulis, inflationibus. Facit ad capitis dolorem potatum et foris illitum fronti aceto dilutum."
Used also for the eyes, with the juice of Perdicium (Parietaria)j for toothache with a fig or galbanum ; for inflamed tonsils, for
* Xenocrates, a physician of Cilicia of about 150 A. D ; of his writings some short fragments survive, and a short treatise on food-fishes, etc., " De Alimento ex Aquatili- bus," edited by Pranz, 1774, Leipzig, and at other times since ; deemed " an interesting record of the state of natural history at the time. ' '
f 'ATiTiT), 6 aarr/p av6(hvoCj ij xp^^l^^^i--, etc.
:j; Rufus Ephesius, celebrated Greek physician of about 100 A.D., born at Ephesus, author of various works still extant.
Aetios' Aster Medicaments
91
wool before the eyes, for flux of blood in myrtle wine ; for old or recent cough, diluted in wine ; for phthisis with Marrubium ; for dysentery, etc., with " Sanguinaria"; for reptile bites with Rue ; for rheumatism, with Gentian ; etc., etc.
Make it with myrrh, styrax, Nardus Indica, Cassia fistula, cor- tex Mandragora, and with terra Lemnia. Or add Seseli Massilien- sis, seeds of Daucus, etc. — Galen, 13 : 164-6.
Aster -re me dies of Aetios. — Another long series of compounds entitled Aster or using Aster Samius as a base were used and described by Aetios, c. 540 A. D., the Greek physician probably of Justinian's court ; who called most of these preparations by the term collyrion, xoXh'jpcov ; as his Magni coUyrion composed with a base of Aster Samius ; and as the following to which he gave the name Aster :
Asclepiades' Aster. — " Asclepiadae, aster inexsuperabilis, do- lorum eximens." This is a modified form of Galen's ulcer-curing Aster inexsuperabilis. Aetios states its purpose in Galen's words and prescribes nearly the same ingredients, adding gummi, 6 drachmae, cineris pompholygis lotae, 8 drachmae," and omitting Galen's cerussa, amylum, spodium, plumbum, and his terra samia, omitted here, but forming, under the name Terra Asteris, a base of the most of his numerous collyrions ; Aetios adds, Excipeaqua, take in water, most time honored of medical formularies.
Aster Magni. — Aliud collyrion. Aster Magni, quod preparari solet . . . ; it contains the "terrae quae aster appellat."
" Asclepiadae Aster inc amp arabilis " is still another similar col- lyrion of Aetios.
Aetios' Terra-Asteris collyrions. — Numerous compounds re- corded by Aetios include Aster Samius, his Terra Asteris, as a base, and are chiefly directed against ulcers. Each one he calls a collyrion, xoXXuptov, a word evidently cognate with xoXXa, glue, and used by Hippocrates for a poultice, and in later writers interpreted as an eye-salve, as a pessary, etc. Aetios and others use it as a compound medicament of viscous consistency, to be applied as a poultice, salve or plaster, or to be taken internally, in food or drink.
Aetios usually gives each collyrion a distinctive name, from a former physician or from an ingredient. Among those with i\ster Samius as a base are three from Oribasius, two from the medical
92
Aster History
writer Demosthenes, and one each from the physicians Asclepiades, Philagrius, Philumenos, Cleon, and Sandyx, men of whom Httle more is now known than their names. Of these preparations one is called Uranium, two because containing spodium are called Spo- diaceum, three are called libyanum or lybianum ; suggestive of the Arabic name of Aster Atticus, Alibium, but here perhaps originally derived from the region Libya, though seemingly now used sub- stantively in the sense of an aster-medicament or collyrion.
The following is a list of some of these collyrions made with Aster Samius.
CoUyrium libyanum Asclepiadae, for a sty on the eye, etc.
Collyrium inexsuperabile of Oribasius, the tenerimi libyaiiiim of Philumenos, for ulcers, styes, etc., composition nearly the same as Galen's "Aster inexsuperabilis " used for ulcers : made of cad- mium, cerussa, pompholygos, stibium, amylum plumbum, ustum, terra Samia, tragacanth, gumma, myrrh, opium. Take in water. Used also with milk or with an egg.
Aliud lybianum Oribasii, Ad principia, et ulcerationes ; the in- gredients are the same as in the preceding form.
Aliud collyrium Uranium velut Oribasius habet. For ulcers, pustules, etc. Use terra samia, pompholygos, gum trientem, etc.
Collyrium spodiaceum Demosthenis. For inflammations. Make with terra Samia and the dry leaves of olive, etc.
Collyrium Spodiaceum, for ulcers. Make with terra Asteris.
Collyrium Tephnon ; use terra Asteris.
Collyrium Philagrii * or collyrium Sandycis ; use terra Asteris. Collyrium Thure, for ulcers ; use terra Asteris. Collyrium Cleonis velut Demosthenes habet, for ulcers. First of this long series of collyrions not to contain ^^terra Asteris."
Philagrius, known only by a few fragments, a Greek writer of perhaps 250 A. D.
HISTORY OF PRE-CLUSIAN BOTANY IN ITS RELATIONS TO ASTER
II
PLANT WRITERS BEFORE CLUSIUS.
APPROXIMATELY 400 B. C.-1600 A. D.;
With Especial Reference to Aster and to Plants some- times Confused with Aster.
Tabular View
OF
PLANT-WRITERS BEFORE 1600,
Showing estimated Date of Authorship; also Subject, Language and Nationality
Most writers before Brunfels (1530), and, in diminishing de- gree, before Clusius(i576 and in completer form 1601), treat plants chiefly from the standpoint of reputed medical powers. That will be understood of the authors and works in this list, with exception of those specifically otherwise named, especially those treating agriculture or plant-physiology. Onward till Clusius and Cesalpino (1583), this insistence upon remedial agencies remained prominent, but with the difference of gradually shifting propor- tions, the proportion of descriptive matter being greatly increased in works such as those of Bock, Lobel and Clusius.
Works of which the authors are wholly unknown are entered in this list in italics. A few abbreviations used include, with slight variation for context, an. author, tr. translated, b. born, d. died, bef. before, c. or ., about.
A few authors of special botanical importance are capitalized.
Approximate or estimated dates are the only possible dates in most cases before the invention of printing. Such approximation is indicated by a prefixed medial dot, (as . 1000, = about 1000 A. D.) instead of using circa. Dates from 1475 (the BucJi der NatiLr) onward, are dates of first printing, not of authorship, un- less otherwise stated ; and most of these are exact.
The language in which an author wrote is indicated by the heading over the column in which his name begins.
His nationality, if it is not expressed by the language, as in case of many writers in Latin after the development of English, Ger- man, etc., is indicated by heading or by abbreviation following his name. Most of the earlier German writers belong to the Rhine provinces, and are here designated under the term Rhenish. In the column used for those of the Salernitan school in Italy, a few writers are also classed who worked over Salernitan material, viz., Bertharius, Otho Cremonensis, and Arnald de Villanova. Other Italians are classed under a separate column, Italian.
No part of this list is or could be exhaustive ; but particular fullness has been given to the mediaeval portion, especially the early English ; because so commonly ignored.
96
Aster History
Estimated
Date. Greek. Latin.
B. C.
400 Hippocrates, " Father of Medicine."
340 Aristotle — incidental references in his History of Animals, etc.
320 Theophrastus ; plant-physiology, etc., " Father of Botany."
260 Diodes, of Carystus, on kitchen- vegetables and medicinal herbs.
230 Andreas of Carystus, au. of the lost Nartheca^ etc.
160 Nicander, of Colophon, Ionia; poet, Georgics, Theriaca, etc.
1 60 Cato, Rome, de Agricultura.
100 Cratevas, in Pontus, au. of a lost Rhizotomica.
•60 Varro, Rome, de Agrictilttira.
•50 Dioscorides Phaca, at Alexandria; 24 books medica arte ; lost.
•40 Dionysius Itykaos, tr. of Mago, the Carthaginian " Father of Agriculture."
37-30 Vergil, Georgics ; at Mantua and Naples.
•30 Aerailius Macer Veronensis, poet, Theriaca, etc.
•10 Nicolaus Damascenus, plant physiology, etc.
A. D.
•10 Hyginus, at Rome, de Agricultura ; lost.
•20 Columella, at Cadiz, Praecepta de Agricultura.
•35 ' Scribonius Largus, Designatianus, Rome.
•40 Celsus, de medicina libri octo ; Rome.
•51 Columella, near Rome, 10 books de Agricultura.
•55 Aretaeus, of Cappadocia ; De...Jiiorborum, %\>oc^%.
•60 Andromachus of Crete ; Theriaca.
•65 Dioscorides Anazarbeus, of Cilicia ; 5 books de materia medica.
77 Pltny " the Naturalist " ; Rome.
•100 Dioscorides the Younger, Alexandrinus, "the Glossograph " ; on Hippo- crates, etc.
•140 Marcellus Sidetes, of Pamphylia ; poet, latrica, 42 books ; lost.
•175 Pausanias, incidental references in treating topography of Greece,
•180 Galen, of Pergamus ; Opera., 83 genuine books; and Commentaries.
•210 Sammonicus, d. 212 ; Rome, poet, Liber medicinalis.
•240 Gargilius Martialis, de Agrictiltura ; Rome.
•250 Apicius Coelius Carthage?
•300 ^z/t/^jrzj/^ (if not the work of Dioscorides Anazarbeus).
•362 Oribasius, of Pergamus ; Collectanea, in 70 books.
•370 Harpocration's redaction of Kyranis de herbis.
•380 Theodorus Priscianus, Rome ? 7 books de medicina.
•400 Anonymi Carmen.
•400 Apuleius Platonicus, bef. 439 ; Carthage ; De herbarwti.
•400 Marcellus Empiricus ; Bordeaux ? De medicamentis.
•440 Palladius Rutilius, de Agricultura.
•540 Actios Amydenos, of Cappadocia ; 16 books, latrica.
•600 Plinius Valerianus, Rome ? 5 books de re ?nedica.
•600 Isidorus Hispalensis ; Origines ; Visigoth, of Seville.
•620 Stephanos Athenaos, physician ; and Stephanos Alexandreus, alchemist.
•630 Paulus Aegineta, Periodeutes ; of Aegina ; Opera, in 7 books.
•700 Kyranos' redaction of Kyranis, in four books.
■750 Joannes filius Serapionis ; was tr. into Syriac .790 ; of Damascus.
Table of Plant Writers
97
^ Estimated < Salernitan ^ Rhenish J English
( Date. Arabic. Greek. Latin. ( in Latin. / in Latin. ( in La*in.
803 Rhabanu.s, De nniverso.
•805 Capitulary of Charlemagne.
812 />Vi'7^/(7rj/ of Charlemagne.
842-3 Walafrid Strabus, poet.
•850 Macer Floridus (a Calabrian Greek?).
•850 Stephanos Basilides, a Greek, tr. of Diosc. into Ar., bef, 861.
•850 Isaac, Ben Honain, reviser of Diosc, bef. 861.
857-8 Mesue the elder ; on drugs.
•860 Qosthus or Constantine ; a Greek ; in Arabic ; de AgricuJ.tura.
•860 Bertharius, d. 884 (of Monte Cassino).
•890 Photius, Myriohiblion. Liber ?nedicmalis [m A.-^).
•900 Rhazes or Arrazi, d. 932, au. of Continens.
912-9 Cassianus Bassus, edr., Geoponica.
■950 Alfred Cridiensis, Devon.
•980 Haly or Ibn Alabbasz ; bef. 983 ; au. of Liber totius medicinae.
982 Ibn Dscholdschol, tr. Diosc.
•990 Ibn Golgol ; au. on trees, plants, and materia medica.
•1000 Ibn Walid ; tr. Diosc.
•1000 Mesue the younger, au. of De Sujiplicibus.
•1020 Avicenna or Ibn Sina ; d. 1037 ; au. of Canons.
•1020 Gariopontus, De Dynamidiis, etc.
•1030 The Seven Masters, Antrorarium.
•1040 Giovanni Plateario I, Practica.
•1060 Copho the elder,
•1070 CoNSTANTiNUS Africanus, De gradibtcs.
•1075 Simeon Seth, Syntagma.
•1085 Copho the younger, Anatome Porci.
•1090 Trotula, Curandu))i...t)iiiliebriuin.
•1090 Butanicus, (used by Simon Januensis).
• 1 090 Liber de simplici medicina ( of Simon Januensis ) •I 100 Adelard Anglicus.
•I 100 Herbarius, lost, used by Vincent de Beauvais.
■I 100 Stephanos Magnetes, Alphabetum empiriciivi ; etc.
•Iioi Pegime?i sanitatis Salerni ; John of Milan.
•mo Nicolaus Praepositus, Antidotaritnn.
•I 130 Matteo Plateario II., au. of Cikca instans.
.1140 Henry of Huntingdon.
•I 150 Hildegardis de Pinguia (Bingen).
•I 158 Ibn Alawwam or Ibn Al Avam, au. Agrictdtiira.
*ll6o AVERROES or Ibn Roschid, au. de Simplicibus.
•I 160 Giovanni Plateario III.
•I 168 Moses Maimonides, a Spanish Jew; Arabic Commentary on MisJinah.
•I 180 Aegidius Corboliensis.
• 1 180 Galfridus de Vino salvo or
Geoffrey de Vinsauf ; (on agriculture).
•I 190 Ferrarese recension of Circa instans.
•1190 Do/nian recension of Circa i?istans.
•1200 Otho Cremonensis.
•I 210 Alphita. Gilbertus Anglicus.
•1230 Ibn Baithar, d. 1248, au. oi Elenchus.
98
Aster History
£ f Miscellan. ( Latin f Salerni- ( Other C In j" English writers
Date (Languages. J of misc. I tan, in I Italians, J EngHsh. J in Latin. Arabic. 1 nation- | Latin. 1 in Latin. 1 | Greek. [ aHty. [ I i I
•1240 Harpestreng, Danish ; d. 1244; La^ebog, an enlargement of Macer Floridus.
•1256 Smonifnia Estense. Bartholomaeus Anglicus.
1256 Thomas de Cantiprato (Flem.), encyclopaedist.
•1260 Vincent de Beauvais (Fr. ), d. 1264, encyclopaedist.
•1265 Albertus Magnus (Suabian) plant-physiology, etc.
•1265 Roger Bacon, Opus Majus.
•1270 Nic. Myrepsos, Pietro Spano (Sp. ). Henry & Gilbert de Arviell.
•1280 Raimundus Lullus (of Palma), tr. of Kirani Kiranides.
•1290 Petrus de Crescentiis, de Agricultura.
•1292 Actuarius. SiMON Januensis, CA/^-w 5^7«<7/?V«/j.
1307 Bernard Gordon.
•1310 Arnald de Villanova. John Gaddesden.
131 1 Ibn Alkotbi or Malajesa, Arabic, au. oi Epilofne.
•1313 Matteo Silvatico or Pandectarius, Pandects.
•1330 Niccolo da Reggio, & Bartolomeo Mino da Siena.
1349 Cunrat de Megenberg, Rhenish au. of Buck der iVatur, in Ger., printed 1475
•1350 Aggregator practicus. John Ardern.
1355 Jacobus de Dondi or Aggregator Paduanus.
•1373 Jn. Lelamar, tr. Macer Floridus.
•1379 Henry Daniel & De Henley.
1398 Berkeleyan Barthol. Anglicus.
•1400 Ortus Saniiatis. Jn. Bray & Nic. Bollar.
•1400 Manfredus de Monte Imperiali..
1418 Rinius' Dioscorides.
1421 John Mirfield, synonyms.
1430 Antonius Guainerius ; /^w/Zr/f/^zr/ww, 15 18.
1438 Ashmolean Herbals of ' 38, '43, '47.
•1450 Jacobus de Manliis, synonyms.
1 45 1 Theodorus Gaza, a Greek, Latin tr. of Theophrastus.
1458 Le Petit Pelous, au. of Secres de Salerno, Fr. tr. of Circa instans.
•1476 Ortolff van Bayrlandt or Megtenberger ; Ger., Artzneibuch, printed •1476.
1478 Petrus Paduanensis, tr. of Dioscorides.
•1480 Arbolayre, Fr. from Secres. Hermolaus Barbarus, tr. Diosc.
1481 Pr.mptuarium Medici. Physical Plants {Wi).
1481 Antonius Gazius, of I'adua, Florida Corona.
1485 Johann von Cuba ; in Ger.; Gart der Gesiindh it, tr. of Ortus.
•1490 Le Grant Herbier,Yx.,ixovci D Arbolayre. Horman, Synonyma.
1490 Guido de Cauliaco ( Fr. ) An idotariuni, Venice, 1490, etc.
1492 Leonicenus, critic of Pliny.
1493 Liber Agp'egationis. Calcoensis, tr. Palladius in Sc. 1495 Wynkyn de Worde's Bar. Angl. 1497 Tollat de Vorchenberg, in Ger., der Artzney, Vienna, 1497.
1500 Hieronymus Brunsvicensis, Ger., Distillening Buck.
•1505 Hieronymus Brunsvicensis' Apodixis Ger??ianica, in Ger., a brief flora.
1 5 10 CoUinutius, defender of Pliny.
1 511 Gerardus Nocito, Sicilian ; Lucidariuin. 15 13 Herrera, Sp. Obra de agricultura,
Table of Plant Writers
99
Rhenish Misc. Italian Netherlands English writers Misc. Date. in.Latin. Latin. in Latin. in Latin. in English. Languages.
1516 Treveris (printer), The Crete Hn--
ball, tr. of Grant Herbier.
15 16 Ruel, Fr. ; Lat. tr. of Dioscorides.
1 5 18 Marcellus Vergilius, of Florence ; Lat. tr. Diosc.
15 1 8 Vigonius, Joannes de Vigo, Genuensis ; Chirurgica.
1519 Manardi, critic of Diosc.
1520 Leonardus Legius, Galeni Flores.
1525 Ghini, begins delivering his lectures still in MS.
1526 Banckes, Herbal, " Here begynnyth
a newe Mater ye whiche sheweth ...ye Vertues & Properties of Her- bes"...l.on. "by me, Rich, de Banckes, 1526."
1526 Oviedo, Sp. , las Indias.
1527 Euricius Cordus.
1527 Andrewe's The Crete Herbal.
1527 Distyllacyon of all herbes, [ix.).
1528 Giorgio Valla, de Simplicium.
•1529 Anguillara, begins? sojourn in Crete, Zante and Greece.
1529 Janus Cornarius, tr. Diosc.
1529 Ct. von Neuenar.
1530 Baptista Fiera, Mantuan ; de virtutibus herba^um. •1530 Baptista Pius.
1530 Brunfels ; Herhariim.
•1530 Rob. Redman's Boke of the Proper-
ties of Herbes, Lon.
1531 Fuchs (Suabian) Annotationes, in Brunfels' Devera.
1 53 1 Bock, or Tragus, Dissertationes, in Brunfels' De vera.
1531 Joannes Lonicerus or Lonitzer.
1532 Symphorianus Campegius ; critic of Arabs.
1533 Joannes Franciscus Rota ; on Grk. medicaments. 1533 Eucharius Rhodion's Cart der Cesundheit \n Ger.
1533 Cornelius Petrus Leydensis.
1534 Benedictus Textor Segusinus, notes on Diosc. (Ps.ris, 1534). 1536 Robertus Stephanus, De Latims et Craecis nominibtis...herb.
•1536 Lynacro's '■^ Macer'' s Herbal... mio
Englysshe," printed by Robt. Wyer. •1536 Wyer's Herbal ; " Hereafter follow-
eth the knowledge, properties and the vertues of herbes, Lon.
by Robert Wyer" ; date and author? Pritzel, 11565. •1536 Ric. Kele's Properties of Herbes.
1536 Antonius Musa Brasavola, Exainen. .sinipliciuin.
1536 Amatus Lusitanus.
1537 Lovicz, in Polish, med. 1537 Gabriel Humelberg, Ravenspurgensis ; Commentary on Apuleius Platonicus.
1537 Joannes Tagautius, Vimaeus, De.. .siniplicibiis (Paris, 1537).
1538 Turner's Re Herbaria (Lat.)
1539 BoCK (Tragus), Kreuterbuch ; in Ger.
100 Aster History
Date (Ger. /Misc. f Misc. f Italian, f Netherlands, ( English writers \ in Latin [ Langs. ( in Latin ( in Latin ( in Latin ( in EngHsh
1539 Thomas Gybson's edn. of T/ie
Crete Hei-bal.
'539 Agricola Johannes or Ammonius or Paeurle, Medicinae herbariae.
1539 Rbt. Winter (claimed as Scotch ;
and as Rhenish), printer and editor at Basle, 1539, of Nicolaus Damascenus " De plantis libriduo Aristoteli falso adscripti."
1539 Robertus Britannus, Agricul- hirae encoviiuvi (in Latin), Paris, 1539.
•1539 . W. Copeland's i?^?/^^' the
properties of Herbes, Lon. no date.
1540 Dorstenius, Botanicon.
1 541 Fuscus, Remaclus Fusch ; NomenclatiircE . 1 541 Brohon, Fr. , De stirpibiis. Petyt' s ' ' Prope7'ties of Herbes. ' ' 1541 Paracelsus dies; his Swiss-Ger. works on plants, etc., ed. 1589.
1541 Gesner, Conrad, 1516-1565, Zurich, Historia plaiitaru7H.
1542 FUCHS, Leonhard, 1501-1566, De historia stiipmm.
1543 Fuchs, New Kreiiterbuch, Ger. tr. of preceding.
1543 Walter Ryff, Rivius' edn. of Diosc.
1544 Matthioli, Petrus Andreas Matthiolus ; Diosc.
1544 Gisbertus Horstius, De Turpeto.
1545 Hieronymus Cardanus, De simplicibiis, Ven., I545-
1546 Willyam Myddleton's edn. of the " Propertyes of Herbes ; " modified from Banckes' of 1 526 ?
•1546 Pacini? Johan Scot's undated edn of the
same, similar to the next. 1546 A boke of the properties of Her-
bes, the whiche is called an Herbal ; Lon. 1546 ; printer? 1546 Bock, istedn. of his Kreiiterbuch with figures.
1546 Ocyorus, Oxyotus, or Schnellenberg ; Ger. ; Experimenta,
on med. herbs.
1546 Smith, Swedish, medical, iiy tirteganrdt, Malmo, 1546.
1548 Robertus Constantinus, notes on Diosc. in Amatus' coram
1548 Turner, Names of Herbs.
1549 Jean Goupyl, Fr. edr. of Dioscorides.
1549 Valerius Cordus.
1550 Hieronymus Cardanus, De subtiiitateWhri 21, Basle. 1550 Ascham, A Lyttel Herbal.
1550 Ascham, Astrononiie <2r= Herbs.
1 55 1 Adam Lonitzer, Nattiralis Historia.
1 55 1 Turner, A New Herbal.
1552 Andrea Lacuna, Spanish comment, on Diosc. •1552 Esteve, Sp., Dictionario de las yervas.
1553 Pierre Belon, Bellonius, De arboribus ; his Travels, Fr., 1554-
1554 Rembert DoDoENs, Dodonaeus. 1554 Dalechamp, of Caen, P>. " philologist botanist."
1556 Joannes Casma Holzachius of Basle, Annotations on Diosc.
1556 Spiczynski, Polish, tiitecznyeh, Cracow, 1556-
1557 Adam Lonitzer' s Kreiiterbuch, in Ger.
Table of Plant Writers
101
Date S Ger, < Misc. J Misc. f Italian, J Netherlands, \ English writers I in Latin ( Langs. } in Latin. \ in Latin \ in Latin } in English
1557 Clusius' Fr. tr. of Dodoens ; and his own Kecueil.
1557 Melchior Guilandinus, Borussus ; Wieland ; De stirphim, Basle, 1557-
1558 Thevet, Fr. Les singtilaritifs..A7nerique, Paris, 1 558.
1560 Bruyerinus, De re cibaria libri 22.
1560 Mizauld, Fr. , Serretonim agri ; dind Deiidranatome.
1 56 1 Anguillara, de SempHci.
1561 JhonKynge's The Crete Herbal.
156 1 Stupanus, Antonius, on the properties of
Dioscorides' herbs (T>eyden, 1561).
1561 Valerius Cordus, " Annotationes in Dioscoridem," Strasburg, 1561.
1562 Juhasz, Hung., Herbarium . Thos. Penny, coll. in Switz.
1562 Bulleyne, Book of Simples.
1563 Garcia ab Horto, Portug., Coloquios dos simplos, Goa, 1 5 63. 1565 Gesner and Moiban's edn. of Dioscorides' Euporista.
1565 Durante, De Bonitate ...alimentoi^um.
1566 Calzolaris, Ital., // viaggio di Monte Baldo.
1567 Maplet, A greene forest.
1568 Hill, The profitable art of gar-
dening.
1568 Siennik, Polish, Herbarz., Cracow, 1568.
1569 Monardes, Sp., Historia medicinal dc.Indias occidentals, Se-
ville, 1569.
1570 Lobel and Pena, Adversaria.
1570 Tr. of Lemnius' Occulta natural
miracula (of Antwerp, 1561 ; later in Eng., Fr, Ger., tr. ). 1572 Fragoso, Sp., de..arojnaticas, Madrid, 1 57 2.
1572 Mascall, A booke of the arte and maner howe to plant and graffe all sortes of trees, Lon., 1572.
1573 Tusser, 500 points of good hzis- ban dry, 'Lon., 1573 (new edn. by Mavor, 1812).
1574 Simler, Vallesiae descriptio.
1575 Carrichter, Ger., Kratiterbuch, on signatures.
1576 Lobel, Observationes.
1576 Clusius, Rariorum...Hispanias.
1577 Frampton, Joyful News, tr. of
Monardes.
1577 Mountaine, on gardening.
1578 Acosta, Sp. , de les drogas, soon tr. into Eng. by Jas. Caret. 1578 Lery, Fr. , Voyage en Bresil.
1578 Lyte, tr. of Dodoens.
1578 Thurneisser, Historia plantarum.
1579 Langham, Garden of Health. 1581 Ocsko, Descriptio herbaruvi medicarum, Cracow, 1581.
1 581 C2i?,Y>2ir ^o\^, Alphabetu?n empiricum, Znuch, 1581.
1583 Rauwolf, Ger., Raiss, or Jtinerarium Oiientis, 1583.
1583 CA^SAi.vmo, Deplantis libri XVI. Florence, 1583.
1583 Clusius' Rariorum.. per PannoniaDi.
1584 Bejthe, Hung., Stirpium...pannonicus.
102
Aster History
Date fGer. fMisc. [Misc. f Italian, J Netherlands, f Enerlish writers, I in Latin \ Langs. [ in Latin \ in Latin \ in Latin | in English
1584 Linocier (= Du Pinet), Fr., V Histoh'e des plnntes.
1585 Durante, Castor, Herbaria Nuovo, Ital.
1586 Lyte, Dodjens, 2d edn. 1586 Camerarius' Epitojne.
1586 Durante' s // Tesoro della sanitate.
1587 Molines' Dalechanip's Historia plantaruvi (Molinaeus).
1587 Newton's Herbal to the Bible.
1588 Camerarius' Hortus niedicus.
1588 Thalius, John Thai, Sylva Hercynica (Frankfort, 1588).
1588 Tabernaemontanus \^'^^^vl\'^), A^euw Kreiiterlmch.
1590 Acosta, Sp., Historia natural.. de las Indias.
1590 Camerarius' Kreutetbuch, in Ger.
1590 Camerarius' Symboloru?n Centuria.
1590 Wigandus, De her bis iti Borussia.
1591 Aldrovandi, Comments on V>\o%zox\^&%. 1 59 1 Paaw, Horttis . . . Lugduno-batavae.
1591 Jean Bauhin, De plantis (Basle, 1591).
1591 Cortusi, Ital. H horto dei siinplici di Padova.
1592 Alpinus, Prosper Alpino, De plantis Aegyptis liber (his Opera posthuma, 1735).
1592 Columna, Fabio Colonna, 1567-1650, his Phyto-
basanos, Naples, 1592 ; his Ecphrasis, Rome, 1616.
1592 Antonio Pasini, Annotazioni on Diosc.
1592 Zaluziansky, Metkoai herbariae libri tres ; Prague, 1592.
1594 Baumgarten in Braitenbach, Peregrinatio in Aegyptum, etc.
1595 Lyte, Dodoens, 3d edn. 1595 Pona, Plantae . . . in Baldo monte. 1595 Bejthe, Hung., med., Fuves, Nemeth-Ujvarot, 1595.
1595 Urzedow, Pol., He?'barz Polski, CxdiCO-^, 1595.
1596 Caspar Bauhin, his Phytopinax, Basle, 1596. 1596 Linschotten, Itinerariuin.
1596 Gerarde's Catalogue.
1597 Gerarde's Herball.
1597 Sprenger, Horti inedici (of Heidelberg) catalogus.
1598 Belle val, Stirpium in horto Monspeliensi.
1599 Perez, Sp., De medicamentorum delectu, Toleti, 1599-
1600 Serres, Fr., Le theatre d' agriculture. Again, 1804-5.
1600 Schenckius a Grafenberg, Hortus Patavinus.
1601 Clusius, Rariorum historia.
PRE-CLUSIAN PLANT WRITERS IN RELATION TO ASTER
I. Hippocrates
Hippocrates, **the father of medicine," of perhaps* 460—377 B. C, although mentioning f over 200 different plants, 236 accord- ing to Dierbach,J including a dozen or more of the Compositae, seems not to have mentioned the Aster by that name, but, instead, by the name polyopthalmon, or **the plant many-eyes."
Aster references to be expected in Hippocrates. — Later, at least from Cratevas onward, perhaps 100 B. C, the Aster Atticus held a place under its own name in the materia medica, and con- tinued to hold it almost two thousand years. Did it already hold such a place in the age of Hippocrates ? and did it receive the sanction of his personal use? It would have been very gratify- ing had Hippocrates left us a treatise on the materia medica of his time, but none remains. A very ancient letter survives, ascribed in antiquity to Hippocrates, and addressed to the herbalist Cratevas, delivering over to the latter the responsibility of informing the future as to the materia medica of Hippocrates' use ; Hippocrates had written of the diseases, in Cratevas the world would find the plants with which Hippocrates had cured them. Present criticism deems that this ancient epistle was wrongly ascribed to Hippocrates ; for Cratevas' date on other evidence must be brought down to
■^Claimed by most writers (and so Harper's Classical Dictionary, 1 897) following the statements of Soranus, to have lived 460-377 B. C, or later. Claimed by Adams, following Aulus Gellius, to have lived till shortly after the death of Socrates ; to have been older than Socrates ; and therefore to have been born perhaps 480 B. C. or earlier.
t Seventy-two works of Hippocrates which have been preserved, were so accredited and were all formed into one body even before they became known to the Alexandrian critics. Nineteenth century criticism has distinguished among these, several classes, of which "The Genuine Works of Hippocrates" were translated into English by Dr. Francis Adams for the Sydenham Society, London, 1849. Many of the other works appear to have been written by men of great ability, living not far from Hippocrates' own time, and sharers of his theory and practice. Probably some of the writers, as claimed by Prof. Peck, were the five distinguished physicians of Hippocrates' own family, his sons Thessalus and Dracon, his son-in-law Polybus and his son's sons both bearing their grandfather's name, Hippocrates.
X Dierbach's Arzneimittel des Hippocrates, Heidelberg, 1821 ; fide Meyer.
(103)
104
Aster History ; Hippocrates
about TOO B. C; the letter is just such a self-laudatory epistle as many an author has concocted as an humorous introduction to his works, without the intention or at the time, the possibility, of de- ceiving any one ; and this letter cannot therefore be adduced in proof that the Aster of Cratevas was one of the remedies used by Hippocrates.
Later practice among the Greeks of the Roman Empire ex- alted the Aster as a remedy for inguinal tumors. Did that use for it extend so far back as Hippocrates ? We search his treatise ad ingiien'' * in vain for statements that may show which were the plants that he used. Will we have better success when we examine Hippocrates' detailed reports f of cases of inguinal tumor which he had himself treated ? No, he tells us of their num- ber, of their fatal endings, of their complication J with fever, nar- rates the personal case of the eunuch, § and that of the fullers, || and their three months' lingering ; but omits, as usual, any mention of what his own treatment had been. Yet he immediately tanta- lizes the inquirer, in the very next case considered, by specifying for once the remedies he would use ; but this case proves to be merely of cholera morbus, and though one of the remedies was itself a composite, a Lactuca, it has no immediate bearing on Hippo- crates' remedies for tumors or for his use of Aster.
There remains one other class of evidence from Hippocrates which while it may not be positive, will at least point to a very probable result. It is his use of the name polyophthalmon, the plant Many-eyes if we render it literally, a plant-name which Hippocrates' manner of reference shows was then in familiar use, but which seems not to have reached us elsewhere in literature. As an adjective, to be sure, the word is still in useff in modern as
* Hippocrates' -t-pl (pvciov, edn. Kuhn, 574 sq. Also Foes' Lat. tr., "Ad in- guen," I: 297 sq. , edn. of Weckel, 1596. Also Adams' Eng. tr. "The Genuine Works of Hippocrates," l : 71 -j- , "On Airs," Tvepi depuv.
I Hippocrates, edn. Kuhn, vol. 3; being vol. 23 of Kuhn's Medicorum Graecorum opera omnia.
+ Do, 3 ; 619. Pi Do, 3 ; 684.
II Do, 3 ; 705.
Used together with porrum, cepa, brassica, pepo, cucumeris and ervum. f f Contopoulos' Modern Greek Lexicon, Smyrna and London, 1868, and Lowndes' Modern Greek Lexicon, Corfu, 1837 ; both quote iroAtmpBa'XixoQ as still in use for " many-eyed "; Contopoulos cites Tvo/ivofifiaroq as also still used, in the same sense.
Hippocrates' Polyophthalmon
105
ill ancient Greek ; but without any recognized specialization as a plant-name.*
The synonym HyopJitlialmon. — Among the synonyms added to the received text of Dioscorides, is one for Aster which reads ol ok u6(pdaX(iov, i. L\, ''some call it hyophthalmon " (pig's-eye, sow's-eye or boar-eyes). This word seems to occur nowhere else in ancient or modern Greek except in quotations of this passage ; and indeed has been uniformly neglected by the Greek lexicographers,* failing to appear in Stephanus' Thesaurus t or in DuCange, % ^i^d actually appearing only in Coumanoude's recent " Lexicon of uncollected words from ancient and modern writings." §
There seems little appropriateness in the name o6(pdaAfjL0v for Aster Atticus. The Greeks had felt the beauty of the flower ; witness Nicander's epithet (pcoztCovza, " luminous," and his singling it out as fit ornament to shrine and altar. It seems unlikely that they would have framed for the aster a name u6(pdaAfj.ou in an intentionally derogatory sense ; with ridicule as that of Aristophanes when coining the word uofiouaia, " swinish taste in music " ; or as the Greeks seem to have felt in their name uoaxua- aoc, literally hog's-bean, the poisonous henbane, the Hyoscyamus of both ancient and modern botany. Other instances of Greek plant-names derived from swine are few : bbaz()iz, " hog's-endive," (quoted by Pliny, claimed to be Centmirea nigra) seems to stand alone, except for atauo^rfy^Lov, Sisyrinchium, '' swine's snout," by them applied to some kind of iris, and explained as due to the habit of hogs of rooting up its rhizomes. ||
*Jannaris' Eng. and Mod. Gr. Diet., N. Y., 1895; Legrand's Mod. Gr. and Fr. Diet., 1882; Scarlatos Byzantios' Mod. Gr. Lexieon, Athens, 1874; Paspates' Glossarion, Athens, 1888; Deheque's Mod. Gr. and Fr. Diet., Paris, 1875; Kind's Mod. Gr. and Ger. Diet., Leipsie, 1876; Alexandros Joannos' Lexikon Triglosson, 1790 ; " Atakta, a Glossary," Paris, 1829 ; ete
t Stephanus' Thesaurus, edn. Didot, Paris, 1865.
X DuCange, Glossarium ad seriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis, Leyden, 1688. § Athens, 1883; eiting Apuleius Platonicus' quotation from Dioscorides ; by name
II Browning in his " SoHloquy in a Spanish Cloister " representing a monk in the garden as muttering " What's the Latin name for swine' s-snout ? " probably did not mean Sisyrinchium at all, but the common dandelion, widely known in mediaeval Europe as swine's snout, " Rostrum porcinum." In fact mediaeval Germany produced a whole crop of porcine names, both in German and in Latin ; for example :
106
Aster History ; Hippocrates
The only explanation probable for uocpdaAfiov if it was a word which really grew up among the Greeks, is that its use, as " pig's- eye," suggested a smaller size of blossom than that of ^ouipdolfiov, ox-eye," with which the Aster was liable to confusion, and with which it was actually confounded, two thousand years later, by Anguillara, Matthioli, and many others.*
But the more probable supposition is that boipdalfiov was a mis- take in its very beginning, and never existed till some scribe en- Rostrum porcinum : used by Avicenna ; see infra, under De Manliis. Albertus Magnus, de vegefabilibus, bk. vi, c. 331 (edn. Meyer and Jessen, Berlin, 1 867), says of his " Endivia sylvestris," that the kind which possesses milk is called Rostrum porci- 7iiun { Leontodon taraxacum L. ) et alter caret lacte, quem vocant caudani porcinam.'''' — Similarly, Albertus, iv, 145, remarks, " Ficus has milk ; so has esula [Euphorbia) and all its kindred ; similarly also that kind of the endive which is called ro^tricm porcinum.'''' Again, Albertus, iii, 9, says " Other plants are without a silique, as the endives, among them that which is called rostrum porcinum and that which is called canda porcina.
Cauda porcina : Albertus Magnus uses this in the two passages just cited, as name for some uncertain plant of the dandelion kind, which he describes as that kind of wild endive which is without mill^. Jessen when citing the next, makes no attempt to identify this, but remarks that it nowhere else occurs as name of a composite.
Cauda porcina : seems to have been a frequent mediaeval name for Peucedajium ; Albertus Magnus uses it so twice.
Cauda porcina : Simon Januensis uses it as a name for his Milii solis, the Litho- spermum officinale.
" We find no other instance to indicate that the name " pig's-eye " existed among the ancients ; but it did come into use in mediaeval Germany, occurring once in the form " oculus porci " ; in the Latin of Albertus Magnus, but nowhere else, says his editor Jessen, unless it be the same as the " vredels oghe " or " vredels tunghe " of the Vocab. Simpl. or the fridelsouge " or " fridelsauga " of Hildegardis' Liber subtilitatis, bk. 2, C. 131 (of date about 1150). As a synonym for this name " fridelsouge " the name " oculus consulis " appears written on the margin in the codex Guelpherby- tianus, as Jessen remarks. " Oculus porci " of Albertus Magnus is identified by Jessen as Tragopogon porrifolius L. Albertus' account states that it is the flower which is called Flos campus, growing in elevated and dry places near paths, having " radicem de- lectabilem," on account of which " it is eaten as food, and pigs dig it up in the pasture ; it has a rather lofty stalk, and on its top a flower which reddens itself much, and in withering retains the same color. It has leaves which are small and narrow, and cover over the flower in a very brown capsule. It is cold and dry in temperament.''
Could Albertus Magnus have derived the name from a classical source ? I think this unlikely ; he wrote much from his own observation ; next to himself, his prime source was Avicenna, but for properties rather than for names ; his next source was " Circa instans " of Matteo Plateario, and in that neither this name, oculus porci, nor this plant, Tragopogon, occurs ; his remaining known source was Isidorus, Bishop of Seville, 596, who died 636 A. D., but I find no indication among the plant names of Isidorus listed by Meyer, that he ever made use of this name oculus porci.
I think the name grew up in Germany, and that Albertus was here writing his own observations, as their realistic tone itself indicates.
Hippocrates' Polyophthalmon
107
tered it in the text of Dioscorides when he was intending to enter the name nohjocpdaXfiov. Nothing would be more natural than such an omission of a first syllable. The letters for ix'xpdaAfmv, without breathing or accent, are just what would appear in the lower line if the scribe was copying from a MS. in which TioAuoip- QakfLOv had happened to occur divided with its first syllable com- pleting the upper line. If in copying his glance missed that initial syllable, he may have gone on with the rest of the work uncon- scious of omission. When some later scribe copied this and added such breathings and accents as seemed called for, the word assumed its present form and was then recopied again and again. Perhaps this substitution of bbif dalfiov for 7iohj6ipdaAfj.ov occurred in the third century; perhaps after Galen, A.D. c. 180, who does not seem to know such a word as uoipdaXfiov ; but certainly as early as its appearance in the oldest existing manuscript of Dios- corides, written at the end of the fifth century.
Hippocrates PolyopJitJialmon. — We conclude, therefore, that probably Tzo/jjoipdaAtiov was a synonym for Aster Atticus ; was in- serted as such in early MSS. of Dioscorides ; and when used by Hippocrates, probably included Aster Atticus in its reference ; especially since his use for it seems akin to its use prescribed for tumors by Dioscorides.
Hippocrates' reference occurs in his Liber de Articulis,* one of his admittedly genuine works, where, speaking of sores result- ing from dislocations, he says
zd oh sA'Ao:: crjTpapzcv . . . jiohjoipOolfiotaiv ^ . .
i. e., ''the sore is to be cured by application of the plant polyoph- thalmon ; or, he goes on to say, "by such other dressings as are used for wounds; but nothing of a very cold nature should be applied."
Galen' s Polyophthalmon. — Galen, who died about 200 A.D., in his commentary on Hippocrates, writing perhaps 600 years after the above reference to polyophthalmon was written, translates it by buphthalmon, and cites Diodes as supporting him, a follower of Hippocrates who may have written about 270 B.C. Foes, making his Latin translation of Hippocrates in 1596, followed
■^Hippocrates' ivepl apdpuv, edn. Kuhn, 3 : 245.
108
Aster History; Hippocrates
Galen, and so did Kuhn, rendering it " ulcus autem. . . curandum est. . . buphthalmi foliis."
But Adams, unconvinced by Galen and others, renders it " with leaves of camomile," and adds that he believes the plant polyophthalmon is probably Anthemis valcntina^ a plant which if the same with Anacyclits valentinus L., is not now known in Grecian lands.
Whatever plant it was which Galen meant by " buphthalmon," it was surely not the anthelmintic German chamomile, Matricaria chamoinilla L. Nor was it the same, it is believed, as the buph- thalmon of Dioscorides ; and neither were the same as the Buph- thalmum of modern botany.
Galen's commentary on the passage in question is as follows, using the Latin rendering of edn. Kuhn :
" Praecipit autem ut herbae buphthalmi, quam polyophthal- mon appellat [but the Greek original is the opposite, r^c fiozo.vfj^ ok T'liC, TioAuocpddX^ov xaAoo fiivYj^ , yjtc:: /.at j^oo:: d(f da2fid(; duofm^erac'] non secus atque ante tussilaginis [£;^/»^ro red rou fiyjX't^o'] quae eandem vim habet, folia imponantur. Hujus quoque herbae meminit Diodes' in libro de oleribus. \_iisiAvrjTac ok raijifi^ r^c ^ozdwj^ yjj.L J:oxAr^c iv zoj ttsoc Ary.^dycov.'j Tutius autem curationis caput ait id esse debere quod in libro de vulneribus capitis demon- stravit, in quo ostensium a nobis est, curationem requiri sicciorem, quam quae in vulneribus circa articulos praesertim,"* i. e., Hip- pocrates directs, moreover, that one should place on it the leaves of the plant called polyophthalmon, which plant is also named buphthalmon. Of this plant Diodes also makes mention in his book concerning herbs," etc.
Galen's own description of his Buphthalmon is as follows ;t using Kuhn's Latin version :
" Buphthalmum sic appellatum est a floribus, qui figura quidem
Diodes of Carystus in the island of Euboea, a Greek physician of the 3d century B.C.; he (says the Biographie Generale, 1855) held an eminent place in ancient esteem ; employed vegetable remedies by preference ; composed a work on the utility of plants in medicine ; invented the surgical instrument /e bisiilque ; of his many works none remain but fragments in Galen, Coelius, Aurelianus, Oribasius, etc.; the largest re- maining is a letter to King Antigonus, of Macedonia (who died B.C. 239 after a reign of 44 years), included at the end of Paulus Aegineta's 1st book of medicine. Pliny says Diodes was first in date and reputation after Hippocrates, f Galen, edn. Kuhn, 1 1 : 852-3.
Usage with Buphthalmon
109
boum oculis videantur assimiles, colore autem anthemidis floribus simillimi sunt, sed multo turn majores turn acriores. Proinde et vehementius digerunt, adeo ut et duritias sanent cerato mixti."
Confusion zvitli BnplitJialmon. — We are now prepared to com- pare the succession of usage of the names aster, polyopthalmon and buphthahnon.
With Hippocrates, 430? B.C., polyopthahnon only was used, and probably included several plants used for reducing tumors ; Aster Atticus (thus accounting for the citation of polyophthalmon as a synonym for Aster) ; and also the yellow-flowered species Chrysantheinuni scgctuin and coronarhim of Linnaeus, and also Antheinis tinctoria L. Each of the four has at one time or an- other appeared as buphthalmon and all were doubtless early so called. This may account for Galen's citation of buphthalmon as a synonym for polyphthalmon.
Subsequently the tendency seems to have been to restrict to the larger-flowered species the name buphthalmon — ox-eye— separat- ing the yellow-flowered species by that name and leaving poly- opthalmon for aster. Which one of the yellow-flowered species would be the buphthalmon of any particular writer may have been a matter of locality as well as tradition. Just so the United States has a sliding scale of distinctions between our daisy and our ox-eye daisy ; in one locality the " ox-eye daisy " is Rjuibeckia hirta, because the largest that is common there ; in others, as Vir- ginia, where the true daisy, Bellis, was present to the thought of the people, the ox-eye daisy" is LeiLcantJienmni vulgar eh^zd^w^^ it is larger than Bellis, the type.
With Diodes, 270? B.C., seems to occur the first mention of the name buphthalmon in literature — in his dc olcribus, his Tizta Xrr/dvcov, or Garden Herbal. Probably the buphthalmon present to his mind was ClirysantlLciniLin coronariiuii L. {Pinardia coro- naria Lessing) which has been often claimed to be " the ancient buphthalmon." As it produces edible stalks, it is likely to be the species intended in this lost book on garden vegetables.
Diodes may therefore have mentioned buphthalmon as a syno- nym of polyophthalmon, intending by it not a complete but a par- tial equivalent ; as much as to say, one kind of polyophthalmon
110
Aster History; Hippocrates
is called buphthalmon and because it is eaten as a vegetable I men- tion it here."
Concentration of medical use upon a species which was finally proved to possess particularly strong properties, may have gradu- ally caused the prominence afterward assumed by Antheinis tinc- toria, which is still labelled as BiiphtJiabmnii vulgare by apothe- caries ; and by the time of Galen that species may have become tlie buphthalmon to physicians.
Galen may have interpreted the buphthalmon of Diodes as a synonym of complete equivalence to polyophthalmon, when it was meant but as a partial equivalent.
With Galen, therefore, and with his period, buphthalmon may have meant Antlieinis tinctoria^ and he may have taken it for granted that his buphthalmon and that of Diodes were identical.
Meanwhile Dioscorides seems to have been citing polyophthal- mon as a synonym for his Aster Atticus, which he called an an- themis-like flower. He used (fide Sibthorp) Anthemis melinanthes for Antheviis tinctoria L., Anthemis porphyranthes for AntJiemis rosea DC., Anthemis unmodified for AiitJieinis CJiia L. His Buph-» thalmon and his Chrysanthemon are identical and cover Chrysanthe- miun coronariiun L. and perhaps CJirysantlieminn segetum L.
Finally came Linnaeus' genus Buphthabnum^ with still another application of the name to the related plant B. spinosuin L. (^Pallenis spinosa Cass.) somewhat similar to the AiitJicinis tinctoria in appear- ance and particularly so in its esteem as a vulnerary ; this species being itself identified with Dioscorides' Aster Atticus by Anguillara, Gesner, and many others.
To sum up, these species may be thus distinguished historically :
Aster Atticus L., once famed for reducing tumors, may be in considerable part the polyophthalmon of Hippocrates.
Anthemis tinctoria L., a discutient and vulnerary, seems to have been the buphthalmon of Galen and Pliny, f the BtipJithal- niuni vulgare of mediaeval and modern apothecaries, j; the Antlieniis melinanthes of Dioscorides, the Biunastus virens f of Vergil's Culex (406), the Canioniille tiuctoriale t of France ; and it may have been the plant meant by some of those who have insisted that Galen's buphthalmon meant chamomile, though others seem to have seen in his buphthalmon the chamomile of Europe in general, Anthemis
The Name Buphthalmon
111
nobilis L. (Adams ; Dunbar ; Bodaeus, 68/ ; but A. nobilis seems used chiefly in the flowers, and internally.)
CJirysanthenmin segetiun L., the corn-marigold, is identified by Sibthorp and authors in general as included in the buphthalmon of Dioscorides*and of Nicander ;§ has less active properties ; is, like Antlieniis tiuctoida, the source of a yellow dye.
CJirysanthciniLm coronarimn L. {Pinardia coronaria Lessing), the crown daisy, with discutient flowers, is considered to be the chrysan- themum and buphthalmon of Dioscorides,* t the chrysanthes^ of Nicander, the chrysanthus of Vergil's Culex f (404) and " the bupJithalmon of the ancients " % [Foster] ; earlier than these, it was probably the buphthalmon of Diodes about 270 B. C, the chrysios anthemos oi Sappho, || 85, about 61 1 B. C, and the calche or chalcas of Alcman, 30,1[ about 650 B. C; and of Nicander, 2, 60.
Hippocrates' chief contribution to knowledge of Aster consists in what he says of polyophthalmon, above discussed, and in the light this throws upon the name hyophthalmon.
* II. Aristotle.
Aristotle, born 384 B.C., does not give descriptions of plants in his works which remain ; but gives incidental references to many, 61 such plants being listed by Aubert and Wimmer as men- tioned by Aristotle in their edition of the ten books of his Th'cr- kunde {L^i^psig, 1888); which include a few composites, as spe- cies of Carthamus, but no Aster, the nearest of kin being Aristotle's xov'j^ia (book iv, 96) regarded by Fraas as Erigeron viscosuni L., by Sprengel as Erigeron graveolens L.
Throughout the great range of Aristotle's extant writings his use of aarqp seems to be almost always in the primary sense of **a star" with exceptions of the giant Aster, slain by Mineus ; and of his marine starfish d.(TTrj[> of De animalibus, v, 72, of which he writes 6 ok yjjlo'jfiivo:^ darfjp o'jzoj depfio^i ifrr: tt^v (p'jcrtv, &ad^ . . . i^acfjou/ievov.
* Sibthorp. • t Fee.
J Foster's Encyclopaedic Medical Dictionary, Appleton, 1890. ^ Billerbeck.
II " Fair girl with form beautiful as the chrysanthemum blossoms." ^ " Wearing a golden chain woven with petals of lovely chalcas."
112
Aster History ; Aristotle
Aristotle's aaTinia.^, starred," was not a plant name but de- noted respectively a species of falcon, of heron and of weasel.
Aristotle's Dc plantis, so called, is not now regarded as written by him, but by Nicolaos Damascenos,* himself a second Aristotle of three centuries later. It contains no formal description of in- dividual plants, nor any mention of asters, nor of a nearer relative perhaps than Absinthium f and Centaurea. It is devoted to the physiology of plants, undertaking interesting though then insoluble inquiries into such subjects as " Why do the leaves fall," and " Why is the leaf-green not continuous within," etc. J. C. Scaliger (1484- 1558) established the fact that it was not written by Aristotle; Sprengel, 1807, classed it with the Byzantine period ; both thought it of very inferior merit. By Meyer, j 1854, its true authorship was established, and its author elevated nearer to his due position, Meyer remarking that it is a monumental work, the only one on plant physiology in the i 500 years from Theophrastus to Albertus Magnus. Its history has been a series of the most singular vicis- situdes, surviving only for a time in its original Greek, and in Syriac translation from that, and in an Arabic translation from the latter by Isaac Ben Honain ; time has swept all three away ; but it had been translated from the Arabic back into Latin by one Alfred who was known to Roger of Hereford of about 11 70 A.D., and was probably the Norman Alfred known as de Sarchel. From this Latin retranslation it was again retranslated into Greek by one Maximus, so Hermolaus Barbarus, 1454-1493, informs us; probably by Maximus Planudes, of date 1350; and it is this Greek version which is at present known, and the imperfections in it censured by Scaliger are in fact chargeable, says Meyer, to failures on the part of its last translator.
* Nicolaos Damascenos, friend of Herod the Great, and of Augustus, to whose court he came, B.C. 5, with commendations from Herod; he was born in Damascus, was also called "of Laodicea," was greatly esteemed as historian, poet, philosopher and statesman ; Augustus gave his name to a kind of date-palm Nicolaos had brought him ; he wrote lost lives of Augustus and of Herod, a general history in 144 books, tragedies (as Sosaitis, on Susannah) comedies, from one of which a fragment of 45 lines survives, a commentary on Aristotle, and philosophical treatises of his own. See Miiller, Hist, of the Lit. of .A.nc. Gr. , 3 : 114, and Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, I : 324, also, Meyer's edition of Nicolaos Damascenes, Leipsic, 1841.
f Aristotle's tt^/k fvrojv or De p/an/is, I, 14; page 26 of edn. Didot, Paris, 1878.
X Finding in Abd-Allatif on Et^ypi, passages ascribed by him to Nicolaos which are identical with the corresponding passages in the so-called Aristotle de plantis.''^
III. Theophrastus
Theophrastus,* the ''father of botany," who succeeded Aris- totle as President of the Lyceum 322 B. C, mentions in his His- tory of Plants 438 species as identified by Sprengel. He also mentions others not identified, and it is further probable that many of his descriptions have not come down to us. Among them there may have been a description of Aster that is lost. His one reference to Aster is not the description which he might be expected to have written, but is a mere casual reference, and in the form of the diminutive asterisais, darsfjcaxo:^. Evidently aster - iscus was a plant familiar to 'Theophrastus and to the Greeks among whom he wrote, and was a type long known before, its name having now already reached the diminutive stage (see p. 11).
Theophrastus' asteriscus is mentioned (bk. IV, ch. 13, p. 487) in a chapter treating of ayoivoz {^Schoenus) rendered jiincus by Theo- dorus Gaza f and including species of Juncus, Schoejius, Scirpiis and Isolepis as more recently classed. Theophrastus begins by distinguishing three kinds of rush or ayoivoz, of which the second is characterized partly by its bearing black seeds similar to asteris- cus seeds in shape. Theophrastus calls this second kind yApntfioz, or ixzlayy-pavLGfibv^ rendered by Gaza " frugifer sive atriferum," by Bodaeus " melancranis sive atriceps"; identified by Billerbeck (Flora classica, 17) as Scirpus Holoscliocrius L., the Isolepis Holo- schoeniis R. et S., of later authors, a common plant of Greek shores : identified by Schneider and Sprengel as Schoenus 7iigri- cans L., which is also still found in southern Greece, etc. Of this nielancranis, Theophrastus, describing the seed remarks,
TO anepiidzcov . . . TrpoaefupspsQ rco tod dcFTZfnaxoD . . . rr/rr^u d/jis- vrjVOTSfjov ; in Gaza's translation " Nigrum non absimile semini herbae inguinalis, verum exilius."
* Theophrastus Eresius, De Jiistoi'ia et de caiisis plant artmi : first printed, Gaza's Latin translation, Tarvisii, 1483 : first in the original Greek by Aldus, Venice, 1504^ My references are to the Stapelian edition, Amsterdam, 1644, by Bodaeus a Stapel.
f Theodorus Gaza, 1400-1478, born in Thessalonica, and of high position there ; fled from its destruction by the Turks, I430;*was pursuing studies at Padua, 1440 ; later, at Ferrara ; was invited to Rome 145 1 by Pope Nicholas V, and remained there chiefly to his death in Calabria, 1478 ; had brought with him to Italy, MSS. of Aristotle and Theophrastus " which," says Sprengel, Geschichte, i., I: 303, "he so translated into Latin as to indicate his facility rather than true knowledge," perhaps about 1451.
114
Aster History ; Theophrastus
Two interpretations have been set up for this reference : ist, that d(TT£(JC(7xo:; means the Aster Atticus ; 2d, that it means Parie- taria officinalis L., of which polymorphous congeries P. diffusa, M. et K. is the chief representative now in Greece and Italy.
In favor of the rendering of asteriscus by Aster Atticus are the following facts :
1. Asteriscus is given among the Dioscoridean synonyms as a name used by some for Aster Atticus.
2. Most lexicographers have so received it in this passage ; Stephanus, and Liddell and Scott, incline to do so ; in support of which Stephanus and DuCange quote a mediaeval MSS. lexicon as agreeing (Codex Reg., 1843).
3. Theodorus Gaza, first translator, so understood it, translating asteriscus here by herba inguinalis, a common Latin equivalent for Aster Atticus.
4. Apuleius Platonicus, about 400 A.D., used asteriscus (with- out special reference to this passage, however) as equivalent to herba inguinalis, i. e., Aster Atticus ; fide Stephanus.
5. Actuarius,* the Constantinople physician of about 1300 A.D., identified asteriscus Vv^ith Aster Atticus.
6. Most commentators and editors retain this view ; as the elaborate commentary of Bodaeus, 1644, after reviewing the other side at some length.
The contrary interpretation, that Theophrastus' asteriscus means Parietaria officinalis L. (see supra, 80, 81) is due to the commen- tator and lexicographer, Robertus Constantinus, f who, in his Greek lexicon (Geneva, 1592), omits d(m[uaxo:: \ in his commen- tary on Theophrastus he proposes this emendation :
' A(TTSf)C(7xou, corrupte pro (Icrrepr/u'j. De Asterico herba sive perdicio vel herba urceolaris { habes apud Pliniam 22, 17."
■^Johannes Actuarius (Auctuarius of some), whose works are published in Ideler's Physici Gr. Minores ; first published in Latin translation by Ruellius, Paris, 1539, by title of " De medicamentorum compositione." See infra.
f Styled " praestans vir" by Tournefort, Institutiones, i : 5 ; his Commentary had been published 1584, Leyden, and 1644, Amsterdam, the latter by Bodaeus. He is said to have been a Frenchman or at least to have written in Paris. See infra.
t Pliny quotes these names as synonyms ; Billerbeck identifies them with Parie- taria officinalis L., the ^oniSin pe r die iu in, by Galen called " Tccpc^iKinv, because the partridge's delight," by Celsus murati-, by Ammianus parietina, by Apuleius perdi- calis, by Dioscorides and others eX^l.i>f/, " a semine aspero vestibus adhaerente," by the Germans known as Glas/zraiit, and, like the pansy, as Tag tmd Nacht.
ASTERISCUS
115
Against this emendation, it may be noted, besides the observa- tions noted above, that the best and oldest manuscripts suppoit the reading daTzn'tcryjK ', and so Wimmer in the Didot edition of Theophrastus (Paris, 1866) retains (larznidyjK,'^' stating that he fol- lows scrupulously the codex Urbinas, " much the oldest and best and fullest of the codices of Theophrastus."
Theophrastus' chief contribution to the knowledge of Aster con- sists of the use of this name asteriscits, with mention of the small seeds.
IV. NiCANDER
Nicander, Greek poet and priest of Apollo, f a native of Colophon, and therefore writing in the Ionic dialect, who flour- ished about 160 B.C., is the source of the first commonly-received citation for Aster. His numerous descriptions and references to plants do not include Asters in his longer surviving works, his Theriaca and his Alexipharmaca, which poems have a combined length of more than 1,500 lines, and have a great deal to say of the classic conyza^ but no mention of xA^ster. Nicander's actual reference to Aster is in a fragment of the second book of his Georgica, a lost poem of some length and apparently of much beauty. We owe the preservation of this and other fragments of Nicander's Georgics to Athenaeus,t that indefatigable collector of choice bits of Greek poetry. Some of these brief fragments were quoted by Athenaeus from tattered MSS. where he could not read more than he quoted.
This fragment is of some length, including 72 lines. § The Aster is mentioned in line 66, following immediately on a catalog of flowers which, as Nicander says, "you may cull for posies," flowers from amaracus to gladiolus.
* Though in his Latin translation he curiously renders aarsinaKoq by " exterioii,'^ as if a misprint for " asterion," another Dioscoridean synonym for Aster Atticus.
t Priest of Apollo Didymaeus, at Claros, Ionia ; son of Damnaeus and known as Colophonius from the neighboring city of his birth ; is thought by Meyer to have died about 133 B.C. ; mentions about 125 plants in his surviving fragments ; gave his Georgics to King Attains III., says Suidas.
X Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, XV, 683, of about 200 A. D.
§ Meyer claiming that the text is corrupt and "dim with mythologic fancies," says he will not translate it, Geschichte, I : 244, perhaps because he deemed line 72 unintelligible.
116
Aster History ; Nicander
Lines 66-67 ^^^^ * as follows :
Trac OS Tcz 'fj kXiveiov q d^crvipa (fcor't^ovra dps (/'a:: stvooiocac dscou napayA^^als arfAolz, —
We may render these lines and their context lines 66-70, as follows :
Whoe'er indeed you may be that may gather f the luminous aster,
Or pluck the helenium, place them on the roadside shrines of the gods,
Yea, even on the images wreathe them, and that when first you behold them ;
Pluck again and again these enchantments beautiful, and pluck the chrysanthemums.
And lilies, and lay them as garlands on the tombs of the weary at rest. \
The whole concluding passage, lines 66-72, was thus repro- duced in Latin by Gorraeus, translator of Nicander, in 1557 :
Quisque vero aut helenium aut astera splendentem
colligis, triviis deorum adjice aediculis
aut ipsis simulacris, quum primum conspexeris ;
saepe pulcra placamenta carpens, ut chrysanthemum,
et lilia, quae in cippis marcescant defunctorum,
et gerontopogonem, et tortiles cyclamines,
et sauram, quae inferi corona dicitur Agesilai.
Against the commonly received reference of the daTspa ^lojriC^ovra of the above passage to the Aster Amellus of Linnaeus, some might raise two objections :
I. That a more conspicuous flower than Aster Amellus should be expected, as an offering to the gods. But this objection when examined, resolves itself instead into an affirmative argument, for Virgil distinctly reiterates the use of Aster Amellus for wreathing into g-arlands about the altars, saying of it in his 4th Georgic,
* Didot edition of Greek Bucclic Poets, Fragments, 157-163 (Paris, 1851).
t Plucking flowers for pleasure is a strong feature of Greek poetry, from the classic myth of Proserpine gathering flowers in the meadows of Enna and from Sappho's "maiden full-tender plucking flowers," livSe afiepyovaav TcauV ayav ajraAdv, to the modern Greek song that bids Charos wait that the little children he is carrying down to death may roam among the flowers again before they die : " Good Charos, halt in the village, or halt by some cool fountain, so that the little children may go and gather flowers."
The love of flowers is still very strong among the Greeks ; one of their modern myrologies or songs of lamentation for the dead begins
" Round all the world God planted pinks and pomegranate flowers ;" and folk songs in the Epidorpion of Lebekos' collection speak of flower after flower as filling the air, with rose and basil, aav tuv (ifjapado, etc (Rodd, Customs and Folk- lore of Modern Greece, 212, 285, etc.)
'\,nT//'Aai.aiv ... Ka/i6vTUi> ; literally, on the memorial columns of those who have wearied into rest.
Aster termed Glowing
IIT
Saepe deum nexis ornatae tonjuibus arae.
Indeed it may be claimed that Vergil wrote that Hne with this very Georgic of Nicander in mind. And Pausanias, the Greek traveller, is claimed to have meant the aster when he narrates how the plant called asterion at Mycenae (see infra) was offered to Hera, and wreathed into garlands about her altars.
2. Some may object, however, that (pcori^ovza, luminous, is an unnatural epithet to use for any aster, and Nicander must have meant some more brilliant flower. This objection is met by these considerations :
[a) (fcoTc^ovza, splcndens, is here used not in scientific description but by a poet. The thought of shining which was instantly called up in the Greek mind by the word for a star, was likely still to cling to the word when transferred to a flower, even though the reason for the transfer was a resemblance of shape and not par- ticularly of brilliancy. The brightness which the poet really meant by his (pMZL^ouTa was probably no more than is indicated by our word glozuing, always a current poet's epithet, and which does not necessarily imply actual gleam or phosphorescence any more when used of a glowing flower than when used of a glowing cheek.
(p) Nicander was not alone in calling Aster Amellus a glowing flower, for Vergil does so too when using of its flowers the verb siiblucet. Nor did Vergil intend to suggest any very great degree of brilliancy, such as might be possible with a yellow flower : for Vergil's phrase is :
Violae sublucet purpura nigrae, or, "the aster glows with the purple of the dark violet."
The Hortulus ascribed to Vergil also makes use of the verb nitescunt'm speaking of two-colored flowers, presumably of the Aster Atticus ; see infra, p. 132.
(c) Instead of indicating that his Aster was not the same as that which the Greeks later called aster and which is identified as Aster Amelliis L., Nicander's phrase darsixicpco zcCouza, misun- derstood and stretched into meaning phosphorescent, may ha\'e been one of the very causes for the subsequent fable about Aster Amellns as a flower which shines in the dark ; a fable believed among Greeks and Romans for six hundred years, from Crate vas to the pseud-Apuleius, and sagely set down to the credit of this
118
Aster History; Nicander
flower under the names Aster Atticiis and asterion ; a fable which was also the very first bit of so-called information about the Aster to survive the Middle Ages and be set down in that mass of in- dustrious credulity, the Ortus Sanitatis, perhaps 1400 A. D.,or later.
No other among the many brief fragments of Nicander seems to apply to the aster, unles it was present to the poet's mind as one of the flowers in this last known fragment.
" With Bacchic wreaths of flowers .they crowned their heads,"— Coronis Bacchicis floridis capita ornarunt ; quoted by Athenaeus from Nicander's poem In Unguis.'^
Nicander has also a reference to asterion as glowing and shin- ing in splendor ;t but his asterion unlike that of other classics, is a kind of lizard ; so called from its star-like spots, as an early scholiast j on Nicander remarks.
Other Greek bucolic poets leave no surviving mention of the aster so far as I find, though they praise its relatives, the chrys- anthemum, § buphthalmon,|| senecio,Tf etc.
Nicander'' s chief contribntion to literattcre of Aster consists of his reference to the flower as glowing, as commonly plucked by flower-lovers, and as a flower fit to decorate shrines and tombs.
V. Cratevas.
Cratevas, the next Greek writer to speak of the Aster, may have written about 100 B. C., his date** being inferred from his dedica-
* Nicander, Didot edn., 163. f " At vero asterion dorsi fulgore coruscuiii, Virgatis splendet maculis, alboque relucet," Nicander's Theriaca, lines 725, 726, as translated by Gorraeus, 53, Paris, 1557. X See Gorraeus' Nicander, 98.
^ Marcellus Sidetes ; also Anonymi Carmen de herbis, etc.
II Praised by the unknown author of Anonymi Carmen de herbis; see infra.
^Praised by Damocrates, Didot's Bucolici, 129.
I have suggested for Cratevas the date 100 B. C, a comparatively early date in Mithridates' reign, to bring him nearer in period to Andreas of 217 B, C, the other botanical writer with whom Dioscorides couples Cratevas (Diosc, introduction) and whose plant- names Dioscorides compares occasionally with those of Cratevas (bk. 4, 35) c. 75; and see c. 33). Andreas, of whom little is known, was called Cary- slius, it would seem from nativity Carystus in Euboea like Diodes (p. 108) ; was a disciple of Herophilus ; was author, says a scholiast on Nicander, of a work concerning
Cratevas' Mithridation
119
tion of his plant Mithridation to Mithridates the Great, king of Pontus from 120 to 63 B. C, to whom Cratevas is said to have been court-physician. Mithridates discovered the plant and had himself used it medically as a poison -antidote, and Cratevas had bestowed on it in his Rhizotomica its discoverer's name — so we learn from Pliny.*
powers of medicines called I^np6?/Ka ; was reviled by the grammarian Eratosthenes as a plagiarist and styled Bibliagisthos, Book-despoiler or Cuckoo-among-books ; and was probably that Andreas who was court-physician to Ptolemy Philopator. This Andreas was slain in his king's tent, 217 B. C, by Theodotus the Aetolian, in the battle of Rha- phia, during the war between Ptolemy Philopator and Antiochus the Great. Some other references to an Andreas have reached us but cannot be attributed to the Carystian with so much probability as the preceding ones cited. This Andreas is said to have been the first writer on hydrophobia (Riley's Pliny, 4 : 302, n.) and becomes therefore of special interest to the student of Asters, as his lost work is likely to have been a source from which Cratevas obtained his curious idea of using Aster Atticus as a hydrophobia-remedy (see p. 45, and p. 120 ). Andreas is the source of the name Cii^sium, and of its use for varicose veins (Diosc. iv., 1 19).
*Pliny's Nat. Hist., bk. 25, c. 6, section 26 ; " Ipsi Mithridati Cratevas adscripsit unam, Mithridation vocatam. Huic folia duo a radice acantho similia. Caulis inter utraque sustinet roseum florera.'' Sprengel, Hoefer, and Meyer understand from above adscripsit that Cratevas named the plant for Mithridates ; Riley that Cratevas ascribed the discovery of the plant to Mithridates. Probably both inferences are cor- rect. Pliny's statement -taken together with other remarks by him, shows that the plant was Mithridates' discovery, if not by original right, at least by his adoption as his own of the discoveries and medical usages of various regions and peoples, as was that great king's custom (Pliny, 25, sec. 3) ; and it was named Mithridation by Cratevas in his Rhizotomica, though that may have been merely applying to it in his written and formal volume a name already in use for it on the lips of physicians of that time. What the plant actually was. Fee and Riley deemed indeterminable ; Commerson and Schrei- ber made it the Doistenia tanibourissa of Sonnerat ; Cesalpino identified it with speci- mens of Erythronium dens-canis L. (found by Anguillara, Semplici, 174, "in agro Forojuliensi," not far from Venice) which Pliny's brief description strongly suggests except that it would be doubtful in what sense the leaves were compared to acanthus.
Another of Mithridates' plants, the scordotis or sco*dion of Pliny, the (iKopchov or OKopoc^ov of Dioscorides, deemed to be the labiate Teucrium Scordium L. ( Billerbeck, 147), also came to bear Mithridates' name, the Dioscoridean synonyms citing Mithri- dation as a name for it. Pliny says of it (bk. 25, sec. 27) that a description of this plant in King Mithridates' own hand was found by Lenaeus. It was evidently one of the pi ant- memoranda found in the cabinet of the captured king Mithridates which were translated by Lenaeus into Latin "at command," says Pliny (bk. 25, sec. 3), "of Pompey and to the benefit of mankind."
Of the other numerous pei'sonal plant-names used by Dioscorides and Pliny, the source or original author is unknown or mythical ; as Eupatorium, Gentiana, Polemo- mum, Philaeteria, Lysimachia, in honor of kings ; Heracleum, Persephonia, Circaea (for Mandragora), Apollinaris (for Ilyoscyamus), Palladium (for Leontopodium), Asclepias, Chironia, Dionysias, Melampodium, Achillea, Helenium, etc., for mythic characters.
120
Aster History ; Cratevas
This is a very early instance of the custom since prevalent among botanists, of honoring the discoverer of a plant by conferring his name upon it, and is I think the first instance where the botanical writer conferring such a personal plant-name is himself definitely known.
Cratevas' lost work on plants called the Rhizotomica survives to us only by quotations ; the citation of present interest is intro- duced into Dioscorides' chapter on Aster Atticus, and is as fol- lows :
Kal KpareuaQ b fJc^ozo/JM:; tarof/sc' o.'jtYj ^ho^oa xoTrelaa fj.s-a o^uyycol) -alacou^ rrocsl npoQ AuaaodrjxroDz y^o} [•ipoy^oxfjArxouz' uno- d'Jfj.conivYi ok (fuyadeusc d'/^fna.
" Caeterum Crateuas herbarius banc refert, si viridis cum axungia verere tundatur, contra rabiosorum morsus gutturisque ramices prodesse, ac suffitu quoque serpentes fugare (Saracenus' transla- tion*) i e.,
Furthermore, Cratevas the rhizotomist states this : ' the green plant of Aster Atticus bruised and mixed with old axle-grease, is a remedy for the mad-dog's bite and for throat tumors or goitre ; and if burned, its fumes put serpents to flight.' "
This quotation from Cratevas was probably introduced into Dioscorides' text by a later sch6liast, according to Saracenus and other commentators, who have excluded it from the text as un- worthy of Dioscorides' excellent judgment. That argument alone is not, how^ever, a sufficient reason ; for Dioscorides' attitude toward Cratevas seems to me to have been this ; he held him in esteem as did Pliny, Galen and others who quoted from him ; he speaks in his preface of Crataevas' plants as delineated with very keen discrimination (dxf)ci3e(TTipco^) ; but this esteem was qualified by some limitations ; and the more credulous statements of Cratevas, Dioscorides would still cite occasionally, if they were needed to complete his plan of presenting a fair resume of the chief points of current medical opinion ; Dioscorides freeing himself from re- sponsibility for them by making a general protest against their credibility, but then continuing to cite them by such phrases as It is said," etc. For example,' in Diosc, bk. 3, c. 130 (de Phyllon), Dioscorides quotes Cratevas as mentioning a current
Dioscorides, A, 118.
Cratevas' Fragments
121
belief in the possession by that plant of a power (which man has sought in all ages) to control the sex of offspring. Dioscorides expressly adds " Cratevas narrates this ; but to me such things seem to pertain to folk-lore," * and then in succeeding chapters Dc Orcliidc^ De Scrapiade, etc., Dioscorides continues to cite the same imagined efficacy without taking pains anew to exculpate himself from personal endorsement of its value. Such was his practice ; one general disclaimer sufficed.
Comment on Cratevas' medical uses for the Aster is given, supra, pp. 45, 50. Credulous indeed Cratevas doubtless was, like the world in which he lived ; but we deeply regret the loss of his writings, steeped in credulity though they were, for the fragments that remain are little windows through which we peep into the hidden undercurrent of plant-lore which swept on through that ancient world — in the days when even common plants were in- vested with marvel, before a later superficial wisdom had pro- nounced them weeds and ignored them as of no account.
Dioscorides and Pliny quoted independently from Cratevas ; other quotations occur in Galen, and in the scholiasts to Dioscori- des, Nicander and Theocritus.! In 1561 Anguillara in his Scinplici made quotations * from a Greek MS. containing frag- ments of Cratevas ; what this MS. was is not known ; and An- guillara's Semplici is itself very rare ; it contains 37 quotations from Cratev^as ; but Wellmann,J the latest writer on Cratevas, thinks they add little to the quotations already familar in Dios- corides. We hear also of an unedited fragment of Cratevas, of four quarto pages only, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, of which Tournefort wrote as far back as 1700, that only those could judge of Cratevas to whom it was permitted \.6 inspect this, and on which Meyer said in 1854 that we must suspend judgment till it is studied by some one who is both philologist and botanist. Hoefer in 1856 also mentions a " Lexique Botanique"§ of Cra-
*Diosc, 3, 30, " Haec memoriae prodidit Cratevas; mihi autem videtur talia ad traditionem prosequi."
"[•Quotations are enumerated, Meyer's Geschichte der Botanik, I : 252-254.
j Wellmann, Maximilian; "Krateuas," in Kon. Gesellsch. d. Wissensch. Got- tingen, — Abhandlung. philol. hist. Klasse, N. F., 2.^ Berlin, 1897 ; pp 32.
\Y. Hoefer, article "Cratevas" in Biographie Generale (Didot, Paris, 1856), be- ing an advance extract from his " Histoire de la l^otanique " then unedited.
122
Aster History ; Cratevas
tevas (which he had found "in the midst of some alchemic Greek MSS." in the Paris Library) "which seems," he says, "to have escaped the attention of the erudite."
More was lost than mere plant-lore, however, in losing Cra- tevas ; for he was flower-painter as well as writer, and the botanist has probably lost in his picture of Aster the first one of which the past will unveil the name of the painter. There were three rhi- zotomists, says Pliny,* or herbalists, or lovers of plants for their own sake — however we may paraphrase it — and they were Cra- tevas, Dionysius f and Metrodorus. J Their habit was to paint a figure of each plant they considered in their writings, adding a description of the properties which the plant possessed. Since Cratevas wrote of ^the Aster the inference follows that he also painted it. Pliny indicates that the method of these Greek plant- illustrators was to paint the original figure, expectmg this original to be continuously copied by scribes at the same time with the description ; each copy should become a hand-illuminated manu- script with figures and text ; but Pliny states that the figures were apt to degenerate in the process, from unskillful copyists. Galen, apparently annoyed at the lack of a plant diagnosis for each species, complains § that the descriptions of plants which he found in Cra- tevas could not be understood without the figures ("sine aspectu"). It may well be that many copies of Cratevas' figures were still pre- served, however, and were still being repeated ; some of which
* Pliny, Nat. Hist., 25, 4.
f Dionysius — one of over a hundred Greeks of this name enumerated by Fabricius — was probably Dionysius Itykaos ( ?. ^. , of Utica, and also called Dionysius Uticensis), author of a lost Rhizotomica (mentioned by a scholiast on Nicander's Theriaca, 520), and who was probably the same as the Cassius Dionysius Uticensis, a writer of Georgics. One indication of his date is Pliny's order of reference, which may show that he continued the plant-paintings of Cratevas and was later in time ; or that he was possibly coeval but of minor importance. Pliny, 8, 84, and 10, 98, is supposed to refer to the same Dionysius as "the translator of Mago," the Carthaginian (the Father of Agriculture, says Columella ) from the Punic into Greek, in 28 books condensed by Dionysius into 20, and dedicated to the Roman praetor Sextilius, furnishing Riley with a date for Dionysius of 40 B.C. Pliny also used a Greek epitome of Dionysius, made by Diophanes of Bithynia (as Pliny states, 8, 84 and 10, 98) and dedicated to King Deiotarus of Galatia (who died shortly after B.C. 42).
J Metrodorus was probably, says Haller, that Metrodorus, who was a disciple of the Bithynian physician Asclepiades (who came to Rome B.C. 89 and founded an im- portant school of medicine). Wellmann dates Metrodorus " in the reign of Augustus."
\ Galen, de Antidot.
Cratevas' Plant-figures
123
may have formed originals for the figures still found in early manu- scripts of Dioscorides. — Since writing this last sentence I find that Wellmann in his remarks on Cratevas in 1897 had anticipated me in my suggestion that the figures in MSS. of Dioscorides may be due ultimately to Cratevas and may retain some traces of the figures which he and his fellow plant -painters supplied. For Well- mann, after reviewing the early codices of Dioscorides which pos- sess colored figures, remarks (pp. 29, 30) that the foundation for the illustrations in the MSS. of Dioscorides " lies in something before Dioscorides, in an illustrated herbarium [ein ilhistriertes hei'bariuDi) composed in the manner and in the age of Cratevas, Dionysius and Metrodorus."
Cratevas' chief contribiLtion to the knowledge of Aster consists of his painting, lost but perhaps surviving in traces in MSS. of Dioscorides ; and in his folk-lore as to the properties of the plant.
VI. Vergil.
For the next reference to the Aster we turn to the Romans, and we find it in Vergil. Cato (234-149 B. C.) and Varro (117- 26 B. C.) mentioned respectively 125* and 107* plants, but among them few Compositae — except Absinthium. Vergil (70— 19 B. C), though a poet, mentioned 164 * plants — a greater num- ber than those of the professed writers on agriculture. Meyer f remarks the fact that Cato gives descriptions of a few plants, Varro not of a single one ; but Vergil of at least one, and that one our Aster Amellus.
Vergil knew this flower by the name Amellus, % and located it among the banks of the river Mella, from which river Servius says it received its name.
The Amellus was evidently a favorite flower with Vergil ; it was the only flower singled out in the Georgics for detailed de- scription ; Vergil's description is very accurate, as Keightley ob- serves ;§ and Fee remarks |I that it is written avec line sorte
* Meyer's figures.
t Geschichte, i : 374.
X See p. 23 for the identification of this Amellus with the Aster Atticus of Dios- corides ; early made, 1544. probably, by Matthioli. ]>odaeus, 1644, says, " Aster Atti- cus, ut dixi, Amellus est."
*Thos. Keightley, Flora Virgiliana, 377, in his edition of Vergil, 1847.
t Fee, Flore de Virgile in OEuvres de Virgile, par M. Charpentier, Paris, 1835 ; — Vol. 4-
124
Aster History; Vergil
de predilection," so much so that the plant was sometimes called Vergil's flower. It grew near his Mantuan home, but not south- ward, except in the mountains. When robbed of his paternal es- tate and sojourning in Rome or Naples, the poet no longer saw his home flower about him. The flower seems to have become entwined in his affection with the memory of that twice lost patri- mony which had been Vergil's devotion, where he had spent his boyhood among his father's bees, gathering Amellus flowers along the rocks of the river ; a patrimony from which he was an exile now in this year 30 B. C, when completing at Naples * this fourth book of the Georgics.
Vergil's description of Amclhis. — Vergil's subject in this fourth Georgic, both before and after the reference to Amellus, is that of bees — a subject associated again with Amellus at a later time in the writings of Columella ; an association between Amellus and the bees which may have been greatly strengthened in the Roman mind by the identity of the middle syllable of the plant name with the Latin word for honey. In his genial discursive way Vergil has been re- ferring to the hardships of bees in winter and severe weather, a sub- ject of which Vergil's youth had brought him practical experience, his father deriving no small profit from the apiary on his farm. Next he alludes to methods of aiding the bees when languishing from disease. Then, says he, " burn odorous galbanum, and put honey in their troughs through pipes of reed, mixing it with the flavor of powdered gallnuts and dried roses, or must boiled down over a slow fire, or raisins from the Psithian vine, or Cecropian thyme or strong-smelling rosemary." Then follows the classic passage recommending boiled amellus roots and wine as a nourishing food for bees when ailing, the ninth of his remedies for languishing bees, as Wedel observes ; a passage so often quoted that Sprengel calls it " tritissimus," but its beauty has borne quotation well, and we cite it here entire, first translating :
* M. Tenore is quoted by Fee in his Flore de Virgile as having recently ( 1835 ) looked in vain for As er Amellus near Naples ; just as Vergil perhaps did when at Naples, over 1800 years before. The smaller flowered Aster acris L. ( Galatella punctaia angustifolia DC. ) which abounds in wet lands about Naples, was far from satisfying either poet or botanist. Habitats cited by Nyman 'for Aster Amellus ; Switzerland, Austria, (Germany, France, Northern Italy, Dalmatia, Croatia, Hungary, Transylvania, southern and middle Russia ; besides Attica and Luxembourg ; and Asia. Ray, Historia PlantaruDi, i : 268 (1686), cited Sicily also as a habitat for Aster Amellus.
Description of Amellus
125
" There is also a flower in the meadows, on which the name amellus is bestowed by the farmers ; a quick-found plant to the searcher ; for from its base of tangled * sod it raises up a great forest of stalks. Golden it is itself, but in the rays which are abundantly shed round it, glows the purple of the dark violet. Often the altars of the gods are festooned with its woven gar- lands. Bitter in the mouth is its taste ; in the shorn autumn val- leys shepherds gather it ; they cull it by the curves of the river o Mella. Boil its roots in odorous wine, and place it as food in full baskets in the doorways of the hives."
Est etiam flos in pratis, cui nomen amello P'ecere agricolae, facilis quaerentibus herba ; Namque imo ingentem tollit de cespite silvam, Aureus ipse ; sed in foliis f quae pluvima circum Funduntur violae sublucet purpura nigrae ; Saepe deum nexis ornatae torquibus arae ; Asper in ore sapor |. ; tonsis in vallibus ilium Pastores ; et curva legunt prope flumina Mellae.l Hujus odorato radices incoque Baccho,| Pabulaque in foribus plenis adpone canistris.
Wm. Sotheby, Esq., in his " Translation of the Georgics," London, 1815, p. 201, renders as follows :
*The root of Aster Amellus, says Martyn, Georgics, 389 (1741), "consists of a great bunch of fibres," adding that Vergil evidently meant here by cespes not turf but "radix cespitosa," " a root whose fibres are thick matted together so as to form a kind of turf." So the old Roman commentator Philargyrus had understood it, writing " Non de terra, sed de radice." Such a great tangled mass of fibres was well repre- sented in the commentary on Dioscorides by Mattliioli, as early as the figure in my Latin edition of Venice. 1560 (p. 57^); another Latin edition of the same printer, 1565 (ex libris E. L. Greene), shows a much larger figure, nearly a whole folio page, developed from the same plan as the preceding, but the tufted tangle of roots still more pronoimced, and the "forest of stalks" displaying some 15 principal stems.
■f Folia, or leaves, for rays, was a natural and probably common classical expres- sion. So Dioscorides calls the r^ys p/iyi/aria , little leaves. So Palladius, bk. 7, c. lo, describing the preparation of the oil from chamomile blossoms, says : Take an ounce of the yellow center of the flower (auream medietatem), "having thrown away the white /eaves by which the flower is encompassed," as Owen renders it.
X Praised by Bodaeus as particularly applicable to Aster Amellus or Atticus, " huic sapor est asper," Comm. on Theophrastus, p. 821-2.
^ This line is quoted by the grammarian, M. Valerius Probus, Grammaticae Listitu- tiones, i6, 8 ; an interesting fact to those who believe this Probus to be the same as the grammarian, Valerius Probus, of about A.D. 100, who possessed a copy of a part of the (ieorgics with corrections upon it in Vergil's own hand ; but whose commentary on Vergil is now little known to us except through references in Servius.
126
Aster History ; Vergil
" In fields there grows a flower of pastoral fame Amelias, so the shepherds call its name, — Sprung from one root its stalks profusely spread, A golden circle glitters on its head, But many a leaf with purple violet crowned Throws a soft shade the yellow disk around. Though rough to taste, yet wreathed round many a shrine, In rich festoons the golden blossoms shine. Along meandering Mella's grassy plain Its radiant lustre tempts the shepherd swain, Seeth in rich wine its roots and oft renewed High pile before their gates the alluring food."
Voss rendered lines 274 and 275 in his German translation,
Gold ist die Scheibe der Blum, allein auf den haufigen Blattern Ringsum glanz der dunklen Viol' anmuthiger Purpur.
Old John Gerarde * gives a quaint English version of lines 271-275, saying it is in English thus,
With little search in medowes green a flowre is to be found.
The countrie swains do clepe the same Starwoort. Out of the ground
One root doth sprout, which spredes broade with branches thicke and wide. Of colour like the finest golde in fire that hath beene tride.
The leaves which bud on every side in a round and thicke rank Have such a purple colour as darke Violets on banke."
These lines of Gerarde have the swing and the gusto of Chap- man. But within forty years taste had so changed that in John- son's remodelled edition of Gerarde's Herball (1633), the editor, Thomas Johnson, thinking mechanical metre better than vigor, substitutes the following rendering :
*' In Meades there is a floure Amello named,
By him that seekes it easie to be found. For that it seemes by many branches framed
Into a little Wood ; like gold the ground Thereof appeares, but leaves that it beset
Shine in the colour of the Violet."
That the dark violet color of Viola odorata was what Vergil actually meant here in attributing the same color to his Aster is shown by his references to " Viola nigra " t in his Eclogues, J which is also identified by Fee as Viola odorata.
"'^ Gerarde's Herball, 394. London, 1597.
f From Theorcritus' 'iov fxe/iav to the modern pansy known as " King of the Blacks," the darker violet colors have passed for black. They do so yet in Greece. X Eel. X, 39 ; V. 38.
Disputed Lines on Amellus
127
Controversies over the ineanmg of this description. — Among Eng- lish translators in verse many could not understand purple leaves as a part of a golden flower. Says Martyn, " Our translators have greatly erred — for May represents the leaves of the stalk as being purple ;
" For from one root he spreads a wood of boughs, Whose many leaves, aUhough the flower be gold, Black violets' dimme purple color hold."
"Addison has very much deviated from the sense of his author :
'A mighty spring works in its root, and cleaves The mighty stalk, and shews itself in leaves : The flow'r itself is of a golden hue. The leaves inclining to a darker blue. The leaves shoot thick about the flow'r, and grow Into a bush, and shade the turf below.
Dryden took the folia quae plurinia circuni fiinduntur to be the branches of the plant :
' For from one root the rising stem bestows A wood of leaves, and vi Uet purple boughs : The flow'r itself is glorious to behold, And shines on altars like refulgent gold.
Dr. Trapp supposes the stem to be golden, and the leaves purple :
' For from one turf a mighty grove it bears ; Its stem of golden hue, but in its leaves. Which copious round it sprout, the purple teint Of deep-dy'd violets more glossy shines."
Another feature in Vergil's description which has been variously understood is his epithet for what I have called " the shorn autumn valleys." I take it that the poet meant by tonsis, shorn, to suggest time of year as well as place ; that he meant to imply that the flower bloomed in the late summer and fall, when in the valley-lands where it grew the meadow-grounds were now mown and the pasture-lands had been shaven close by the flocks ; so that it was now in shorn valleys, " in valleys where cattle have grazed " as Martyn suggests, that the shepherds would gather it, picking it from rock-borders and ledges where it grew near the river. Not that it grew exactly in the mown part nor sprung up after mowing ; struggling with which ideas trouble came to some
128
Aster History; Vergil
commentators, some of whom with Servius* interpret tonsis as simply unwooded, clear and open, which is less natural. La Cerda, Ruaeus, and Trapp interpret tonsis as mown, which is better, but has less general and less poetic value than sJioini.,
One suspected line. — One line and one only in the cited passage about Amellus, has been doubted by some commentators. This is the line Saepe lieuni . . . araey It is retained by Burmann, though he thinks the metre a little limping, and inserts hinc after denni. The line is retained also by Wagner, though he thinks it crept into the text from the margin but from Vergil's own hand. The challenger of its authenticity is Weichert,t who notes "its needlessness, its languor, and the change of tense, and doubts if the word torques could be properly used of garlands of flowers." Jahn and Forbiger agree with Weichert ; Keightley and Ribbeck incline to him also, the latter adding the argument that the commen- tators Servius and Philargyrus do not notice the line. But there are many undoubted lines which Servius and the fragments of Philargyrus do not notice.
I should also defend the line for several other reasons. It is not needless, but adds an important touch of dignity to Vergil's flower. It is not excessively languorous, but has the movement characteristic of mild reminiscence so frequent in Vergil. Its use of torques^ a collar, as an encircling band of flowers, is not in the least unnatural to a poet, and is scarce more rem.ote from the original sense than Vergil's use for it again in the Georgics for an ox-yoke, or Pliny's for a band of color around a bird's neck. Furthermore the verse is found in all the MSS. of the Georgics, including the esteemed Codex Vaticanus, and the Palatine and the Mediceus, all of which date back to the fourth or fifth century. It should require much stronger reasons for rejection of lines on which all these MSS. agree.
Whether the line was written by Vergil or an ancient Roman interpolator, it shows that to the mind of the Latin writers, as to the Greek Nicander, the aster was a flower fit to decorate the altars and was actually so used.
* Servius interprets tonsis as no?i si/nosis, and e\plains that the poet used it in con- trast with wooded mountains which he had called intonsi, or shaggy. But to make the argument from supposed contrast valid the two usages should have been in juxta- position.
\ " De vers, injur, suspect.," p. 63 as quoted in Keightley's Vergil, p. 311.
Usage of Amellus
129
Use of the Name Amellus. — The entire appearance of the name Amellus in literature seems due to its single occurrence in Vergil. Columella, the other Latin author who mentions the plant, may have obtained his knowledge of it only from this source ; and so, of course, may Servius and the other Latin commentators. The word occurs also, in quoting the line, in Julius Rufinianus, and in Aru- sianus, about 450 A.D. Of its Italian form amello, mention has been already made, p. 6r. It has appeared in four principal ways, also in modern botany ; Linnaeus adopting it as the species-name. Aster Amelhts^ 17535 "^^^ bestowing it also as a generic name on a race of Cape of Good Hope plants close to the true Asters, but with a chaffy receptacle. Adanson substituted Amellus for Aster as a generic name in its entirety ; except that he separated Aster Tripolmm L., and retained the name Aster for that ; a mesalliance by which he attached the name Aster to that particular species which the ancients did not consider to be an Aster, and struck it off from the one plant for which they did use the name. Colonna had preceded him in using Amellus as a genus-name for Aster, I 592-1616, calling our Aster Amellus by the name Amellus pra- tensis, and referring to Tripolium as Amellus palustris. Calzolaris in his account of the plants of Monte Baldo, near Verona (Venice, I 566), in calling our Aster Amellus by the name Amellus Virgilii, may or may not have intended the phrase as a binomial in place of Aster.
Variants for Amellus are Amelia, its current Italian form ; Amillo, in the Palatine codex of the Georgics ; Amelia, in Servius' commentary. Wedel in 1686 claimed that we do not know the gender of Vergil's noun, and that the nominative was more probably Amellum, Vergil mentioning it only in the dative, A7nello.
A Folk-name. — Amellus seems to have been only in pastoral use ; not at Rome, where it did not grow ; not in literary or nat- uralist's Latin, which used the word Aster ; not in the Latin of the Roman physicians, which used the terms herba inguinalis and in- guinaria. If Vergil's " cui nomen amello fecere agricolae " is to be taken literally, the word was the colloquial name in Cisalpine Gaul ; and so Martyn and Wedel considered it, Martyn remarking the poet tells us Amellus is a rustick name."
130
Aster Htstory ; Vergil
Source. — Vergil's special mention of its growth "along the curving river Mella " * seems to hint at a belief on his part that the two names were of common origin. Where the names vary, as in the ancient and much -esteemed Palatine codex, they vary together, substituting / for c of both names, making them Ainilliis and Milla.. But they may really have had nothing to do with each other until their similar sound caught the fancy of the poet- If the river was named from the plant, it would imply great famil- iarity and wide usage on the part of the plant name, neither of which seem to have been true ; the many American names which have originated so, as the Greenbrier river. Hemlock and Alder creeks, Laurel run, etc., are derived from conspicuous plants with familiar, not unusual, names. If the plant was named from the river it may be difficult to parallel the case in modern usage. The ancients thought they had such an example in the plant Asterion which Pausanias remarks is called by the name of the river on the banks of which it grows ; but probably there was no original con- nection between the two words. Servius,t however, the great commentator on Vergil, claimed that the name Amellus, or Amelia as he terms it, was derived from the river, remarking :
" Mella fluvius Galliae et juxta quem herba haec plurima nascitur : unde et amella dicitur, sicut populi habitantes juxta Lemannum lacum Alemani dicuntur."
Was tJic river-nmnc Mella a Celtic survival ? — The name of this river Mella in Lombardy, and the several other rivers of the same name, the two Samnite cities Melae and Meles (Livy) and the two ancient towns in Hispania Baetica named Mellaria, and the ancient Gaulish city Melodujium, now Melun on the Seine, all suggest a common orioin, and seem scattered survivors from an earlier oc- cupation than the Roman. Taylor j interprets Melodunum as
■^This river Mella (variants were Mela and Milla) still retains its ancient name, being known as Mella or Mela. The Mella rises in the Alps, and falls into the Oglio (the ancient Ollius) just before that river reaches the Po. Catullus, Ixvii, 33, refers to the Mella as flowing through the city of Brixia (modern Brescia) ; it is at present one and one-half miles from it.
f Servius Maurus Honoratus, who flourished perhaps 390 A. D. The elaborate commentary which passes under his name has many later but undistinguishable accre- tions, as is indicated by the variants of its MSS. The comment quoted above may, therefore, be not of vServius' own, but may be some' scribe's introduction.
:{: Rev. Isaac Taylor, "Names and their Histories," 1896, and his "Words and their Places," 222 (1865), following a suggestion from Gliick, Kelt. Nam. 139.
Derivation of Amellus
131
from the Celtic roots mod = rounded hill and d^/n = fort ; like Meldon and perhaps Maldon in Great Britain, Perhaps all the other cities are from j/we/ also, and were hill-towns. The Amelia was a river from the hills ; but its name may have had a more special- ized origin ; it may have been the name of some neighboring rounded hill, and may have been fortuitously shifted to the river near ; a kind of transfer very common when people become heirs to the local names of an earlier race ; as the Gcncscc, = beautiful valley, applied by the Indians to a flood-plain, by the whites to the river beside it.
Was the Plant-name Amellus also a Survival from an Earlier Race ? — The plant Camomile in its Greek form is commonly inter- preted as meaning ground-apple, and as due to the apple-like smell of the flowers. I have long wondered if that is not a later sophis- tication, and if -///^/ov in this word, -milla in its Latin equivalent, did not really represent some earlier generalized name for a small bushy plant. If so Amellus may have been the same word with- out modifying prefix. Recently I find that over four hundred years ago, Hermolaus Barbarus, first great Italian commentator on the natural history of the ancients, had anticipated me in expressing, in part, the same idea, suggesting that the names Amellus and Caniomilla are of the same source, and as he would surmise, per- haps of the same plant. While not agreeing with him in the last particular, there seems good ground for following up the first sug- gestion, even though it received the scorn of Wedel, who called it Peculiaris opinio." There are also two other occurrences of the name mella that need explanation ; Sibthorp found it used in Arcadia for the mistletoe ; and as far back as about 600 A.D. Isidore of Seville, first Gothic writer on plants, mentions Mella as a name for the Lotus or Aegyptian bean, and Malomellus for some plant unknown.
Was the Plant-name Amellus Derivedfrom Mel, Honey ? — Am- ellus, a flower visited by bees," says Fee. Vergil and Columella both speak of the flower as an important source of food to bees. Did Amellus mean to Vergil the honey-flower, strangely connect- ing with the call of /is/i, honey, cried in the streets of Athens to-day by honey venders from Hymettus ?
That this was the origin of the name was evidently the belief
132
Aster History; Vergil
of that ancient scholiast who wrote the gloss on a margin of Vergil, identifying Amellus with MclissopJiyllon. But that plant, the honey-balm, honey-leaf literally, in its form fizAiifj/Jo'^, had, as Bodaeus observes, no proper color or form to agree with the amellus of Vergil. Yet Salmasius, the learned commentator of the seventeenth century, subscribed * to this identification.
That Amellus was connected with wc7, honey, though in a dif- ferent way, was also the belief of Wedel, who argued its identity with his Melilotus lutetis, the McliloUis officinalis Willd., though a more violent contrast to Vergil's description could hardly be found.
Personally I am inclined to think the resemblance of the word Amellus to incl is purely accidental.
Singularly enough, when Miiller, watching A. Amellus L., to see what insects visited it, at Haarhausen in Thuringia, on Sept. 13, 1871, found it thronged with numerous apparent bees — they proved on close examination to be the dipterous insect Eris- falis arbustoruin L., the well-known bee-mimicking fly which in shape, size and color is with difficulty distinguished from the honey- bee even when at rest. Did all the Roman reputation of the flower as one of the wild plants loved by bees, rest on observation of similar visits of Eristalis, mistaken for an actual bee ? But Vergil's father was a practical bee-keeper, and made a good income from his honey, and it was not made from Eristalis. No doubt a longer scrutiny of the flowers now would have shown the honey- bee an actual visitor, as it is so to American Asters, and to their European kindred Anthemis tinctoria, Conyza squarrosa, etc.
A secomi Vergiliaii reference to Aster has been claimed as follows : Among the " Minora " or shorter poems attributed to Vergil, occurs a little poem under the title, as printed by Koberger, of " P. V. Maronis hortulus," f in which among the flowers of the garden some are mentioned as " two-colored," and which may have been the violet and yellow blossoms of his favorite, the Aster Amellus. The poet, Vergil or mediaeval follower, writes,
Flores nitescunt discolore gramine Pinguntque terras gemineis honoribus, Apes susurro raurmurant gratae leni. Cum summa florum vel novos rores legunt.
* Salmasius, Plinian. Exercit. in Solin. 102.
I Vergil, edn. Koberger, Nuremberg, 1492; fol. 318.
Aemilius Macer, Friend of Vergil
133
We may render :
Flowers shine there with two-colored sprays
And paint the turfs with twin graces ;
Bees murmur pleasingly their light susurrus,
Culling from the topmost blossoms or the latest dewdrop.
Aemilius Maccr Veronensis.
The preceding lines are just such as we might suppose might have been written about Vergil's garden by his friend the poet Aemilius Macer/'' of Verona, perhaps the most distinctively ^ poet of plants that Latinity produced, but whose works are lost to us. He was from Verona, near which the Aster Amellus still grows. We may suppose that it was familiar to him, as well as the other flowers of that northern part of Italy. Because he, as Ovid t tells us (writing " Quacqite necet serpens, quae jiivat herba, Macer'), wrote of the plants which were potent against serpents, it is not unlikely that he may, like Cratevas, have mentioned the belief that the Aster's fumes would put serpents to flight. But only slight fragments j of Macer remain, and what the friend of Vergil and Tibullus had to say of the Aster we are likely never to know.
Vergil's contribution to the knowledge of Aster ^ consisting of his ten lines on Amellus, is the principal ancient description outside of medicine.
VII. Celsus.
Cornelius Celsus, who wrote his eight books De Medicinal perhaps about 40' A. D., seems not to have used aster or aniellns as a plant-name, but makes mention of the use of something which he calls Asteriace, the sole occurrence || of the word so far as ap-
* Author of an Ornithogonia, a poem on birds, perhaps his chief original work ; of a Theriaca and an Alexipharmaca, probably modelled on those of Nicander (per- haps mere translations, surmises Meyer) ; died in Asia, 15 B. C.
I Ovid, Trist, iv, eclog. 10, v. 44.
X There is a line about Ocymum " Inter praeteritas numerabitur ocymos herbas." A few other lines are wrongly attributed to him ; as six lines on Allitnn ascribed to "Aemilius Macer, lib. 1, cap. 5 " by Arnaldus de Villanova in his Commentary on the Regimen sanitalis Salerni, as published by Sylvius in his ScJiola Salcrnitana, 120 (2d edn., 1667); beginning Allia qui mane jejuno swnpserit ore ; etc. These lines seem to belong neither to the Roman nor to the mediaeval Macer. — Fragments of genuine lines are given, Fabricius ; Bibliotheca Graeca, 13 : 36, etc.
\ His only work which has survived entire; first printed Florence, by Nicalao, 1478 : edited by Milligen, Edinburgh, 1826: by Renzi, Naples, 1851-2; etc.
II Celsus, V. 5, 14.
134
Aster History ; Celsus
pears in Latin or in ancient or modern Greek. Meyer suggests that it was perhaps a plant. It is possible that it is merely an- other synonym for Aster, like asterion, and astcriscus, for the latter of which it may possibly be a false reading. Harper's Lat. Diet, suggests that it is the name of a medicine. Several medical preparations were later known by the name aster (see pp. 85, 88), and it is on the whole probable that this was one of that class.
Vni. Columella
Columella,* the Roman writer on agriculture, of about 51 A. D., mentions Aster by the name Amellus in his De re rnstica,]' bk. I., c. 4, sec. 4, where his subject has been the aversion of bees to the yew. He then, like Vergil, or copying from Vergil, enume- rates the Amellus as one of the native plants of Italy of which bees are particularly fond, in the following words :
" Mille praeterea semine vel crudo cespite virentia, vel subacuta sulco, flores amicissimos apibus creant, ut sunt in irriguo % solo [virgineo solo, Codex Longobardiis^ frutices § amelli, caules acan- thini, scapus asphodeli,|| gladiolus narcissi. T[ At in hortensi lira consita nitent Candida lilia, nec his sordidiora leucoia, tum punicae rosae, luteolaeque et Sarranae violae,** nec minus coelestis numinis
* L. Junius Moderatus Columella, born at Gades (Cadiz) in Spain, resided in Rome, travelled in Syria, Cilicia, etc. His surviving work, De re ■mstica, is in 12 books, the loth a poem, De ciilto hortoriiiii (Parma, 1478, etc.). Of an earlier work on the same subject, one book, De nrlntritiis remains. See p. 137.
t First printed 1470, Venice, by Xicolaus Jenson, together with Cato, etc. Edited in his " Scriptures rei rusticae," /. e., chiefly Cato, Varro, Columella and Palladius, by J. M. Gesner, 1735, etc. Edited last by Schneider, 1794-7.
.t So codices Medicei, followed by Politian, Victorias, Fritzsch and Schneider.
?l Not meant for sJiriibs in technical sense, for I find Columella using frutex of olus, kitchen vegetables ; and of the lupine. Commentators who have claimed from frutices in this passage, that Columella never saw the Amellus, can no more draw such an inference from this assumed false description than from Vergil's speaking of its clus- tered stems as " a forest of stalks."
II Pontedera, commenting on Columella, and praising his style, remarks of the phrase frutices amelli, caules a' anthiiii, scapus asphodeli, that it is " elegans ilia lo- quendi forma." Pontedera claims that Palladius imitated this passage, replacing Amellus by Citrago. See infra, under Palladius.
^The word gladiolus belongs herewith narcissus, appropriately observes Ponte- dera gladiolum ob similitudinem appellatum."
**Two kinds of violets, observes Fritzsch, the yellowish, and the Sarranian or Tyrian or purplish.
Amellus as a Source of Honey
135
hyacinthus, Corycius item Sicul usque bulbus croci deponitur, qui coloret odoretque mella "; or in English :
" Moreover, a thousand seeds, either growing green in their native turf, or in the deep-tilled trench, bring into being flowers most friendly to the bees ; as are, in their well-watered soil, the little bushes of aster, the stems of acanthus, the flower-shaft of asphodel, the little sword of narcissus. But in the prepared gar- den-beds shine white lilies, nor less than these, though more dim, the snowdrops, and then the ruddy roses, and the yellow and the purple violets ; nor less dear to the celestial powers, the hya- cinth ; likewise the bulb of the Corycian and of the Sicilian crocus Is set in the ground there, the crocus, that it may give color and may give odor to honey."
Columella, having thus mentioned Amellus at the head of his first list, the best wild sources of honey, proceeds with a second class of inferior sources, as follows :
"Now indeed there are produced of lesser note, innumerable herbs of both classes, in cultivated and in pastured lands, which make the wax of the honeycomb to abound ; as the common lap- sana,* and more valuable than that, the armoracia,t and the greens of wild rape, the wild chicory, and the flowers of black poppy ; and then, the field parsnip, and, of the same name, that all-tamed parsnip which the Greeks call StapJiylinou.
In truth, above all those which I have mentioned, and those which I have omitted, in consequence of brevity of time — for be- yond computation is their number — it is thyme which gives to honey the most excellent flavor."
Columella makes mention of Amellus also when discussing the disease of bees which he terms profliivies aiui, " caused | he says by overfeeding on titJiyinahis and iilnnis,'' in the beginning of spring, and from which they die unless it is speedily checked. The trouble may be healed, he remarks, " by supplying them medicated food. Hyginus,§ following older authors, recommends keeping the bees
* Charlock, Harper's Diet.
f Horse-radish is armoracia ; one MS. reads aremorana. j Columella, bk. xiii, c. 13, section 8.
\ C. Julius Hyginus, from Spain, a friend of Ovid, and a freednian of Augustus, who placed him in the Palatine Library; was author of many lost works, including the one on agriculture cited above, also "Commentaries on Vergil," accounts of the Penates, of the sites of the cities of Italy, etc.
136
Aster History; Columella
in a dry place through the winter, and changing to a sunny ex- posure in spring " — as quoted by Pliny.
To such languishing bees," continues Columella, "should be given grains of pomegranate bruised and stirred into Aminean wine ; * or of raisins pounded up with an equal measure of Syriac- dew t moistened with an austere wine ; or if each by itself is not efficacious, all should be used together, weighed out in equal weights, and heated | in a pottery vase with Aminean wine, but quickly cooled, and placed in wooden troughs § before the bees.
" Some offer rosemary brewed in sweetened water, etc.
" The disease is at its height at a time when some bees will bring out the bodies of the dead from their domiciles, and others walled within lie motionless in sad silence as overcome by public calamity. When the hive is found in that extremity, foods are to be offered, poured out in troughs of reed, well boiled down in honey and rubbed up with gall or dry rose. It is well also to burn galbanum, that it may heal by its odor.
" Best II of remedies, however, is the root of Amellus ; which is a yellow shrub,1f with purple flowers ; boiled with old Aminean wine, it is wrung out, and so weighed out, its juice is given them."
Hyginus indeed, in that book which he wrote concerning bees, says Aristomachus** considers that the bees should be treated in this manner ; first removal of the affected comb, then fresh food given, and fumigation."
i
* Aminean wine, that of Aminea, a region in Picenura, famed for the vine, f " Cum rore Syriaco " ; but another ancient reading is " sutorio " ; and others amend to " coriariorum ros " or " rhus." ± Et in lictili vase. ^ Ligneis canalibus.
II "Optime tamen facit Amelli radix ; cujus est frutex luteus, purpureas flos ; cum vetere Amineo vino decocta exprimitur, et italiquatus ejus succus datur."
^ Martyn (Georgics, 389) remarks of the above, " Columella, not being acquainted with this herb himself, makes it a yellow shrub with purple flowers." But friitex meant with him merely a branching plant with some stift'ness ; and very likely he wrote fm- ticis, meaning " a shrub with yellow and purple flowers." Pontedera suggests "Cum Virgilius amelli florem aureum purpureumque docet scriberem * Cuius est fruticis luteus purpureus flos,' sive abflecto frutex, 'cuius est luteus purpureusque flos.' "
** Aristomachus Solensis, who was, says Pliny, ''for 58 years so absorbed with the love of bees that he attended to nothing else but to take care of bees and write books about them."
Value of Columella
137
Columella s chief contribution * to knowledge of Aster is his as- signing it high rank as a favorite source of honey to the bees : and his setting forth the manner of its use as a remedy for them in dis- ease. Compared with Vergil, he lacks description ; he may have owed his knowledge of the plant partly to Vergil, and partly to cur- rent reputation among others fond like himself of country life ; he may never have seen it in its native state ; he adds to what Vergil
^- Of Columella little has been written for a hundred years, till just now there reaches us a dissertation presented for the doctorate by Wm. Becher, De Coluniellae vita el scriptis, Leipsic, Teubner, 1897. Becher' s principal points made are these :
The latest edition of Columella is that of Schneider, 1794-7. Men disagree greatly about Columella ; some hold him the best of writers de riistica, and elei^antissiimis poeta ; some, but a rude compiler. Columella was born of a not ignoble family at Cadiz, about the beginning of the Christian era, and knew rural life there ; in Rome he frequented schools of rhetoric and of other Greek and Roman learning ; was military tribune in Syria and Cilicia, returned to honors in Italy, and retired to rural life in his ageltum Ardentiniiin. Under Tiberius or between 20-30 iV. D., he had written his three short books on agriculture, his Praecepta rustica, addressed to Eprius Marcellus ; a work now lost in its full form but known to Pliny and from which Pliny took the ex- tracts he quotes from Columella. The second book of these Praecepla survives form- ing the book of Columella now known as " De arboridus,^^ a work of his youth, imbued with his fatherland at Cadiz. It had its influence on his contemporaries, and following Columella's example, Atticus, Celsus and (^raecinus took to writing de rustica.
Meanwhile Columella composed an astrological work, now lost, filled his mind with i-esults of Greek and Roman culture, and continued his own studies of rural life, diligently scrutinizing the writings of his contemporaries and elders, though not always possessing accurate copies, so that his quotations cannot be relied on as unimpeach- able authority for minor matters of text. Moved by the prayers of Silvinus Caeretanus, he began thirty years after his first similar work, to write out his De re rustica in ten books, between 51 and 61 A. D., sending single books to Silvinus at his agelluin Caeretamivi. Entreated by his friends he added a book of groniatica praecepta,'''' taken, says Columella, *' ex trito commentariolo,' but without naming the author. After the manner of Vergil, he wrote a book, de hortulano, on garden culture, adding an index which is now lost.
Of his contemporaries none but Pliny mentions him, and Pliny knew only his earlier work. Writers of succeeding ages who mention him are :
Eumelus, veterina> ius, perhaps 210 A. D., who has ten passages supposed to be derived from Columella.
Gargilius Martialis, 2 o A. 1)., quotes Pliny and Columella on the chestnut.
Palladius, perhaps 440 A. D., cjuotes from all of Columella's 12 books; and Columella is also mentioned by an unknown interpretator of Servius' commentary on Vergil, and by Vegetius, Pelagonius and Cassiodorus.
Cassiodorus, of about 540 A. D., a man of widest reading and great erudition, for his own part praises the elegance of Columella's work, and evidently was personally acquainted with it ; but states that had been superseded by the writings of Palladius, saying *' Palladius censured him, and the volumes of Columella passed into oblivion. Columella's volumes contain so many arguments and full complex treatises that for his
138
Aster History ; Columella
wrote, however, that the wine used be that of Aminea ; and pictures the Amellus as first of wild plants after the thyme in attractiveness to bees. His calling it a yellow shrub with purple flowers has been criticised as heedlessness, but he may actually have written " of this shrub the flowers are yellow and purple."
DiOSCORIDEAN PeRIOD IX. DiOSCORIDES
The one comparatively full description of Aster which an- tiquity has bequeathed us is that of Dioscorides Anazarbeus, of about 65 A. D.; in that age of contrasts, while Rome put forth her worst in Nero and her best in Seneca. Then, almost in a mo- ment, came the great blossoming time of natural history and medi- cine, in the works of Pliny, Dioscorides and Aretaeus, of dates perhaps about 77, 65 and 55 A. D.
Aretaeus of Cappadocia, "the most important Greek medical writer since Hippocrates" (Kuhn), wrote in Ionic about 55 A. D., his extant writings being De caitsis and De curatione inorboruni, each in four books ; a book De re pJiarniaceutis is lost, in which references to Aster Atticus should be sought. The Aster men- tioned * in his extant works, (larrup Az'jxoc:, is a white earth of great repute in ancient medicine as an astringent ; see supra, p. 83.
contemporaries and for the husbandmen for whose use they were meant they were the roughest of reading, — ad lef^endiiui aspcrnini .'' ^
Isidorus Hispatensis, about 600 A. D., calls Columella " insignis orator, cjui totum corpus disciplinae ejusdem complexus est."
Columella's manner of writing shows his love for his subject and agrees with his own remark that from boyhood he was an ardent lover of the country : " a puero rusti- cationis amantissimus." Probably it was family influence that called him to city life. When, long after, he returned to the country, he wrote anew, that he might encourage the husbandmen and recall citizens to pristine manners. Before he left Spain he had known the works of Bolus Mendesius, held Vergil's poem "in deliciis," and Cato in esteem, and had doubtless become especially indebted to M ago, the Carthaginian writer on agriculture, whom he praises particularly. Columella possessed while yet a boy a copy of Vergil's Georgics and says, "he held Vergil's poems in delight from his youth."
Ribbeck, the textual critic of Vergil, claims that Columella in cjuoting Vergil, mixed his quotations as if by inexact memory, fitting in bits of the poem into his own wiitings as they came to his mind. Becher, printing the parallel passages, does not agree with Ribbeck's implied charge of " beplastering his writings with fragments of Vergil," but thinks Columella planned to make quotations of sense with altered words, and occasionally to quote a line from a copy he had, which was however a copy with interpolations, and does not supply the authentic text.
* Aretaeus, edn. Kuhn, bk. 2, c. 2.
Date of Dioscorides
139
Dioscorides, a Cilician Greek, the most precise authority for plant descriptions previous to Bock, seems to have written a Httle later than Aretaeus, perhaps ten years, or about 65 A. D., cer- tainly before the death of Nero in 68 A. D. Some have placed Dioscorides later than Pliny, even at 100 A. D. or later. But Pliny probably meant Dioscorides when he spoke of " certain re- cent writings on medical plants " ; and he seems to have made about 200 quotations from him, though without giving his name. Hence Dioscorides should be assigned a date just older than Pliny. That the date was in Nero's reign seems evident ; for —
1. Dioscorides' five books Dc materia uiedica bear a dedica- tion to a famed physician of Nero's reign, Areus Asclepiadeus.f
2. Dioscorides Anazarbeus (unless it could be proved that the less known Dioscorides Phaca was meant) was cited by name of Dioscorides^ in Erotian's Vocabulary of Hippocrates, dedicated to Andromachus,t Nero's court-physician.
3. The Euporista, attributed to Dioscorides Anazarbeus, was also dedicated j to Andromachus,§ either by Dioscorides himself or by some one who sought reputation under his name and used his probable date.
We assume with Sprengel, Smith, etc., that the Andromachus meant was the elder and better known physician of the name, who died probably not later than 66 A. D., as he had been succeeded by his son Andromachus before Nero's death in 68. It follows that 65 A. D. is the nearest date to Pliny at which it appears probable that Dioscorides could have completed his writings.
There were at least three medical writers named Dioscorides ; the great Dioscorides Anazarbeus, not later than 65 A. D.; pre-
Native of Anazarbus, in Cilicia. He is sometimes called Tarseus, from Tarsus, the nearest large city.
•j- Friend of Licinius whose father Lecanius Bassus was a consul under Nero.
J There w^ere two court-physicians to Nero named Andromachus ; the elder was of Crete, inventor of the famous antidote called by his name and still in use after 1 800 years, the Theriaca Andromachi, described by him in an extant poem of that name of I74lines: which mentions about 70 plants but not the Aster. Dying toward the end of Nero's reign, he was succeeded by his son Andromachus the younger, author it is claimed of a work on pharmacy in three books, of wliich only a fevv fragments remain.
^ If as claimed by some the Euporista was written about 600 A. I). — or if about 300 instead — by a writer who fabricated the names pf Dioscorides as author and An- dromachus as patron, it still points to Nero's reign as the time then assigned to Dios- corides, whose supposed contemporary the fabricator desired to name as his patron.
140
Aster History ; Dioscorides
ceded by a Dioscorides Phaca, the Herophilean, of about 50 B. C, who left, says Suidas, 24 books de inedica arte (now lost) ; and suc- ceeded by a Dioscorides the Younger * of about 100 A. D., prob- ably author, thought Sprengel, of the 6th and 7th so-called books of Dioscorides Anazarbeus ; or of the 6th only, thought Meyer.
Dioscorides' zvorks remaining are, ist, the five books De materia medica, f ^-/v; ohj:: his famed descriptions of plants clos-
ing with the fourth ; the plants have been counted as 700, of which the identity of at least 400 is known ; 2d, two books, De alexi- pJiannacis and De theviaca^ already united to the preceding five in the 7th or 8th century, also classed with them by Photius in the 9th century, but separated by Saracenus and Sprengel. Sprengel ascribed both, Meyer one only, to Dioscorides the Younger.
Third among the works ascribed to Dioscorides Anazarbeus is that variously known as Euporista, or De Paralniibus, ~soi e^jnonia- zwv, the Haiisiinttcl or "Household Remedies," in two books, preserved to us only in a single manuscript, the Augustan, first printed and edited at Strasburg, 1565, by Moiban and Gesner, who deemed it a spurious work of Dioscorides ; edited with Dios- corides, but deemed spurious, t by Saracenus in i 598 and Sprengel, 1830, but claimed as perhaps genuine by Meyer in 1855, though he was doubting it again in 1857.
Ill this Euporista, bk. 11, c. 115, the author mentions 72 plants efficacious against viper bites, used in wine or in food ; among them the 23d is, a^rri/voc dzTcxou zb di^do::, i. e., " the flower of Aster Atticus " ; the 6th remedy following is the white earth of Samos, used for the same purpose, and called y/^^ aafua-:
* Known as ihc Glossograpn. because author of a commentary on Hippocrates (fide Galen); was probably the same as Dioscorides the Alexandrine; is twice called t/ie Younger by Galen ; wrote descriptions of plants and animals, compiled from Ana- zarbeus, Cratevas, etc.
t Best edition, by Sprengel, Leipsic, 2 vols., 1829 and 1830. First critical edition, by Saracenus, Frankfort, 1598. P'irst published in the original Greek in Venice by Al- dus, 1504; a Latin translation had been first printed in 1478. First printed in other translations, the Italian translation by Fausto da Longiano, 1542, at Venice, and that o^ Matthioli, 1544, also at Venice ; in German, by von Ast, 1546, at Frankfort; in French by Matthee, 1553 at Lyons ; in Spanish by de Laguna, 1555. For commentators, etc., vide infra, under A abic writers and under the Revival of Learning.
\ Because containing three or four names supposed not to be introduced into Greek till about 600 A. D., but which might have been interpolations. Oribasius quotes this Euporista apparently, about 362 A. D.
DioscoRiDEs' Aster Atticus
141
Tou dfTTSoo^, or Aster Samius ; the adjectives serving well to distin- guish the two uses of the word Aster ; see supra, p. 83.
Dioscorides' descripiion of Aster Atticus constitutes the i i 8th chapter (120th by Saracenus' numbering, iioth of others) of his 4th book, following that on Cirsion [Cirsiujn) and succeeded by those on Isopyron and on Viola purpurea (/. e., Viola odorata L., with addition perhaps from Aster), I quote it from Sprengel's edition,* retaining his brackets for the parts he thinks subsequently added, subjoining on each page my translation and adding notes on variant readings in the MSS. Constantinus (C) and Neapolitanus (N.) For review of the description and properties, see pp. 25, 39, etc.
kzw. ()rrj. {<>'/') Waripoz Wrzr/jrj.^
\l(TZYj() o.zTcxb^ f [or (Te d^rrTzocfTxo::, ot dk dazifnov^ ol as fio'jfio'j- vcou^'l Oi ok b6(fdaAfj.oi^, ' P(i)fj.a7o: lycwdXcc,^ Jaxol pad'.ficda\\ ] fx/.pd'toi^ quhoosz dxfto'j iyj)i^ av^sC rcupcunou'^^^ xac frrj/r^oi^, wrr-so d'^OzfJiido:^ xzifdhov ~spc(7yjdk(;"\'\ iysc dk ifj/Jj/Jxa dazknt dauca ; zd dk Tzepc zov xa.'jAbv wuAAa uTZOfi'/jx-rj xal daaia.
Chapter 118 (120) [Concerning Aster Atticus]
Aster Atticus [which some call asteriscus, some asterion, some bubonion, some hyophthalmon (/. polyopthalmon), the Romans inguinalis, the Dacians rathibida] bears a woody little stem, having, at the summit, flowers purple or yellow, just like a daisy in shape ; in a split border around the little head it bears
■^^"Kuhn's Medicontni Graecornin opera omnia, 25 : 605-606. Leipsic, 1829.
t Concerning Dioscorides' binomials, see supra, p. 65.
j Oribasius has oi (^e jSovjScjviov.
^ C and N have lyyvvaXi;- : others h/yivd'/j-.
II The synonyms are all bracketed by Sprengel, following Saracenus. But the first four are such as Dioscorides Anazarbeus may properly be supposed to have written in himself ; h/yvvdAL(; may have been added by Dioscorides the Younger, about 100 A.D., and the Dacian name by some other about 200 A.D.
^ C has pa[ii)ia ^vAuih].
"^'"^Kai, so read Marcellus Vergilias, V. Cordus, Matthioli, Sprengel : instead of which the codices, with Serapion, Ruellius, Cornarius, Anguillara and Saracenus, read f/, " or." Saracenus understood ?/ to mean " of two kinds, with purple or with yellow rays." If ?/ is the true reading, as codices indicate, I would, instead, interpret it " with flowers which may be called purple, or called yellow, as they are both.''
fl C and N have Tzepl ax£(y(v 0v7JMpluv arevcdv " with a border around of narrow leaflets." They lack acrtpibfima, but that is found in Serapion, and in Oribasius, who is earlier than C.
XX ^- " flowers which may be called purple, or yellow, as they are both."
142
Aster History; Dioscorides
leaflets just like a star ; but those leaves which are along the stem are oblong and hairy.
It is an aid to a burning stomach when applied as a plaster, and for styes on the eyes and for tumors of the groin, and for hemorrhoids. They say that the purple part of the flower, taken as a drink with water, is a help in labor-pains and in the epileptic fits of children.
It is a remedy, when applied moist as a plaster, for tumors of the groin ; and dry, when held in the left hand of one in labor- pains, and when tied on around the groin it relieves the pain.
[It grows in the midst of rocks and rough places. The stars
■^Rejected by Sprengel (not by Saracenus) because occurring also under Viola. But that may more likely have been repeated from this, f C prefixes v-6.
J Of this bracketed portion, Sprengel remarks "It is absurd and smacks of a superstition foreign to the author. It is not found in the oldest manuscripts nor in ancient commentators." Saracenus, following Marcellus Vergilius, remanded it to his notha. Perhaps it was inserted by Dioscorides the Younger, about loo A.D.', who was a compiler from Cratevas.
Of the previous bracketed portion, Lcpe/inl. ... ~ai.6uv was deemed an interpolation by Sprengel, and suspected (though retained) by Saracenus, these lines are lacking in C. are not quoted by Pliny or Galen or Avicenna ; but are in Serapion and all editions [Sprengel). They are repeated with but slight change, two chapters onward, of the violet; from which chapter, thought Saracenus, they might have been transferred to this, I think there are too many differences of phrase and arrangement to permit this hypothesis for the first part, ^(peld — eSpac; ; though the following words, (paai — ~al6ov, being alike in both, may have been a copyist's reduplication, word for word. See pp. 143-146.
Aster-properties under Viola
143
of this plant shine forth in the night ; so that those who do not understand, when they see this, suppose it to be a phantasm ; but it is found and known by the shepherds of the flocks. Furthermore, Cratevas, the rhizotomist, states this : " The green plant, bruised and mixed wirh old axle-grease, is a remedy for the mad-dog's bite and for throat-tumor or goitre; and if burned its fumes put serpents to flight."]
DioscoRiDEs' Purple Violet
Rcpetitioti of Aster-properties under Viola. Dioscorides pro- ceeds, after Aster Atticus, to describe his Isopyron, variously iden- tified as covering Isopyron thalictroides L., and also as a Fumaria or an Aquilegia. Next, he describes his Ion, the Viola purpurea of Pliny, our Viola odorata L. After describing the violet's ivy- like but darker leaf, and its love of shade, in terms applicable to Vola odorata, he mentions its properties as a refrigerant and then enumerates properties which duplicate some already narrated for Aster Atticus. The repeated lines read as follows — quoting Sara- cenus' Latin version, which retains the duplicate properties under both plants :
"Folia. . . stomacho ardenti, oculorum inflammationibus, pro- cidentique sedi auxiliantur. Aiunt et id quod in flore purpureum est in aqua potum, angina laborantibus, puerisque comitialibus * opitulari."
Matthioli, edn. 1560, p. 574, quoting the Arabic Mesne as " giving the faculties of the purple violet exquisitely," cites Mesue's version of the last sentence in the words " et morbo regio laboran- tibus opitulantur." Fuchs repeats the same in the form " puer- orum comitialibus mederi affirmant" (Fuchs, 309. 1551).
Commentators have suspected that the repetition here was accidental. If so, the kinship of the repeated characters with others of Aster Atticus and their unlikeness to others of Viola odorata points to Aster as their source. If they were accidentally duplicated by a scribe in one of the two occurrences, as it is a more natural and more frequent copyist's error to repeat lines already written than to anticipate, it remains more probable that the Aster
* This supposed efficacy for epilepsy continued to be cited for Viola through the Arabic writers and the Renaissance ; the " epileptics' violet" of a gloss c. 1499.
144
Aster History ; Dioscorides
chapter contained the Hnes originally than that the description of Viola did so.
On the other hand, Saracenus deemed their source the Violet, because the lines in question occur in Pliny, not under Aster but under Viola ; and so in Galen and Avicenna who seem here to have simply copied Pliny. But Serapion attributes these properties to both Aster and Viola.
Violet early a composite term. There is another way to explain the repetition. Ion may have been not a single entity but a com- posite term. To some of the Greeks this purple Aster may have been known as "purple violet," I'ov TTorxporjoup. The Greeks used ion for as widely different a flower as our snowdrop (Leucojum), their le?ieo-io// ; their purple violet as understood by Pliny included probably a number of widely different flowers, one of them still retaining the name of Violet in its compound name Dame's Violet, Hespens matronalis L. The Romans thus called a number of violet-colored flowers by the name violet, and this is presumptive evidence that the Greeks had done so. Mediaeval and Renais- sance usage did so to a surprising extent, — see infra, under Ar- nald ; and the tendency is still strong to-day, observ^able not only among colored people on the Potomac, who habitually call bluets ''violets^ but among botanical works, which still print Erythro- nium as dog-tooth-violet."
Purple Violet sometimes a synonym for Aster My suggestion is therefore this : that some among the Greeks called Aster Amellus by the name wv Tiofupunovv, purple violet, by extension of the name to other flowers having the color of the violet ; that some * among the multitudinous medical writers now lost, wrote out its reputed properties, calling the plant I'ov 7iO[)ip'j()ohv, from which Pliny copied the statements under discus- sion ; and from him Galen and Avicenna derived theirs. Mean- while Dioscorides, knowing the plant as Aster Atticus, inserted all these reputed properties under that name ; and some scribe copying his MS, observing them given under Viola by others, inserted them there also in the Dioscoridean text.
We may imagine Andreas of Carystus in Euboea doing so, a writer whose early life was in the Aster-region, and from whom Pliny and Dioscorides quoted inde- pendently.
The Name Rathibida
145
We will find the duplicate properties repeated occasionally under both plants by authors to Fuchs in i 5 5 1 , and will discover one great mediaeval physician, Arnald de Villanova, who, about 1 310, had perceived the incongruity of these imported characters with those of Viola odorata L., and who wrote that tJiey probably belonged to a different violet.
DiOSCORIDES' DaCIAN NAME FOR AsTER
Dioscorides' Synonyms. One of the most valuable parts of Dioscorides' work is the series of Greek, Latin, Carthaginian and other plant-names, quoted with each species described. Many of these may have been subsequent additions,* but many others oc- cur as if a part of the original text, and some of them occur in Pliny, quoted, it is claimed, from the text of Dioscorides. Spren- gel, editing Dioscorides in 1829, writes that the names in use for plants in various nations were collected by Dioscorides scien- tifically," ''during his travels to Egypt, Carthage, Italy, Gaul and Spain." Without predicating genuineness of all, I shall simply refer to these synonyms as " Dioscoridean."
Rathibida. The Dioscoridean synonyms record Rathibida, f)a0ci3ida, as the name for Aster Atticus among the Dacians, /. e., if in Dacia proper, in the region north of the Danube where it still grows and where it is particularly widely distributed. This name Rathibida of the MSS. may stand there in corrupt form, from error of copyist or from defect of the ear of the original in- vestigator ; and in some later copyings it lost its last consonant, appearing in Bock as Rathibia and in John Lonitzer as Rathibis. However, assuming that fjadci9:oa of the MSS. is substantially the original form, inquiry at once arises if it can be paralleled at all in the Greek — presumably the nearest cognate language to the obscure Dacian or Thracian.
If the "second syllable were an intrusion, it might be compared 1st with Dioscorides' own word pd^ocov in the immediate connection = a little bush, a twig, a small stem. Or, 2d, with f)Sfiid:, present
■^Such are bracketed by Sprengel (but with the usual practice of bracketing all synonyms indiscriminately) following the example of Saracenus, who himself followed the acute judgement of Marcellus Vergilius, the sagacious commentator on Dioscorides whose Latin translation appeared in 1518.
146
Aster History; Dioscorides
name in Crete for the ifjs^^ci^do- of D, Ciccr aiietinimi ; a very dis- similar plant. If a first syllable had been lost from such a f)d[-icda, it might be compared, 3d, with the present name in Zante for the composite plant Zacintha verrucosa, 'Aaoafiido-yoprov, " tigerbeetle's grass," or " blisterbeetle weed."
But these suggestions do not explain the name as it stands. In the existing form oadiricda has the aspect of a compound name formed of [)d, or, what may be the same, a root par — meaning a plant, a weed ; with addition of an adjective ending. In fact, it has the form to suggest an origin, 4th, as pd dr^j^aido:;, " Rha of the Thebaid," Theban plant, formed like pd tzovzcxov, Rhaponticum, D, 3, 2, the Rha of Poniiis \ or like pd (^dp^apoi^,^ Rhabarbarum, the same plant, from which form its present name Rhubarb comes. Perhaps paOifiida preserves in its first syllable that otherwise un- known but cognate root f ^'<^t — which forms the Old High Ger- man rato and the Old Low German rado, a weed, source of the present German raden, cockleweed.
Finally, and most probably, the root of drji%z, admirable, re- markable, the supposed source of the name of Boeotian Thebes, may give a suitable meaning joined with pd or par — and equivalent to "remarkable plant."
Comparison ivith Other Dacian PlaJit-nanies. — The Dioscoridean synonyms include as many as 3 1 Dacian names. A few are very much like the corresponding Greek names ; as Dacian /9/"^'C; Greek j^AYjTov, Lat. Blitum, Eng. blite. For Salvia Horniimun L., Diosco- rides' Greek name is opfuvov, the Dacian dp pea. For bugloss, Dios- corides has Greek [douyAcoaaop, and has ^o'jdd/Mj. as the Dacian, as if the Dacian for ox was identical with the Greek ; as indeed would be theoretically probable. For the elder, Sanibiicus nigra L., held in such reverence among the Greeks even to-day (and formerly by many other European races) the Greek j aappouy^oq, of to-day is a
* If the Greek pa, which appears only in this plant name, had any connection with the root of L. Radix, a root, Gr. pa<si^ a branch, the ancients did not themselves feel it so ; at least the historian AmmianusMarcellinus, about 400 A. D., expressly declares that it is from the River Rha, the Volga. Rha, as the name of that river, seems a Unnic name, the Finnish tribes, Mordvins, etc., now on its banks, still calling it Rhau.
f Kluge's Etymological Diet. of.Ger., Davis' tr., 1891.
.| The more usual and colloc[uial Greek for this elder is ^eKop(j)via, Attica; Theo- phrastus and Dioscorides call it aKry, Pliny actaea.
Dacian Plant-Names
147
late importation, from the Latin it may be claimed, and the Latin Smnbiiciis was by the Romans said to be derived from their use of its wood for their musical instrument sambuca, the Gr. aafili'rAY^ . But musical instrument and name are traceable to Syria, and any connection with sambucus the elder was probably an after thought. A connection may exist however in the Dacian for elder, which comes to us as aifia, and may suggest Gr. ai[-i(j.^ "awe," the holy wood ;* or may have lost its last syllable and may have been iden- tical with Latin sainbitais in the form of sabitcns used by Sam- monicus.
Other Dacian names which may have been derived from the Latin (or may have been merely cognate with it) are '/A^ for Por- tulaca (the Greek being the dissimilar dvoixk-^vYj), and zo^)T(>().az()a for Colocynth (Gr. xoAoyJjvdr^, where the Dacian suggests modifica- tion from such a Latin source as /6'r/-^iYr//w, = twist-plant, not unnatural for a plant in repute for violent emetic properties, as colocynth was then and now.
The other Dacian names have varying degrees of difference from the Greek ; from names of incongruous suggestion like that for Eryngium, aty.oij~vokz , which may be read as cucumber-bunch, and for Adiantum, (fcAowdidzAa, which seems a stuttering utterance of the lover of seseli f ; to names of no obvious suggestion, as oL^v for Urtica and xnouazdwj for Chelidonium majus.
The Dacians. — How happened it that a people speaking a language even as much like classical Greek as the foregoing names indicate, should have been living in Dacia ? and who were these Dacians who were so far developed as to have transmitted to us their name for Aster ? Following the views of Robert Roes- ler, " Romanische Studien, Leipsic, 1871," recent students believe, as Rennell Rodd, 1892, that the pre-Roman Dacians were of the old Thracian race, and were kindred in speech and blood to the Greeks. These Dacians, north of the Danube, were conquered by Trajan 106 A. D., who planted his Roman colony among them, withdrawn by Aurelian under pressure from the Goths i 50 years later. The Roman army, officials and colonists, now moving south
*The Greeks now call an amialet riju/nv ^vXov, "revered wood." t Dioscorides' ctaeh, later Kavnakida and Tordylium officinale, common in Grecian lands.
148
Aster History ; Dioscorides
of the Danube, established their new homes in a part of Moesia, which now became called Moesio-Dacia, and its people the Motatboay.zc, ; or by the Romans called Dacia Ripensis or Aurelia, officially so constituted as a province under Diocletian ; but itself at length overrun by the barbarians ; its inhabitants taking to the mountains, finally migrating north, toward 1200 A. D., and south also but in smaller numbers. These inhabitants of Thracian origin, now for centuries assimilated to Rome and partly descended from the Roman colonists, now called themselves Rounians (later giving name to Rou mania) , and at some time later than Trajan, a few of their plant-names gathered by some unknown collector, found their way among the Dioscoridean synonyms before the copying in 492 of the MS. now existing. So we may explain resemblances to Latin as well as to Greek ; rather than to adopt the theory cher- ished at one time by Sprengel that these and other synonyms were personally collected by Dioscorides Anazarbeus himself during his travels ; which would date them probably as early as 60 A. D., before the beginning of the blending of Latin and Thracian by Trajan's colony of 106 A. D., from which the Roumans claim to be descended. To those remnants who did not pass northward in the 1 2th century but moved southward, persisting in the mountains of Macedonia, Thessaly and Epirus, the name Vlach, IV/Ayo^, i. e., Wallachian, became attached, and the region Megalovlachia in the Thessalian mountains has received their name. Those of Megalov- lachia claim descent from Pompey's army defeated at Pharsalia in Thessaly, 48 B. C. Prominent settlements of the Vlach race re- main in Greece proper only on Pindus and Olympus. Transient abiding places are numerous among the other mountains, as in At- tica itself, where they lead the life of shepherds. The name Vlach has from this fact passed into a second significance, merely shcp- lierd (see p 37), among many Greeks and among recent writers, and " so applied to the Greek and Albanian herdsmen of the Morea," Rodd, though other Greeks say " we would not think ourselves of using it for any but only of the race of the B'/Ayoi " (Attica).
Conclusion. — Perhaps the name Rathibida for Aster was native, we may infer, to the old Thracian speech ; was in use among the Dacian branch, while the name Aster held current among the Greek branches proper. Perhaps the plant-names called Daciin in Dios-
The Codex Constantinus
149
corides were added to the MS. before 250 A. D., while the origina Dacia survived, before the terms Aurelian or Moesio-Dacian be- came Hkely to replace the unmodified form D acian. Certainly they were added to the MS. before the writing of those MSS. from which came the oldest existing codices, dating from the 5th century and onward ; and pretty surely before Apuleius Platonicus wrote his numerous synonyms, perhaps about 400 A. D. So we may conclude that some one collected these Dacian names, probably in Dacia north of the Danube, perhaps between 200 and 250 A. D., when the Roman colony had already existed a century or more and had begun to produce in the native Thracian speech that se- ries of changes in vocabulary and syntax which has persuaded so many students that the modern Wallachian tongue * is " lineally descended from the Latin."
Codices of Dioscorides
One of the most interesting of all the features of the MSS. of Dioscorides is the presence of colored figures, one for each plant as a rule, figures v\^hich presumably reflect features from the fig- ures of Cratevas though mingled with many crude accretions. Of these MSS. the following seem each to contain an Aster figure. f
C. Codex Constantinus at Vienna, brought from Constanti- nople to Matthioli by Busbequius J ; known as C ; of the 5th cen- tury, the scribe attesting that he wrote § it by command of Juliana Anicia, daughter of the emperor Olyber (Flavins Anicius Olybrius), who died 472 A.D. Its letters are large, with no accents or dia- critic signs : it contains 387 parchment leaves, with alphabetical ar- rangement of subjects, and 380 illustrations, each introduced by the received Greek name of the plant in red, and followed by an Ara-
* While many features in their speech are believed to represent elements no older than Latin, the myths and lore still current among the Vlachs may go back beyond the old Thracian ; Rodd believed that "much of their mythic lore may be really from a time before the dispersion of the Western Aryans," Rodd, 42.
t Wellmann, " Krateuas," Berlin, 1897. See su/>ra, p. 121-3.
X Augier Busbecq, a Flemish antiquary and diplomatist, 1522-1592, Austrian am- bassador to Constantinople, who took care to collect for the Vienna library such MSS. as had survived the fall of the Greek empire, bringing to Vienna not only ancient Greek codices like C above, but also recent Greek folk songs (now edited by Emile Legrand) of the 14th century.
^ About 492 A.l)., as commonly stated.
150
Aster History ; Dioscorides
bic synonym and often by others, and with other Greek synonyms in a I 5th century hand. Dodoens reproduced some of these fig- ures ; and in 1897 Wellmann reproduced one of Moly. Spren- gel remarks that "the figures occasion Httle expectation of skill or art ; but Swieten and KoUar entreated the empress Maria Theresa to have them reproduced in copper-plate. She assented and not a few were prepared. But from the more learned mind of Jacquin the work received arrest. The copper plates lie now in the second Bibl. Caesarea, unworthy to be published. All the figures are rude, many are made according to the imagination or the pleasure of the painter, and many are monstrous." See also Pritzel's Thesaurus, p. 335, for reference to Jacquin's gift of plates to Linnaeus and to Sibthorp, and destruction of the remainder. Pritzel speaks of these figures in C as " pulcherrima," and even Sprengel refers to the praises they had received. But considering the rude- ness of plant figures already familiar to us from the i 5th century, it would be surprising if these Dioscoridean figures were not rude. Their chief value undoubtedly lies in their part-expression of just what the ancient conception of the plant was ; and that is reason enough for their publication. I would repeat Wellmann's dictum of 1897, " The illustrations of Codex C ought to be published."
N, Codex Neapolitanus, now also at Vienna, more mutilated
than the preceding ; and *' supposed to be more ancient," says Pul- teney (i '.41). Its age was stated by Sprengel as " equal to C or earlier," by Pritzel placed in the 5th century, but by Wellmann in the 7th ; is alphabetical ; " generally agrees with C, but has many better readings, better written synonyms, and more Roman synonyms," Sprengel \ has 409 painted figures, 2 or even 4 on a page. Both C and N are evidently copied from the same original text, and from one with the same figures, which must have dated
* Dodoens, in his Peiiiptadcs, of 1583, copied 10 of these figures, poorly exe- cuted, and causing those of Codex C to fall, as Pulteney suggests, into undeserved dis- paragement. Some were reproduced by Gerarde, 1597, and one by Parkinson. Pulteney lists them as follows, using the 1583 edition : Coronopus, Dod. 179 (109), Gerarde 1190. Arction, Dod. 849 (149), Park. 1374. Hyssopus, Dod. 286 (288). Hippo- phaes, Dod. 373 (377). Aconitum Lycoctonum, Dod. 437 (439), Ger. 572. Stoebe, Dod 123. (123), Ger. 731. Lotus sylvestris Dod. 562 (572). Lotus Aegyptiaca, Dod. 563 (573). Tithymalus dendroides, Dod. 368 (372), Ger. 501. I introduce in parenthesis in the preceding list, the pages on which I find these figures in my copy of the 1616 edition of the Pemptades. One other also occurs in this, Sphacritis, p. 126.
Illustrated Codices
151
after i8o A. D., or later than Galen, Wcllmanri. Haller remarks of its figures that " they are sufficiently exact to enable the botan- ical traveller with such drawings in his hands, to distinguish the plants of Dioscorides in their native places of growth."
Codex Parisinus, no. 2179, of 9th century; uncial; 402
figures, to the end of book IV. ; praised by Salmasius ; pronounced "best" by Wellmann ; not greatly esteemed by Sprengel ; con- tains the text from 11. , c. 204 to V., c. 124 ; Arabic and Latin plant names are added by three distinct hands ; contains also Coptic plant names according to Sprengel, who inferred that the MS. was written in Egypt.
Codex Athos, of 12th century; 404 figures, 5 to 1 2 cm.
high, with name beneath, standing in the text ; at the next de- scription but one after Aster Atticus, that of the Viola odorata,
7Top(p'jpo^jv, a figure showing two ladies with vases is intro- duced ; as if copied from a Greek source which connected the violet with its appreciation among Grecian women.
Codex Marcianus, XCII., of 13th century. Was this one
of the " exemplaria codices" used by Anguillara and Manardus, presumably from the Marcian library of Venice ?
Codex Parisinus, no. 2180, i 5th century ; it states that it
was written by Georgius Midiates about 148 1 ; with the figures except in some cases where the blank spaces left for them re- mained unused.
Codex Parisinus, no. 2183, 15th century; figures from
bk. 2, c. 107 to end of bk. 4.
Codex Bonn, no. 3632, i6th century; illustrations 2-6
on a page, some of the same as in C.
In the Vatican 6 other codices are preserved. Matthioli con- sulted MSS. from Constantinople, said to have included some now unknown, additional to the Codex C at Vienna.
There are two codices of Dioscorides in the Bodleian library (Pulteney, i : 57), 3637, De Herbaruni Natiira ct Jlrtuiibus, ciini icoiiibus elegaiitibzis ; and 840, an Arabic version of 5 books, " cum nominibus a Thoma Hyde adjectis."
A Latin translation of Dioscorides, used by Marcellus Vergilius was the Langobardic codex (Monacensis, 377) : investigations upon this by Auracher were continued after his death, by Hoffmann and
152 Aster History ; Dioscorides
Stadler. Figures extend through the first book at least ; that on Hydropiper, for example, has been much praised.
Another very ancient Latin translation was extant in the time of Cassiodorus, or perhaps 540 A, D., but is now lost ; he cites it as Herbarium Dioscoridis "; it contained colored figures. Cassiodorus remarks of Dioscorides himself that he described and painted the plants of the field with wonderful accuracy"; which may not refer strictly to the original Greek author, but to the Latin edition bearing his name.
A very ancient Syriac translation of Dioscorides must also have repeated the figures, for they were retained in the compend pre- pared from it in the thirteenth century by Gregorius Barhebraus under the title " Liber Dioscoridis cum figura herbarum et earun- dem delectu et virtute," etc. {^Alcycr, 3 : 136).
One of the early Arabic translations, made in 948-949 under the Moorish caliph Abd Arrahman HI., was also filled with no- table pictures of the plants [Miycr, 3 : 137). See infra ^ 185.
Probably a figure of Aster Atticus occurred in each of the pre- ceding and in many more.
Figures from some codex of Dioscorides prove also to have been used and copied by Bartolomeo Mino da Siena about 1330 and by Rinius about 141 8, before the invention of printing. See infra, under Circa iiisians.
X. Pliny
Pliny the elder,* the great Roman naturalist, who lost his life while observing the eruption which destroyed Pompeii, 79 A. D., had but just completed his Natural History, f a work which his
* Caius Plinius Secundus, born at Verona or at Como, 23 A. D., removed to Rome by 39 A. D., travelled when 21 in Africa, Egypt and Greece, was commander next year of a troop of cavalry in Germany, was made procurator in Spain by Nero, returned to Rome A. D. 70 and adopted his nephew Pliny the younger (author of the Letters), was made by Vespasian prefect of the Roman fleet ; when sailing to observe the eruption of 79 A. D. he turned aside to rescue sailors near Vesuvius, and lost his life, two years after finishing his last work, his only work extant, the Natural History, in 37 books dedicated to Titus, and composed largely of excerpts from Greek authors. Hardouin catalogs over 400 authors cited in it. Books 12-27 are devoted to plants.
■\ HislO'iae naturalis nbri 37; first printed at Venice, 1469, by Spina, only ioo copies, and long excessively rare; with notes (of Sigismund Gelenius), Basle, 1539 ; with notes by Hardouin, and with variant readings from 8 manuscripts, Paris, 1723;
Pliny's Aster
153
nephew terms "not less varied than nature herself." In that work the name Aster used for the Samian earth, asterion for a star- spotted lizard (like Nicander's usage), and aster 'iciun as a synonym for perdiciuui^ i. c, the plant wall-pellitory, Parietaria ; see p. 80. He makes two short references to Aster Atticus, very brief and scanty compared with Dioscorides ; adding however one new synonym and one new medical use, that for sciatica, really only a superstitious use, serving merely as magical amulet. Those who would reject part of the Dioscoridean description because too superstitious and because not found in Pliny, should also take exception to Pliny's citation of virtue possessed by aster only when plucked by the left hand, and other supersti- tions.
Pliny s reference under the name Aster. — Pliny does not in either place call the plant by the Dioscoridean binomial name of Aster Atticus, but terms it simply Aster, and Inguinaria. His first refer- ence * is in a chapter f where he considers in a loosely alphabetical arrangement, properties of a number of unrelated plants, beginning with A, in the midst of which is his De ... astere vel bubonio^ as follows :
" Aster ab aliquibus bubonion appellatus, quoniam inguinum praesentaneum remedium est. Cauliculus foliis oblongis duobus aut tribus, in cacumine capitula stellae modo radiata. Bibitur et adversus serpentes. Sed inguinum medicinam, sinistra manu decerpi jubent, et juxta cinctus alligari. Prodest et coxendicis dolori ad alligata." In English (Riley's rendering), §
critical edition, Sillig, 1851-2. First translation (into Italian, by Cristoforo Landino) , Ven.' 1476 ; first into English, by Philemon Holland, London, 1601 ; second, from which I quote, Riley's continuation of Bostock's translation, Lon. 1855-7, edn. Bohn. First commentaries separately published, those of Hermolaus Barbarus, Rome, 1492-3, and Leonicenus, Ferrara, 1492 ; that of Salmasius was of 1629, at Paris ; that of Fee, Paris, 1833. Two partial MSS. of Pliny are in England, one of 18 books, Bodl. 289, and one in the Norfolk collection, 2996 ; besides an epitome, 459, in Trinity College, Cambridge.
* Bk. 27, c. 5 ; — p. 482 of the edn. Froben (Basle, 1555).
t De aparine, et arctio, et asplenio, et asclepiade, et astere vel bubonio, et ascyro vel ascyroides, et aphace, et de alcibio, et alectoropho. J Lit., "for pain in the region of the hips."
\ Pliny, edn. Bohn, 5 : 229. Riley here notes Fee's agreement with Jussieu and Sprengel, that Aster Amellus L. is here meant. Desfontaines had suggested that Pliny intended *' the Inula buboniicm . see p. 69.
154
Aster History ; Pliny
" The Aster or Bubonion, Three Remedies
" The Aster is called bubonium by some, from the circumstance of its being a sovereign remedy for diseases of the groin. It has a diminutive stem with oblong leaves, two or three in number, and at the summit it is surmounted by small radiated heads like stars. This plant is taken also in drink, as an antidote to the venom of serpents ; but if required for the cure of inguinal com- plaints, it is recommended that it should be gathered with the left hand and attached to the body near the girdle. It is of great ser- vice also worn as an amulet for sciatica."
One feature in Pliny's description looks like that of a man who had actually seen the plant ; his remark "it has a diminutive stem with oblong leaves, two or three in number." As the plant grew in northern Italy, where Pliny was born, it may have been fa- miliar to his childhood. He does not seem to know the name Amellus for it, however, which might be due to a failure of the name Amellus to extend in popular use beyond the river Mella, with which Vergil connected it ; or Pliny may have forgotten the rural name, being now almost forty years removed from the regions of its growth about Verona, and having been accustomed to read its descriptions since in Greek authors who called it Aster, as Cratevas and Dioscorides, and probably many others lost to us.
Pliny s previous reference, as Ingidnaria. — The other allusion to Aster made by Pliny is by the name of Inguinaria, and among plants used for tumors and for hemorrhoids. For these purposes Pliny has just mentioned plantago, cinquefoil, cyclamen-root, blue anagallis, cotyledon and pennyroyal ; then follows what he has to say of Inguinaria ; then the use of panaces (Lasei pitiiini C/iironiion L.), plantago, and a number of other plants, all used for tumors, including verbascum, hoarhound, etc. The remarks concerning pennyroyal and inguinaria are so similar that I quote them both : *
" De pulegio et argemone.
"Alii adjiciunt et pulegium ; quod jejunus qui legerit, si post se alliget, inguinis dolores prohibit, aut sedat coeptos.
"Inguinaria, (quam quidam argemonen vocant) passim in v^e- pribus nascens, ut profit inguinibus, in manu tantum habendum est."
* Pliny, bk. 26, c. 59; (and ecln. Bohn, 5: 188 )
Pliny's Inguinaria
155
Riley translates this as follows :
*' Section 9
Some persons add pennyroyal to the number of these plants ; gathered fasting, they say, and attached to the hinder part of the body, it will be an effectual preservative against all pains in the groin, and will allay them in cases where they already exist.
Chapter 59, Inguinalis or Argemo Inguinalis again (the 'Groin-plant'; probably the same as the Bubonionof bk. 27, c. 19), or as some persons call it, ' argemo,' a plant commonly found growing in bushes and thickets, needs only to be held in the hand to be productive of beneficial effects upon the groin."
The name Inguinalis is given among the Dioscoridean syn- onyms as the Roman name for Aster Atticus. It seems to have been more generally used than Inguinaria, Pliny's form for it ; in late mediaeval Latin it sometimes appeared as Unguinalis, Unguini- alis, or Ynguinialis.
Some, however, as Billerbeck, 143, without apparent reason, assume Inguinaria as distinct from Inguinalis, and identify it with Heniiaria Jiirsuta L.
Pliuf s Aster-synonym Argcnion. The name argemon, which appears here as a Plinian synonym for Aster, occurs once again in Pliny, and, as before, not as a cur- rent name in received usage, but as a synonym, used on this second occasion for his Lappa canaria,'^^ a plant with a resemblance to Aster in its medical reputation, being used as an application to ulcerating tumors. An atmosphere of magic and of ritual hangs about argemon. Its root was reputed to be medicinal to swine ; and no less a personage than the goddess Minerva was said to have discovered that quality in it. It bore an antipathy to iron. The person who would use it must not dig it up with an iron mat- tock t or any similar implement. He must, as he takes it up, repeat the magic formula, "This is the plant Argemon, which
* Beginning "Nam quae canaria appellatur lappa," etc. I Efifossa sine ferro, Pliny, 24 ; c. 19.
156
Aster History; Pliny
Minerv^a discovered, which she found a remedy for swine, for all such as should taste of it." *
How much of the practice of this ritual passed on with the name to Inguinaria, or Aster, we can only surmise. Probably there had come to the Romans some dim rumors of a plant that the Greeks had called argemon, and had invested with tumor- healing magic. Thereupon certain Romans believed they had found this argemon in their own tumor-healing Inguinaria or Aster.
To summarize : Aster seems by some Greek writers to have been called Argemon because used for argema or the white ulcer of the eye. Aster was also in repute as a general remedy for ul- cers, tumors, and inflammations whether of the eye or elsewhere. Reputation for these properties seems to have passed on to the plant known to Cratevas and Dioscorides as Argemone, dnyziuovr^^ Adonis aestivalis L. f and to the three plants known to Pliny as Argemonia, and now as iza.Tzano'r^d., Anemone coronaria L., Adonis aestivalis L., and Papaver RJiocas L. % This reputation for like prop- erties with Aster was perhaps in part original to the plants called Argemonia but also in part strengthened by the early confusion of the similar names Argemone ( = Argemonia) and Argemon ( = Aster).
Others among Pliny's authorities had evidently lost the identity of Minerva's plant Argemon and thinking its name (meaning " white § thing ") might be derived from the root, had applied it to the Lappa eanaria of Pliny, an uncertain plant with a large white root variously identified as Atlianianta Libanotis L., Caiicalis lati- folia II L. and Arctium tomentosum \ Schk.
Others later confused Argemone and Argemonia with Agri-
• " Haec est herba argemon, quam Minerva reperit, suibus remedium,.qui de ilia
gustaverint," Pliny., bk. 24, c. 19, sec. 117.
\ Fide Sibthorp's examination of the text and figure in codex C of Dioscorides at Vienna. This plant is now confused with the poppy or -mzapovva in Greece ; Sibthorp found it called aypioTTanapol'va in Zante.
I Billerbeck makes them " Anemone pratensis, Adonis aestivalis, and Papaver somniferum."
§ 'Ap)'0-, white, WpyEvvo- in Aeolic and Doric.
II Because Dioscorides (2, 169), described his Caucalis (the modern Greek KavKa/u(^a) as having white flowers, Candida timbella odorata.
^Because of the white root and supposed inclusion with Arctium Lappa under the Roman name Lappa. See Dioscorides' chapter on Arctium, apKTiov, (4, 106; ; Pliny's chapter on Arctium is a direct translation of this.
Pliny's A/^c/^:.vi(k\-
157
monia and its partial synonym Eupatorium, the vj-arwnco'^ of Dioscorides, claimed to represent Agrimojiia Eiipatoria L., and Eiipatoriuni cannabiniiin L.
Finally Linnaeus transferred the name Argemone to his Amer- ican papaveraceous genus, which had no claim to inherit the name except distant and late-discovered relationship.
To Argemon in the sense of Aster may be attributed :
1. The synonym Anthemis, D, 2, 208, interpolation, under Argemone.
2. The synonym Inguinaria, Pliny (" Inguinaria quam quidam argemonen vocant ") though some, as Billerbeck, deem this to be Hcrniaria hirsiita L.
3. The story told by Pliny of Minerva's discovery of "that plant Argemon," with its use for tumors in man or for ailments of swine, when dug without iron, and with the formula, " Haec est herba Argemon, quam Minerva reperic, suibus remedium, qui de ilia gustaverint."
4. The uses for argema and for films in the eye also attributed to Argemone, D.
5. The uses for tumors and inflammations, though in part per- haps original to Argemonia.
To Argemonia and Argemone may be attributed Dioscorides' description, and that of Pliny ; Cratevas' use with nitre rubbed on dry before the bath ; and in general, the properties given by Dios- corides under the name Argemone, by his interpolator under the name Argemone altera, and by Pliny under the name Argemonia ; though strengthened by influence of the reputation for similar properties enjoyed by Argemon or Aster.
Pliny s ehief contributions to the kjioivledge of Aster consist in his statement of the few leaves, of the use for sciatica, of the Roman names inguinaria and argemon, with the inferences implied and considered above, together with the opportunity afforded by his description for comparisons with that of Dioscorides.
XL Pausanias Pausanias, the Greek geographer, writing the ten books of his Periegesis or Itinerary of Greece, about 1 75 A. D., narrates how after he had travelled about Attica and Megara, while pursuing his way
158
Aster History ; Pausanias
from Corinth to Argos he came to a river Asterion, where grew in abundance a plant of the same name, which was sacred to Hera and was habitually wreathed round her altars.
Since the herb Asterion here mentioned may be the Aster, I give the context sufficiently to show the connection ; using Fra- zer's translation.
" On the way from Corinth to Argos ... having ascended to the pass of the Tretus and resumed the road to Argos, we have on the left the ruins of Mycenae. That Perseus was the founder of Mycenae is known to every Greek ... Another legend is that the first man born in this country was Phoroneus, and that his father Inachus was not a man but the * river of that name. Inachus, so runs the legend, arbitrated in the dispute between Poseidon and Hera for the possession of the country, and he was assisted by Cephisus and Asterion ; f and because they decided that the country belonged to Hera, Poseidon made their waters to disap- pear. Therefore neither the Inachus nor any of the other rivers has any water, except after rain. X
To § the left of Mycenae at the distance of 15 furlongs is the Heraeum. Beside the road flows a water which is called the river Eleutherius ; i. e., the Water-of-freedom ; the women who minister at the sanctuary employ it for purifications and for the secret sacri- fices. The sanctuary itself is on the lower slope of the mountain Euboea. For they named this mountain Euboea, saying that the river Asterion had three daughters, Euboea, Prosymna, and Acraea, and that they were nurses of Hera. The mountain opposite the Heraeum is called after Acraea ; the ground about the sanctuary is called after Euboea ; and the district below the Heraeum is called Prosymna.
" The Asterion flowing above the Heraeum falls into a gully
* The three chief rivers of the Argive plain were those meant by Pausanias (Fra- zer) in his names Inachus, Cephisus, and Asterion, although some identify Pausanias' Asterion with the brook Glykia, a small torrent behind the Heraeum.
t Asterion as a river-name occurs only in this context, I think, and in a fragment of Callimachus. As a personal name it was frequent ; see p. 60. Numerous occur- rences of Asterion as a personal name seem to run into variants as 'Aareplcov, Wcrkpiov, Aarepnc, without essential difference.
+ Pausanias, bk. 2, c. 15.
^ Pausanias, bk. 2, c. 17.
Pausanias' Ast/-:k/ox
159
and disappears. On * its banks grows a plant which they also name Asterion ; they offer the plant to Hera and twine its leaves into wreaths for her."
That this blossom, the Asterion, was the same as Aster Atticus has been asserted, and has been denied. The name Asterion oc- curs as one of the Dioscoridean synonyms for Aster Atticus, and it is by the name Asterion that Apuleius Platonicus describes the Aster Atticus, about 400 A. D.
Two other plants sometimes called Asterion by the Greeks from their parted leaves, are out of consideration, because unfit for decorative use ; they are Cannabis sativa, the hemp, and Hcraclenin Sphondyliiini^ a coarse, ill-smelling umbellifer.
Ruelliust in 1536, summarizing the knowledge of his time about Aster Atticus, refers to Pausanias' Asterion but remarks that he has not been able to prove that they were identical, saying :
" Qualis autem Pausanias sit herba, quae in Mycenensi agro ad Junonis fanum, asterion vocatur, a flumine terram illam rigante, quia in ripis nascitur, cuius folia Junoni sacra in coronas nectunt accolae, non comperi."
Schliemann seems to have assumed that Pausanias' Asterion was the same as that of Dioscorides, for speaking of his journey to IMycenae, he says % of the stream by his path : " The water of the Asterion fed the Asterion plant (a kind of aster), sacred to Hera, from the leaves of which wreaths and festoons were made for the goddess."
Frazer, the latest translator and editor of Pausanias, is no further advanced in 1898 than Ruellius in 1537, toward identify- ing this Asterion, saying : § " What the plant was, we do not know\ Schliemann indeed calls it a kind of aster, but this may be a mere inference from the name."
^ (pverai 6e avrov -na irpog oxOaig- 'Aarepiiova uvo/jd^ovai kcu ri/v Tcoav ravT7/v rif 'llpa Kal avri/v (j)epovai, hat a-o tCov (f)'v7i}iuv avTf'/i; arsQavovg izAtnovaiv Translated by Shilleto (Pausanias, edn. Bohn, Lon., 1886, i ; 122) "And the flower called As- terion grows on its banks ; they carry this flower to Hera and plait her crowns of its leaves."
f Ruellius, De nattcra stirpium^ Basle, edn. Froben, 1537, p. 633. \ Mycenae, p. 25.
^ J. G. Yx^ztx' % Pausanias, 4: 1 18. Lon., 1898.
160
Aster History ; Pausanias
Siebel, editor of Pausanias in 1822, is as indefinite as pos- sible, merely indexing the reference as to a certain "Asterion, herba."
Against the identity of Pausanias' Asterion with the Asterion of Dioscorides, and, therefore, against its identity with Aster At- ticus, the following reasons may be urged :
1. The names, although seeming the same in English lettering, are not quite the same in Greek, the form of Pausanias being \I(tts- picov, Dioscorides' ' A(JT£()cov. This difference may be nullified by observing that if the plant usually called dazkotov so abounded along the river independently named \ I(ttsouou, it was natural that the plant-name should become assimilated to that of the river ; or it may not have been actually so assimilated, but may have been before unknown to Pausanias and though given to him in the form dazipcov it may have been understood by him to be meant for the same form exactly as the river-name.
2. The chief objection to the identity of the two plants called Asterion seems to be this : some might infer from Pausanias that his Asterion was a plant with long leafy stems more suitable to weave into wreaths than could be said of the short stems of Aster Atticus. I do not regard this objection as carrying weight, for we have references by Nicander and Vergil to the weaving from Aster Atticus of garlands and wreaths for altars and grave-columns.
3. Some may object to the identity of the two Asteria that Eustathius * in his valued commentary on Homer has been under- stood to identify f Pausanias' plant with the short-stemmed but sacred verbena, the Greek 7zz(n(TTZ()zco'^^ sometimes called dutazzozco'^ ^ especially latterly, but for which izeocazznzcov, plant of the doves, was the common Greek name from Crate vas onward.
Eustathius, commenting on the command of Ulysses that his palace at Ithaca be purified with incense after the suitors for Pene- lope were slain, remarks as follows : X
* Eustathius, a Greek bom in Constantinople, bishop of Tliessalonica, who died 1 198 A. D., whose commentary is " of incalculable value to us, as nearly all the works from which he made his extracts are lost."
f Comm. on Odyssey, edn. Weigel, Leipsic, 1S25-6 ; based chiefly on the Roman text with slight typographical corrections ; p. 291.
X Eustathius' Comm. on Odyssey, 22, 481 ; chapter 1935, line 2; page 291, edn. Weigel, Leipsic, 1825-6.
EUSTATHIUS' Ar/STEREON
161
"It is narrated that not only though incense were purifications made and performed, but also a certain plant was most useful for this. Aristereon certainly, the plant according to Pausanias, was suitable for use in purification." *
Frazer, commenting on Pausanias, takes it for granted that Eustathius' reference above quoted refers to the Asterion and to its use in the temple of Hera as quoted in Pausanias 2, 17. But Eustathius does not say that Pausanias 2, 17 was the passage he meant, and there is too much difference between Aristereon and Asterion to be lightly mistaken for each other ; besides, Paus. 2, 17 does not mention any plant as used for purifications ; it is for decoration and as an offering that his Asterion is used.
Therefore Eustathius.' supposed identification of Asterion with Verbena is not an identification of Asterion at all, but merely a remark about another plant, Aristereon, f already well known to be the same as Peristereon % or verbena.
In favor of the identification of Pausanias' Asterion with Dios- corides' Asterion, i. c\, Aster Atticus, we may say the burden of proof rests by right with those who would prove them different ; and we add the following considerations :
4. Pausanias says that his Asterion was offered to the divinity of the place, Hera ; and that wreaths for her were made from it. Similarly Nicander and Vergil speak of offering Aster to the gods, and making garlands for them from it.
^" api.areptcjv yovv, (bvrbv Kara Ylaiiaaviav, eK/-//ih-iov ng KaOapfiuv. So reads Weigel, stating that he bases his edition on the excellent Roman text, with slight typographical corrections.
f Aristereon literally is "the left-hand plant," "the sinister plant" ; see p. 55 ; mentioned also in the Orphica Argonautica, an epic of nearly 1,400 lines (edn. Hermann; 916). Also mentioned by Aelian, about 150 A. D., bk. I., c. 35 of his De animalium natura, TiEfu C,uu)v uhorr/roi;, in 17 books, a miscellany on the peculiari- ties of animals; edited by Gronovius, 1744. Some (J. Bauhin's Hhtoria plan/arum, 3: 442) explained hpLarepeuv as "the strongly- consolidating plant," from crepeio, solido, and an intensive prelix apt, from a reputation for healing wounds ; making the name equivalent to Solidago. It may be however that Aristereon is really only a cor- rupted form of the word Peristereon.
J Peristereon, literally "the plant of the doves," "dove-dwelling," name of a dove cote; and name of this plant, because, says Dioscorides, 4, 60, "doves seem to delight to linger about it." Used like Aster for ulcers and in labor. Unlike that and perhaps all other plants, this was a sprinkling herb in religious ceremonial, and used, says Dioscorides, in purifications, and called sacred herb, lepa-ftoTavrj.
162
Aster History; Pausanias
5. It seems probable that the plant-name Asterion antedated that of the river or at least was independent of it in origin. Plant- names derived from individual rivers are yet to be proven to occur in popular nomenclature, however common they may be in that of science. Probably the plant-name was really dariptov (= Aster Atticus), and became assimilated to that of the river, dazznUov.
6. The locality Pausanias describes for it, the rough river valley among the hills, agrees with the kind of locality natural for Aster Atticus.
7. The not distant neighborhood of the locality to Megara agrees with the information given me by a Greek formerly resi- dent in Attica, who recalls seeing Aster Atticus growing wild toward Megara perhaps ten years ago.
In brief, I would say that Pausanias' Asterion may probably be the same with that of Dioscorides, though we cannot say that it must be, without further evidence. I do not find that any one has given much account of the actual flowers of that river valley since Pausanias' time. Subsequent travellers who visited Mycenae previous to Schliemann were Clarke and Gell, who give no evi- dence on this subject, and Dodwell,* whose visit to Mycenae was on Dec. 8th, and whose remarks on flowers are made chiefly while in other parts of Greece, as on the asphodel, the agnus castus, scilla, acanthus, the laurel-rose or rhododaphne of the banks of the Ilis- sus, and the "many-colored anemones in 20 different tints " over the Thriasian plain. Mahaffy f visited the vale of Argos " in spring, in the time of the growing corn, of scarlet anemone and purple cistus " ; and was again at Mycenae in summer, when stubble already covered the fields, and " down at the river-bed great ole- anders [i. c, the rhododaphne] were spreading their sheets of bloomj " ; but seems to have been too early for the Aster Atticus, if indeed it was there.
* Dodwell's Tour through Greece, 1819,
t Mahaffy' s Rambles and Studies in Greece, T.on., 1878.
X Mahaffy's Rambles, etc., p. 404. Cf. p. 378, where he is journeying from My- cenae to Argos, and writes that " along the river Inachus. ... We could see and smell great wild fields of rose-red oleander, blooming along the river banks, very like the rhododendron of our demesnes."
Galen and Oribasius
163
XII. Galen
Galen, the great Greek physician, who died at seventy years of age, about 200 A. D., mentions Aster Atticus twice, as follows, in his alphabetical treatment of remedies ; using Kuhn's Latin trans- lation :
[69. De Astere Attico.] Aster Atticus, alii Bubonium vo- cant, non ob id tantum quod illitum, sed etiam quod suspensum bubones sanare credatur ; habet quiddam etiam digerens, habet vero non minime et refrigerans quiddam ac reprimens, ut mixtae sit facultatis uti rosa, verum id non astringit.*
[11. De Bubonio.] Bubonium aut aster Atticus nuncupatum est ita, quia creditum est bubones sanare, tum illitum turn inguini alligatum. Est autem mediocriter digerantis facultatis, quia vide- licet et modice calidum est, nec vehementer, nec ita desiccat ut contendat, maxime quam etiamnum molle ac recens fuerit.f
It will be observed that Galen I adds nothing to what Diosco- rides had said except remarks as to "the discutient properties of the plant, non-astringent, but of mixed nature, as in the rose."
For his numerous compound remedies which he termed aster, see supra, p. 88.
XIII. Oribasius The next Greek writer whom we can cite for Aster was Ori- basius,§ final summarizer of the medical knowledge || of the pagan
Galen, edn. Kuhn, 1 833, in A/ed. Gr. opera omnia, ii : 841 ; being Galen's chapter between his De Astragalo and his De Astaphide tiva.
f Galen, do., II: 852 ; being the chapter between his De biilbo votnitorio and De btiglosso.
\ Galen, the son of Nicon, an architect of Pergamus, was physician for a time to the emperor Marcus Aurelius ; passed his old age in his native Pergamus ; had trav- eled over Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece and Italy ; journeyed to Palestine to investigate a balsam which was being adulterated ( Antidotarum, i, 424, 435); remarks that he was not satisfied to see only the imperial gardens in Crete, but that the physician should journey that he might see officinal plants in their native places and collect them and really distinguish them (Antidot., i, 428).
\ Oribasius Pergamenos, 'OpttjSdaio-, born at Pergamos in Mysia about 325 A. D., journeyed from Alexandria in 355 to Athens where his friend Julian, nephew of Con- stantine the Great and afterward emperor, was that year engaged in the study of Greek literature ; accompanied Julian when emperor to Gaul and to Persia ; banished by his successors, he was finally recalled in triumph, and was living in comfort 395 A. D., having married, says his friend and biographer (Eunapius), "a lady of wealth and rank, by whom he had a son of kindred genius to his own."
jl Oribasius' works include, ( l) Epitome of Galen, written at the behest of Julian,
164
Aster History ; Oribasius
world, court-physician and confidant to the emperor Julian, to whom he dedicated the seventy books of his Collectanea * (of per- haps 362 A. D.), and on whom he was in attendance when Julian met his death in battle^ 363 A. D. Oribasius in his long friend- ship for Julian and for the sophist, Eunapius, linked together the three master-spirits whose end marked the passing of paganism.
Oribasius' description of Aster Atticus is an adoption of that of Dioscorides, under the name of "Aster Atticus or Bubonion," and is valuable chiefly as throwing light on the true text of that most important description. The name Bubonion, for example, was stricken out from the received text of Dioscorides by Sara- cenus in 1598, as part of a later interpolation; on what good ground does not appear, as the name Bubonion was cited for the plant by Pliny and was doubtless current long before Dioscorides wrote, its form indicating a long period of established medical re- pute to occasion the development of the name, — "the Groin-plant," as it has been rendered. We note that Oribasius had been also
on or before April, 361 (now lost), (2) Collectanea, or Collecta Medicinalia, cr Hebdomecontabiblos (the seventy books), his 2wa}w}'ai 'larpiKai, a compend of the medical writings of antiquity, in 70 books written under the auspices of Julian, 361-363 A. D. (3) His Synopsis, or ovvoipig-, books abridged from the preceding at the desire of his son Eustathius ; about 393 A. D. ; printed only in Rasariiis' Latin translation. (4) His Syntomie or Euporista or De facile Parabilibus, in 4 books, forming a " Family Physician," dedicated to Eunapius, his intimate friend ; printed only in Rasarius' Latin translation.
^'Of this great encyclopaedia of medical knowledge, the Collectanea, more than half is lost and the remainder in some uncertainty ; books L-X, XIV, XV, and a frag- ment of book XVI were published in the original Greek and in French translation by Bussemaker and Daremberg, Paris, 2 vols., 1 85 1, 1854; books 46, 47, and fragments of books 48 and 49 were published in Greek and Latin from a Florentine MS. by Cocchi, P^lorence, 1754; and fragments from books 44 to 50, by Cardinal Mai, from a Vatican MS., Rome, 183 1, Books XL, XII., XII I., being a transcript of Dioscorides, were unfortunately omitted from the Paris edition.
The standard Latin translation of Oribasius, published at Basle, 1557, was made at Venice shortly before by Rasarius from two MSS., one that of the Venetian patrician Matthaeus Dandolo, the other that of one Nicolaus Sammichelius, " medicus Novoco- mensis" ; it includes 30 books, the Synopsis, the Euporista, and books I-XV, XXIV and XXV, of the Collectanea. One of its MSS. came later, says Meyer, 2 : 269, to Moscow, where Mathaei printed from it the Greek text of books I. -XV. with the Latin translation, 1808, but without textual comparisons.
The earliest published portion of Oribasius was that printed by Schott in 1 533 at Strasburg, by title " Oribasii medici de simplicibus, Libri quinque," which consisted also of portions from Apuleius and Dioscorides and from some unknown Greek physician.
Oribasius' Bub onion
165
preceded in his use of the name Bubonion by Galen, his medical exemplar.
Unfortunately, the Greek original of this description of Aster is not yet properly accessible, being contained in the omitted part of Oribasius' Collectanea, — printed by Mathaei ; but omitted by the editors of the critical edition of Paris, 185 1-4, because merely a transcription of Dioscorides — but in behalf of which within the next year, Meyer (2 : 268) was uttering a strong plea. Compari- sons with Dioscorides have long been made however by means of Rasarius' Latin translation of about 1554, and in many places, says Sprengel, this suggests very valuable readings.
LATER ROMAN WRITERS XIV. Sammonicus
Some confusion has arisen at times between Aster Atticus and Chelidonium. There was a widespread belief at the beginning of the Renaissance that the two were identical, Clielidonium minor * being the plant then so identified. Matthioli was summoning arguments against this belief in 1568, and Bodaeus y Stapel was still doing so in 1646. Similarity of reputed properties in Cheli- doiiiuni majiis and in Aster seems to have been the source of the confusion. t
* The lesser Celandine, Ficaria ranunculoides.
f Dioscorides had recommended Chelidonium for the King's Evil and for clearing films from the eyes ; as Aster Atticus was also recommended.
Our Chelidoniinn luajiis was to the Greeks the plant of the swallow, swallow- wort ; they called it Chelidonion or Chelidonia, and Theophrastus mentions its blooming with the return of the swallow, in spring. They said that the young of the swal-
low at breaking the shell, have less perfect eyes than other birds, or have a film over them, or in the words of Aristotle, the young of the swallow are blind when hatched. Dioscorides and Pliny both quote the belief that the parent birds remove this blindness from the eyes of their young by the use of the herb Chelidonium. Aelian repeats the same, Anim. Nat., bk. iii, c. 25. Celsus explains (Comm., book vi) the process by which a stroke should liberate the eye ; all set forth again at length by Ruellius in 1536.
The reputation of the Celandine for removing films from the bird's eye, passed readily to the human eye ; "a sovereign remedy for films upon the eyes," Pliny calls the plant, bk. 25, c. 50. For this purpose the Greek practice was to use the expressed juice of the flowers, mi.Ked with Attic honey, brought to boil in a brazen urn over coals — " in aeneo vase cum melle Attico leniter cinere ferventi."
Chelidonia, says Dioscorides, was also a remedy for the king's evil ; here meaning apparently scrofula but often understood as epilepsy.
166
Aster Historv; Sammonicus
The real confusion shows first in Serenus Sammonicus, Roman medical poet of about 210 A. D, who in writing of his Chelidonia attributes to it not only the power of relieving films and also the king's evil, but other properties still more characteristic of Aster, as " the power of healing ulcers or other troubles of the groin;" for which purpose his verses recommend its use together with yarrow, saying
Herba chelidonia fertur cum nielle mederi, Herbaque cum seuo foliis de mille vocata. f
It is doubtful how soon another Latin medical work perpetu- ated these ideas ; the verses of Macer Floridus and the school of Salerno repeat Pliny but not Sammonicus ; perhaps the first echo of Sammonicus is in Arnald de Villanova, J about 13 10 A. D., who prescribed Chelidonia with anise in white wine § for ulcers as w^ell as for the king's evil.
XV. Apicius COELIUS Apicius Coelius, perhaps 250 A. D., was author of the most ancient Latin cookbook, Dc Opsoniis^ first mentioned by Enoch As- culanus, 1454, first printed 1498 at Milan, edited by Lister, Am- sterdam, 1709, by Bernhold, 1787. His editor, Lister, from certain comparisons of his use of the word Garuni for a spice (the Garon of the Geoponica), deems him a contemporary of the Emperor Va- lerian, 253 A. D., and a native of the Roman province of Africa.
*Q. Serenus Sammonicus [Samonicus of some MSS.), a man of taste and culture, founder of a magnificent library of 62,000 volumes, the friend and literary mentor of Geta (son of Septimius Severus and, with his brother Caracalla, joint ruler of Rome, 21 1 -21 2). Geta is said to have studied Sammonicus' compositions " w^ith great enjoyment." When Caracalla succeeded, after many failures, in assassinating his brother, the death of Sam- monicus was at once ordered also and the poet was murdered while at his supper, A. D. 212. His son of the same name was preceptor to the younger Gordian (emperor of Rome who fell in battle A. D. 237 ) and bequeathed to this Gordian the library which his father had accumulated.
f Q. Serenus Sammonicus, Liber Medicinalis, lines 693-4 (and see line 764 for Chelidonia recommended for " igni sacro ") in Bahren's Poetae Latini Minores, 3 : 139. This poem is of li 15' hexameters, mentioning 120 plants, " with a considerable amount of information on natural history and the healing art mixed up with a number of puerile superstitions, and in almost prosaic language."
J Sylvius' Schola Salernitana (with Exegesis by Arnald de Villanova), 306.
\ Macer had prescribed it similarly with anise-root in white wine, but for jaundice not for ulcers.
Apigius' Esculents
107
The plants mentioned by Apicius were reviewed by Dierbach, 1 83 i, in his Flora Apiciana, published at Heidelberg and Leipsic. Among these plants are the following :
Viola. — Apicius i, 4 (2) ; an example of the latitude charac- teristic of the Roman use of this name (see p. 143, under Dios- corides, where it is confused with Aster Atticus) ; Dierbach, 83, interprets it here as Viola odorata L,, Meyer (2 : 248) as MattJiiola incaiia or CJieirantJiiis CJieiri or altogether doubtful. Some of Apicius' other plant names are equally uncertain, as his Ligusticum ; his Praecoqiiuin, perhaps the peach or apricot ? his Corona bubula, perhaps rue ; his Acrilactiica, perhaps Lactuca Scariola or virosa, Meyer.
Helenium, Lactuca, Intubum, Cnicus (safflower), Carduus (Cynara Scolymus), Absinthium, Absinthium Ponticum, Pyrethrum (Artemisia Dracunculus), are mentioned by Apicius, among the Compositae.
XVI. Theodorus Priscianus
Theodorus Priscianus, Roman physician of about 380 A. D., author of an Antidotariiis^' and of De swipliei inedieina," etc., was cited in the 6th century by Alexander Trallianus and by Actios, but his writings remained for the next thousand years otherwise unknown. They were finally made known, in 1532, by Gelenius and Count Neuenar (Meyer, 2 : 286), the latter printing them, 1544, and ascribing them to one Octavius Horatianus.
Theodorus Priscianus is one of the few ancient authorities for the name Pulicaria, now used as a genus including Aster dysen- tericiis of Scopoli, etc.
Pulicaria first occurs, Dioscorides, 4, 70, as a Roman name for his Psyllion, Plaiitago Psyllmni L., the (^'^JAAoyj)()TO'^ of modern Greece ; all of its names being due to a reputation for exorcising fleas.
Pulicaria in Theodorus Priscianus occurs twice, and probably in the preceding sense. The name does not occur elsewhere, fide Meyer's search,* until Theodorus Gaza used it to translate the Conyza of Theophrastus 6, i, the fleabane of ancient and modern
^^"^ Exception should have been made for Isidorus, about 600 A. D., who enumer- ates " Psyllios, quam Latuii Jierbafii ptdicarein vocant."
168
Aster History; Theodorus Priscianus
Greece (now called, with that meaning, il'^JAAirFrna and xovur^a), the Erigcron viscosiini and gravcolcns of Linnaeus, both species now forming part of the genus Pulicaria of Gaertner.
Previous appearances of the latter Pulicaria in Latin had oc- curred under the name Coiiyza minor, as in the writings of Scribo- nius Largus,* perhaps 35 A. D.; in his Coinpositiones, 167; and afterward in Pliny.
XVII. Marcellus P>mpiricus
One of the most interesting of ancient authors in connection with plant-names, the statesman of Gaul, Marcellus Empiricus,t (who may thus be distinguished from the more ancient physician, Marcellus Sidetest) was author, about 408 A. D., of a work De Mcdicamcntis, the more remarkable as of value for both physician and botanist.
Meyer praises Marcellus' work § as the richest in plants since
ScribGiiius Largits, sometimes called Designatianus, celebrated as a Roman medical writer before the death of Tiberius, 38 A. D. ; was court physician to Claudius and accompanied him to Britain A. D. 43. He prescribed for the notorious Messalina, Claudius' profligate empress, until her death, A. D. 48 ; his recipe for a tooth pow- der which he prepared for her is the 60th of the compositions in his chapter xi. To- gether with the physician, Vettius Valens, he had studied under the physicians Tryphon and Apuleius Celsus de Centuripa, and from them two of his published prescrip- tions are derived. His chief work, the " Compositiones medicamentorum," was edited at Paris by Ruel, 1529 ; at Padua by Rhodius, with a lexicon, 1655, and again by Bernhold {^ex libr. Meyer) 1 786. He is one of the chief authorities for the peculiarly Roman names Urcedaris for Parietaria, and Seritda catnpaiia for Melilotus. He men- tions Inula cainpana, Eryngium, etc.
"I" Marcellus Empiricus, a native of Gaul, and some say of Bordeaux, in office as " Magister officiorum " at the court of the Roman emperor Theodosius, 379-395, and under Arcadius, his successor, 395-408. From humility and as if esteeming himself but an amateur, he disclaims being a physician, in a letter to his son, though that was then the honored calling of most authors whose writings mention plants. He mentions his fellow-citizens (of Gaul ; of Bordeaux, fiJe Torinus) who were distinguished phys- icians, Siburius, Eutropius and Ausonius (the poet) ; is himself called " the epitome of all virtue" by Suidas ; was of the Christian faith ; urged his emperor to banish " all heretics" from Constantinople, his capital.
J Marcellus Sidetes, native of Side in Pamphylia, whose long medical poem, latrica, written perhaps abou^ 140 A. D., 42 books of Greek hexameter verse, survives in two fragments only, the longer, on fishes, consisting of loi lines.
\ Marcellus Empiricus " De Medicamentis," first printed in Aldus' series " Med- icae artis principes," Venice, 1547, edited by Cornarius ; again, 1567 ; Meyer secured both editions.
He was also author {fide Meyer) of a poem on plants in 78 hexameters, first
Sarcocolla.
169
Pliny, and of particular value because not written for the learned, but for the people, taking both his numerous Gallic nanies and his description of remedies and properties not from books, but from the mouth of the people ; " so that," as Meyer remarks, " his work becomes the first rudiment of a Flora Gallica," with many Gallic plant-names which he terms Celtic and which he could scarcely have found in writing, so that it is surprising that those making researches into the history of botany have neglected him so long."
Among Marcellus' plant names which are of interest to the student of Asters are the following :
Sarcocolla t which is Argemonia." Marcellus might be
printed by Ruel, 1529, in his edition of Celsus, and credited to Vindicianus (an emi- nent physician whose letter to the emperor Valentinian, 364-375, is still extant), by others ascribed to Sammonicus, but of superior elegance, and differing in pronunciation of many plant names, Marcellus saying sinapi, not sinapi as Sammonicus, crocus, not crocus, brassica, not brassicum, nasturcum, not nasturcium, etc. * The following are examples :
Artemisia quam Gallice Bricumum appellant
Herba quae Gallice dicitur Blutthagio
Chamaeacte, quae Gallice Odocos dicitur
Papaver sylvestre, quod Gallice Calocatanos dicere
vSerpyllum herba, quam Galli Gilarum vocant
Trifolium herba, quae Gallice dicitur Visumarus
Nymphaea, quae Gallice Baditis appellatur
Herba quae Gallice Vernetus dicitur
Proserpinalis herba, quae Graece Dracontium, Gallice Gigarus, appellatur (Arum).
f The occurrence of the word Sarcocolla in Greek and Latin is as name of a Per- sian gum, described by Dioscorides 3, 89 (99, edn. Saracenus) as follows :
" Sarcocolla, GcipKOKoXXa [literally "flesh-glue " because healing wounds], is the tear or exudation [daKpvov) of a tree growing in Persia ; it is slightly brownish, has a bitterish taste, is similar to frankincense, has the power vulnera glutinandi et oculonim Jlitxi- ones inhibeiidi [whence doubtless applied as name of Aster, or of Argemonia in sense of Adonis, etc. ; because of similar properties ; — or to both] . It is a constituent in poultices. It is often adulterated with gum." , This gum is still called sarcocolla ; it is the anze- root of the Arabs, giijara of the Hindoos, who use it still in medicine. It is imported from Arabia and Persia in light yellow or reddish grains ; is now thought to come from some Astragalus"; had been claimed to be the product oi Penaea Sarcocolla L. ; and is the origin by transfer of the name of the related South African genus Sarcocolla estab- lished by Kunth, 1830.
The name Sarcocolla to Pliny and to Galen was the same as to Dioscorides, the name of the gum; but from Marcellus Empiricus' synonym it seems to have been later applied to a plant of similar repute and use ; perhaps in Byzantine regions to Aster A melius, with which he may have been familiar both while living at Constantinople and while passing through mountains of Italy and Gaul ; perhaps to Argemonia in the sense of Papaver, etc., which was also used both for wounds and ulcers and the eyes.
170
Aster History; Marcellus Empiricus
thought to have used these names for Argemon (= Inguinaria = Aster Amellus). But more probably he intended Argemonia, in the sense of Papaver (see supj'a, 156). So Strabus seems to have appUed the names in 842, in whose poem they appear as ''Agrimonia or Sarcocola," Marcellus avoids this confusion of Argemonia and Agrimonia, giving Agrimonia separate treatment, with a strange native name, Hociamsani sive Agrimoniae radix," c. 20, a word which may owe its present grotesque form to a mis- take in copying, and its resemblance to Hyoscyamus to accident.
StrnniiLS herba, so mentioned twice, chapters i and 2 ; a name of the same form and origin with Herba Inguinalis for Aster ; and implying a similar reputation for curing the stnima, or ulcer. Marcellus Empiricus probably intended by this name our Solamiin nigmvi L.* Pliny also states, 27, 44, that some persons give the name Strumus and others Stryclinoii ( = Stryclinon in Dioscorides ; and Trychnon in Pliny 21, 52 and 105) to the plant Cucubalus r., the owl's plant), or, in other MS., Cuculus (/. c., cuckoo), meaning Solamnn nigrum L., which Riley therefore terms "the 'strumous' or * scrofula' plant." Its berries or leaves were used, says Pliny, for scrofulous sores, lumbago, headache, and serpent-stings.^^
hiula, quae Graece dicitur Helenium (/, c, Imila Hcleniinn L.).
Inula riistica, Halum, Alum Gallicum, Allium Gallicum, Sym- phyti radix, Portulaca ; all these are given as synonyms by Mar- cellus Empiricus, for SyjJiphytuni tiLbcrosum L., the Wallwurz of Germany, a'j[np')Tov Trezpacou of Dioscorides, a/uni of Pliny.
Vio/a marina; Ceratitis, quam herbam Violam marinam appellamus, (c. 27) " ; an uncertain plant ; xspaczc^ occurs, Theo- phrastus 3, 17, as name of Trigonella Foenum-Graecum L.
Other synonyms of interest include :
Lingua bubula, diWd Lingua bovis or Burduncula, are uncer- tain names, to be added, with Corona bubula of Apicius, to the old names formed from considered supra, pp. 69, 70 n.
^ Two plants of this reputed power are named Strunnis herba by Pliny ; one his Ranunculus, the- Greek Batrachion ( = Ranunculus Asiaticus, R. Sardoiis, R. muri- catus, and R. aquatiliSj/^/^- P^ee) of which PUny says, 25, 109, "Our herbalists give this plant the name of ' Strumus ' from the circumstance of its being curative of strumous sores and inflamed tumors, for which purpose a portion of it is hung up [in the chimney] in the smoke. It is a general belief, too, with them, that if it is replanted the malady so cured^will reappear ; a criminal practice, for which the plantago is also employed."
Gallic Plant - n a m p:s
171
Mater sylvac ; " Periclymenon, quam Sylvae matrcm voca- mus," c. 23 ; the first appearance of that name for Caprifolhim which became strangely confused with Aster a thousand years later ; see Hi€ro7iynuis Bninsvicciisis.
Gladiatoricia hcrba, Sanguinaria herba * (Salutaris herba,* rosemary), Personacea herba, Sacra herba (= Verbena), Verrucaria herba, Orbicularis herba (= Cyclamen), Cymbalitis herba, PY-l ter- rae* or Centaureum, are a few of his descriptive names, not Gallic, and partly of uncertain identity.
XVIII. Apuleius Platonicus
Apuleius Platonicus, styled Herbarius, and in one MS., Plato, is to be distinguished from Apuleius Medaurensis (born about 130 A. D.), the author of the romance The Golden Ass, who was also sometimes styled Platonicus, having extended his education begun at Carthage, by studies in the Platonic philosophy at Athens.
Our Apuleius Herbarius seems also to have written in Africa, about 400 t A. D., or at least before it was lost in Rome, in 439. It has been hinted that he was a descendant of the romancer; at' any rate, the taste for the marvellous was still strong in him.
* Also mentioned by Isodorus, about 600 A. D., by the same name.
f Sprengel, Geschichte der bot. I : 184, 199, conjectured that the authoi- was a monk of the iith or 12th century, who had assumed the name of a distinguished Ro- man after an affectation common at that period. A MS. of Apuleius seemingly written about 1200 A. D. was deemed perhaps the oldest one. Meyer however shows ( 2 : 322) that a Latin MS. of the 9th century still exists ; and in that 9th century our Apuleius enjoyed such widespread fame that King iVlfred the Great had a translation into Anglo-Saxon made, of which four llth century MSS. still remain, with 184 chap- ters and figures; it is printed in Cockayne's Anglo-Saxon Lecchdonis, Lon., 1864. Haller (Bibl. bot. I : 166) had already observed that Apuleius lived in Africa, from the African or Carthaginian name which he gives for asparagus. — One MS. of Apuleius was in possession, says Fabricius (Bibl. bot. 3), of Isaac Vossius, and was written before 1200 A. D. It was also provided with figures. Cockayne collated 5 illustrated Latin MSS. in England chiefly Harleian. The figures are identical in most codices. It seems to have taxed the illustrator to represent the form of his magic plant, the Aster, suspended from the neck and shining in the night ; as described in his text. Cockayne says that the drawing of Asterion in the best Anglo-Saxon MS. and in two of the Latin MSS., is " beyond interpretation." No doubt these simply repeated the figures of some lost MS., — earlier than the 9th century: but not of Dioscorides, Cockayne's ex- amination of the Vienna plates. In the second-best Anglo-Saxon MS., B, of date perhaps 1180, Cockayne found the Asterion figure to " remind us of Stellaria media " ; as if the illustrator were groping anew for a plant whose name should translate Asterion.
172
Aster History; Apuleius
His work Dc licrbanun virtutibiis * consists of 131 brief chap- ters, each devoted to the properties of a single plant, sometimes with a few descriptive characteristics, and often with a long list of synonyms, f many of which may have been derived from Dioscorides, but some of which as well as some of the med- ical uses stated, must have come from some unknown and later source. The chapter on Aster is the 6ist, which I quote entire.
"61 J. Asterion. Nascitur inter petras et loca aspera. Hac herba nocte tanquam stella in coelo lucet, et qui videt ignorans dicat phantasma se videre, et metu plenus irridetur, maxime a pas- toribus. Ad caducos. Herbae asterii baccaseis dab as mandu- candas Luna decrescente, cum erit in signo Virginis, et ipsam her- bam habeant in coUo suspensam, remediabuntur."
/. " Asterion grows among rocks and rough places. This herb shines by night just like a star in the sky and any one who sees it unaware of this fact may say that he sees a phantasm, and being full of fear he is laughed at, most of all by the shepherds. (Its medical use is) For fallings (/. r., epilepsy). For these you "may prescribe the berries (/. e., pills) of the herb asterion to be chewed in the wane of the moon when it shall be in the sign Virgo ; and should they wear the herb itself suspended about the neck, they will be healed." §
^ First printed at Rome without date or printer's name in or before I473 as is indi- cated by dedication to Cardinal F. de Gonzaga ; before \\']\, fide Pritzel. It has rough copies of the original figures, but is very rare. It was edited by Philip de Ligna- mine, who called Apuleius "a Platonist, now attempting to take up the work of the centaur Chiron who had learned his art from Achilles."
■{■Among these are synonyms credited by Apuleius (a native of the province of Carthage himself) to Carthage, and which the MSS. of Dioscorides credit to Africa, /. to the "A(ppnt ; showing that it is Carthage which the MSS. of Dioscorides intend.
:{: The 60 of references; but 6/ of the A-S version, and of the annotated edition of Ackermann, 1788 ; also of the edn. Drouart, Paris, 1543, which I use; which (add- ing French names) repeats the text of the ed/Vto pn'nccps by De Lignamine, but without its figures. Meyer, 2 : 320, wrongly spells Drouert ; but he had never been able to see a copy of that edition.
\ Cochayne translates the A-S version of this, " This wort which is named Asterion and by another name [blank in MS.], is produced between stones and in unsmooth places. This wort shineth at night as a star in heaven, and he who seeth it not witting what it is, he supposes that he seeth an apparition and so afeard (as he is), he is ridi- culed by herdsmen and by such men as know the virtues of the wort. For the falling sickness, take berries of this wort, which we name asterion, administer it to be eaten when the moon is on the wane, and let that be when the course of the sun is in the constellation named Virgo ; that is, in the month which is called August ; and let him have the same wort hung on his swere (neck) ; he will be cured."
Apuleius' Aster
173
This chapter 6i on Asterion is unlike others in being without synonyms, at least in the Drouart edition — though Apuleius is often cited as using the synonyms Aster and Inguinalis.
Apuleius once uses Aster also as name of our familiar Plaiitago major L., quoting Aster among a long list of synonyms, saying of his Herba Plantago, "Some call it heptapleuron, —
"alii plantaginem majore, a Graecis arnoglosson, Galli car- bidolupon ; alii aster ; alii arnion ; Hispani tyricam vel thesaricam ; alii septracimam ... Itali plantaginem latam," etc.
Apuleius adds that this plantago is a remedy for the bite of either a mad dog or a serpent. As Aster Atticus was in use for both purposes, its name had probably become confused with plan- tago on account of similarity of use. — Was it merely as a trans- lation of Apuleius' Aster that Plantago appears as " Herba Stella" in Dodoens' Peiiiptadcs, p. 109 ?
XIX. Palladius
One of the most popular Latin writers on agricultural subjects, Palladius was of very uncertain date, perhaps about 440 A. D., at least not before 438, suggests Meyer, and not after 540 A. D., when he was mentioned by Cassiodorus. Palladius' De re rustica, * in 14 books, consists in the main of a Farmer's Calendar, in 12 books beginning with January, with addition of an intro- ductory book and of another on grafting in the form of a poem of 85 couplets. The whole is based on Columella, Pliny, Gargilius Martialis (about 210-240 A. D.) and Vitruvius. Palladius' work was itself known to Cassiodorus, 540 A. D., Isidore, 600 A. D., to Albertus Magnus, and Vincent de Beauvais ; and to Petrus de Crescentiis,t last of the great wTiters in Latin de re riistiea.
Columella was the author to whom Palladius was indebted
* " Palladius Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus ; " in the Latin " Scriptores rei rusticae " by Gesner, Leipsic, 1735, etc., edited again, by Schneider, Leipsic, 1794. First printed by Jenson at Venice, 1472. An Eng ish translation by Th. Owen appeared at Lon- don, 1807.
f Petrus de Crescentiis, or Piero da Crescenzi, " civis bononiae," i. <f.,'of Bologna, whose works were printed 1471 at Augsburg by Schiiszler under the title " Ruralium commodorum libri duodecim," and by John de Westphalia at Louvain in 1474. He was born, Meyer, shortly before 1235, must have completed his writings in 1305, and died between June, 1320, when he made his will, and Feb., 1321, when his son became administrator.
174
Aster History; Palladius
most of all, and one example of the way in which Palladius may be considered to have modified Columella becomes very interesting- to the student of Aster. Columella's first list of wild plants be- loved by the bees, consisting of amellus, acanthus, asphodel and narcissus, passing then into garden plants and enumerating the lily, snowdrop, rose, violet, hyacinth and crocus, has already been cited, p. 134. Pontedera* claims that this particular list was imi- tated by Palladius, De re rustic a, bk. i, c. 37, in whose new form it is as follows :
" Asphodilum, citraginem, amaracum, hyacinthum, qui iris vel gladiolus dicitur similitudine foliorum, narcissum, crocum ceterasque herbas suavissimi odoris et floris." In English,
" Asphodel, balm, marjoram, hyacinth which is called iris or gladiolus from the likeness of its leaves, narcissus, crocus, and other herbs of sweetest odor and flower."
Here Amellus disappears, as if unknown to Palladius after lapse of 400 years ; and if any plant in the list replaces it, it is Citrago f or balm, a very different plant, mentioned by Palladius again, i, 37, 2 ; and v, 8, 6.
What is indicated by replacement of the Amellus of Columella by the Citrago^ i. e., balm, or inelissopJiyllon, of Palladius? Prob- ably the following :
1. Columella, perhaps not very familiar with Amellus in nature, and basing his own references to it chiefly on Vergil, had not been able to give reality enough to his references to impress posterity.
2, All true knowledge of the Aster Atticus of the Greeks had probably disappeared from Rome since Galen, and there was no surviving tradition to lead Palladius to connect the Amellus with it.
-'^ Giulio Pontedera, botanist of Padua, 1688-1757, author, 1718, of a "Compen- dium " in which he reviews 272 plants lately detected by him in Italy ; and, 1720, of an " Anthologia" with 12 plates ; both published at Padua. Two epistles of Pontedera concerning the botanical garden at Padua followed in 1726, and posthumous epistles later.
f Undoubtedly Palladius meant by citrago, or citreago as various editions have it, the plant Melissa offi-cina'is Balm, the fie2.iaa6^>vX?iov of the Greeks, and representing in large measure the Apiastrum of the Romans. Of this plant Matthioli, edn. 1 560, p. 435, remarks " Melissophyllon, quod Latinis Apiastrum, et OVr«^<? dicitur, Hetrusci ab odore citri vulgo vocant Cedronella, itemque Melissa, sicut etiam Insubres." Caesal- pino, in 1583, calls it Ciironella ; and other Italians, Citraria ; in Macer Floridus it ap. pears as Barrocus and in the Apodixis Florae Germanicae, I53i> White Barheng.
Palladius' Citraco
175
3. That Palladius made the substitution for Amellus which he did was probably due to the ancient gloss incUssoplLyllon which was early written against Amellus in Vergil's fourth Georgic ; or if Palladius did not see that gloss itself, the opinion which it repre- sented may have been current in his time.
This leads' to another inquiry. Did not a confusion grow up between the inelissopJiyllon or apiastritni, and the Aster known as Amellus because of their similar reputation as bee-plants ; and did not the author of the gloss just cited actually mean Aster by his name inelissopJiyllon ?
Such a probability is suggested by the ascription to balm of numerous uses highly characteristic of Aster Atticus, as follows :
Dioscorides, bk. iii, c. loi or 118 (describing his nielisso- phyllon or niclittaina, in which bees delight), evidently intends to describe Melissa officinalis, but adds that it is efficacious against the bite of a dog, against tumors and ulcers. These properties sound very much as if borrowed from those of the other bee-plant, Aster Atticus. On examining Dioscorides' preceding description of his Ballota, or black horehound, with which nielissophyllon, he himself says, was often confused, we find the same properties re- peated. The properties may have been actually ascribed by phy- sicians of that time to both Ballota and Melissa ; or they may have been entered here under those names by confusion of the identity of the plants with Aster Atticus, a confusion due not to resem- blance of appearance but of bee-loving habit.
Some general confusion certainly did exist later ; apiastrum covering both Melissa officinalis L., and Seliniun pahistrc L., in Latin usage. Pliny, Columella and. Palladius all furnish examples of lists in which the apiastrum and its usual equivalent melisso- phyllon occur disjunctively as if not equivalents (though this may be due to inadvertence on part of the authors). In the 1492 edition of his commentary on Vergil, Cristoforo Landino notes that some thought then that niclilotiis was same as melissophyllon.
So among such writers apiastrum or melissophyllon may have meant Melissa, but a Melissa overloaded with properties imported from Aster Atticus, which some of Pliny's multitudinous non-ex- tant authorities had probably confused with the preceding and de- scribed under the name melissophyllon. Ascription to Apiastrum
176
Aster History : Palladius
of the properties characteristic of Aster Atticus increased very much with Pliny, when compared with Dioscorides, including the following :
It cures ulcers — ulcera sanat.
It cures the bite of a dog — canisque morsus.
It cures swellings of glands in the throat — ulcera thoracis.
It cures inflammations or dimness of the eyes — caligines ocu- lorum.
It cures vulvarum strangulationes."
So Macer Floridus, who repeats most of the above.
So Avicenna, who adds to the properties of Melissa, " etiam visceribus conpetit [as cited by Matthioli, edn. 1560; 436].
So Simeon Seth, who enumerates properties normal apparently to Melissa and then adds, as if from Aster, " Bubones laedit " [as cited by P'uchs, edn. 1542 ; 500].
Others as Nicander, Varro, Vergil, Galen, Serapion, seem to have mentioned mehssophyllon in a manner uncompromised by any probable importation from Aster Atticus.
XX. Plinius Valerianus
Plinius Valerianus, an author or redactor, perhaps of 600 A. D., was much in vogue at the Renaissance. His " five books of medicine " were first published in 1509 at Rome, as Medicinae Plinianae " ; again by Cratander at Basle, I 528, edited by Torinus ; and a fifth edition by 1529. They contain the first instances of many modifications of Latin plant names which later became com- mon, as Eviscum for Hibiscum, Jusquiamus for Hyoscyamus ; and also contain many names apparently Celtic or Arabic or other- wise foreign to Latin.
Plinius Valerianus has an interesting name for Aster's near relative, the Chamomile, AntlLcmis nobilis, calling it " Proser- pina herba, quam alii Camomillam dicunt," i, 38 ; Aster had been linked and associated with Athena and Hera ; Anthemis had now become linked with Proserpine.
There were two other plants latterly dedicated to Proserpine ;
^' So written by writers like Bartholomaeus Anglicus, etc., the name appearing in editions almost as late as 1 600.
Spanish Plant-names
177
arum, the " Proserpinalis herba " of Marcellus Empiricus ; and the Proserpinaca " of Apuleius Platonicus, said by him to be poly- gonum.
XXI. ISIDORUS
Isidorus Hispalensis,* Visigothic bishop of Seville, 596 A. D., who died in 636, a compiler who has been called a second Pliny, was the author of " Origines," or Etymologies, " Etymologiae " as he himself termed his work in a letter to his friend Braulio. His work contains absurd etymologies and childish definitions, but is particularly full regarding medical terms, remedies, etc., arranging plants according to use as electuaria, cataplasniata, etc. He often gives the Greek and Latin synonyms with a Spanish name f also ; sometimes the Spanish name only, as in his Herbitum (mod. Sp. Erbato,J: = Foeniculum), his Turbiscus (mod. Sp. Torvisco, = Daphne Mezereum). His names of interest as concerning Aster include Buphthalmus, 9, 93, and the following :
" Strychnos, Latine Herba salutaris vocatur (which latter name he also cites for Rosmarinum) et Uva lupina," 9, 78 ; meaning Sol- anum nigrum? Did Bock know of this last name Uva lupina as applied to Strychnos or Strumus herba (confused with Aster ?) when he made his own Uva lupina an Aster ?
Alam or Alant, Inula quam Alam rustici vocant," chapter II, paragraph 9, edn. Otto : = Inula Helenium. Erigeron, Latini Senecionem vocant," 9, 53.
Malomellus, 7, 5. Mella, Graece Lotos, vulgo Faba Syriaca," 7, 9. Coquimella (for Prunus), 7, 10. Oleomella, 7, 11. — Names which should be compared with mel, honey ; or with Aniellus ?
* He was probably born of a Visigothic family at Cartagena, and adopted the name Isidorus on entering the church. He was bishop of Seville 40 years. The best edition of his works is that of Otto, Leipsic, 1838. He was much in vogue in the middle ages, by MSS., and was quoted as Ysid, Ysyder, etc., etc.
f His Spanish vernacular names include Matris animula for thyme, Sarralia for the Laduca agreitis of the Romans, Nepeta for their Menta agrestis (^Nepeta Cataria L. ) Genicularis herba, Nixa for their Prunus, Millimindrum for henbane (" Hyosquiamos, a Latinis dicta Herba calicularis, vocatur et Herba insana, vulgo Millimindrum " ) ; Stingum for Gr. Satyrion or Orchis ; Radix (radish) for Raphanus.
X Not only do many such old names survive in Spain, but the whole mass of an- cient plant-lore ; the Spanish translation of Dioscorides being still, it is said, the ac- cepted botanical standard.
178
Aster History; Anonumos
EARLY BYZANTINE WRITERS XXII. Anonumos
Anoiiynii caruien Graecinn de herbis, is the caption long used for a fragment of 2 1 5 Greek hexameters, from an unknown author of perhaps 400 A. D., whom we may for convenience name as Anonumos. It was first printed, Venice, 15 18, in the second Aldine edition of Dioscorides ; its best edition is that of Choulant, Leipsic, 1832. Termed by Meyer not the work of a physician or natu.raHst but of one enchanted by the spells of rhetoric, the poem was filled by its nameless sire with mythological and medicinal lore, and an air of distinction was sought by use of the old Ionic dialect. The plants described number 16 or 17, including the following :
Chamaemehmi, '^aim'iptYjAov, which is prescribed, line I, for fevers, with oil of roses
Buphthalinon, ^oixpdaXnov, lines 128-132, which the poet de- scribes as under the protection "of Ilithyia, the increasing Moon, light-diffusing lustrous maid," and directs the user to "take up Buphthalmon, invoking Ilithyia," so securing it as defence against fears and evil spirits and spells of magic and baneful drugs." Then follows a line connecting the plant with Zeus or Jove —
132. TaJjTfiv TTjV [^ordvTjv Acb(; d(ppua nd^ duojutd^ei, i. This plant every one calls by the name of Jove's-eyebrow.
Aiitheiiiis. — After a gap of uncertain length, the poem is resumed with the name Anthemis, assumed by editors to be here used for the previous Buphthalmon and to continue the same description ; if so, it is doubtless the same as the y^pua'totatv dvdkfioiatv to the beauty of which Sappho had likened the loveliness of her daughter Cleis. But the dvdefu^ of Anonumos may instead be the same as that of Dioscorides. The line reads :
133. Xpuaconbv (TTtX^ec TiapimEuxuxXo:^ dvOe/ic^ dj^pij, i. e., With gold-face gleams delicate Anthemis, circled with her purple hem.
The purple border is appropriate if the author meant Aster Amcllus L., by his Anthemis ; or if he meant Anthemis rosea DC, deemed by Sibthorp to be the 'Ai^dejucc nopipupdudrjc of Dios-
Aster as Anthemis
179
corides ; taking nanoTre'jx'jyJo': for a form intended to imitate the Ionic and to include ;r«oL>^iy, a purple border woven around a robe.
The lines remaining direct the use of Anthemis for a pain in the stomach (as with Aster in Dioscorides) ; and for toothache, using the root roasted; neither direction occurring in Dioscorides, for either his Anthemis or Buphthalmon. The special virtue of his 'Avdsfic:: 7:o()(ft)f)dvdrjr- was, fide Dioscorides, for calculi. These particulars look as if Aster Amellus, shining with gold center and purple border, and used as stomachic remedy, was in the poet's mind as his Anthemis. — So with the Anthemis nobilis, in the illus- trated Anglo-Saxon Apuleius ; at least it is colored a blue purple.
Chrysanthemum; to this, lines 211-215 relate, beginning
Take up the pure chrysanthemum dewy from the earth, Before the great sun renews his unending cycle,
continuing. Bear it about the body, for it is able to ward off drugs, and perils from unlawful magical spells.
Peristera, i. e., Verbena (now mixed with Eryngium ?), is sub- ject of lines 55-73, which declare it a plant dedicated to Aphrodite^ of two kinds, Trigonion and Aristereon (see p. 161, n.) of use for the eyes and headache and as an aphrodisiac, to invigorate. So Kyranis (uncertain Greek author, edited by Harpocration perhaps 370 A. D.) indicates that Peristereon is a plant of Aphrodite by citing its otherwise unknown synonym * Aphrodites.
XXIII. Aetios Actios Amydenos, another Greek medical writerf of date thought to be about 540 A. D., was author of sixteen books J in which he
* Other synonyms Kyranis cites for it are Kynaedios ; Meretricis ( Dioscorides gave Mertryx as synonym for Geranion); Centum capita. Pliny's white Centum capita is Ejyngium campestre L., which Kyranis calls Eringion, and of which his redactor, per- haps 700 A. D, (Kyranos; or the Kirani Kiranides, as the work is called by Raimundius Lullius, q. v.), says " Sow its seeds and you will find growing up a Gorgon's head."
J Born at Amida, now Diarbekir ; seems to have studied at Alexandria ; was a leading court physician at Constantinople, in or about the time of Justinian.
X The Greek original, as Sprengel remarks, lies hidden yet in some library ; the second half has never been printed ; the first 8 books were printed, 1534, at Venice, by Aldus Manutius ; followed by Cornarius' excellent I.atin translation (from which I quote), edn. Froben, Basle, 1542; and by the Latin translation with notes on the plants by Solerius, Leyden, 1549. Sprengel remarks that for establishing Dioscorides' text, Aetios is " of little authority, because his extracts from Dioscorides are not literal, and he adds many from other authors and also many from his own description." This makes him the more important however as a source of the plant knowledge of his time.
180
Aster History ; Aetios
presented a compend of the older Greek medicine. Aetios is re- markable for the numerous and complex preparations which he describes under the name Aster ; one medicine was his Aster inex- supetabilis, another his Aster inagni, another his Aster Asclepiadae ; they were his leading remedies, his star preparations; they contained sometimes the earth known as Aster, but not the plant Aster ; they were useful for ulcerations as the plant Aster was ; and it would seem that if their name had any relation to that of the plant it was through this similarity of their use. See p. 91, for details of his aster medicaments.
Aetios by no means ignored Aster the plant, however ; the fol- lowing in his treatment of it, in his alphabetical discussion of sim- ples ;* using the Latin translation of 1542, and showing the context. It will be seen that it was adapted from Galen.
Asparagus....
Aster Attictis, Bubonium. Aster Atticus, quem alii Bubonium appellant, quod non solum in cataplasmate impositus, sed etiam ad- alligatus bubonias ac inguinum tumores sanare credatur. Habet etiam quod discussorium, ut mixtarum virium sit, velut rosa, sed bubonium non ita astringit.
Astaphis....
Bubonium sive Aster Atticus. De Bubonio dictum est in secundae appellationis elemento.
BuphtJialmiun. ... duritias sanent ad ceratum permixti.
XXIV. Paulus Aegineta Paulus Aegineta, t Greek author, perhaps 630 A. D., of seven books of medicine,! was called § the most renowned physician
14 of edn. Froben.
f Paulus Aegineta, called Aegineta, Aeginetos, from birth in the island Aegina ; called Periodeutes, i. e., circulator, as a peripatetic physician ; and called latrosophistes, i. e.^ philosopher of the healing art. He is deemed by Fabricius (Meyer, 2 : 412) to have flourished under Constantinus Pogonatus, 668-685 A. D. Abulfeda states that he lived in Alexandria; if so, doubtless before its capture by the Saracens under Amrou, 640. Haller, approved by Meyer, assigns him to the age of the emperor HeracHus, whose reign was 603-641 A. D.
% First printed by Aldus in the original Greek, Venice, 1 528 ; from which edition I quote : again, Basle, 1538 : three Latin translations appeared in that century, by Cor- narius, 1556, etc.; and an English translation, an unusual thing among writers of his class, London, 1 847, by Dr. Francis Adams. Sprengel praises the edition of 1538, accurately edited by Hieronymus Gemusaeus, and of great use in establishing the text of Dioscorides. ^ By the Arab writer Abul-pharagius.
Paulus' Aster
181
of his age. He long remained an important source of mediaeval citation. Writers were quoting what he had to say of Aster Atti- cus as late as the revival of learning ; as in the Gart der Gesund- heit (edn. M-entz, 1485), where, article Unguinalis, we read,
" Paulus says in his chapter ' Aster ' that this is a plant which has rather long leaves and at the summit bears a star."
These statements, however, are traceable to Dioscorides, and do not occur * at all in the passage about Aster Atticus as it actually exists in the Greek text of Aldus which I proceed to quote in the English translation by Adams — being really, as Adams observes, extracted from Galen, from whom indeed much of Paulus' plant-knowledge was derived.
Paulus' remarks f on Aster are as follows :
''Aster Atticus ; | Starwort is also called Bubonium because it is believed to cure buboes, not only when applied for this purpose but even when appended as a periapt. It is possessed of mixed powers, being discutient and cooling."
On which Adams comments as follows : " Our author's ac- count of the Starwort, Aster Amyllus (sic) is taken from Galen, who in his turn copied from Dioscorides. In the common editions of Dioscorides there is a passage under this head (which although quoted by Serapion § 96, is scarcely considered genuine by Spren- gel, seeing it is not alluded to by Galen or Pliny) in which the Aster is recommended for ardour of the stomach, inflammation of the eye, buboes and quinsies. The Arabs in treating of the Aster Atticus, copy from Dioscorides. See in particular Avicenna, ii, 2, 357 and Serapion, de Simpl, 36 and Rhases (Contin. I., ult. 95). It is not found in the works of Celsus. It held a place in our modern dispensatory down to a late date. See Quincy (116)."
* Indicating that the author was quoting not from a manuscript of Paulus but at second hand, and that in transcribing he or some preceding authority had exchanged names of his authors.
-f- Adams' Paulus Aegineta, 3 : 59 ; Lon. 1847, book 7, sec. 3.
J 'Acryp 'Attcko^ 01 6e f^oufSdinov, on jxi] judvov eTTinTiaTTdfiovov, a2,?ia Kai nepLaTTTO- juevov, etc.
182
Aster History ; the Arabs
ARABIC WRITERS. XXV. Rhazes Rhazes, Rhasis or Arrazi, Arabic author of Persia and Bagdad, who died 932, A. D. (^fide Abul-pharagius), was writer of works combining medicine, astrology, alchemy, etc., printed, in translation in barbarous Latin by Feragium of Salerno, under the name Con- tinens, as at Brixiae, by Jacobus Britannicus, i486 ; including many plant-references in books 21, 22 and 23, with their properties mostly transcribed from Dioscorides and Galen, Among these plants Aster Atticus appears, Continens, i. ult. 95. Rhazes was so named from his birthplace, Raiz in Persia ; was the first Arabic writer to treat medicine in encyclopaedic manner ; and was the first writer to give any accurate description of measles or of smallpox.
XXVI. AVICENNA
Avicenna or Ibn Sina, born 980 A. D., son of an official of Bokhara under the last of the Samanides (Nuh' Ben Manssur, ruling 976-997); went into Dahistan, 10 12, and lived afterward chiefly in Persia, where he died, at Hamadan, 1037. His books, though brief, number over 100, including his celebrated works on medicine, and on plants, animals and astronomy; with commentaries on Aristotle; especially his Qanun, or book of the Canons of Medicine,* in which occurs his chapter f on Aster Atticus, book ii, 2, c. 27. His works formed the scientific code of the middle ages, eclipsed the fame of Hippocrates and Galen, and took the place in European universities of the Greek authorities from whom they were extracted — in France till about 1700.
"By Avicenna," remarked Fuchs,J "Canon 2, c. 17 [27 recte\^ Aster Atticus is wrongly written Atratisus ; and in like manner almost all names of herbs are by Avicenna corrupted."
* First dated edition, 1473, Milan, in Lat., prob. tr. by Arnald ; printed earlier by Mentelin at Strasburg, twice at least. Printed at Rome, 1593, in Arabic ; in 1595, Lat. tr. by Gerardus Cremonensis ; in 1658, one by Plempius at Louvain of the 1st, 2d and part of the 4th books ; in German translation, 15 books, by Sontheimer, 1844, at Freiburg.
f The 27th of the 757 chapters (mostly plants) of Avicenna's maietia medicu. I quote it from signature bb.ii oi my unpaged copy of Arnald de Villanova's tr., printed Venice, i486, by Pierre Maufer et socii. " De atratisus, Ca. 27. Atratisus quid est. Est medicina cognita cum chali \_z. e. cum nomine chali?]. Natura. In ipsa est parum infrigidationis et non est in ea stipticitas. Operationes et proprietates. Desiccat cum equalitate et eius virtus est resolutiva cum infrigidatione. Apostemata et bothor [?'. e. ulcera] . Confert apostematibus emunctoriorum more emplastri superposita et suspensa. ' '
J Brunfels' De vera, 155. 1531-2.
Serapion's x'\ster
183
XXVII. Serapion
Serapion the Younger,* of i i lo A. D., or after, one of the most important mediaeval authors to describe f Aster Atticus, was long our chief source for Arabic plant knowledge, and formed in his writings a connecting link between the Greek world of thought and that of the caliphate. His identity is shrouded in mystery, and to his date there is no clue within two centuries. He is not himself cited by any Arabic writer, or by any writer at all until the time when Simon Januensis translated him into bar- barous Latin, about 1292 A. D. He himself cites writers only to I J 06 A. D., and may have written shortly thereafter. His orig- inal text needs to be diligently searched for, and Meyer observes that no Arabic MS. of Serapion is known to exist in any library in Europe.
This author with a Greek name but writing in Arabic and known to us only in Latin, has been thought from his modes of expression to have been a Christian residing among the Moors of Morocco or of Spain. He knew Dioscorides and Galen in Arabic translations, and united their remarks about plants with those of other Greeks J and of certain Arabs into one tissue. He treats of
■'^To be distinguished from Serapion the physician of Alexandria of the third cen- tury B. C, none of whose writings are extant ; and also (as Meyer remarks) to be dis- tinguished from the physician Joannes filius Serapionis, also called Janus Damascenus, and, in Arabic, Jah'ia Ibn Serafiun ; who is cited 785 A. D., and whose Greek writ- ings were translated into Syriac not long after that time. To be distinguished also, and much more readily, from St. Serapion, the scholastic of the monastery of Arsinoe in upper Egypt, friend of St. Anthony, and who is known for his defence of Christ' s divinity, made at a council of 347 A. D.
f In the Liber Serapionis aggregattis in niedicinibus simplicibus, 26 ; 96 ; so denominated in its Latin form, a translation made by Simon Januensis about 1 292 with the help of the Jew Abraham Tortuosiansis ; printed first at Milan, 1473. Sprengel used a Leyden edition of 1525 ; Meyer deemed the best edition to be that of Brunfels, printed at Strasburg, 1531, together with Averroes, Rhasis, etc., by the title, "Joan. Serapionis Arabis de simplicibus mediciniis opus praeclarum et ingens."
X Especially from a " Liber de Agricultura" of Qosthus, a Christian physician of Baalbec and of Armenia, who traveled in Greece and made translations from the Greek at Bagdad ; who lived perhaps 860 A. D.; whose name Qosthus is an Arabic form for Constantine ; and from whom Meyer gives quotations, Geschichte, 3 : 151-4, De Lactuca, etc. An Arabic translation of his works seems to have been made from a Persian translation by Sergius. Meyer deems Serapion's quotations from his Asceos, Barbios, Constantinus and Costes to have been all from this one Qosthus.
184
Aster History: Serapion
plant-remedies in 365 chapters, and then follows with a few from minerals and from animals. Often our text of Dioscorides differs greatly from that of similar passages in Serapion. Older critics, as Leonicenus, attributed these differences to Serapion's supposed lack of familiarity with Greek ; more recent critics, as Sprengel and Meyer, ascribe the differences not to Serapion, but to some older translator of Dioscorides into Arabic, who had a better Greek text than our existing MSS. Sprengel, therefore, praises Serapion as a source for the correct text of Dioscorides, deeming him " uberrimus,* " and his writings an "egregium opus,"t ** much more important for the natural history of plants than any previous writer in Arabic."
In this connection it becomes of especial interest to observe that Serapion in his article on Aster Atticus, which is substantially that of Dioscorides, includes all Dioscorides' statements which Sprengel separated as spurious or doubtful. In the disputed read- ing as to color of Aster flowers, purple or yellow, or purple and yellow, Serapion reads or, r^, not which Marcellus Vergilius inserted ; see p. 141.
Serapion's greatest peculiarity, as regards Aster Atticus, was his identification of the plant with Centum capita, or Eryngium. The light he throws on the probable text of Dioscorides is more important but less remarkable. The identification of Aster Atticus with Eryngium was made in set terms by Matteo Silvatico in his Pandects ; and he was led to it by Serapion's confusion or exten- sion of the name Centum capita. Serapion's words were quoted % by Giacomo da Manlio or de Manliis, about 1450, as follows :
Etiam in Serapion ait, ' Ascaracon, id est, Centum capita, est coelestis coloris,' inferius dicitur * Iringi.' Sed Centum capita alba, est species spinae."
Serapion's version (in Simon Januensis' translation) of the name Aster Atticus, Astaraticon, is printed as Ascaracon. Serapion in- terpreted a blue flower which he knew as Centum capita, as the original of Dioscorides' Aster Atticus. Whether his " celestial colored " Centum capita was our Aster Amellus (which may have
* Sprengel' s Dioscorides, pref. t Sprengel' s Geschichte. X Brunfels' De vera, 170.
Serapion's Ascaracon
185
been out of his range of travel and so never seen) ; or was Simon Januensis' name for our Aster Amellus (which may have been familiar to him in his life in northern Italy) ; and may have been in- troduced by Simon in translating, as his understanding of Serapion's original ; or whether Centum capita was used by Serapion or by Simon or both, for a small blue-flowered species of Eryngium, by extension from its white relative ; certainly without access to the text, these are but conjectures. But probably in one of these three ways it came that Pandectarius and de Manliis understood Serapion's identification to be with the common Centum capita, a white spiny plant, the Eryngium of most authors then and since. So it hap- pened that Pandectarius identified Aster Atticus with a white Eryn- gium, an impossibility which de Manliis pointed out, c. 1450, and which Fuchs exposed again, 1531.
XXVIII. Other Arabic Writers
The translation of Dioscorides into Arabic early brought the knowledge of Aster Atticus into lands far remote from its nativity. The first translation by Stephanos, son of Basilios, was made at Bagdad in the reign of Motawakkil, 847-861, and revised * by the learned H'onain Ben Ish'aq,t court physician to the caliph Motaw- akkil. Under Abd Arrah'man III. of Spain, 948-9, a new copy of Dioscorides in Greek with figures of plants and with a Latin trans- lation, was sent to Spain from the emperor of Constantinople, Romanus II., and was followed, 951-2, by the learned Nicolaos, "to give instruction to Arabic physicians in Cordova and to ex- pound the Greek names in Dioscorides." A new translation into Arabic followed, completed 982, by Ibn Dscholdschol, probably at Cordova. Another later translation was by Ibn Walid.
Three hundred Arabic medical writers are listed by Wirsten- feld.
* A MS. copy is in the Bodleian Library and another in Paris ; and a copy with- out translator's name, in the Escurial, may be the same, Meyer, 3 : 138.
I Ysaac, or Honain Ibn Ishak, born, it is said, 809 A. D., died 873, son of an apothecary of Omar's time. He made translations into Syriac from Aristotle and from Nicolaus Damascenus. He was the Arabic translator of Hippocrates, Galen and of Paulus Aegineta. He or his son of the same name was author, i. e. , translator, of Ysaack's De Simplicibus medicamentis, printed 1515 at Lyon. His nephew H'obaisch also made translations. His daughter also, was author of medical commentaries.
186
Aster History ; the Moors
Arabic authors who are likely to have treated of Aster but of which I have not been able to get detailed evidence include :
Haly filius Abbas, or Ibn Alabbasz, a celebrated Persian phy- sician who died 994 and wrote before 983 ; his Liber totius medi- cina was a Latin translation from him, made 11 27 by Stephanos Antiochenus, and printed Venice 1492, and Lyons 1523 ; not yet printed in Arabic ; this "Royal Book" was the Arabic standard in medicine till Avicenna wrote.
Mesue or Filius Mesue * or Janus Damascenus, who lived 926- 1016; wrote on medical remedies, including Eupatorium, etc.; a Latin translation appeared at Leyden, 1531, by Campegius ; and at Venice, 1540 ; another issue at Venice, 1562, printing two Latin translations together, the new being by Sylvius ; his De Simpli- cibus was for centuries the standard for materia medica and was used in forming the first London Pharmacopeia, time of James I.
Ibn Golgol, court-physician to the Moorish caliph in Spain Hischam II., who reigned 976-1013 ; travelled in Syria, etc.; wrote on the remedies omitted by Dioscorides ; discussed many herbs, and treated especially of palms and other trees.
Ibn Alawwam of Seville, wrote 11 58 or before, Meyer, 3: 261 ; his Libro de Agricidtura, published at Madrid, 1802, in a Spanish translation from the Arabic, by Banqueri, mentions 585 plants, t
Averroes, or Ibn Roschid, born at Cordova about 1 1 26, died at Morocco 1198, the great Arabic commentator on Aristotle ; many of his writings on natural history have appeared in Latin, as his De Simplicibtis, published by Brunfels, 1531, with Rhasis, etc.
Moses Maimonides, or Miasa Ben Maimun, a scholar of Aver- roes, born 1 140 of a Jewish family in Cordova, also wrote on plants ; as in his Mischna, published at Amsterdam, 1698- 1703, in the Latin translation by Surenhusius. His work also exists in Hebrew as well as Arabic.
Ibn Baithar, a Malagan, who travelled in Greece, Asia and Africa, and who, says Sprengel, " ardor incredibUi pulsus, wandered
* The elder Mesue, who wrote 857-8, was also famed for his knowledge of drugs.
f The French translation by Clement Mullet, in 2 vols., Paris, 1864-7 5 ^^O' ^434 pp., bears the title Ihn-Al-Avam Le Livre de V agriculture. A copy of this edition, already rare, was offered in Paris in 1901, at 20 fr. One is in the Sturtevant library.
Baithar's Plant-collecting
187
over all the Orient for the sake of collecting herbs," was court physician in Egypt 1238 and died in Damascus 1248. He de- scribed 1,400 plants ; a selection was published by Dietz in 1833 at Leipsic (derived from MSS. at the Escurial, at Madrid, Paris and Hamburg), entitled Elenchus materiae medicae Ibn Baitharis Malacensis." Sprengel remarks, Geschichie, i : 240, publ. 1807, Baithar alone among Arabs went to nature instead of relying on Nestorian and Greek writings," and again, i : 238, " I grieve over nothing more than this history should be written without Baitha- ridian aid " — not even Dietz's selection from Baithar having yet been published.
Ibn Alkotbi or Malajesa, born in Armenia, lived in Bagdad, a physician and a botanist of talent and sagacity ; author of what Dietz termed an epitome of Ibn Baithar ; but it was really much more, says Meyer, 3 : 243 ; Sprengel had deemed it a compend of Dios- corides of the loth century by Abul FadH. Three MSS. exist in Paris and two at Oxford ; one of the former was completed (by the author himself, Meyer) Nov. 8, 131 1, as the MS. attests.
Various Late Greek Writers Mention of Aster Atticus by rearrangement from Dioscorides is to be looked for next in Photius, in Simeon Seth, in Stephanos Magnetes, and in Nicolaos Myrepsos.
XXIX. Photius, made patriarch of Constantinople 858 and banished 886, who remained thereafter engaged in studies in a mon- astery in Armenia, prepared, in his Myriobiblion,* 280 volumes of analyses and extracts, of which the 178th contained Dioscorides, volumes 216-9 Oribasius, 221 Actios, 278 Theophrastus.
XXX. Simeon Seth, or Sethi, an obscure but able writer, who seems to have been a physician from Antioch, and a high official of the palace at Constantinople, was styled magister or protobestiarch, and dedicated his work on plant-remedies and foods t to the Emperor Michael VII. (Ducas) who reigned 107 1-8.
* Printed, the Greek with Latin translation, by Andr. Schottus of Antwerp, at Rheims, 1653; the Greek alone, with recension by Bekker, Berlin, 1824.
t Simeon Seth's "Syntagma ... de cibariorum facultate," first published in Latin translation by Gyraldus of Ferrara, Basle, 1538 ; again, edited by Monthesaurus of Verona, Basle, 1561 ; and published in the Greek original with a Latin translation, Paris, 1658, by Bogdanus ; all of which rare works were in Meyer's library.
188
Aster History ; Simeon Seth
The contents of the work show that the author was a contem- porary. Sprengel deemed him to be the same Simeon to whom in 1034 the Emperor Michael IV. (the Paphlagonian) resigned the government when he became a monk. Meyer doubts his being the same, as there were 38 years between the two periods of activ- ity. Simeon Seth's work is a well made compend, Meyer, from Actios, Paulus Aegineta, Oribasius, Rufus Ephesios, Galen, Dioscorides, Theophrastus and Hippocrates, also showing knowl- edge of physicians of Persia, Arabia and India. From its first Latin translation Fuchs (edn. 1542, p. 500; also edn. 1551, p. 485) quotes, "ex Symeone Sethi," under Melissa officinalis, in such a manner as to suggest origination from Aster Atticus, Simeon Seth saying of the plant Bubones laedit," i. e., it dis- perses inguinal tumors ; representing Dioscorides' remark of his HeXcaaoipuXkov, " Strumas discutiunt, ulcera purgant." Dioscor- ides' recommendation of his melissophyllon for ulcers and tumors * seems to have been borrowed from the ulcer-curing power of his other bee-loving plant, Aster Atticus ; confusion between the two seems evident in later centuries ; see supra, Palladius, p. 175.
XXXI. Stephanos MAGNETES,t who wrote % about 1 100 A. D. on medical plants § and added their Arabic names ||; claimedlf that Dioscorides' chapter on Chrysanthemum is a later addition, being
* Dioscorides, remarking that many persons confused the melissophyllon with his Ballota or black horehound, ascribes to the latter also these same curative powers.
I Dietz distinguishes Stephanos Magnetes from Stephanos Athenaos, a physician, who wrote under Heraclius (603-641) and from Stephanos Alexandreus, an alchemist who dedicated his work (Ideler's Physici et medici Graeci minores, 2 : 243. Berlin, 1842) to the same emperor.
X His Commentary on Galen and Scholia on Hippocrates were for the first time edited in the Greek by Dietz, 1834.
\ He was probably the original Greek author of the " Alphabetum empiricum," printed by Caspar Wolf at Zurich, 1581, from a Latin MS. which Gesner possessed ; and which still exists in the unprinted Greek MS. at Vienna. This work is based on Dioscorides, rearranging his plant remedies under an alphabetical series of the dis- eases. A later unknown reviser, whom we may with Meyer, 3 : 370, term Pseudo- Dioscorides, may have added the name Dioscorides which now heads the MS.
II The Arabic name Sumach for Rhus makes its appearance here.
\ Fraas made the same claim more recently and with fresh proofs. Magnetes deemed Dioscorides' " Chrysanthemum or Anthemis " the same as his Buphthalmon, thus identifying it with Chrysanthemum cor onarium L. " the only plant about towns in Grecian lands with large golden flower and many-parted foliage." See supra, under Hippocrates.
AcTUARius' Aster
189
partly in the same words as his Buphthalmon ; * and is, I think, the first author to use the word Lulakion, to be compared with the modern Greek for a daisy or for a flower in general, in the form XooXoudta : and with Persian lilak, the li'ac.
XXXII. NicoLAOS Myrepsos, Alexandrinus, author of a Greek Antidotarium, between 1270- 1280, not yet printed ; a Latin trans- lation by Fuchs appeared in 1549 in 48 sections, at Basle ; and an earlier one by Ammonius, at Ingolstadt, 1541.
XXXIII. AcTUARius. Perhaps the next Greek writer to mention Aster Atticus was Actuarius,t Greek physician of Con- stantinople, who wrote J about 1300 A. D., quoting Dioscorides upon Aster, and who is cited by Bodaeus as identifying Theophras- tus' Asterion with Aster.
MEDIAEVAL PLANT-WRITERS OF THE WEST The search for indications of the attitude of mediaeval writers to Aster, — which involves their attitude to the Compositae and to many other plants — leads next to an almost untrodden field. It requires an examination into the approximate place, time, character and value of many little-known plant-writers, some of whose works § have but recently come within the knowledge of science. Only in this way is it possible to trace the sources of the Aster-chapter in the Ortus Sanitatis, which ushers in the Revival of Learning.
I have therefore treated this less familiar part of the subject — substantially the period 800-1300 A. D. — with much greater full- ness than might be suggested by the paucity of its direct contri- butions to knowledge of Asters.
* He has been credited with a new synonym, Persea (or Persa) sylvestris, for Amaracus (fide Dufresne, apparently from an ancient glossary) ; Amaracus which Galen and other ancients use for Matricaria ChaT7ioniilla L. But perhaps Dufresne' s Afnaracus was a slip for Amygdalus or Amandalus, and the peach may have been the real intention.
f Actuarius, incorrectly Auctuarius, in Greek ^ AKrovainoq ; his actual name, Joannes, son of Zacharias; he dedicates a work to his tutor, Joseph Racendytes, who lived under Andronicus II, Palaeologus, 1 281-1328.
Jin his De Methodo Medcndi, depaTrevTiKij MidoSog, in 6 books ; of the Greek text only books i and 2 have been printed (see Ideler's Physici Minor es). A Latin trans- lation of all, by Mathisius, first appeared at Venice, 1554; the 5th and 6th books were published separately in a Latin translation by Ruellius at Paris 1539 and Basle 1540, under the title *' De Medicamentorum compositione." The Medendi is said to have been extempore and designed for the use of his schoolfellow Apocauchus during an embassy to the north. Meyer, 3 : 386, styles Actuarius " a man of Geist and a clas- sical philosopher, worthy of birth in a better age."
\ As the Delia Confezione in Magistri Salernitani, Turin, 1 901.
190
Aster History ; Western Revival
Traces of Reviving Botany under Charlemagne Medical studies, to which we might look for the early indica- tions of an awakening knowledge of plants in Western Europe, made a slight beginning under Charlemagne. But even the names of his two Jewish court physicians, Ferraguthus and Buhahyliha Bengesla, are claimed by Meyer to have been mistakenly attributed to his period. The latter is said indeed to have written his medical work Tacuin at Charlemagne's command ; but according to Meyer, however, he is to be identified with that physician of the same name who died at Bagdad, i lOO A. D., a convert to Islam.
Centers of learning grew up at Metz, Hersfeld, Osnabriick, Korvei, Reichenau, St. Gall, St. Emerau, etc., and especially at Fulda,* famed for monastic studies of Rhabanus, Grimoald and Walafrid Strabus ; not to omit the " school of the palace " at Charlemagne's court, over which he placed the English scholar Alcuin, 782-804, preceded by Paulus Diaconus the Lombard, and by Petrus Pisanus who gave instruction to the monarch him- self Distinct recognition of medical studies in the west appears in Charlemagne's Capitularc or charter for his Kathedralschule," issued at Thionville,t 806, empowering it to teach De medicinali arte ut infantes hanc discere mittantur."
XXXIV. Charlemagne's Capitularies, 800 -f After Charlemagne % had been crowned emperor of Rome, December 25, 800, a classified list or Capitulary § of his posses- sions was prepared at his order, copies of which were found in the Helmstadt and Wolfenbiittel libraries, and the 70th chapter of which forms a list of the plants of the royal garden, including fruit-trees, kitchen-herbs and medicinal plants, and also orna- mental plants, as Rosae, Lilium, Gladiolus," about 105 plants in all being catalogued. The few Compositae which occur are only
*Fulda, in Hesse-Nassau, 53 miles northeast of Frankfort ; its abbey was founded 744, around which the town grew up.
f Thionville, the ancient " Villa Theodonis," the Diederhofen of the Germans, on the Moselle, 18 miles northeast of Metz.
X Charlemagne, born 742?, reigned 768-814, dying at his western capital, Aachen or Aix-le-Chapelle, January 28, 814.
\ The *' Capitulare de villis et cords imperialibus,^^ first printed 1647, Helmstadt, edited by Conring ; important editions are those of Bruns, Helmstadt, 1799, and Pertz, Hanover, 1835 (in Monumenta Germaniae^ 3 : 181).
Charlemagne's Capitularies
191
these : Abrotanum (= Artemisia Abrotaniun), Dragontea (= Ar- temisia Draciinculus), Intubae and Solsequium (= Cichoriiitn Endivia and C. Intybiis, fide Reuss), Lactuca (= Lactuca sativa), Tanazita (= Tanacetitni vulgare^, and Costum (= Balsamita f).
Some of Charlemagne's plants are completely disguised, as Warentia (= Rubia tinctormn, Fr. Garance), Vulgigina (plural, = Asarum Europaeum), Britlae (= Allium Schoenoprasum), Pirarii (= Pyrus communis), etc.
XXXV. Charlemagne's Breviary, 812 Charlemagne gave instructions in 812 that an inventory be made " of all things in the church, farmhouse and tenements, and in the royal possession." One of these Breviaries" or inventories remains in the Codex of Helmstadt,* and contains 50 plant-names, which forms, remarks Meyer, 3: 412, ''the first rudiments of a Flora Germanica." Many of the plants of the Breviary are less classically named than in the Capitularies, progress toward Galli- cizing their Latin names showing in frequent clippings at either end, as Scalonia for the previous Ascalonia and Petresilum for Petreselinum ; or in the middle, as Nepta for the Latin Nepeta. The Compositae of the Breviary are only " Abrotanum, Taneza- tum or Tanazita, and Costus." Names of special importance in the present connection include :
Acrimonia : not in Capitularies ; Meyer deems it to be = Agri- monia Eupatoriuin L.; but not the Agrimonia of Strabus and of others later (as Pseudo-Macer), which was the Argemonia of Pliny; see supra, pp. 156, 169, etc.
Caulae and Caules : Cauli in the Capitularies ; = Caulis of Macer ; late Latin for Brassica the cabbage ; see p. 205.
XXXVI. Rhabanus Bishop Rhabanusf or Hrabanus of MentzJ was perhaps the
* Helmstadt in Brunswick, seat of a former university.
t Rhabanus Magnentius Maurus, 774-856, Abbot of Fulda 822-842, afterward Bishop of Mentz, 847, etc., born of an ancient family at Mentz, was devoted to learning from boyhood, and already at school at nine, pursuing studies in a Benedictine cloister at Fulda. His friend Bishop Haymo of Halberstadt had a copy of the De Universo, about 843.
% With Rhabanus begins the long series of associations of botanical history with Mainz, Mayence or Mentz, the city which Gutenberg was to immortalize by his comple. tion, 1456, of the invention of printing. Mentz, on the west bank of the Rhine opposite
192
Aster History ; Rhabanus
chief writer during Charlemagne's reign to pay considerable atten- tion to Nature. His extensive work, De Universo, was the labor of his youth, written while in the cloister at Fulda, completed when about 29, in 803, and consisting of 22 books, modelled upon the work of Isidorus Hispalensis. In it he mentions about 100 plants, giving their etymologies, properties and products, but with more attention to "their symbolic or spiritual meaning" than to their actual characters.
XXXVII. Walafrid Strabus Walafrid Strabus * or Strabus Fuldensis, 807-849, a Suabian
the mouth of the Main, was successively a Celtic town, a Roman camp, the Roman capital of Germania Superior, and the head of the mediaeval league of Rhenish towns. Here in 840 on an island in the Rhine, died Louis le Debonnaire, le Pieux, at the age of 72, son and successor of Charlemagne. Here in 843 at the treaty of Verdun (the foundation of the German Kingdom), in the partition then made of the empire of Charle- magne, the line of Germany which usually followed the Rhine, was swerved to the west so as to include Mentz in the territories of Louis the German. Here its archbishop Hatto I. conducted the government of Germany during the reign of Louis the Child, 900-911. Here in 913, Bishop Hatto died, to be flung by the devil, says German legend, into the crater of Etna for his crimes. Here in 968 another ill-fated Hatto be- came bishop, builder of the " Mouse-tower," to be eaten alive there, says the legend, in the following year. Here, soon after the invention of printing, were the first dated issues from the press of those curious compends of botanical legend, he Ortus Sanitatis, 1491, the Gart der Gesundheit, 1485, and the Herbarius or Aggregator practicus, 1484.
* Walafrid, Walhafred, or Walahfrid, as contemporary writers spell his name ; born 806 or 7, Choulant ; calls himself a Suabian ; studied at Reichenau under Tatto ; then at Fulda under Rhabanus ; and either there or at St. Gall under Grimoald, and dedicating his " Hortulus," to " Abbot Grimoald " who was elected ^bbot of St, Gall, 841-2 and died 872 ; to the relations of the two as master and scholar, Ermenric the monk of Reichenau in dedicating his grammar to the Abbot Grimoald made the fol- lowing allusion : " Domnus Walhafredus tibi notissimus, quem etiam tu ipse, ut peritus cathegeta, peritam sophistam enutristri ; " " i. e., Master Walhafred is very well known to you, whom yo.i yourself, as skilled guide, nourished and developed into a skilled master of learning." Walafrid became a Benedictine monk at the cloister of Rei- chenau, the Latin Augia, an island (now in Baden) 5 miles from Constance, in the Untersee of Lake Constance; this abbey, founded about 728, was secularized 1803. Here Walafrid read, in 825, at the age of 18, wrote his Vision of the monk Wetinus (Wettin), dedicating his poem, to Grimoald and mentioning his instructors Rhabanus, and Tatto the monk of Reichenau. At Reichenau or before, Walafrid had adopted the name Strabus, saying of himself in a poem to Grimoald
Edidit haec Strabus, parvissima portio fratrum,
Augiae quos vestris insula alit precibus. Strabonem quamquam dicendum regula clamet, Strabum me ipse volo dicere ; Strabus ero.
Strabus as Abbot
193
who was elected in 842 at the age of 35 Abbot of Reichenau, wrote in that year or shortly after a poem on plants, his Hoi^tulus,'^' in 444 Latin hexameters, termed by its discoverer a poem of
elegantia delectabilis." Some claim that Strabus, after studies at Reichenau and Fulda, was for a time at St. Gall, on the Swiss side of Lake Con- stance, and that he was deacon (^fide Schottgen) and finally abbot {^fide Trithemius) of its ancient abbey ; founded in the 6th century as result of the teachings there of the Irish monk St. Gall, and continuing until i8o5.t — During some period previous to 842 Strabus was directing instruction at Reichenau and with such success that he was made its abbot, 842, when but 35. Her- mannus Contractus or Herimannus Augiensis, monk at Reichenau, 1043-1054, says of him in his chronicle merely that he was 12th abbot, and for 7 years. Goldast in his collection of Alamannic writers " cites a MS. as saying Walafrid had by reason of his learned studies so neglected the management of the business of the cloister that he was compelled to resign his office as abbot, and was expelled from the cloister." If this was true, then, as the
Histoire literaire de la France" remarks, cited with approba- tion by Meyer, 3 : 424, Strabus must have been later made Abbot again, for he was abbot in 849, when his sovereign. King Louis
* First printed 1512 at Nuremberg from a MS. found at St. Gall, Switzerland; best edited by Choulant, Leipsic, 1832, and by Reuss, Wiirtzburg, 1834.
f Plants Ground St. Gall at a little later period are said to have occasioned one of the more celebrated among the Latin hymns of the middle ages, — written by the learned Notker Balbulus, 840?-9i2, monk of St. Gall, reformer of church music and author of its sequences," Of his well-known antiphonal beginning
Media vitae In morte sumus,
Prof. F. A. March remarks : *' This world-famous hymn is said to have been com- posed while watching the samphire -gatherers on the precipices around St. Gall" {Latin Hymns, 205. N. Y., 1875). This " Notker Vetustior" is claimed by March to have been the first to use for the Virgin Mary the popular name Maris Stella, which so occurs in the 4th line of his hymn De Nativitate Domini, Some, however, have claimed an origin for the name as early as the 4th century, ascribing to that date the anonymous hymn beginning
Ave maris Stella, Dei mater alma.
This Notker whose thoughts were so stirred by those who gather samphire — dreadful trade," is to be distinguished from a slightly later monk of St. Gall, Notker Labeo, who died 1022, whose translations from the Psalms and from Latin and Greek authors form early monuments of the Old High German.
194
Aster History; Strabus
the German, sent him as his ambassador into France to his brother Charles the Bald ; on which journey Strabus died, 849, fide his own scholar Ermenric.
Strabus' poem indicates much famiHarity * with Latin authors ; parallel passages are exhibited by Reuss from Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Columella, Pliny, Sammonicus and Plinius Valerianus.
He describes 23 plants, all such as were represented in Charle- magne's garden, either in Cartulary or Breviary, and including his three ornamental flowers, " Gladiola, Lilium et Rosa," beginning with sage, his " Salvia " or " Lihfagus, dulcis odore, gravis virtute," which Perpetuo viridi meruit gaudere juventa.
Longest of his descriptions is that of his '* Cucurbita," or gourd, 52 lines; shortest his Raphanus," 5 Hnes.
A closing apostrophe f to the lily and the rose is followed by
* Strabus himself says his poem rests upon current knowledge — opinio famae vul- garis ; on far- sought reading in ancient books, — quaesita libris nec lectio priscis ; and on "labor et studium" in behalf of which he had deferred the regular business of many days — ocia longa dierum. He begins
Plurima tranquillae insignia vitae, — i. e. Many the trophies of a tranquil life may be, and not the least is this [plant- knowledge], if one given to the Paestan art discerns how to treat the workings of the hid garden-god — curas tractare Friapi.''^
f Among the flowers described with most evident enthusiasm in this early flower- poem of the new west, are the lilies ;
" Not Parian marble, not nard in its odor. Rival our lilies ; "
and his Gladiola,
" Bearing to me the beauty of purple blossom, Pleasant offerings of dark violet in early summer." But he writes co7z amove of his Rosa especially ;
*' Since Germania attains not the Tyrian shell, nor can broad Gallia include within her bounds the glowing murex, precious here blooms the branch of the rose, and adds its yellow flowering yearly and its purples, fruitful only of blossom ; — rose which is said to have surpassed all beauties of plants in virtue and odor, so by right it is held the flower of ^ov^ers—Jlorum Jlos.''''
Afterward, comparing the beauty and ecclesiastical significance of roses and lilies at length, he says of the lily,
" Virginity shines in the flower, victorious in her blessed fame, and finally compares the flowers in these words :
" Pluck roses in war, but in peace gather glad lilies,"
and
" Highest victors' palms grants our church to those through the ages Who pluck in the blood of the martyr the gifts of the roses, And who bear glad lilies in the whiteness of their shining faith."
Strabus' Agrimonia
195
dedicatory verses addressed to " Grimalde pater d<jctissime," and written it would seem after Grimoald's election as Abbot of St. Gall in 842, as Strabus speaks of ''his mastership there of that school of pleasure," " schola laetabunda tuorum."
To the student of Asters, Strabus is of chief interest in his de- scription, lines 358-367, of his Agrimonia, by which Argemonia is meant, and for which he also uses the name Sarcocola, as Mar- cellus Empiricus had done four centuries before, and with the same application to the healing of wounds. The manner of Strabus' reference leaves no doubt that he meant one of the poppy kind, an Argemonia (not Argemon, e., an Aster) and may be accepted as interpreting Marcellus' use of the word also. Strabus begins (in translation) ;
21. Agrimonia. Here also Sarcocola clothes the fields abundantly which it is scattered over, and there grows discovered under the shades of neglected woodlands, easy to discern in its ranks of beauty." *
Its uses for pain in the stomach and for healing wounds fill out the other lines.
Strabus describes only two or three Compositae, Absinthium, Abrotanum and perhaps Ambrosia. Absinthium receives one of his few touches of description :
*'Next the shrubs of sharp Absinthium demand place, Simulating the mother of herbs with slender twig. In the leaves is a different color, on the branches another odor, The hairy branches, — and of taste far bitterer its draught."
Abrotanum is similarly described :
Nor less is one prompt to admire the Abrotanum,
Its tall hairy shrubs, — and what beard one beholds
In its branches' wealth, imitating a diffusion of tresses.
These odorous locks, plucked with their slender stem.
Avail much to mingle with Paeonian remedies.
It quenches a fever, it flies a weapon, it gladdens the limbs.
It quells the uncertain injury of the hid poison-drop.
It has as many powers besides as the threads of its tresses.
His Ambrosia is identified by some with Artemisia campcstris L.; by others with Clicnopodiiim Botrys L., because Dioscorides, describing this his Botrys, adds that the Cappadocians call it Am- brosia or Artemisia.
^ Ordinibus facile est discernere pulchris," an echo of Vergil's remark of Asicr Amellus L., " facilis quaerentibus herba."
196
Aster History; Strabus
His Hcrbaruui mater, line i8i, is a name for motherwort, or mugvvort (/. e,, midge- wort), Artemisia vulgai'is L., and is so used for Artemisia by Macer Floridus, perhaps in quotation from Strabus.
XXXVHI. Macer Floridus Macer, a writer known (since 1500 only), as Macer Floridus, or " Macer of the Flowers," was the chief mediaeval poet of plants^ and though not a brilliant poet, still a faint star wins our notice if it shine alone. His identity and nationality have long been a dis- puted problem. Evidence now indicates that he was a Calabrian Greek,* perhaps of the name Maxnov "great," by birth, by profes-
* That Macer was a Frenchman was claimed by Haller, followed by Choulant and Lacroix, from Macer' s use of the plant-names Gaisola (but Gaisdo in best MSS.) for I satis, Maurella for Solan iim ni^ rum, Jusquiamus for Hyoscyamus, Paratella for Lapa- thum ; and Gingiber. Lacroix believed his date to be about 800.
That Macer was a Salemitan of about iijo A. D. was maintained by Renzi (Col- lectio Salernitana, I : 213) showing that the preceding names were all in use in Italy as well as in France ; and that many of Macer' s lines are to be found in the poem the Regimen Salerni, IIOI.
Th it Micer was an Unteritaliener or from southern Italy was claimed by Meyer, 3 : 429 -|-; agreeing in part with Renzi ; and adding the following proofs of Macer s origin from Unteritalie^i ox Magna Graecia. I. Macer was familiar with Graecisms, and used certain peculiar plant names of Greek origin and of current use in Magna Graecia, as Brassica, and apparently Etna and Lolium ; as well as using other Greek words incorporated into his Latin, as cacostomachon, incaustum and sciasis. Hence the rhetor- ically-minded formed a low opinion of his work ; Watt, for example, calling it " a bar- barous and jejune poem"; echoing Pulteney who had termed it "a barbarous poem" and a "jejune performance." 2. Macer shows a knowledge of ancient Greek as well as of Roman writers which Meyer thinks that no one then in France possessed ; he cites Pliny twenty times or more, and Palladius ; and among the Greeks, Dioscorides, Galen and Oribasius. 3. Macer' s attitude to Greek mythology is such as to suggest a Greek nativity. 4. Macer' s lines are often woven into the Regimen Salerni, suggest- ing that he was of the Salernitan school or of its neighborhood, and that his writings were thus easily accessible to the Salernitan masters who compiled the Regimen.
That Macer' s Magna Graecian home may probably have been in Calabria I would add in view of the proved greater permanence thereof ancient Greek words, idioms,myths, folk-lore and superstitions. Their survival among the Magna Graecians of Calabria through a thousand years of Roman domination to the time of Macer may seem incred- ible to some ; but it would not have seemed so to Symonds, who remarks ( Renaissance in Italy ; The Age of the Despots, 47) "By the term Roman I wish to indicate the indig- enous Italic populations molded by Roman rule into homogeneity. The resurgence of this population and its reattainment of intellectual consciousness by the recovery of past traditions and the rejection of foreign influence " followed. More than that 6th century " resurgence" of this suppressed Greek population has now been demonstrated, in fact a survival through another thousand years to the present day. This is meant, not of the Albanian colonists in southern Italy, nor of derivatives from the Byzantine exarchate of
Macer a Calabrian
197
Ravenna under Narses, 542 -f-, nor of the thema of Lombarcly," 915 +> under Basilius Macedo of Byzantium; but is claimed for Calabrians, especially those of Bova as surviving essentially unchanged in their mountain strongholds since a half-millennium B. C. A similar survival of Greeks in some parts of Sicily is asserted as a certainty by the folk-be- lief of modern Greece (/^//^V^^). For Calabria its proof rests upon the labors of Domenico Comparetti, Giuseppi Morosi and Astone Pellegrini, and upon the Studi sui diuletti Greco- Calabro di Bova of the latter ; promptly made know^n to the English world in 1886 by the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, in her essay on " Greek Songs of Calabria. "
An example of Calabrian survival is jxaxaLpa, a knife, in Greek from the Iliad to the Klephtic songs; J/ta/ieri, a poniard, Calabria and Sicily still, wholly different from pugnale and stiletto^ normal Italian for poniard, or from coltello, a knife.
So 6 'tpj.oq (3aGiXevei, the sun sets (literally, the sun kings itself, the sun puts on its purple), in popular Greek to-day and especially in the old Klephtic songs {Atiica); pro- nounced 0 eel-yos vas-i-Iev-ee ; the same expression survives current in Calabria as 0 iglio vasileggui; of world-wide difference from the Italian for sunset, tramontare del sole.
That Macer'' s date was in the latter half of the gth century was claimed by Meyer. Renzi, observing the identity of some lines in Macer and in the Regimen Salerni, inferred that Macer borrowed from the latter ; but Meyer discreetly remarks that the aphoristic form of the lines in the Regimen is that naturally secured by condensing from Macer, rather than the reverse. 2. The way in which Macer' s lines are used in the Regimen, date iioi, suggests that he was then esteemed an antiquity, and a matter of common property for writers of his school. 3. From Macer' s many citations and from their manner, Meyer "cannot forbear to hold him earlier than the Salernitan school," meaning earlier than the time of its definite provision for instruction under Constantinus Africanus, c. 1 070 A. D. 4. Macer is first mentioned by name by the ecclesiastical chronicler, Sigebert Gemblacensis, who wrote 1030-1132, who says ** Macer scripsit metrico stilo librum de viribus herbarum," and who places him among older authors, between one of the 5th and one of the 6th centuries. Evidently Macer did not live near Sigebert' s own period, but was to him simply known as an antiquity, and of some period since Rome. 5. The latest writer cited by Macer is Strabus who died 849 (and wrote in or after 842). Placing Macer's date as far from Sigebert as possible will therefore make it about 850.
Macer'' s na?ne is cited in Ci>^ca Instans as Macro, and Macron, hastily interpreted as Macrobius by some readers, as Bartholomaeus Anglicus. As Macron the name appears in one Florentine 14th century MS. Micron still occurs occasionally in Athens to-day as a family name. Were the form Macron merely an assimilation from his original name, we might have supposed the original form to have been an ancient Macar ( = Eng. Bliss), classic Greek jLiuKap, happy, blest; late Greek, juaKap/nq, name borne by the elder and younger saints Macarius of Alexandria, monks who died 390 and 394 A. D.; and by St. Macarius, patriarch of Antioch in the 7th century ; all founders of so-called Macarian systems ; and borne by Macarius, a monk of the 8th century at Monte Pinnatensis in Aragon, writer of lives of the saints. Were his name traceable to Latin only, it might have represented L. macer, meagre, or L. maceria, a wall, maceriatus, endorsed, which last may have given rise to the province Macerata in southern Italy. — Leaving his native Greek hills and becoming a Salernitan physician and student of the classics, he may have chosen, in adopting a Latin name (as Strabus and other contemporaries did), simply to alter its form to the accepted Roman name representing it, the name Macer, with the knowledge that this had been already made honorable as the name of a poet of plants, as well as of a historian, a Roman governor, several other poets, etc. See supra, p. 133.
198
Aster History ; Macer
sion a Salernitan physician,* and serving later, it may be, under Lothair 1., King of Lotharingia and Italy; whose domain included Brabant, the region from which we first hear Macer mentioned. He seems to have written his poem in or shortly after 850, which is as distant a date as can be assigned it from the time of its first mention, about iioo, when his date was already thought to be indefinitely ancient.
Macer's poem De Viribns Herbaruin\ consists of 2,269 Latin hexameters, treating 77 different plants ; besides 20 spurious chapters, of 487 lines, including 12 more plants and some ani- mal and mineral remedies, as Fel, Alumen, etc. Among these spurious chapters, two classes are distinguished by Choulant ; an addition earlier than Matteo Silvatico, 13 13, including Aaron, Bryonia, Alga palnsiris ; and a later addition, including Qiiinqiie- foliuni and Sanibiicns.
* A physician, but a layman, Meyer deems Macer ; from his use of his mytholog- ical knowledge ; remarking that " in Salerno before 900 A. D., and in other places in southern Italy, a physician could obtain high standing though outside of the priest- hood ;" whereas in France, the successful physicians were such as the Bishop of Amiens, and in Germany the Abbots of Fulda and Reichenau. Reasons for thinking Macer a Salernitan physician include also the character of his poem, indubitably intended, says Meyer, for the publicity afforded by that school, as shown by the poet's professional striving for effect, and certain mannerisms of his verse. The names of few Salernitan physicians are known previous to 900 ; perhaps 5 ; though medical learning is thought to have had its seat at Salerno from c. 500 onward. Until 839, from Zotto, 571, Salerno was subject to the Lombard Dukes of Benevento ; in 839 Siconolph of Salerno became an independent prince ; Macer may have studied at Salerno as early ; in 848 and 856 " Josephus mediciis'''' bought real estate in Salerno, and in 855 " Josan medicus,'''' as shown from documents first by Renzi ; they may have been fellow medical instructors with Macer, and as Jews, examples of the liberality prevailing there of which Macer as a layman was also himself an example, and examples of which liberality were the subsequent instructions given there by " Abdena Saracenus, Solonus Ebraeus, Tetulus Graecus, and Michael Scottus," and others of foreign birth, A. D. 980-1200. The next Salernitan physician known by name was probably a Lombard, Ragenifrid, who in 900 persuaded Prince Waimar of Salerno to give real estate to the Benedictine cloister at Salerno ; the Prince giving this "for the health of his soul and at the persuasion of his physician Ragenifrid and his father-confessor the priest Ermenald." So here again the functions of physician and priest were still separate at Salerno.
■\ First printed, Naples, 1477, by Arnold de Bruxella ; again, 1482, at Milan by Zarotus Parmensis ; numerous editions followed, 20 being enumerated by Choulant (followed by Pritzel) ending with 1590, after which came only Choulant' s critical edi- tion, Leipsic, 1832, The most noted editions before were those of Ati ocianus^ Basle, 1527, of Cornaritis, printed by Egenolph, Frankfort, 1 540, and of Pictorius, Basle, 1559. Woodcuts began to appear first in the 1482 edition ; a copious commentary by
Translations and Manuscripts
199
Guillermus Guerualdus Cadomensis, physician and professor of medicine at the Univer- sity of Caen, accompanied the Caen edition, 1509.
Translations have been made into Polish, French and English ; the Polish by Lovicz, professor of medicine in the University of Cracow, who added notes, .voodcuts, and this translation, to his rearranged alphabetical Macer, Cracow, 1537.
The French translation^ "par Lucas I'remblay," entitled " Les fleurs du livre des vertus des herbes ... par Macer Floride," with the commentary by Guillaume Ger- oult, and with figures, was printed at Rouen, 1588, 8vo , but the translation extended only through the first seven chapters ; to which an ophthalmic remedy was added and a description of Nicotiana {Pritzel).
A MS. English translation (in Eibl. Sloane) was by John Lelamar, master of Hereford school about 1373.
The printed English translation, a l2mo. later than 1535 {Pritzel^, bears the title *' Macer's Herbal, practysed by doctor Lynacro, translated out of Latin into Englysshe, with [additions] shewynge theyr operacyons and vertues set into the margent of this Boke, to theentent you might know theyr virtues." This phrase suggests its translation from the French edition of about 1 500, which ends with a woodcut of a monk writing, and with the words " Herbarum varias qui vis cognescere vires Macer adest disce : quo ducedoctus eris," i. e.. *' Macer is at hand, to teach you, you who wish, to know the various virtues of herbs ; with him leading you, you will become learned." — This translation by Lynacro or Linacre bears no date, but merely the statement of imprint by Robt. Wyer, dwelling "at the signe of St. Johan Fvangelyste, in seynt Martyn's Parysshe, in the Bysshop of Norwytch's rentes, besyde Charynge Crosse ' [Hoefer. ) Another edition was of 1542.
The oldest coPated MSS. ,fide Choulant, are of the thirteenth century ; of which one, /C, at Leipsic, begins " Incipit Macer de naturis herbarum" ; the two others have no name or title except as recently added ; nor do all of the MSS. of the fourteenth cen- tury possess a name, although two, t and A of Choulant, have the title de virtntiiuts herbartim , and bear the name Macer. The Florentine MS. mentioned below bears the title Liber Macronis. The title now used, Macer de viri'nis herbarum, rests on older authority than any MS. however, being that cited by Sigebert Gemblacensis, before 1 1 12. Choulant describes twelve known MSS., the latest being written 1508 by young Simon Steyn of Penig, who received his MD degree the year following. The name Aemilius occurs coupled with Macer on no MS., and was evidently first joined to this Macer in half-knowledge of Aemilius Macer the Roman poet of plants and friend of Vergil (see supra, p. 135), and first by the editor Atrocianus, 1527 ; after which most editions bore the name of Aemilius Macer ; as those of Lovicz and of Pictcirius. Macer Philosflphus was the title by which the rare editio princeps named the author, 1477 ; and so in that of Vienna, 1506. Macer Floridus first appeared as his title in the sup- posed third edition, in France about 1500. but without note of place or time ; the first dated edition bearing this name is that of Paris, 1511.
A Florentine MS. of Macer, written in its 77 chapters in a small Italian hand of the 14th century, not known to Choulant and said to have been early in the Library of San Marco, Florence, — is of peculiar interest because illustrated, and has recently come to America, into possession of Mr. Oakes Ames, of North Easton, Mass., who has kindly given me some items of information regarding it. It seems to lack all the so-called spurious chapters and about 1 15 of the lines accepted as genuine by Chou- lant. Its 56 colored illustrations are added upon the margins and at the end of the whole ^ and were pronounced by an English bibliographer to be " far more accurately delin-
200
Aster Historv ; Macer
Macer's work is largely wrought out of Pliny ; in next degree, from Galen ; a little from Dioscorides, Oribasius and Palladius ; and from many ancients as Hippocrates, Diodes, Xenocrates, etc., who may have been known to him only through Pliny. Other ancient writers, as his Asclepius, were evidently known to Macer not through Pliny but through their own MSS. or in some way unknown to us. Choulant lists 23 classic winters cited by Macer ; all Greek, except Cato, Pliny, Palladius, — andStrabus.* Perhaps his citations of Justus, Menemachus and Melicius are the only cita- tions of these authors known ; the others among his rarer sources are mentioned by Pliny.
eated " than the woodcuts of herbals like the Ortus-Sanitatis, a century or more after- wards. This MS. is further notable for its containing also 14 brief chapters on the na- ture of herbs, differing from those of the Circa instans, written chiefly in Italian, and beginning Cucurbita salvaticha erba."
Many other MSS. of Mo rer exist in Europe, in the British Museum, etc., etc., which were not collated by Choulant, some of which he refers to as ascribed to the 1 1 th century.
N'anies of redacto- s are borne on four of the MSS. :
Odo Veronensis, unknown otherwise ; in a prose abstract of the 13th century, of which he was probably the author.
Odo Magdunensis, of Mehiin, unknown otherwise, on a Dresden MS. of the 14th century.
Odo Muremundensis, on a 14th century MS., the Cistercian monk, Otto von Muri- mont, in Burgundy, who died I161 ; once Abbot of Beauprai.
Albert de Aulica, Dominus, on a Wolfenbiittel MS. of the 14th century. This may have been the name not of the redactor or the scribe but of the master for whose use the scribe had prepared the MS.
Of one of the preceding the learned Meruia (born at Dort, 1558 ; d. 1607) writes in his Cosinographia generalis, 1605, "Aemilius Macer elegantissime de herbis scripsit. Sed hie libellus qui sub Macri nomine circumfertur, non hujus est, sed Odonis cujusdam medici, ut ipse vidi in codice quodam antiquissimo. Verum ut gratior exiret in lucem, Macri titulo inscriptus est." But this Odo was doubtless redactor only, and later than Sigebert who cites Macer as name of the author. The redactor was yet credited with its original authorship as late as 1790, when Pulteney wrote, It is ascribed to Odo or Odobonus, a physician of the later times, and probably a Frenchman."
* Macer cites Strabus only under his Ligustica, lines 900 and 906, and in a way that implies that Macer had access to a MS. of Strabus' Hortulus after Strabus' death, when Macer could in no way satisfy his curiosity as to Strabus' source. Strabus' lines 228-233 on his *' Libysticum, Ligusticum or Levisticum," render as follows: " Delay- ing among the odorous branches, a lingering love of the little garden persuades to re- count the strengths of Libysticum. This shoot although by its juice and by the odor of its sprouting buds it is held to oppose the eyes and to inflict shadows, yet they often add its little seeds to their searched-out cares (prescriptions), and deserve fame with a differ- ent praise." — Macer's 25 lines on Ligtistictnn levisticwn L., are in part derived from
Macer's Knowledge of Strabus
201
Pliny, 19, 50 and 20, 60 ; but Pliny, after remarking that Lovage grows wild in the mountains of Liguria, its native country, but at the present day it is grown everywhere," says little else of it, and gives only three medical values to it, "for the stomach, for convulsions and for flatulency." — Macer on the other hand assigns it the following curative powers: " for flatulent stomach; for all interior diseases," /. ^-.j digestive ; urinas movet ; menstrua purgat ; for all venomous bites, if taken in wine, and if the plant, well-rubbed up, be bound on the place ; for colic, both in drink and bound on ; especially the elixir from its root, to drink for colic and for all the before-mentioned ; and its seeds, which possess '■^ peptic a z-zV/z/i-, is well added to all digestive remedies." Apparently the whole of this is taken by Macer from his own knowledge of the prac- tical value of this native Italian plant, which he may have been always familiar with in its garden state (sweeter than the wild but less powerful, Pliny). The wild plant Macer probably saw also in its native luxuriance, during sojourns in northern Italy ; for Macer's introductory statement that " Ligustica takes its name from its na- tive land among the Ligurians, because greater abundance of this herb is produced there" is no copy of Pliny's statement and has the air of a visit to its native habitat. — So far Macer writes as if sure of his facts from personal knowledge. Then he adds the differing properties he had found in Strabus' MS. saying " This plant is harmful (^nociva, a very rare word) to the eyes, asserts Strabus, both in drink and in odor, yet he directs its seed should be mixed in antidotes ; whether he could have said this from himself or from books of the learned is not known to me ; this I know, that the ancients with no small praise have extolled this very herb, nor do I recall that I have read anything, such as is ascribed to it by the discourses of Strabus." The following conclusions seem to follow ; that Macer knew the plant lovage well, in medical use and probably not only in gardens but also in its native Liguria ; that he knew well a wide range of ancient authorship on the plant, including probably Pliny, Galen, Oribasius ; perhaps he had Cratevas in his hands and found in him (where he calls lovage "cunila bubula,' as quoted by Pliny, 20, 61, 60 ; 19, 50) the same statement which Macer makes of the use of lovage for snake-bites ; probably he had other ancient writers not known to us. Then, per- haps after writing his poem, Macer, who cites no other recent author, finds a MS. of Strabus' Hortulus, is surprised at its ascriptions to Ligusticum and adds them to his poem under a protest which implies that Macer wished that Strabus were yet alive and able to tell him of his source for such unexpected statements.
How came Macer to know Stratus' MS ? Not in the ordinary way of the monk turning over the accumulated MSS. of his cloister, if Meyer is right as he seems to be, in deeming Macer a layman. Not at a time remote from Strabus' death, when diftusion of copies of his MS. might be supposed to have brought some to that southern part of Italy, recovering by 915 A. D. from the burning of libraries in 884, etc., by the Saracens; *^hough perhaps no MS. of Strabus' ever actually travelled so far. Instead, Macer seems to find the MS. soon after Strabus' death, when the MSS. were probably rare then as now. This points to exceptional opportunity enjoyed by Macer, probably as occasional or permanent court-physician ; and to a court which brought him at some time within range of Strabus' life on the Rhine or of his death while ambassador to Paris. With the death of Charlemagne's son and successor Louis le Debonnaire in 840, the empire had been parted between his sons Louis the German, Charles the Bald of France, and the eldest son Lothair, whose kingdom, Lotharingia, was a narrow strip including Italy from near Gaeta northward, with Provence, Burgundy, Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, Bel- gium, P"riesland, etc. Of these three divisions of Charlemagne's empire, did Germany allure Macer out of Italy? I see no probability, for its ties to Italy were then but slight.
202
Aster History; Macer
How much Macer revered the authors he quoted we may in- fer from his scrupulous regard for their utterances, and from his manner of mention of Hippocrates, whom he calls, Ippocras, niedi- cinae maximus auctor [i^oZ) \ of Dioscorides, whom he elevated to distinction by an Ipse — Ipse Dioscorides ait, 1628 ; and of Palladius, whom he calls peritus, 802, saying of rose-oil, " I will quote what Palladius wrote of it, Palladius the skilled," —
Dicam Palladius quid scripserit inde peritus.
With Pliny, Galienus," Oribasius, and Asclepius he used the ap- pellative auctor, evidently a mark of great dignity. The one Latin whom he quotes besides Pliny and Palladius, Cato, he refers to as Romanus Cato testator, 1205 ; words however strange on the lips of one who also felt himself a Roman, very natural for a Calabrian
Was he in service of France under Charles the Bald' s long reign, 840-877, as ambassador to whom Strabus died, in 849 ? and did Strabus carry a copy of his Hortulus with him the French king's court, there soon to be seen by Macer, though too late for conference with its author ? and so did Lacioix's assignment of Macer to the France of ( harlemagne have this measure of justification ? This may yet prove true ; but the French chronicles might be expected then to have mentioned his name ; the French court was a fairly continuous court, till near Hugh Capet's accession, 987 ; yet the first chronicler to mention Macer, Sigebert of Gembloux, himself esteemed a Frenchman, and living 1030-1112, knew nothing of Macer as Frenchman or French court physician, catalogued him as if living 500 A. D. , and evidently knew only the poem, not the man. Therefore if Macer knew royal favor about 850-860, it seems more likely to have been not in France but in that transient kingdom of lost chronicles, Lotharingia, under Lothair I. (born 795), 840-855, and his sons Lothair II. (of the northern portion), 855-869, or Louis 11. (King of the southern only till 869), till 875. Macer may have passed from Salerno into service of Lothair, after that king was thrust back into Italy in 843 (Salernitan physicians were in request at courts), and may have accompanied him northward to his strong cities of Metz, Verdun, Brussels, or Antwerp, and at some one of these already old cities that MS. of Macer may have been preserved which gave Sigebert his knowl- edge of his name, Sigebert' s own home at Gembloux being not far from Brussels, and within Lower Lorraine. Meanwhile Macer' s knowledge of Strabus' MS. may have been obtained during such northern journeying ; as while at Metz or passing up the Rhine to Basle (which did not become a part of Germany till 1032) or passing farther up to St. Gall, where the MS. lay in 1 512, and where Macer may have seen the very MS. sent by Strabus with his dedication to Grimoald, still Abbot of St. Gall, 842-872. And if Macer' s public life was under Lothair or his sons, the lack of record of it is ex- plained by the lack of almost all records, consequent on the convulsions attending the breaking up of that Lotharingian kingdom in 875 on the death of the childless Louis II., and the subsequent disintegration of that northern part where Sigebert Gemblacensis originated, then rent asunder from the ancient capital at Metz into the numerous duchies of Brabant, Limburg, etc. In this way Sigebert may have found some MS. of Macer derived from one at Metz, but yet may have known nothing of his personality.
Macer's Mediaeval Reputation
203
who never forgot the Greek blood in his veins. Another for whom an epithet is used by Macer is Thebana Olympias or Thebanis Olimpias (1278), a Theban authoress on medicine men- tioned by Pliny, Pollux and Plinius Valerianus, and from whom Macer cites three lines on Malva apparently at first hand. Local appellatives like Theban are rare in Macer, and the Greek divinities appear by the bare name only. One other reference to a Greek occurs with his line 2034, under Cicuta,
" Great Socrates perished by hemlock,"
where his magnus seems as satisfying as it is natural. He makes it evident also that those Greeks who wrote copiously of plants commanded his admiration ; mentioning that Chrysippus had writ- ten a whole book concerning the powers of Brassica, and Themison one concerning Plantago.
Macer was in great repute during the middle ages. He was first mentioned by Sigebert Gemblacensis, 1030— 11 12 (as already indicated, p. 197). About 11 01 his poem was used, as if Salerni- tan common property of unnamed origin, in the composition of the poem Regimen Salerni. Matteo Plateario, who died 113c- II 60, cites Macer often. A copy of Macer found its way to Denmark and was used in the next century by Henrik Harpe- streng,* who died 1244, as basis of his Danske Ldgebog on 1 1 5 plant remedies. Citations from Macer occur often in the works of the great encyclopedic compilers who immediately followed Harpestreng ; as in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, c. 1256, Vincent Bellovacensis, who cites 5 1 of the 77 chapters, and Matteo Silvatico, 13 13. About 1373, Macer was translated into Eng- lish by Master John Lelamar, of Hereford School.
* Henrik Harpestreng, of Denmark, whose gravestone, yf^/^" Meyer 3 : 537, tells us all we know of him, that he was canon of Roeskild and died 1244. A Danish MS. by him was discovered in the Danish Royal Library and was published by Molbech at Copenhagen, 1826, as the "Danske Lagebog," etc.; a rare octavo of 206 pages (ex. bibl. Meyer, Dresden and Goettingen). Molbech deemed it a prose version of Macer rioridus. Meyer shows that it is more, differing in arrangement from its basis, Macer ; including all of his plants except Isatis, but adding 18 mineral or animal remedies, and adding 39 plant remedies, remarkable for their number of exotics, and including Eupatorium," but adding no other composite; introducing in his 2d book, "Boraga," and " Basilisca or Gentiana, Skaersetae " also Marocbus (see infra, p. 211). Harpestreng gives no descriptions ; and synonyms seldom. Each chapter he- gins with the Latin name used by Macer, and its Danish equivalent.
204
Aster History ; Macer
The 77 genuine chapters follow no definite order, but begin with familiar garden plants, with the three Compositae, Artemisia,* Abrotanum and Absinthium, and end with foreign drugs, as Gario- filus (cloves), Costus and Aloe. Each plant is given usually 20 lines or more, chiefly of its properties ; sometimes much longer, Sinapi (mustard), Caulis (cabbage), Ruta, Betonica, Plantago, Elleborus albus and Absinthium, each exceeding 60 lines. Sometimes a few descriptive touches indicate Macer's personal enthusiasm ; as the following :
" XXI. Rosa. — I have said the flower f of flowers among us by right is the rose, because in beauty it surpasses all flowers, and in odor. Nor yet does this flower avail to delight us in beauty or odor so much as it avails by its aid in varying medicines.
''XXII. Liliinn. — Golden roses,! I think is fitting, should be followed § by the silvery lilies, which neither in beauty nor odor are deemed to yield place, if compared to the grace of roses. Nor less in its many healings is it fit for the needs of men. The bulb of that root which produces the lilies, roofed under burn- ing coals, and grated together with the olive, is a wonderful remedy if superadded to the burns from a fire ; and yet better if rose-oil be joined with the olive.
"XL. Viola. — Not the grace of roses can pass, nor can lilies, the fragrant violets in beauty, nor in power, nor in odor.
" XLIII. Iris. — The very color of its flowers gives the name to Iris ; indeed like the colors of heaven are the colors of Iris."
Occasionally Macer makes mention of habitats, as
XVIII. Acidula (= Sedum), — Crescit arenosis in pratis et secus amnes.
Occasionally he refers to an incident or tradition, as Galen's story of the boy with the peony-root amulet hung from his neck, lines 1618-1627 ; and that of Alcides (Hercules) crowning himself with dill (Apium), lines 334-5.
* The Artheinisia of Macer's MSS. and of most mediaeval writers, f Flos Jlorum in Macer ; Strabus' /lorum flos.
\ Aurosas ut credo rosas argentea debent Lilia, etc. Geroult, 1509, first explained this as from auruvi., i. e., golden.
^ Pliny, 21, II, says, The lily holds the next highest rank after the rose." Stra- bus, writing of the lily as a type of the Virgin Mary, ranked it above the rose.
Colloquial Citations
205
Macer's Magna-Graecian Names
Usually Macer begins each new plant with two or more lines stating its Greek name as well as its accepted Latin name and sometimes a third Latin or Greek name of popular use ; introduc- ing the alternative name, the Latin name, by latine, nos, nostri, or simply by d'chnus ; or the vernacular name by viilgi more, inilgari moj'e, nostri vulgariter, or by nostra liugiia, vidgi lingua, or roniana lingua ; but never by Italico scrnione, a phase first used by Arno- bius Afer, about 295 A.D., and then used of Latin ; occurring later in the sense of Italian, after Macer's period. His Greek names are usually introduced by Gracci dicere, Graecus vocat, Graece dicitur, or Gracco sernwne ; but of some he makes his reference to the Greek mainland positive by saying Attica dicere^ apud Argos, Argi or Argivi vocant. Three of the Greek names cited by Macer were names, Meyer suggests, which he was ac- customed to in his youth, hearing them as current Greek names in Magna Graecia. They are Brassica, Elna and Lolium (see note, p. 196). Line 1201 reads
Caulis romana, Graecorum Brassica lingua Dicitur.
A native Roman might have said " Caulis vulgariter, sed Latine Brassica." To most men using Latin, Brassica would have seemed the more natural term and as much a Roman word as Caulis (whence our caidiflozver^. Cato, Varro, Cicero and Pliny had all called it Brassica. But its name among the Greeks of Magna Graecia was j^fxLo-ATj or ^[xmaixYj, as we know from express state- ment of Hesychius,* and as Macer seems to have known by his early nurture. [-ipdaxYj did not occur in classic Greek at home, fide Hesychius, and Dioscorides used instead xpafji^-rj, Theophrastus
The Magna Graecian form ^ipday.q has given direct form to the Italian brasca, a cabbage, though the Latin caulis has sup- plied the name in recognized use, cavolo.
Hesychius, the lexicographer, who wrote his lexicon at Alexandria perhaps about 380 A. D. It represents the surviving portion of the great lexicon in 95 books wrought out at Alexandria by the school of Aristarchus, about 150 B. C.
206
Aster History ; Macer
Elna, 1489, is probably a Magna Graecian idiom ; as suggested by Macer's manner of reference, — speaking of Inula Hclcniiiin ;
Enula, quam Graecus Elnam vocat Eleniumque Dicitur a medicis, est forma cognitis cunctis ;
i. e,, Enula, which a Magna Graecian calls Elna* and which by the physicians [using the Attic Greek learned from books] is called elenium — Enula is of form familiar to every one."
Loliuni, 2015, not known to the Greek dictionaries; Macer probably derived it from the speech of Magna Graecia.
Frumentis nocuam Lolium Graecus vocat herbam, Quam nostri dicunt vulgari more Nigellam ;
By the name Lolium the Grecian calls that noxious herb among grain which our Romans in their common speech call Nigella, i. e., the dark seed in the wheat. Lolium, so named by Plautus, Vergil and Pliny, might have been thought a Latin root were it not for Macer. It has given rise since to Ger. lolch as well as its genus-name Lolium L.
Barrocus, 1642; for balm; apparently Magna Graecian. See p. 211.
Strignum, 191 8, Macer's form for the Greek Strychnos (of Dioscorides), may have been a Magna Graecian variant ;t (name of Solamim nigrum L. and sometimes of Atropa Belladonna L,).
Strucion, 907, may have been a Magna Graecian variant for Struthion, still more often in his time varied into Ostrutium (for Imperatoria Ostrutium L.).
* Probably not from this Elna but from the more widely used standard form of the word, Helenium, came its mediaeval French names Alne and Augne. I find that the two latter occur, cited as equivalents for *' Enula campana," in an old French glossary of plant names, " Les noms de medicinel." This glossary forms part of a codex at Turin (Bibl. Naz. di Torino ; Cod. L. IV. 25) written in French in a 14th century hand, and ending with the Aniidotaritim of Praepositus and with Plateario's Glosse. The MS. is yet unpublished, but specimen pages were reproduced in phototype on Tav. 8 of the Atlante accompanying Giacosa's Magistri Salernitanae , Turin, 1901.
f I also find the name in the form strignos in a I2th century Cassinese MS. of Turin, anunprinted Liber Dioscoridis ex herbis femininis (see Giacosa's Atlante^ Turin, 1901); and later the form seems to have been frequent in Italian herbals ; due appar- ently to use of the word in the form strignos in Magna Graecia, and its spread thence to Monte Cassino and Salerno. One occurrence perhaps earlier than Macer appears in the Marcelline Botanicum, which has a figure labelled stigtzos, in a 9th century hand, but probably copying (accurately?) an earlier original.
Plant-names in Macer
207
Macer's Latin Folk-names
Macer is perhaps of greatest value in these references to plant- names, especially those of popular use ; and in his folk-remedies, for that source seems the explanation of many of his prescriptions. That quite a number of examples of amulets or of other forms of credulity are to be found in his pages is to be expected ; but they are few in comparison with Pliny. Among Macer's Latin names of popular use are these :
Pes piilli, chicken-foot, for the plant he says is called Portulaca in Latin, Andrachne in Greek, Pes pulli in the common speech : c. XIX.; meaning our Portulaca oleracea, formerly known in Ger- many as Hanenvot, Hanenvoed, i. e., Pes pulli or chicken-foot.
Paratella, c. 63, 1993, for Latin Lapathum, a Rumex ; in Span- ish known as Paradella, in Fr. as Parelle ; a word of Gothic, Lombard, or Frankish origin ? occurring again in a i 5th century MS. at Padua, the Erbario di Padova " (see Giacosa, 447) Patella sive Paratela, and as Patella sive Piratella.
Maurella, c. 60, line 191 8, folk-Latin; Maurella, Maureola and Morella, in MSS. of Macer ; the Greek Strychnos, our Solanum nigrum; which plant is made its equivalent by Mat- thaeus Sylvaticus, citing Maurella in a line from Macer.
Vtilgago, c. 46, for Asarum ; Fulbert, 1029 A. D., also has Vulgago ; it seems to appear first, a plural, Vulgigina, in Charle- magne's Capitularies, 800 or shortly after.
Others, like the last in not making absolutely their first appear- ance in Macer, are his Gaisdo for Isatis, Colubrina for Arum, Gamandrea (our Germander) for Teucrimn chamacdrys L., Canicu- lata for Hyoscyamus, Lingua bovis for Buglossum, Acidula for Sedum, Eviscum and Altea for Hibiscus or Althaea.
Aster References in Macer
From Macer, brought up in southern Italy, mention of Aster Atticus and Amellus could hardly be expected, and does not occur as such ; but there are signs of fragments of the body of ideas once associated with Aster, which had descended to him and now come up under other names. Consideration of these and of plant-names or beliefs of importance in their relation to the dev^elopment of
208
Aster History ; Macer
Aster history follows ; and first of Anthemis, interpreted by the heading Chamomilla ; an abstract of his 42 lines is the following :
" XIV. Chamomilla. Anthemis * is commended with great praise by the author Asclepius f — which plant we call Chamae- melum J or Chamomilla. § This is a very odorous herb and low- growing, similar to that herb which the common people call by its exact name Amarisca || because of its ill smell and bitter taste ; so similar that when gathered by itself it can scarce be distin- guished in odor from the other.
Authors say If there are 3 species, which they say are readily distinguished by the flowers alone ; there is in all a central golden flower ** (disk), but the flower is girt round with various leaves, white or black ff or of purple color.
"Anthemis proper J J is described by authors; of which plant the color of the leaves [raysj is purple ; this is the larger and stronger. \_Anthemis rosea DC, fide Sibthorp : but the Greek author used by Macer meant to include more ? and covered Aster
* "Anthemum " of many MSS. ; Anthemium, Anthemion, Anthemidum, etc., in early editions.
■j- Pliny writes, "Anthemis magnis laudibus celebratus ab Asclepiade " — Pliny, 22, 26. Asclepiades of Bithynia was a celebrated Greek physician, famous for his cures at Rome, about 60 B. C. , a few fragments from whom were published by Gumpert, 1794- Some MSS. of Macer read Asclipeus, one Esclepius. Perhaps Macer confused this Asclepiades with Asclepius or Esculapius the Alexandrian theosophist, known as " Sco- lapio medicus" at Monte Cassino in the 9th century, where a (still unpublished) MS. of his comments on Hippocrates was transcribed. See Giacosa, xxii.
X Pliny, 20, 26, like Dioscorides, makes Anthemis and Chamaemelum partial synonyms.
I Harpestreng uses H with with as the equivalent name in Danish. Choulant cites Meghedeblomen, Hundesblomen, Hermeln, Camellen, as its former German names, but now only Chamillen.
II Amarisca seu Amarista herba est Anthemis Cotula,'' Choulant's Macer, 51. Is not this the first occurrence of Amarisca ? A later occurrence is in the 14th century French glossary, Les noms de inedicinel, which reads Amerosce est Amariisca.''''
^"Auctores dicunt species tres." This and the preceding sentence show Macer to be relying on Greek writers for description of plants unknown to him.
" Est cunctis medius flos aureus illis, Sed variis foliis flos circumcingitur ille, Albi vel nigri sunt purpureive colons."
It So the MS., nigri by mistake for yellow, inelini, which duly occurs with his Chrysanthemum, the crisantenion''^ of one MS., crisantemim oi\.Qn. \X Dicitur Anthemis proprie.
Aster Traces in Macer's Anthemis 209
Atticus too ?] But Leucanthemum is gathered with white leaves [/. e., rays ; AntJiemis Chia L., Matricaria Chamomilla L., A. nobilis L.; all included in Dioscorides' corresponding white-rayed An- themis, Sibthorp\\ with yellow leaves, Chrysanthemum is found [including Anthemis tinctoria L. ? and perhaps also certain Chrys- anthemum sp. of L.] .
" Strength to all these is ascribed, dry and zvarin * in the first degree. EacJi provokes urine, when drank with wine as you please ; breaks \^dissok'es'\ stones in the bladder, and purges the menses, if the matrix be bathed in water in which the herb is boiled ; or if the herb is more frequently taken in wine. Colic * assuages * and inflation of the stomach by its drink is driven away. Scales [warts] it removes from the countenance ; if you lay it on powdered alone or worked up with honey. For rheumatism it is of service, its decoction taken ; and wonderfully it helps, if taken in drink for complaints of jaundice. Taken with wine it is able to expel the abortive birth. With this herb, boiled in oil, * you may drive off a chill,'^ if you nourish the fevered with it ; and the fever * also often you may expel. Turgid hypochondria is oft purged from the bowels [jinguine ; for inguine] by such draughts.
" Pestiferous bites of serpents produce no harm if Anthemis is taken, a drachma in weight, with wine. [Said by Cratevas of As- ter Atticus. Copied by Macer from some Greek writer ; who was speaking of Aster Atticus by name of purple Anthemis f~\
Pliny affirms f [where ?] that this plant will gradually purge all biliousness, if taken for 40 days, on each day twice, a drachma in weight, with twin cups of a wine thin and white, and accom- panied with a lotion.
" Aegilops or fistida it cures in the eye if any will chew it up, and then so apply it to the place ; so sordid ulcers it purges.
" OftJ the head of the fevered is wont to boil, aggravated with
■^Properties in italics are found in Pliny's account of Anthemis ; and also in that of Dioscorides except those followed by the asterisk
f Choulant compares a somewhat similar prescription, Pliny, 20, 59, with 35 days' use of capparis, but its details are too different to have been Macer's source.
X All of the remainder seems as if Macer's own transcript of experience ; derived from the use of Chamomile handed down among Magna Graecian people perhaps ; it has no basis in Pliny or Dioscorides. Exanthema is classic Greek, and in Hippocrates ; exanthirna, in all Macer's MSS. may be a Magna Graecian form for it. Later edi- tions of Macer correct the i to e to cast the word in conventional form.
210
Aster PIistory; Macer
heat, or with gathered humors it develops ulcers within itself ; ulcers which the Graecian calls exanthimata. These chamomilla expels, — using the green plant boiled in oil. But if the green plant be lacking let the dry be steeped in vinegar, and let him wash the head with it. And there is no better remedy for the bowels {itn- giien instead oi ingiicn, MS.)."
As a whole, this chapter on Anthemis consists of most of Dios- corides' properties for Anthemis taken through the medium of Pliny. Most of the remarks made by either which are not strictly statements of medical properties fail to appear in Macer. Macer expands part of the above matter taken from Pliny and rearranges it entirely ; and adds a good deal, perhaps in part from some other Greek writer, and distinguished above by Roman type. The last addition, the use for exantliiniata, sounds as if made not from any Greek author but from folk-medicine of Calabria. The snake-bite .addition may have come to his Anthemis from the related Aster Atticus as original source. The indications suggest that Macer did not, in preparing this chapter, have any copy of Dioscorides' chapter on Anthemis to compare, at least not as ours are now. Neither Dioscorides nor Pliny devote any chapter to Chamaemelum separately; it occurs with them simply as a synonym for Anthemis.
67. Pyrethrum (=r Antliemis PyrctJinivi L.), in the main quite distinct in Macer's description, lines 2086-2108, but with one remarkable similarity to its relative Aster, its recommendation for epileptic boys as an amulet :
Suspensura collo pueris prodesse caducis Creditur et solo succurrere fertur odore.
5 I . Senecio (=Senecio vulgaris L.). Macer begins, " Erigeron Graeci, nos Senecion vocitamus"; some MSS. have Senation, and Irigeon ; one editor prints Origeron : meaning the Erigeron of Dioscorides 4, 95, f^ncy/jpiov, i.e., old man of the spring," from the white pappus showing so soon. Pliny recommends it for the eyes, scrofulous sores, griping pains, and sciatica. Macer's recom- mendations follow Pliny in the main, using it for tumors and for struma; he adds, "some forbid to drink, others, as Pliny, direct it." As if copying from some unknown Greek writer who had blended its properties with those of Aster ad inguen, Macer adds,
Aster-Characters in Macer
211
its flowers bruised with the leaves and made up with sweet wine, are a very useful remedy 'tumori apponas ani vel testiculorum.' " The belief in its antipathy to iron, like that felt by its relative, Argemon or Aster, is recounted by Macer, with apologies, from Pliny : ''Dig it zvithout iron, and touch it to an aching tooth thrice, spitting on the ground each time in turn, and then replacing the plant in the right place in the ground ; while it lives again, as long as the herb lives, Pliny says, the tooth will never ache more."
XL. Viola. Macer distinguishes " three kinds of Viola, dif- ferent in the flower only, purple, white and black, all almost equal in medical power." His properties are from Pliny and Justus* and Dioscorides ; those given by Dioscorides for both Aster At- ticus and the purple violet reappear here, Macer saying, "the pur- ple violet they say cures epilepsy, especially among boys ; and is a remedy for the eyes, for ulcers, tumor matricis, ani fissuras ; and for the stomach, using the green herb or the dry.
L. Barrocus. Under this South-of-Italy folk-name, Barocho,t apparently Magna Graecian, and now making its first appearance in literature, Macer describes balm, Melissa officinalis L., the Melissophyllon of antiquity. His 23 lines are mostly derived from Pliny, repeating most of Pliny's properties, including those importations, apparently from earlier descriptions of the other bee-loved plant Aster Atticus, which abound under Pliny's Melis- sophyllon (see Palladius, supra, p. 174). The Aster properties which Macer repeats from Pliny's Melissophyllon are : its use for the poison of stings, for ulcers, for strumae, for hemorrhoids, and
*That from Justus, lines 1382-1389, is a tale of the efficacy of a plaster of rubbed violet leaves, bound on to the left foot to cure a patient who has lost the use of his tongue [linguae patiens amiserit tiszan) due to a blow on the right side of his head ; if the blow was on the left side, " bind the poultice on the right ;'' and ending Ui Justus tradit medicus qui talia scfipsit. This is an early appearance of belief in the connection of the right lobe of the brain with the left side of the body, and vice versa. It is also an early (the earliest ? ) occurrence of the present technical use oi patient. Some might claim that because both make citation from a Justus, Macer may also have known Marcellus Empiricus, who, about 408 A. D. (see supra, p. 168), made reference to an unknown writer, lustus or Justus. But the citations made by Macer (under Viola, line 1389) and by Marcellus (c. 25) seem to be independently made; and Macer's treatment of many plants is wholly different from that of Marcellus.
I Persistent in Italy as a personal name ; as the painter, Federigo Baroccio, of Ur- bino, 1528-1612.
212
Aster History ; Macer
general inguinal troubles, for a film over the eyes, and for the bite of a dog,
Herba canis morsus superaddita cum sale curat.
Macer begins his Barrocus with its use for rubbing over bee- ■ hives, which he extends beyond that which Pliny had written, Macer supplying a recommendation to add milk, apparently from Calabrian folklore ; Phny's parallel passage, 21, 86, is as follows :
"If the bee-hives are rubbed all over with melissophyllum or melittaena, the bees w^ill never desert them ; for there is no flower in which they take greater delight. If branches of this plant are used, the bees may be kept within bounds without any difficulty. It is an excellent remedy also for the stings of bees, wasps and other insects, as also for wounds made by spiders and scorpions."
Macer's treatment of the relation of the plant to bees is as fol- lows, italicizing Macer's added matter :
"Z. Barroais. The herbs which the Greeks called Melliso- phyllon,* otir people coininonly call Barrocus ; it is considered above all herbs the most delightful to bees. Nor do they seem to take more pleasure in the flower of any other plant. If you anoint the bee-hives (I'asa apiiini) all over luitli a preparation rubbed up from its leaves, the bees will not desert the hive ; and you will accom- plish this still better if you mix milk zvith it ; with such ointment the bee -farmers retain their swarms. It is an immediate relief to stings of bees, if the sting is covered instantly with the rubbed-up herb ; and in this way too, whom the wasp hurts or the spider, it cures."
The new name Barrocus, here used for the first time, is listed by Matthaeus Sylvaticus in his dictionary in the form BarocJio as a name in southern Italy for Melissophyllon. It was evidently a strange name to the scribes writing the MSS. of Macer, whose variants include (in the accusative) barocam, barrachum, baratam and boracum, some early editions printing it boragam and borra- gam, as if confusing it with borage, name beginning in the middle ages for the rough plant still known as borage, believed to be from mediaeval Latin borra, rough. That origin of Barocho, however, as name of balm, would have no appropriateness, nor is much help obtainable from the only available genuine Latin root
* Melisophilos in one MS.; and many slighter variants.
Aster-Characters in Macer
213
vor, eat, seen in the rare ante-classical brocchus, tusky, or with projecting teeth. Barocho was doubtless a Magna Graecian folk- name, but if of ancient Greek lineage it seems to have no kin- dred in Greece proper unless it be the folk-name rocca, (jox'/m., cur- rently used now in Greece, for ''some kind of sweet-scented grass " {Attica).
In Harpestreng's expansion of Macer, Barrocus appears as Marochus, and with a Danish name Myothyrt, translated by Meyer 3 : 538 as Honigkraut ; the usual German for this Melissa being Biensauge. Harpestreng's mixing Barochus and Melisso- phyllon into Marochus was followed by a greater mixture in the hnes of his description, which begins with Macer's 50, Barrocus^ and presently continues with his 54, Coliibrina^ our Arum.
Allied or Contrasted Plants Mentioned by Macer
5, Plantago, recommended for mad-dog's bite, tumors, the eyes, etc.; cf. supra. Aster uses, p. 45 ; p. 172, etc.
20. Lactiica, for the stomach, for intestinal indigestion, to se- cure sleep, to quiet a troubled sleep, for films over the eyes ; cf. Aster uses, p. 55, etc.
26. Ostrutium, the Astricium, Astritium, Ostricium, etc., of various MS., but having only a superficial connection with Aster, Astericum, etc. Macer's first line is
Struthion, Ostrutium quod vulgi more vacatur ;
Macer's plant has properties in part like Artemisia ; he says it '' is source of a sternutatory powder" ; ''its root with wine is a remedy for the hard tumor of the spleen which the Greek call sdirosis.'' Choulant doubts whether the plant is Saponaria officinalis L. or Imperatoria ostrutium L. ; the latter being generally accepted here, and apparently intended by Dioscorides' original, arpoudcov. Har- pestreng names it in Danish ostris.
44. Enula = Inula Heleniwn L.; see p. 61. A decoction of *'its root drives sciasis from the hips " ; so its relative Aster was said by Pliny to cure his coxendicis dolor, i. e., sciatica.
46. Asarum (= Asariun Europaeum L.) " sciasim fugat."
52. Chelidonia (= Chelidonium niajus L.) the Celidoniae of
214
Aster History ; Macer
many MS. is described by Macer chiefly from Pliny, with none of the aster characters ascribed to it by Sammonicus.
32. Papaver. — Macer describes three kinds, which we might have expected to represent Pliny's three kinds of Argemonia ; but Macer gives them different properties, and is chiefly occupied with the opiates produced from Papaver souiniferiini L.
2 (spurious). Agrimonia, corruption of Argemonia (like Strabus, supra, p. 194) ; a description apparently worked up from the Arge- monia of Pliny, and retaining the properties shared or confused with Aster and Argemon, of use of the juice for the eyes, for serpent bites, poison of the mad-dog, for " ventris dolor,'' wounds, and adding for spleen, pain and paralytics.
XXXIX. The School of Salerno Through the earlier middle ages the light of plant-knowledge burned only in the torch of medicine. For the region which had once been the Roman empire of the West, the center of that cul- ture was Salerno, developing into a botanical garden which was pronounced to have been at the end of the thirteenth century, ''superb."* Salerno as a city united many attractions. Antonio Summonte, historian of Naples, is quoted by Sylvius in 1649 as saying In tutta Italia non essere pia delitiosa citta di Salerno."
Seated on the far-famed blue Salernian bay, thirty-four miles southeast of Naples, and once the royal city of the Two Sicilies, it was for 500 years a Lombard city, being part of the Lombard duchy of Benevento as estabhshed by Zotto in 571, and becoming independent under its Lombard prince Siconolph in 839, nine years after the entrance of Saracens into its vicinity, itself resisting their siege in 872. It flourished so that Pope Boniface VII. in 974 decreed it "a metropolis." It became Robert Guiscard's capital in 1077, and was for some time the home of the Sicilian court till its removal to Palermo in 1194. Hospitable in early days to Norman, Lombard, Roman, Greek, Jew or Saracen, to the lay- physician as well as to the monk, to the woman-physician as well as the man, it was seat of a noted University, 1 150 to 1817 ; and for centuries before, it had been famed as a medical center. Medi- cine is said to have been preserved only there at the time of the fall
* Lacroix.
Monte Cassino
215
of Rome.* Finally the city came to be known as the Civitas Hippocratica.
Medical learning at Salerno was transmitted for centuries by a guild of lay-physicians, who maintained an air of mystery and
* Three Benedictine monasteries at Salerno founded at dates between 600 and 958, also produced men of high medical attainment. Their early fame is however lost in that of the older cloister, the monastery of Monte Cassino, founded in the Neapolitan mountains, in 529, by St. Benedict himself, being in fact the cradle of the Benedictine order. St. Benedict, who lived 480-543, enjoined upon his monks of Monte Cassino not only to cultivate the land but to read and to copy manuscripts. They were long secure in their mountain home, perched above Cassino, northeast of Naples, safely on the Neapolitan side of the Garigliano river, Charlemagne's southern boundary, his do- main reaching within a few miles of the monastery.
Bertharius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, 856-884, says Meyer, 3 : 414, was " a poet even though not a great one, and the only writer of general natural history produced in the West during his century." He labored to build up a medical and general library; as we are told by the chronicler of the cloister, Leo Marsicanus — otherwise known as Leo Ostiensis ; who died 1115, author of the "Chronica monasterii Casinensis " in some three books, before lioi (when he became Bishop of Ostia), and finished by Petrus Diaconus, deacon at Ostia in 1128.
'Leo writes that Bertharius enriched the library of his cloister with two codices — ''wherein Bertharius had compiled a very full series of healing remedies from esteemed writers," and also a recipe collection, perhaps, says Meyer, the outcome of that toward which Marcellus Empiricus had made a beginning. Meyer, however, concludes that the books scarcely outlasted their author, for in 884 the Saracens who had besieged Salerno in 872, now advanced upon Cassino, stormed and burned the monastery, mur- dered Bertharius and expelled the monks, who remained for a time at Rome, and then, under their abbot, Angelarius, 884-9, at Teano, some 20 miles southwest of Cassino.
Since writing the above. Prof. Giacosa of Turin has published his Magistri Salerni- tanae nondiiui editi (see injra, p. 217-8), in which, p. xxii, he claims that the two oldest medical codices existing among the Monte Cassino MSS. are of a handwriting which dates them within the ninth century. Evidently they need further study to determine if they are not the identical " two medical co^lices of Bertharius" mentioned by Leo. Of the earlier codex, 69, Giacosa writes : . " It is a collection of receipts and prescriptions col- lected from various books through the labors of a monk for the benefit of his compan- ions ; including miscellaneous receipts ; an antidotarium ; a treatise on female diseases ; one on fevers ; the letters known as Capsida eburnea, attributed to Hippocrates ; dis- cussion of the seasons of the year and their appropriate regimen ; a book of prognostics attributed to Hippocrates ; and short treatises on food, on baths, on exercise, and on diseases of animals." Of the other, codex 97, Giacosa adds : " Renzi assigned this to the end of the eleventh century ; but the paleography of Monte Cassino fixes its date as toward the end of the ninth century. It is a complete treatise on the medicine cur- rent at that epoch (exclusive of surgery), in logical order and assigned to its various authors, though not always correctly. It was evidently a long time the manual in use for the studious in medicine." Its materials consist, first, of general and special path- ology, including works attributed to Hippocrates, Galen, Vindicianus, Aurelius, and
216
Aster History; Salerno
secrecy about their knowledge of plant-properties, or at least were so credited by later interpreters. This secular school was finally given a definite and public character, according to Meyer, by Con- stantinus Afi-icanus, about IQ/Q, and its code was confirmed by King Roger of Sicily in iioo, and in 1 152 by Frederick. But in the next century, the thirteenth, its influence began to give way before that of the newly-introduced Arabic medicine and before the growing importance of the medical school of Paris and of its own offshoots at Naples and Montpellier.
Salernitan Physicians and Plant-Writers
The following is an outline list of Salernitan physicians and masters, with the dates, actual or approximate, of their activity. Most, if not all, of these were contributors or transmitters to that knowledge of medical plants which became recognized as the com- mon property of the school, many of them, doubtless, making additions to the stock of plants there in cultivation which devel- oped into its botanical garden.
848. Alacer Floridus may have been at Salerno at this time (p. 198), and one Josephus medicus was already established there, buying real estate in 848 and 856. Per-
" Scolapio medicus," the Alexandrian theosophist Esculapius. Part second is thera- peutic, and of great interest to the student of plant-history, consisting of three treatises on medical plants, all illustrated by figures, as follows :
1. The Alphaheta Herbantni ; see infra, ad Pateniianum, p. 232.
2. Apuleius Platonicus' HerbaTitcm.
3. A treatise on remedies of both vegetable and animal origin which attributes itself to Dioscorides, and is a part of the Paternian De siniplicibus formerly attributed to Gariopontus ; see p. 232.
The mother cloister lay waste twenty years but was again the seat of learning in 915, and under its abbot Theobald, 1022-1035, and especially under Desiderius.
Desiderius, abbot 105 8-1 086, the monk Dauferius, who became as pope, Victor III., is said to have had his monks write many theological and juristic works and a Codex Medicinalis, of which only the name is known.
Alfanus, his friend, " a physician, who had won the applause of the great for his knowledge of that art before he became a Geistliche man," says Meyer, on joining the monastery of Monte Cassino in 1055 brought many medicinal books with him.
Constantinus Africanus, called "the third great scholar of Monte Cassino," is bet- ter known at Salerno.
John, of Milan and Naples, fourth of these contemporary^ students of nature's powers, forms, on adding Bertharius, the fifth writer on nature or on medical plants, in this series from Monte Cassino. See infra, p. 236.
Earliest Salernitans
217
haps this Joseph us was the one who was the originator of the medicament cited (in a Salernitan Antidotarium known in a I2th century Turin MS. ; Giacosa, p. 377) as Yera (Hiera) Joseph sacerdotis. Seep. 220, under 1030. Perhaps the medicament was, however, the work of the Joseph of 1005.
855. Josan (the scribe meant Josna^ i. e., Joshua, suggests Aleyer) niedicus also purchased real estate. Can this be the writer cited as " Jozat Caldeus " by Bartholo- maeus Anglicus, c. 1256 (fol. 251 of the Basle edition, c. 1470) ?
900. Ragenif) id, physician to Prince Guaimar I. of Salerno.
908. Alfanus, Bishop of Salerno under Guaimar 11., in a poem speaks of the stir of medical activity at Salerno,
" Tum medicinali tantum florebat in arte Posset ut hie nullus languor habere locum."
924. Eadgifu^ s Salernitan, a nameless physician styled " a Salernitan physician to Charles the Simple, King of France," vanquished 924 or earlier, in a court contest of medical skill with the courtier Derold. The Salernitan was in the especial service of Charles' queen, Eadgifu, and was probably her physician at the birth in 921 of her son, Louis d'Outremer.*
958. Petrus, physician to Gisulf I , of Salerno, was so beloved by him that he made him Bishop of Salerno.
986. Adalbero, Bishop of Verdun, repaired " to the physicians of Salerno"" for his health, but in vain, and died while on his return, Ordericiis Vitalis. First record of physicians of Salerno in the plural, Meyer.
1000 ? An unknown plant writer perhaps at Salerno, made additions to Diosco- rides' descriptions of plants, which additions appear " in a very ancient hand, per- haps of the llth century" [Giacosa, 352), as a^giunta to a 9th century Lucca MS. of a Pseudo-Dioscorides.
■^Eadgifu, granddaughter of that early patron of English medicine, Alfred the Great, and sister of Athelstan, may have shared her husband's imprisonment, 925-929, but at his death, 929, carried off her son for safety to England ; returning in 936, he was King of France to 954. Richer, writing his History of France in 996, tells us of the Saler- nitan's luckless competition with Deroldus, afterward Bishop of Amiens, who was then in King Charles' service at court. The King, who, it will be remembered, has come down through the ages labeled " The Simpleton," turned one day to Derold asking him to furnish him with the most learned physician in the world. - The Queen, sitting by, suggested her Salernitan physician and besought for him that recognition. Derold, on the other hand, had the boldness to name himself. To test them both the King propounded *' one hard medical question." Derold' s light, pat answer (unfortunately for our curiosity, not recorded ) pleased the King belter than the learning of the Saler- nitan's reply. Derold was advanced, and finally became Bishop of Amiens, 929-946, while nothing remained for the Salernitan but poison. — Could this unnamed Salernitan physician have been the same with Macer Floridus ? This would account, by this po- sition at the French court, for Macer's knowledge of Strabus' poem and for knowledge of Macer' s poem by the half- French chronicler Sigebert, But I think the supposition improbable, for if Charles' court-physician of 924 had been so remarkable a man as the poet Macer, his name would be expected upon the court chronicles and would probably have reached Richer in 996, and Sigebert, of about 1050, who knew of Macer's writ- ings, would have been equally likely to have known of any service by Macer at the French court.
218
Aster History ; Salerno
This Pseudo-Dioscorides, as Giacosa terms it, may be distinguished as the Marcel- line Botanicum, for its unknown author styles it '■^ Libellum botanicum"^ ex Dios- coridis libris latino sermone conversum, cum depictis herbarum figuris," and addressed it "to the studious Marcellinus. " It was evidently a briefer work than the Butajiicus listed under the year 1090 ; and was probably different from the Latin translations of Dios- corides of the Lombards (p. 233) or that used by Cassiodorus (p. 152 ), its proportion of plants being but little above that of animals, having 37 animal figures and 46 of plants (one of which, " Dipsacos," is reproduced by Giacosa). It seems to have had no figure of Aster, and probably no description. The Compositae figured in it appear as abrotanum, achillea, bu/taluion, coniza, eliotropiis (if meant for Cichorea), and scolimos. Among its less familiar plant-names appear herba actiomiui, herba sion, herba frenitisy engosminof, osiris, crysola canon, hyera (variant of the larus of Plateario ? which Camus interprets 2LS=Arti)?i Italicwn Mill. ) ; also stignos ( for strychnos ) , i. e. , Solaniim nigrnin L.
1005. Jtidas Judassohn and Joseph, are mentioned, living in the Tews' quarter of Salerno.
1015. Adelferius incdiciis ; whose son Petrus, a cleric, married a wife Amma- randa this year ; so reads the record. Ammaranda may have been one of the learned " Meisterinnen." The effort of Pope Victor II. to suppress marriage of priests did not come till 1055.
1020 ? Gariopontus wrote about this time ; compiler of the Passionarius ; aided in it by " his companions, especially Albicius." See infra, p. 229.
1020? Rabbi Helinus, i. e., a Jewish Rabbi named Eli or Elias, Meyer (or Eli Koph and the same as Copho the younger, Henschel); source perhaps of the name of the old Gate of Salerno called Porta Elina, or Elias Gate, Renzi ; Mazza names him " Rabinus Elinus Hebraeus, qui primum Salerni medicinam Hebraeis de litera Hebraica legit," and calling him Primus, says that he, with masters Pontus and Salernus "were the three ancient founders of Salernitan study," " i. e., were the founders of that new growth of the school and its garden under Gariopontus. Mazza also names Rabbi
*This Botanicum occupies about 62 folios or nearly two-thirds of the 9th century Lucca codex no. 236. The rest consists oiApideius (see p. 171), and the De pigmentis (pp. 216 and 233), and of a brief treatise also apparently in a 9th century hand, De ponderibus fuedicinalibus, which claims to have been the work of " Dardantus the philosopher," and to have been written out at Mantua by a Greek, Aodericos.
The MS. seems to have remained undescribed till its exhibition with other MSS. at the Exposition of the History of Medicine at Turin in 1898, when Prof. Piero Giacosa recognized it as " importantissimo," and "meriting profound study," Un- fortunately the codex was recalled before comparisons could be made further than the brief mention given in (j\2iCQ%2i % Magistri Salernitani nondiim editi (Turin, I901).
For brevity further references to this valuable work the Alagistri, ei< will be made by use of the name of its editor, Giacosa. It contains about 240 pages of annotations upon 108 codices exhibited at the Turin Exposition, belonging to various Italian libraries but largely Salernitan in ultimate origin, the oldest dating from the 9th cen- tury. Giacosa also prints entire in about 314 pages, several Salernitan treatises on medicine and on plant remedies. Of the chief of these little more than the authors' names were known before, as of Ferrario, Salerno, and perhaps Bartolomeo. Others are by writers wholly unknown, an Ursone, a Giovanni, and a Giovanni son of Gre- gorio. All were discovered in various 12th century MSS. of the Bibl. Angelica (in Rome), in the codices numbered 1408, 1481, 1502, and 1506.
The " Antrorarium "
219
Helinus as author of a chronicle of the school, the Chronicle of Helinus, which at- tributes its foundation to " Sem, son of Noah, who came into Apulia, and founded the city Salerno." This chronicle is named as its own source by the later Chronicle of 1260 written under King Manfred, which described the botanical garden.
1020? Salermis^ see preceding ; but Renzi makes him same as Salernus of 1167.
1020. Adala Saracemtis, " who taught concerning Saracenic literature to Sar- acens," says the chronicle of Helinus ; his name may be meant for Abdallah, Meyer ; he also appears as Adana and Aldana, among the seven masters who compiled the " An- trorarium."
1030? " Antrorarium," the oldest of the three famed medical compends called Antidotarium produced by the Salernitan school ; known as *' the work of the seven masters" from the seven great Salernitans said by the old chronicle of perhaps 1260 A. D., to have composed it, — t oniposueriint lihruin qui vacatur Antroraj'mm ; see Meyer, 3 : 469, who thinks that this is the work which Simon Januensis called the Antidotariiiin universale. Its preparation is described by the chronicle of c. 1260 as following upon Gariopontus' assemblage of wise men at Salerno and of many plants, 150 native and 100 foreign, in the botanical garden; seep. 229, n. "And then," it continues, "these philosophers gave judgment concerning the five kinds of Mirobalanus i^Myro- balanus, Te^ ininalia, etc. ) and the three kinds of Sannali (sandalwood) ; the albei and cetrini and sannali ochilitri (white, citron-yellow and reddish-ochre); and that roo, which few found who recognized it ; and they gathered all medicinal books which Aris- totle and Galen and other philosophers composed ; and these men were of that periodt who prepared the compend on medicine [eonvetttum in medicina) with the [three] before-mentioned masters [Masters Primus, Pontus and Salernus]. First master was Gugielmus de Bononia ; 2d, Michael Stortus, who was of the city of Salerno; 3d, Guglielmus de Ravegna ; 4th, Enricus de Padua ; 5th, Tetulus Graecus ; 6th, Solonus Ebraeus ; 7th, Abdana [or Adana] Saracenus ; who made and composed at that time the book which is called Antrorarium." Most of these names are otherwise unknown, some may represent subsequent workers who made additions ; one at least, Michael Scott, belonged to a later period according to Meyer (but not so Jide Renzi).
This Antidotarium it seems probable, is the same with the Antidotarium univ, r- sale described by Giacosa, p. 375-378, which occupies iio folios of a Salernitan 12th century MS. at Turin, is "remarkable for its great number of medicaments of Graeco- Latin tradition," and doubtless antedates Constantinus, as it has no mention of his yen di Constantino., a preparation which was duly recorded by Nicolao Preposito. A hand of the same period has tabulated its articles and enumerates them as numbering 1,193, calling the treatise " iste antidotarium universale." The 1,193 fiiticles are alphabetical ; each narrates first the properties, then the composition, of the remedy. The MS. begins " Antidotarium. Aurea Alexandrina * faciemus ad reuma capitis, cuius dolorem sedat," and ends with Yera pi^ra, or sacred bitters. It is interesting to note the disuse of the word Aster, common generic term in the Byzantine Greek of the 6th century for any much vaunted remedy, as Aster inconiparabilis, etc. Instead, Yera,
* Aurea Alexandrina. With this name the Antidotarium of Nicolao Preposito also begins. The name Golden Alexanders has in America been transferred to the Thaspiuni atcreuin of Nuttall ; but belonged originally to the European Sniyr)iiiini Olusatrum, fide DeCandolle, who identifies it with the hipposelinon of Theophrastus, holus atru?n of Pliny, the inacerone of Italy : cultivated in English vegetable gardens till about the 1 8th century.
220
Aster History ; Salerno
i. e., hiera, the sacred or mystery-sealed, seems to have taken its place, and this An- tidotarium contains 1 8 such, as Yera foTtissinia, Yera Galeni, Yera Rufini, and others of Vindicianus, Theodoricus, Archigenes, Asclepius and Philagrius ; besides the Yera Joseph sacerdotis, noticed p. 217.
Another Antidotarium occupies 80 folios of a 12th century MS. at Parma, and may be a modification of this. Accurate and detailed study of the Parma and Turin MSS. is greatly needed.
1030? IVilliaui of Bologna, William of Ravenna, Henry of Padtia, Solon ike Hebrew ; known only as of the seven masters."
1030? Te/ulus Graecus, named as one of the seven masters compiling the " Antro- rarium." Meyer seems to think Gariopontus was meant ; but Gariopontus had been already mentioned as bringing the seven wise masters together. Considering Tetulus as a second Grecian, Tetulus may have been his proper name, represented in Doric by the familiar Tityrus (Attic Satyrus) — Thvpoq, goatherd ; or may have been a school appellative, in which case it may represent the remnant of the word entitled, = the master who was entitled the Greek {intitulo, to entitle, had already occurred in use ; Rufinus used it, 400 A. D. ) ; or may have been Latinized Greek diminutive of rkrra, *' father," familiar term used instead of master by Greek students, Tetulus Graecus becoming equivalent to " Little Father Greek " (as Tettapharmacus, p. 227).
1035. " Petrus et Hyacinthus, medici et clerici," are recorded here; claimed by Meyer to be the first known instance at Salerno of physicians who were not laymen (except Petrus of 958) unlike most mediaeval conditions.
1040 ? Giovanni Plateario I may have written his De Practica about this time.
1043-5? Rodolf Mala Corona, the skilled Norman physician, here "learned the secrets of science," says Orderic ; see iifra, under Plateario.
1045? "One sapient matron " {^Orderic) alone excels Rodolf "in the art of medicine " ; she may have been the widow of a Giovanni Plateario ; see iftfra, p. 222. Or she may have been the famed Genesia Cleopatra, whose Liber de dversis infrmita- tibus midierum survives in MSS. from the 1 2th century, and was printed by Wolf at Basle, 1586.
1060 ? Copho the elder ; a Coptic monk ? cited by Copho the younger ; and per- haps author of the " VoCABULA Herbarum," a list of plant synonyms found by Renzi in a "Codex Casinense " of the lith century, in which Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Egyptian works are cited, beginning " Asphaltum id est bitumen."
1070? Constantimts Africaniis wrote at about this time and after, his Glossa, Viaticum, De Gradibus, etc. .
1070? Joannes A fflacius ; author of the Liber aureus; his treatise called Cur a e Joh. Affiatii diseipuli Costantino also survives in the Breslau Codex.
1070 ? Atto, "chaplain to the empress Agnes" (if Agnes of Poitou, wife of Henry in. of Germany, was meant by the chronicler, she died in 1077), came, in mature years, to listen to Constantinus, Petrus Diaconus saying " Atto, Constantini Africani auditor, et Agnetis imperatricis capellanus, ea, quae supradictus Constantinus de diversa linguis transtulerat, cothurnato sermone in Romanam linguam (folkspeech) transtulit. "
1081? Joannes medicus,''^ pupil of Constantinus, becomes " in physica arte dis- ertissi?nns^'' "in the reigns of Alexius and Joannes Comnenus of Constantinople."^ — Probably the same with Joannes of Milan, noticed at year lioi.
* Alexius reigned from 1081 to 1118. — Joannes Comnenus, less fortunate than Robert Curthose, died from a wound by a poisoned arrow, in II43.
Salernitan Poisoners
221
1084. Late in this year occurred the cure * by the Salernitan physicians, of Bohe- mond, the crusader, f who when wounded, " was sent for his cure," says Orderic, " to the surgeons of Salerno, whose reputation for skill in medicine was established through- out the world." Following this is his story of the wife of Robert Guiscard, Sichelgaita of Salerno,! as attempting to poison first Bohemond and then her husband. Orderic says, that in order to remove Bohemond out of the way of her son's advancement, " she prepared a deadly potion and sent it to the physicians of Salerno, among whom she had been brought up and by whom she had been inst tided in the use of poisons."'^
■'^Ordericus Vitalis, 7, 7; or in Forester's translation, 2 : 366.
I Bohemond, later Prince of Antioch, son of Robert Guiscard and named in jest for the traditionary giant of Calabria. Bohemond had been fighting the Greeks and Venetians ; had won victories at Jannina and at Arta, was defeated at Larissa, then met them by sea and though victorious was wounded and was brought to Salerno for cure.
\ Sichelgaita, Sichelgade or Sigelgaita, a princess of Salerno, daughter of Guaimar IV., sister of Geoffrey of Conversana, and of Gisulf II., last Prince of Salerno (1052- 1077); married Robert Guiscard about 1059 and was at his side through his adventur- ous career ; was with him at the head of the triumphal procession entering Palermo, Jan. 1072, on its conquest from the Saracens ; and with him at Bari in 1073 when he lay long sick and was thought dying, so that she hastily assembled the Norman Knights, and caused them to choose her son Roger Bursa as successor. On this Pope Gregory VII. wrote her in condolence, professing his irremediable grief, sending her his good will and asking her to bring her son to Rome to receive confirmation of his possessions. But Guiscard recovered.
\ Orderic continues : *' The physicians lent themselves to the wishes of their lady and scholar, and gave the deadly poison to Bohemond whom it was their duty to heal. Having taken it he was reduced to death's door, and instantly despatched a messenger to his father informing him of his danger. The shrewd duke immediately perceived his wife's treachery, called her to him in great distress, said, ' Bring me a copy of the holy gospels and a sword,' took them and swore, ' Listen to me, Sichelgade ; I swear by this holy gospel that if my son Bohemond dies of this malady, I will plunge this sword into your bosom.' Alarmed at this menace, she prepared a sure antidote and sent a messenger with it to the physicians at Salerno, urging them with prayers and promises to extricate her from her peril. The physicians, learning that the treachery was de- tected, and perceiving the embarrassment of their lady, prayed that the duke's threats might not be put into execution, and used every effort which their medical skill sug- gested to restore the young prince to health : and he recovered ; but such had been the violence of the poison that his countenance was pallid all the rest of his life."
However little truth there may be in this narrative, evidently embellished by the monks through whom it was transmitted (but narrated again by Meyer), there is cer- tainly no truth, says Forester, in Orderic' s following story of Sichelgaita's terminating her husband's life by slow poison soon after. The fact was that he did die soon after in the midst of an expedition against Alexius Comnenus, in June, 1085, at Durazzo in Ceph- alonia, where Sichelgaita and the Roman nobles performed his solemn funeral rites. But he died lamented by all, not only by wife and sons, but by his antagonist Alexius. Orderic' s tale accords with the skill and fame of the Salernitan ladies ; with the common practice of women there to learn medicine ; and with the court familiarity with poisons and their antidotes. An echo of Salernitan sureness as to just what plant would kill, is found in Matteo Plateario's promptness, in his Circa instans, to remark of fungi, that
222
Aster History; Salerno
1085 ? Copho the younger ; Salernitan physician, who wrote 1085 or after, but be- fore 1 100 (Meyer 3 : 479) ; speaks in his writings which we possess, of what he had written out from the lips of Copho (the elder), and from writings of Copho' s associates. He was author of the Anatome Porci, a medical work long familiar in the middle ages, and serving as a manual, swine being used by anatomists for demonstration pur- poses. An electuary which he composed also transmitted his name, the electuarium fngidu7)i Cophonis.
1085. Abbas de Curia. The Abbot at Salerno at this time or later compounded a remedy for the use of Duke Roger, who succeeded his father Richard Guiscard, 1085, as duke or king of Apulia. It was preserved and prescribed by Nicolo in his Antido- tarium, about 1 1 10, under the name of Electtiaritim Duds (for calculus, flatulence, indigestion and iliac pains) with explanation "quia abbas de Curia illud composuit ad opus Ducis Rogerii, filii Roberti Viscardi."
1090? Trotula, the celebrated " female professor," author of an oft-printed work on obstetrics ; about this time, Meyer; about 1050, Remi.
1090? Giovanni Plateario II. and Matteo Plateario I. and the wife of one (said to have been Trotula) wrote about this time ; or 1 1 70-90, Renzi.
1090 ? Petronius, or Petroncello, Bartholomaeus, and Ferrnrius, are mentioned next after Copho in a list of Salernitan writers in a Breslau codex, Meyer 3 : 480. Fragments of a succinct work on fevers by Petronio survive.
1090? The above Maestro Bartolovieo may have been the author, suggests Gia- cosa, of the Trattato della Confezione, first printed by him, 1901, from a 12th century MS.; forming pages 293-326 of his Magistri Salertiitani. The numerous plant names in this treatise on medicaments, are mostly of accredited and usual form : some of the Aster uses are now represented by menta levisticuni, viola, polipodium, reubarbarum, as stomachic; glaucia, id est celidonia, {ox dolor oculortwi ; poppy leaf, or semen mironis, id est papavej'is albi, for procuring sleep ; asarebaccara viridis as a laxative, etc. He mentions crescones for cress, and matrisilvia, "quam nos appellamus in vulgari nostro cerefoliuin'''' (the later caprifolium). His Compositae include policaria, calendtda, artemisia, cicorea, canioviilla, etc.
Known works by this Bartolomeo are his Pratica and his Curae, printed in the Collectio Salernitana, etc. The Pratica ends with the name Ungula caballina, i. <?., Tussilago Far far a.
"they are of two kinds, death-dealing and those that are not death-dealing" — -fungi mortiferi et nan niortiferi ; of the deadly nightshade, that it is " Solaniivi ?/wrtale " / of the oleander, that " its virtue is venomous" — virtutejn habet venenosani ; and of the in- nocent-seeming Poiamogeton natans, which he named Facius videon, literally "the widow-maker," saying, " Whoever shall eat of this herb, let him immediately expect death." Of similar tenor is the remark by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, that '* Platearius says, if a wolf eat an almond it will die ' ' ; and the observation in the Compendium Salernitanuni (not found in Circa instans) that the man who should partake oi Apiu77i risus would die while laughing. Not that Matteo himself knew personally about poisons ; he was so poor an authority that the administration of hemlock to Socrates became in his text "an administration of mandrake to Plato " — AppoUinus earn [ap- pollinarem herbam] viinistravit ad Platonem. But Matteo, like Sichelgaita, knew his antidotes well, and was confident to expel any poison with such ready remedies as turnip-seed and onion -juice ; as were the very rustics about Salerno ; Matteo writing of the onion, " Succus eciam [allii] interius ore receptus excutit venenum, unde dicitur Tiriaca [Theriaca, the poison-queller] rusticorum."
The Antidotarium
223
1090? Bui'ANicus, or Butanicus de simplicibus medicinis," a work earlier than Nicolaus Praepositus but otherwise unknown, often cited by Simon Januensis, Meyer 3 : 466 and 4 : 167 : perhaps the work cited by DaManlio, about 1450, as Compositor.
1090? LiHiiR DE siMPLici mp:dicina, another book much used by Simon Jan- uensis, but now unknown ; he says it was without title, but was in hoc re copiosus.
1 100. Robert Curthose, the crusader son of William the Conqueror, and who had just been saluted King of England to succeed his brother William Rufus, now comes to Salerno early in lioo, with his bride Sibylla da Conversana, to be healed of a poi- soned arrow wound. His bride heals him ; see p. 238.
I loi . The Regimen sanitatis Salerni is written out in leonine verse, by the iota schola Salerni, and sent to Roberto Angloriivi regi, after his arrival, September, lloo, in Normandy.
1101. Joannes de AIediolannm,\?> claimed by an ancient MS. to have been the Salernitan editor of the preceding ; see p. 236.
1 1 10? Nicolo Preposito, commonly known as Nicolaus Praepositus, "a man of wealth and noble blood," ^ author of a celebrated Antidotarium f or register of medi- cines, printed in the 15th century, which "became a standard work for compounding medi- cines, and the foundation of many later compilations" : "this with the works of Matthaeus Platearius are to the botanist the most important of the productions of the Salernitan school," says Meyer. Nicolo cites no authors, but is thought to have used the previous " Antrorarium " or Antidotarium of the Seven Masters as his basis. His drugs bore appropriate Greek names, as his diuretic electuary called Philoanthropos ; or names " ob virtutis excellentiam," as his taiguenliim nureum ; or from some one cured, as his electu- arium Ducts; or, as in precedents from Galen and Actios, from the physician from whom they were descended, as his histinum, a diuretic remedy, recommended also by Otho Cremonensis. Nicolo was also author of a lost ANTlDOTAkiUM MAjus,j and of a DiSPENSARiUM ^ existing in a 15th century redaction.
II18. Giovajini Ferrario I, or " Giovannaccio medico " ; living lilS, Renzi ; chief author of a work on drugs, in collaboration with three masters whose treatise, Medicina Pratica, survives in fragments.
1 130. Matteo Plateario II probably finished his Circa instans at about this date ; perhaps had already written his Glossae ; perhaps afterwards, if he was its author, he prepared the Compendium Salernitanum by making additions to his Circa instans.
1 140. Matteo Plateario'' s last lectures, heard by the young poet and physician Aegidius of Corbeil, may have occurred about this time.
^ " Plenus divitis et ex nobil isanguine procreatus," says Cristoforo da Onesto, in preface to his notes on Mesue.
f Nicolo' s Antidotarium has been but once printed separately, a rare and very early edition ; but it is also printed in all editions of the Antidotarium of the Arabic physician Mesue, and best in the folio by Valgrisi, Venice, 1562.
\ Asculanus and Christophorus de Honestis in the 15th century speak of this large work. Perhaps it was the basis of the Dispensarium.
\ This is a dictionary of drugs in three books, bearing the title Dispensarititn magistri Nicolai prepositi ad aromatorios ; Ackermann deemed it to be the work called Majus by Asculanus ; Choulant proved by comparison of works cited in it that its pres- ent state dates from the 15th century; probably a redactor then worked over the Majus, earlier ? than the time of Asculanus' mention. Meyer possessed an edition printed in 1505 in quarto at Leyden ; three somewhat later editions were known to Choulant, all accompanying the Circa instans.
224
Aster History ; Salerno
1 140? The Lady Licinia, i. e., giver of the licinium cure (see infra), mother of another Giovanni Plateario (III.).
1 140? N'otitia Salernitanaruf?i mjilieruni ; a work (or uncompiled recipes?) relat- ing to defects of face and complexion which Salernus, about 1 160, proposed to incorpor- ate and improve ; using nigella glatitia (glaucium), spargula, gariofillus, ysopus, ciibeba, rubea major, Jlos niuris (parietaria ?) centatirea and many still more common plants.
1 1 50? Maestro Ursone ; whose work on wine was first printed 1901 by Giacosa rom a 13th century MS.: it seems to be referred to by Aegidius about 1 190.
1 150? An otherwise unknown Giovanni, son of another physician Gregorio ; and another unknown Giovanni of perhaps about this time, were authors of works printed first by Giacosa, 190 1, from 12th century MSS., a short work on baths by the first, and an extensive Trattato delle cure by the second. In the latter occur very many plant names ; for " appostemata " it recommends siiccus allii, lactncella, etc., for " condiloma," flax- seed, pomegranates, folia plantaginis, mentasirum, etc. ; and for another tumor, also representing the bubo of Cireek use for Aster, the remedies prescribed include abrotamim, cicuia, pentofilon, nialva et paritaria, etc. ; no reminiscence of aster occurring.
II50? Maestro Andrea may have flourished now or earlier; his prescription ad menstruam restringenda is preserved in a I2th century MS. at Rome {Giacosa, 385) ending with Galen's recommendation to use the seeds and roots of peony.
1 1 60. Giflvan?ti Plateario III., perhaps finished his additions to the Circa installs.
1 160. A " ?Jiagisier Salernus'''' at Salerno occurs.
1 167. Magister Salernus, this year imprisoned at Palermo on charge of poisoning Roberto Bellisino ; died in prison soon after ; is thought by Renzi and Giacosa to have been the Salernus whose skill and fame is praised by Aegidius ; Giacosa attributes to him the Catholica, first printed 1901, from a I2th century MS. This was to be a gen- eral treatise on all diseases in four books ; it seems to have remained unfinished at the end of the 2d book ; the author had before written medical works entitled Tabellae Salernitanae ( Tavole), Compendiian, and Chiritrgia. Among the numerous remedies in the Catholica occur petroleon, rasura osissippiae, and plants like lapatimn, asfodilla, sinphitum, semperviva, vermiculai-is, etc. Some of its remedies for diseases for which Aster had once been used, are as follows :
For a " darkness of the eyes " he recommends radix enuLie, eupatorium, maiorana, bettonica and artemisia. For epilepsy Aster is no longer recommended, but pyrethrum, stafsagria, herba para'isis, salvia, etc. For dolor oculorum, use succus celidoniae, granati, verbenae ; melilotus, ruta, parietaria, etc. P'or tumor oculi, carduus benedictus, calendula, etc. For albedo oculi ar^einoji of the Greeks), sarcocolla, fenuculwn, rasa, aloe, zinziber, etc. For squinantia ( for which Pliny had recommended aster), Saler- nus uses nialva, altea, brancaursina, fenugrecuni, linuni, mellilotus, liiutn, cinoglossa id est lingua canis et volubilis. For dolor stomachi, usual remedies, and anacarnimn, carui, anisum, pillulae de granibus 7nirobalanis, etc. For apostema stomaci, among other remedies, oculus christi, an early occurrence of that name. P'or emorroides , cotula, rubea, brionia, solatrum, etc. For inflatio vulvae.^ rubea major, spergula cortex pini, etc. For wounds, tie on fasciam et super fasciam stellas planas. For morsus f etc., use allium, genti ana , raphanus, cucumeris agrestis, vincetossicum, carduus benedictus, oculus christi, calendula, nepita, menta, lanceola, orobus agrestis, scordeon, allium domcsticuni, semen canapi^ ruta, diptamutn, or plantago; where oculus ch isti seems to inherit its repute from Aster ? (See DaManlio and An^uiliara. )
Ferrario and Otho
225
1180. Maurus, "an esteemed Salernitan master," a man of wealth and gen- erosity, who is said to have prepared a medicament out of pearls ; Aegidius Corboliensis praises " the splendid munificence of Maurus, a man conspicuous with much gold," Meyer 3: 460.
I188. Gio: anni Ferrario II, the Signor of Gragnano, friend of William II., and author ( so Renzi and Giacosa) of the work on fevers known as Curae, first printed 1901 in Giacosa's Magistri Salernitani, pp. I-65, from a I2th century codex. He used among the Compositae, policaria major et minor, ladnca, scariola, camotnilla, aprota- num, balsamita, succtis absinthium. Strignum, of Macer (for Solamim nigrum^, he calls stringmim. As an emplastrum for bringing sleep he used poppy and mandragora, with oil of roses or violets. For pain in the head he directs to use erba quae vulgo dicitiir cassillago. He cites no contemporary by name, but quotes from the Passionaj'ius and from Constantinus' Viaticum. Renzi shows the continuance of the family in his son, Tommaso, and nephew Giovanni III ; and sons of the latter, Matteo and Bartolomeo Ferrario, mentioned in documents as at Salerno in 1273.
I190. Aegidius Corboliensis, or Gilles de Corbeil, a Salernitan physician and teacher, later court physician to Philip Augustus of France, king I180-1223 ; known for his carrying the medical knowledge of Salerno to the French schools of medicine at Paris and at Montpellier ; and for his medical verses (edited by Choulant), chiefly a translation from the Antidotarium of Nicolaus Fraepositus and from the Glossary of Matthaeus Platearius. His Latin hexameter treatises De pulsis and De urina became medical classics. He died, says Meyer, 3: 507, "at the beginning of the 13th century."
1 1 90? Domianus edited Circa instans, see infra.
1 190? Socius Plaiearii. Some companion of the Plateario family seems at aboiit this time to have prepared the Ferrarese recension of the Circa instans, see infra.
1200. Magister Thoviasiti'^ Saractnitis QXtxxzxx'i, '^2iX&cvi\i?ca\x% doctor in physica " died in 1 200, Renzi. Was he a Crusader, termed. Saracenus on his return? as has been the case in France, and as is claimed for the origin of the name of Saracenus, the Dioscoridean editor ? Renzi thought him an Arab, and perhaps the same as the Saracen master Adala. But probably Adala was a Saracen who remained a Saracen. Master Thomas instead if a Saracen by birth must have adopted Christianity, and that early enough to become a priest, taking the name of Thomas.
1200? Otho Cremonensis who may have written perhaps 1 200 A. D., and whose writings when printed in part, 1551, etc., always occurred in company with the Regi- men Salerni ; author of a poem f of 138 lines " De electione . . . medicamen- torum" contained in a Leipsic MS. of about 1300 A. D. , to which Choulant, publish- ing this in 1832, added 241 others as perhaps by the same author, which treat of the same remedies as the Dispensatory — or Antidotarium, of Nicolaus Praepositus. His compound medicines are interesting to compare with those of Actios, whose compound Asters have disappeared ; instead of which their virtues have passed to such preparations as those he calls Adrianum, a remedy for the eyes, the stomach, tumors, the king's evil or " hieranoxia," etc.; Hygia, for " rheuma," for the eyes, and for indigestion ; Tiriaca magna for poison, "hieranoxia," " frigiditas stomachi," etc. ; rau/inur?i (a remedy evidently traceable to Paulus Aegineta) for the eyes, and " thoracis frigora"; Pilulae aureie (= golden pills), to clarify the eyes and for " turbo stomachi "; Picra Ga/eni {= Galen's bitters) for " errores stomachi " ; and especially his Diasatyrion,
* Called N. Otto Cremonensis by Seguier, 288 (in 1740).
f Printed in many editions of the Regimen Salernitana, as 155 1, -3, -6, -7, 9, at Frankfort, and others (as Paris, l^^g,fde Bumaldo, 1657).
226
Aster History ; Salerno
probably made from the orchid Serapias, for the bite of a reptile, or for a barking dog, or for " matricis frigiditatem."
The special medicament-names which seem more than any other to have replaced Aster in his terminology are Hiera, the sacred remedy; (more colloquial Salernitans called it Yera, as in the Turin Antidotario ; see the year I030, supra), and he has his Hiera Rujini, Hiera Gaieni, Hiera Constantini send Hiera Ahbotis de Curia ; and Dia,'*^ as an inseparable prefix, used with the plant which had been in Greek usage, the object of Diu as a preposition ; like Diainargariton, which " laedificat, cor confortat, stom- achum juvat," and Diacalantintum, which "digestivum juvat"; and, in the third place, his series of Unguenta, as his Unguentum Marciaton, for "stomachi dolor," and '* acumen iliacae," his Unguentum Agrippa for a tumor, etc.
That Otho was soon lost to memory, is seen in a 14th century MS. of his verses at Rome, which attributes them to (Jilles de Corbeil ( Giacosa, 407).
1 2 10? Michael Scdus (not the Michael Scott, the savant Scotus, who lived 1210- 1291), "celebrated British astronomer and necromancer," Meyer ^i'- 470, lived long at Toledo and later at Naples at the court of King Frederick II. ( 1 208-12 15, when he was crowned Emperor at Aachen, living so till 1250); was, says Renzi, esteemed a Salernitan physician ; Meyer deems him the same as the Second of the seven masters, reputed authors of the " Antrorarium " c. 1050, who was chronicled as "Michael Stortus, qui fuitde civitate Salerni," by some writer of Manfred's time, c. 1260. Scotus may have made additions or corrections to that digest of medicines.
1220? Alphita, a glossary of the 13th century, found in the Cibl. Mazarin at Paris by Carlo Daremberg and printed by him, Collectio Salernitana 3 : 276 +. Camus terms it " I'interessantissimo vocabolario salernitano." The name by which it is cited is due to its first line, ' Alphita et farina hordei idem.'
1240. Thomas de Cantiprato [q. v.) bases his work on Circa instans.
1250? The SlNONiMiA DELL EsTENSK, written probably in the 13th century, was perhaps a Salernitan compilation ; it exists in Modena in two forms with slight vari- ants, one a MS found by Professor Foucard, in 13th century characters ; the other one published by Professor Camus, 1886, written out about 1458, by Le Petit Pelous, who after translating his Secres de Salerne from the Tractatus Herbarum, wrote this Sinou- imia of 25 folios upon the last blank portion of the latter MS. It begins with " Arthe- misia, id est matricaria, mater herbarum,'''' and has also a " Matricaria minor, =ama- ;v//'," and a M-itricari i media, — At hanacetutn or Ath /nasia,^'' i. e., tansy. It contains no Aster, but has " Turbith, similis galange."
1260? The Salernitan Chronicle of about 1260, by an unknown writer ; see p. 219,
1270? P'Lctro Spano, Spanish writer recommending his " Eufrasia" for the eyes ; may have been a Salernitan scholar ; his book seems to echo the title Secreta Saler- nitana" in its own title "Secreta magistri Petri hispani De egritudines oculorum." He died 1277.
1285. Bernard Cordon, the Scotch author of the Lilium ftiedicinae, etc., con- tinued Salernitan traditions at its offshoot the school of Montpellier, where he lived 1 285-1307. Giacosa, p. 390, notes the discovery of another work by him, & Flebotomia, in a Naples MS. of the 13th and 14th centuries with the date of its beginning, " in- choatus est iste liber in preclaro studio Montis Pessulani," Feb. 22, 1 307.
* Macer Floridus cited one such name, Diapiganon, which he says is a prepara- tion made from Peganum, and which he mentions as if to him, writing about 850 A. D., it was a new form of expression.
The Fourteenth Century
227
1300? Other medical writers of presumably Salernitan training and of uncertain date, but whose works remain in MSS. of the 14th century, include : Maestro Giovanni da Parma (a Practica).
Maestro Gerardo da Cremona (on purgatives, and translations from the Arabic). Albertino da Salso or da Plagentia, whose lectures, collected by Tommaso da Crema, are in a MS. dated 1368 to 1385.
Aegidius Romanus (Liber Exameron, and on human embryology).
Maestro Ruggero (Chirurgia).
Maestro Rolando (Chirurgia).
Guglielmo da Saliceto (Chirurgia; printed, 1546).
Ludovicus Tettapharmacus, translator from the Arabic of an Antidotarium, prob- ably by Abulcasis.
Teoderico Borgognoni (Chirurgia, printed in part, Ven. 1484 ; and Chirurgia dei Cavalli, not yet printed).
Taddeo Alderotti (on conservation of health).
Giovanni Alessandrino (on pestilences).
1305. Crescenzi {q. v.), uses Circa instans as basis.
1 3 10. A maid de Villanova, though not directly of Salerno, became associated with it about this date in his commentary on the Regimen Salerni. See infra, p. 242.
1313-7. Alatteo Silvatico, or Matthaeus Sylvaticus ; his Pandects are assigned to this time; he, born at Mantua, perhaps 1 270, a Salernitan physician, perhaps 1 297, was maintaining his Colocasias ia his botanical garden at Salerno, at his writing, about 1313. See infra.
1330? Niccolo da Reggio, a Calabrian Greek who translated Galen into Latin for the first time (see the Latin edition of Galen, 15 16), taught at Salerno in the 14th cen- tury and wrote in Latin a short abstract of the Greek Antidotarium by Nicolas Myrep- sus, which was edited by Ammonius, Ingolstadt, 1 541. Meyer, 3 : 382.
1 340? Bartolomeo Mino da Siena, "an old Salernitan writer' ' ( Camus, 1 6) , compiler of the " Tractatus herbarum," an alphabetic Latin dictionaryof medical plants, pre- served in a 15th century MS. at Modena, with colored figures; prepared from Circa instans by omitting animal and vegetable remedies, etc. Its figures are substantially those of Codex C of Dioscorides, Cajnus. Bartolomeo cites Pietro Spano, who died 1277, and Matteo Silvatico, of 1313. Camus thinks that Andrea Mino da Siena (a poet of the 14th century, sprung from the Piccolomini family) may have been his son. See infra, under Plateario.
1340? Salvator, Prior " Salernitani et Neopolitani Collegii," father of Constantia.
1350? Constantii Ca/^-w^/cz, praised as " insignita," " nobilis et erudita mulier;" she was " laurea etiam doctoralis," says J/asz*?."^" Like so many of the Salernitan women, she was not a nun but a married physician, the record of her marriage to Baldassere de Sancto-mango de Salerno occurring in the Register Regiae Siclae under Joanna IL, who was queen of Naples, 1343-1382. Meyer uses her record and her father's, as an argument that the School of Salerno was secular not monastic.
1350? The Aggregator practicus (q. v.); based largely on Circa instans.
1390? La force des herbes, a French translation from Macer, etc., probably written by a sojourner in Italy ; begins
Ci comence li livres que Maycirs et Ypocras firent.
*In his Urbis Salernitanae historia, Naples, 1 68 1, and in Graevii thesaurus anti- quitatum Italiae.
228
Aster History; Salerno
Its first article, Armoise (Artemisia), quotes " Maycres " as terming it mother of herbs," and adds ** the masters say whoso carries the seed of Armoise will keep him- self from any serpent."
A Turin MS. of Macer of the 14th century in 46 folios noticed by Giacosa, p. 444, presents the name in the legitimate form ; beginning
Herbarum Macer dixit carmine vires, — and is of interest because the numbering of its pages is partly in cipher, not in letters as in earlier MSS.
Another and closely related French MS. herbal, taken largely from Macer but later and in a l6lh century hand, exists in the National Library at Turin, in 26 leaves, beginning '* Ici appres,^'' and stating that it is copied from the book of De Bray, which book was " a Lempereur et au roy Chart.'''' It styles itself *' De virtulibtis herbarum " and " Liiionis des herbes.''^
1390? The Pavian " Erbario " exists in a 15th century codex (130) of the Uni- versity of Pavia, forming the whole elegant codex of about 130 folios, with descriptions and with colored figures. The figures, however, are highly diagrammatic, are drawn with more regard to effect than accuracy, and are conventional forms derived from older MSS. Camus has noted the descriptions (Malpighia, 97. 1895) and Giacosa the figures (Magistri Sal., 447-452). Of these he has reproduced several in his Atlante, plates 18, 19, 20, Turin, 1901 ; showing its herba lucea, herba gualia, herb a lunar iCy herba ciinbalaria quae multae cottilidon vacant, yris yllirica, herba foleis and herba illocharias.
Figures occur under the following names of interest to Aster history : Stellaria, fig. 5 ; foi" what plant ? ; Herba amors u serpentis, fig. 32.
Herba oculus doniini, fig. 54 (Oculus Christi of DaManlio ? ) also Calendula, Inula campana, Centaurea maior. Absinthium, Salsifica, Ungula caballina (Tussilago) and perhaps other Compositae.
We note also of agrimony and of lapathum,
Agronomie quae domiani unone vocant. Patella sive paratella sive piratella.
1410 ? Erbario di Padova, the Paduan Herbarium, an MS. herbal in Italian, occu- pying the first 5 or 6 folios of a 15th century codex (604) of the University of Padua, which is mainly filled with the Chirurgia of Rolando, and is accompanied by a notary's certificate stating that it was sold in 1421 to a pharmacist. It has about 32 plant-figures in colors, of diagrammatic character, derived apparently from the Pavian Erbario. Among them are C llendonia, Abr.tano, Latuge (Lactuca), Millefolium. Giacosa {Atlante, plate 20) reproduces the figures herba illocharis^^ and he*ba foleasV The text is a translation into Italian from the Latin of the Pavian " Erbario."
1415 Rinius. The Liber de simplicibus Benedicti Rinii ; a MS. preserved in the Marcian library of Venice ; with figures of plants derived from a codex of Dioscorides.
1456? The Baptista Antidotariufn, folios of MS. forming the beginning of a Turin 15th century codex, written in 2 columns, rubricated and with red initials. It bears the name Baptista, in gold letters, indicating the same author as the following. It begins " Aurea Alexandrina valet," etc., and includes parts of the remedies of Nicolao Prepositor, Mesue, Almansor and Serapion, and of the following little known tnaestri ; Giovanni de Lignino, Stefano de Cays, lacopo de Borsano, Giovanni, Matteo de Grate, Magno, Alberto di Canobbio, Gratiano, etc.
Last Salernitan Masters
229
1456. Baptista de Rainzone, scribe, who on Nov. 5, 1456, completed transcribing the Latin translation of Albucasis, the Liber serviioris, in the codex of the preceding.
1458. Les Secres de Salerne, or Herbollaire, a translation of Plateario's Circa instans into French with modifications by a young sojourner in Italy, who calls himself Le Petit Felons. The Modena Library listed its MS. of this Secres as Secreta Saler- nitana. See infra, for its developments in France and England.
Similar titles had been long used ; as the
Secretum Secretornm^ MS. translations in a 13th century hand in the Bibl. Angelica at Rome selected from an Arabic -work de disposition e regni, entitled " Cira- ]acerar, id est secretum secretorum " ascribed by the translator to Aristotle. (See Giacosa, 386).
S-'cretutn Secretorum, a different work, printed at Bologna, 1501.
Secrets de Medecine, in French, 32 ff. ; a Bologna MS. written in 1457, beginning Assit pj'incipio, consisting of astrological matter and of remedies, including secrets des dames (Giacosa, 498).
1458. SiNONiMiA by Pelous, beginning^;V//(?w?j?Vz / ^w^mgZuccarus. See p. 226.
1469. Indice DEI Semplici, 6 ff. with 277 simples, Antiti07iiiiim to Radix asse- fetide, and Zilocaracte, in a Turin MS.
1500. Hieronymus BrunstJnvygk von Salem'''' first prints his Distillierung Buck at Strasburg ; see infra. The name may be interpreted to indicate Salernitan personal descent ; or merely the Salernitan origin of his art.
1305-1783. Works based largely on Circa instans ; see that title.
XL. Gariopontus
Gariopontus, a learned and long-lived Salernitan physician, distinguished as a Greek * scholar and teacher, may have written perhaps 1020 A. D. or earlier. He marked the full development of the codifying tendency at Salerno which was soon to be suc- ceeded by the more original work of the so-called Salernitan
* As Gariopontus he is now usually known, and in Italian as Garioponto or Guar- impoto. Comparison of the MS. names for him of Pontus Graecus, Gariopontus, Guaripontus, Guarimpontus, Varimpontus, and Warmipotus suggests that some local name may have become among his family or his associates assimilated to the Lombard personal name Guarin, our Warren.
It was Meyer's judgment that he is the same as the " Master Pontus " recounted by an old chronicle (see Rabbi Helinus, entered p. 218, under 1020) as one of the three founders of the greatness of Salerno, who gathered the philosophers together there for study and to formulate their *' Antrorarium " and who brought together there " all man- ner of [Italian] leaves and roots and herbs, to the number of 150, and who assembled there [in their botanical garden] other plants which came from therealm of the Pagans, in number 100 generations of species," etc. Another fragment of an old chronicle says he first taught Greek learning to the Greek physicians at Salerno — " J^Iagister Pontus Graecus de litera Graeca Graecis." Petrus, Damianus, Bishop of Ostia, born 1007, d. 1072, wrote " Dicam, quod mihi Guarimpontus senex, vir videlicet honestis- simus et apprime Uteris eruditus medicus, retulit." Simon Januensis also mentions him and calls him a Salernitan.
230
Aster History ; Gariopontus
masters." Gariopontus, says Giacosa,* stands together with his predecessor Petroncello, at that period in Salernitan history when the previous sparse and scattered materials and diverse MSS. were put together and organized into a body of medicine." In his case, as with other eminent codifiers, there has been a tendency to ascribe many works to him with which he probably had nothing to do ; Meyer, in 1856, bestowing on him several which Giacosa, writing in 1 90 1 with new materials, finds must have reached their present form several centuries earlier. These new researches, issued since the present work first went to press, have completely changed the position occupied by Gariopontus in botanical literature, and I therefore present the subject in greater detail.
The following extant works have been ascribed to Galen, but seem in their present form to be redactions by Gariopontus from various authors :
1. The Passionariiis, i. e., treatise on passions, that is, diseases. This work was first published 1526 at Lyons as Galeni
passionariiis, and 1531 at Basle as " Garioponti ... rrpaqetov libri 5,"- etc. The Basle MS. bears the title Passionarium seu Practica morborum Galeni, Theodori Prisciani, Alexandri et Pauli, quem Gariopontus quidam Salernitanus ejusque socii una cum Albicio f emendavit, ab erroribus vindicavit, et in hunc ordinem redegit." %
2. De Dynamidiis, i. e., concerning the medical powers of plants," 2 books, printed among the spurious works of Galen (as in the 1556 Venice edition in Latin); attributed by Meyer, fol- lowing Renzi, to Gariopontus ; by Giacosa to various unknown writers anterior to the middle ages. It is called the Dinamidii of Galen by Constantinus African us, who cites " a rearrangement of it" as among his sources, valuable to him "as it treats of the
* Magistri Salernitani nondum editi. Piero Giacosa, editor ; Fratelli Bocca, pub- lisher ; Turin, 1901.
f A writer otherwise unknown ; Renzi searched in vain for other Salernitan refer- ence to him.
J The Passionarius still exists in an iith century MS. dating back nearly or quite to Gariopontus' lifetime, the Codex 1496 of the Bibliotheca Angelica at Rome, which begins, presumably in Gariopontus' own words, " Incipit liber Passionarii Galieni,. Ippocratis, et aliorum." A slightly later hand has added, perhaps in the next gener- ation, Auctor istius libri fuit Garimpotus, et composuit eum ex epistola Galieni ad Glauconem et ex libris Pauli, Alexandri, et Theodori." Modern criticism, says Giacosa, " confirms these sources, and finds two other ancient authors cited by it, by name of Aurelius and Aesculapius. '
Gariopontus as Codifier
231
virtues of simples." Giacosa suggests that Gariopontus may have been the redactor who made the rearrangement which Constantinus used. A considerable part of what Constantinus knew as the " Di- namidii " is lost to us, and seems not to have formed a part of the " rearrangement " used by Constantinus, surviving then, as he says, but " too much corroded by the wastes wrought by copyists, and by blunders due to the depravity of scribes." Giacosa points out three distinct elements in the printed Dynamidiis :
A, the first book, an ancient epistle to Paternianus ; perhaps belonged originally with 4, infra.
B, introducing the second book ; a letter from a " Hippo- crates," i.e., a physician, to a Maecenas of pagan Rome. It contains the injunction : " In Terentius Euelpistius' last book you may read the Dynaines Hcrbarinn ; which herbs take heed to dig as you ob- serve their growth under the changes of the moon." Giacosa re- marks : I can find no other trace of this Terenzio Evelpisto." In fact, the query suggests itself. Can it be that part C of the Dinamidii was meant by the Dynaines Herbartun, and that its author bore this name Terentius ? — An early Epistola Ippocratis ad Anti- ochum regem de tuenda valetudine " (published in Helmreich's Marcellus Empiricus), may be, says Giacosa, a more ancient variant of this letter to Maecenas.
C ; forming the main part of this second book ; an antido- tarium, with prescriptions, etc.; being the part apparently chiefly important to Constantinus, and used by him.
Works (3 and 4) follow, which have been ascribed to Gario- pontus by Renzi or Meyer, but are now proved earlier by Giacosa.
3. Dynamidionun libri duo ; by which name Cardinal Mai published at Rome in 1835 * the ist and 2d books out of a treatise of 5 books discovered by him in a Vatican codex of the lOth century. Mai believed them hitherto unprinted, but they proved to be part of the ancient anonymous work printed by L. Schott at Strasburg in 1533, under the erroneous title of Oribasii me did de siniplicibus libri qiiinque. The Dynamidionun was treated by Renzi and Meyer as probably a work of Gariopontus ; but the Mai MS. was probably written before Gariopontus' birth, and the unknown author may not have been much later than Apu-
Classicorum audorum e Vaticanis codd. 7 : 397, .
232
Aster History; Gariopontus
leius Platonicus, from whom he drew much material, as well as from GargiHus Martialis, and from an ancient Latin translation of Hippocrates' Diaeta. It contains 125 or more chapters on plants, and is remarkably rich in synonyms, having besides those of Dios- corides and Apuleius, very many folknames from southern Italy, among which 34 plants are listed by Meyer, 3:496-500; in- cluding the following names for Compositae :
Zy giber,'' for Artemisia; and the generatria'' distin- guished by Dioscorides as polyklonos (the tragantlies of Apuleius Platonicus), monoklonos and leptophyllos, by the Mai MS. are called tagantes, mono gloss a and leptopJiylla.
" Hiniila canipa agrestis, dicitur Parachironia. ab aliis Cen- taurea, Panachilinion, Helena;" = Imila Heleniiim L.
Myriophyiliun, quod et Balasticon seu Centifolium " = Achillaea Millefolwin L.
Pentaphyon, i. e., Gudabal (Punic name from Apuleius), qui et Pes leonis dicitur, simulat Millefolium" = a Filago ? Meyer.
" Tridacon iagioii, i, e., Lactuca leporina, /. e., Piligis" = Lactuca leporina of Apuleius ? which Anguillara identified with the Cazzalepre of the Italians (Haserloffel of Germany) the Leontodon aiitiniDialis L.*
4. De Simplicibus medic ai nimbus ad Patennamtm, an alphabetic summary of remedies, printed in the Spurious Galen of 1556; made up, said Meyer, " without citations but chiefly traceable to Di- oscorides, seldom to Pliny and Apuleius Platonicus ; Dioscorides must have been in the writer's possession." Meyer, though treating it under Gariopontus, found reason to think that this work, which we may term the Paternian treatise, — is older than the preceding.
Now it is shown by Giacosa that it is contained entire in MSS. of the 9th century, as in Codex 97 of Monte Cassino, where it bears the name oi Alphabeta herbarmn (see p. 216 ; the Alfabeto delle erbe of Giacosa). It occurs in another 9th century codex at
* Other names of present importance include two Greek variants, Glycis as a name for Paeonia, replacing the Glykyside of the Dioscoridean synonyms, and Glyconium for Pulegium replacing Glechon of Dioscorides. Glycis and Glyconium may be old Magna Graecian forms.
Recognition of the Italians as different from the Romans is shown by the Mai MS. in the remark, which may be attributed to his addition : " Bryonia a Graecis dicitur hjiKFTio- Aeii/c?) (classic), a Romanis Abutaminium (corruption? for the Dioscoridean synonym Uva taminea) ab Italis Vitis alba=3 Bryonia dioica L.
Paternian Plant-Names
233
Lucca, 236, under the name De pigmeritis. It occurs in the Codex Vienna 2425, probably coeval with Gariopontus. It again ap- pears in book V of Schott's 1533 Strasburg Dc simplicibus, at- tributed by him to Oribasius.
This De simplicibus is clearly traceable, says Giacosa, to a Latin translation of Dioscorides executed for the use of the Goths during their dominion in Italy, 493-555, which translation long supplanted the true Dioscorides, and was the Dioscorides used by Simon Januensis.
Meyer catalogs 32 peculiar Paternian plant-names. Among these are :
Argemone ... hujus radicem Graeci Eupatorium dicunt."
Artemisia herba est subsimilis Absinthio, sed per omnia vas- tior, in foliis latior, ramis altior et fortior, sed aspectu et colore humidis" (Meyer would read similis).
Other names include ''Bulbus erraticus" for Colchiciwi, "Cuculus, graece Cinenon, alii Strychnon," for Solanuin nigrum, "Lipsiani " for Cicer, ''Salvicula" for Valeriana Celtica, etc. Another, "Cridrium," is otherwise unknown. Here also, under the name Vella herba, occurs the first known description of Carriclitera Vella, which was first recalled to modern knowledge by Anguillara.*
XLI. CONSTANTINUS AfRICANUS
Constantinus Africanus or Afer, born in Carthage about 1003, buried about iioo at Monte Cassino, was, about 1070, the real founder of the university work of Salerno, as claimed by Meyer, 3 : 471-483. Meyer's claim is that Constantinus transformed the Salernitan school ; that the school had been before but a guild of physicians who held their learning and remedies secret, and made no writings public ; that it was Constantinus' great work, that he transformed the anciently-founded and high-esteemed Salernitan School from a guild of physicians to an open academy, most of whose writers thereafter wrote with a view to publicity."
Constantinus had made long and extensive journeys through the Orient in the study of medicine and philosophy, f spending 40
*Semplici. i8o (Meyer).
t " For study of grammar, dialectics, geometry, arithmetic, mathematics, astron- omy, necromancy, music and physics."
234 Aster History ; Constantinus
years in seats of Arabic learning in Babylon, India, Aethiopia and Egypt. He returned (says Petrus Diaconus, ancient chronicler of Monte Cassino), " erudite to overflowing with philosophical stud- ies, master of the Orient and of the Occident, a new and reful- gent Hippocrates."*
Among his pupils and successors, taught by him at Monte Cassino and Salerno, were Atto, said to have been afterward chaplain to the Empress Agnes, Joannes, later of Naples, to whom he left his books, and Afflacius, also a Salernitan master.
The chief dates of his life may have been : birth 1003 t at Car- thage; at 18, 102 1, he begins his 39 full years travel in the Orient; 1060, returns to Carthage and then lives at Reggio, perhaps 10 years; 1070, becomes identified with Salerno and Monte Cassino (appearing as one of the monks of Monte Cassino at the dedication of the abbey under Desiderius in 1071); early in iioo, burial ta Monte Cassino, aged 96. j
Constantinus' works included, besides some unprinted :
" "Philosophicis studiis plenissime eruditus, Orientis et Occidentis magister, novus et effulgens Hyppocrates. "
"{■These dates are modified from those suggested by Meyer (3 i^jb), who makes his birth 1018 and death 1 106, although aged 96. (See also p. 238, n.)
t Seeking Carthage after these forty years of travel, his fellow countrymen, says Diaconus, thought his wonderful knowledge supernatural and diabolical, and he fled for his life to Salerno. Renzi and Meyer deemed the story a monkish invention, considering the opportunity for a literary life at Salerno a sufficient inducement. He seems not to have gone there first, however, at least not to remain,, but to have lived for years at Reggio, in Apulia, in converse in this ancient Magna Graecian city with people of old Greek lineage, there acquiring that mastery of Greek which he shows so remarkably in his translation of the Viaiicti?ji into Greek. While here he held an official position as secretary — ' Aa7]Kpr]Tri~ — perhaps to Robert Guiscard ; and lived here long enough to be entitled "The Rhegian " — 6 'Vrjyivo-, on his Greek MSS. After this, his life at Salerno, says Petrus, " had already continued long when the brother of the King of Babylon [caliph] came there and sought him out." There he transformed the place, taught and wrote ; was held in high esteem by Robert Guiscard as early as in 1075, who made the place his capital in 1077. In 1078 Richard I., prince of Capua, died, giving the revenues of his church of St. Agatha at Aversa to Constantinus, as a reward perhaps for personal care. Before this Constantinus had become a monk of Monte Cassino, and he now brought the Aversa church into possession of that cloister, where he was the friend of its Abbot Desiderius, and where he was buried, in the reign of Emperor Henricus according to Petrus, at an extreme age, supposed to be 96 by Meyer. Meyer assumes the emperor to have been Henry V. of Constantinople, 1 106-1125 ; but it accords better with the other facts related of Constantinus, to sup- pose that Henry IV. of Germany was intended, whose reign was 1050-1106.
CONSTANTINI OpERA
235
1. " Glosas herbarum et specierum," plant synonyms ; the Bibl. Naples contains what seems to be a copy of this in the Pan- tegni MS. of the 13th century, Camus, 132.
2. Viaticum," a medical work which he translated out of Syriac into Greek and of which two Greek MSS. exist at Vienna and one at Florence. His Latin translation of this from the Greek bears the name Viaticum, and has been printed.
3. " Constantini Africani, Opera conquisita." Basle, by Hen- ricus Petrus, 1536. The title calls the work a selection from Hippocrates and Galen, and terms the author " Graeca lingua doctus sedulus lector."
4. " Constantini Africani medici. Operum reliqua hactenus desiderata." Same printer; i 536, at the end dated 1539; calls the author " the greatest in all philosophy " ; forms a second volume to complete the preceding (no. 3) ; both are massive folios. They con- tain a selection from his works ; some of the others are lost, some are still in MS.; these printed are pronounced by Meyer to be valu- able chiefly as containing only practical medicine. They consist of translated extracts from Greek and Arabic works, many of the latter without names of their authors.* They constitute," says Meyer, the first introduction of Arabic medical literature to the knowledge of the West : though only of their literature, not their practice ; in the latter he followed Galen."
Last of his works in the volume of 1536 is one there entitled De gradibiis qnos vocant sintplichim ; by Simon Januensis cited as Liber gradumn ; by Petrus Diaconus called Duodecim gradmim. It contains over 200 remedies, 168 of which are plants, 10 of these from Arabic sources, of which one is Turbith, its first ap- pearance in Western literature, Arabic name for Aster Tripoliiun L., but also used and soon predominantly so, for an oriental drug. Among the others are two names, otherwise unknown, of present interest as perhaps Compositae :
Ocidcca, mentioned by no other author, a blue-flowered spiny Eryngium, named from its flowers like little eyes ? or a violet- flowered Aster-like composite of the Buphthalmon kind ? Con-
* So that the translator," says Meyer, "may be thought plagiarist" by those who did not understand his purpose ; which error quickly followed, Simon Januensis and Petrus de Apone expressing very great contempt for Constantinus.
236
Aster History ; Constantinus
stantinus' description (Meyer 3 : 484) is " Oculcea est herba super terrain duobus brachiis saliens, cujus frondes breves et subtiles, quasi frondes chamomillae. Spinam (spicam ?) etiam modicam vividem et florem violaceum (habet). Rami ejus multos nodos habent." Opera coitquisita, 352.
" Syclie species est Abrotani in Armenia nascentis," 360, with- out description. Simon Januensis in his dictionary, citing this, says *'Siche Armenum, Hber graduum, est Abrotanum agreste."
XLII. The Regimen Salerni
The Regimen sanitatis Salerni^ * celebrated medical poem, seems to have been finished in iioi, the joint product f of the then Salernitan masters, reducing to aphoristic form the medical wisdom current in their school, using as material various parts of Macer Floridus' poem, etc., and addressing their poem to the King of England, identified as Prince Robert of Normandy, sec- ond son of William the Conqueror, thus harmonizing three MSS. which begin Anglonini regi (the oldest form), Francormn regi (i. e., king of Normandy), and Roberto regi.
John of Milan — Joannes de Mediolano " — is named J as compilator " in "the ancient Tullovian MS.", discovering which fact, his editor! Zacharius Sylvius, M.D., of Rotterdam was first to make the claim § in 1648, that the original poem was written
'^Regimen Sanitatis Sderni (and also S lernit mum') is its title as given by Arnald followed by Ackermann and most authors; Flos viedicinae of many MSS. ; Flos inedicinae scholae Salerni of Renzi ; Sylvius, 1 667, entitled it Schola Salernitana sive de conservandi valetudine praecept i ?fietrica " ; Arnald also calls it Medicina Saler- nit'ina, and John de Milan, " Flores Medicinae.''''
f This poem was first carefully edited by Arnald de Villanova, who died 1313, and in whose form, considered the most authentic example of the supposed original, the poem consisted of 364 lines. Some MSS. have only 200 ; later ones were augmented until they reached 2130 as published by Renzi ; but Ackermann, its critical editor (Sten- dal, 1790) deemed all spurious which were not iound in Arnald, although as Meyer remarks, many of the spurious verses are doubtless as old or older than iioi, but were not then included in the Regimen.
X Rotterdam, 1649'and 1667 ; printed by Leers.
§ On the authority, says Sylvius, "of Joan Georgius Schenkius, in Bibliotheca Medica."
John of Milan
287
by this till then unknown * John of Milan, whom Sylvius terms " a physician and versificator distinguished for his period." The " Tullovian MS," as quoted by Sylvius, ends with these words — " Explicit Tractatus, qui dicitur Flores Medicinae, compilatus in studio Salerni a Mag. Joani de Mediolano Instructi medicinalis Doctore egregio, compilationi cujus concordarunt omnes Magistri illius studii."
This colophon implies that John of Milan was in i icq one of the most learned and facile of the physicians of Salerno ; that he there revised and united the verses condensed from Macer and other sources or probably largely contributed at the time by other Salernitan masters ; that he then submitted them to these as- sembled masters and received their final approval ; so that the poem went forth as the united work of the whole schools.
Everything seems to indicate that this Joannes of Milan f was the ''Joannes medicus " of whom his brother-monk Petrus Diaconus wrote perhaps 1 140, in his Chronicle of Monte Cassino as follows :
"Joannes medicus, supradicti Constantini Africani discipulus et Casinensis monachus, vir'in physica arte disertissimus, post Con- stantini sui magistri transitum aphorismum J edidit physicis satis necessarium. Fuit autem supradictis imperatoribus (sc. Alexii, Henrici, et Joannis). Obiit autem apud Neapolita, ubi omnes lib- ros Constantini sui magistri reliquit"; /. e., Joannes the physician, pupil of the above-named Constantinus Africanus and a monk at
* Sylvius prefixes to his editio 1 of the Regimen verses written by him as a late rec- ompense to the unknown John of Milan as follows ;
" Consolatio ad manes Jo. de Mediolano. Quod Auctor ipse Carminum Scholae Salernitanae hactenus ignotus fuerit.
*' Non opera periere tua, labor iste peribit
Nunquam, Posteritas non tua scripta negat, Hactenus incerti placuerunt Carmina multis, At tua, qua posthac fama vigebit, erit. Zachar Sylvius."
■f- Meyer, 3 : 503, claimed that John of Milan was some later redactor, apparently because unmentioned by Arnald in editing the Regimen, (1310?), and because ISIeyer had not observed that the John who came from Milan and the John who died at Naples were evidently the same person. But Arnald does not discuss the origin of the poem at all, and the testimony of Petrus Diaconus, a contemporary who knew Joannes, is of much more weight than the silence of Arnald, who wrote five or six generations later.
\ The aphoristic nature of the verses which compose the Regimen Salerni make Aphons>/nim a natural term to use for it. The author of the Aggregator Practicus uses the same phrase for it, in his preface, perhaps about 1350, speaking of the sagacity of Arnald de Villanova in aphorisinis sttis, i. e., in his edition of the Regivien.
238
Aster History; The Regimen
Monte Cassino, was a man most learned in the medical art [" phys- ica " was used in ordinary terminology at Salerno as a term for medicine ; as again of the Salernitan " magister Thomasius ... doctor in physica " who died in 1200, p. 225. So in England, physic s- garden " was long used for a garden of medicinal plants]. After the transit from earth [in 11 00*?] of his master Constantinus, Joannes edited the aphoristic code [Regimen sanitatis Salerni, of iioi] so necessary to physicians. Joannes flourished moreover under the above-named emperors [1081-1143]. He died more- over at Naples, to which school of medicine he left all the books of Constantinus his master."
The incident related which produced the Regimen Salerni and led to its remarkable first line,
Anglorum regi scripsit tota schola Salerni,
was this : that Robert Curthose.f just then proclaimed King of England, was healed at Salerno in 1 100 of the effects of a poisoned arrow, which the crusader had suffered from since the siege of Jeru- salem, and which it is said, had degenerated into fistula. The physi- cians of Salerno stated that it could not be cured except by frequent suction by the mouth, which we are told that "the pious and excellent prince was unwilling" to permit lest the poison imperil the life of another ; but in his sleep his bride Sibylla % repeatedly drew off the poison, " being moved by such new love to him," and sustaining no injury to herself; and he speedily recovered. Robert
^ If further evidence should at some time prove that I am wrong in conjecturing the " Emperor Henricus " under whom Constantinus died, to have been Henry IV. of Germany, 1050-1106 ; and should prove that Meyer was right in identifying him with Henry V. of Constantinope, II06-II25 ; then Constantinus' death could not have been earlier than 1 106, the date Meyer assigns it. In that case John of Milan may be held to have been redactor, not original editor, of the Regimen ; and to have put forth such a reissue of it soon after 1 106 as received the approval of the other *' masters."
f Robert Curthose (short-hose), eldest son of William the Conqueror, heir of his father in Normandy and of his brother William Rufus in England, had joined the first crusade 1096, wintering with the Normans in Apulia on his way. Declining the offered Kingdom of Jerusalem, he was told of the death of his brother William Rufus, was saluted King of England and returned to Apulia, where he married Sibylla de Conver- sana, and becoming alarmed at the development of fistula, repaired to Salerno. He reached Normandy September, 1 100, invaded England lioi, was finally defeated and imprisoned 1 106, dying at Cardiff 1 134, aged 78.
J Sibylla da Conversana, daughter of Geoffrey of Conversana (a town in the Apulian mountains, five miles from Bari), the brother of Gisulf II., Salerno's last prince. She died lamented in Normandy, 1 103, mother of Robert's young son William.
Salvia in Horto
239
then departing to assume his crown (which he found ah'eady seized by his brother, Henry the First), " the School prescribed a ration of food for him," composed the Regimen sanitatis Salerni, and sent it to him as a guide to health. His own difficulty was the reason, continues Sylvius, why fistula * was one of the few disorders selected for special mention in the Regimen.
The popularity of this poem may be judged from the fact that Renzi enumerates i 19 editions and 26 translations besides his own, and Meyer possessed 10 editions not included in the i iQ.f
The poem, " the quintescence of Salernitan wisdom " as Meyer terms it, is still in common quotation^ by American physicians, who couple its famous line
Cur moriatur homo, cui salvia crescit in horto, ^
and that marvel of interwoven word-tapestry,
Quos anguis dirus tristi mulcedine pavit, Hos sanguis mirus Christi dulcedine lavit.
* *' For fistula, mix auripignientum (arsenicum), sulphur, calx and sapo;" — "these foure, by way of Playster, Are able any Fistula to maister," as adds Holland (p. 158 of my copy of the 1634 edition). Philemon Holland, first English translator of the Regimen and of Pliny, lived 1551-1636. The Regimen vi^as also translated by Thomas Cogan, and " interwoven," as he says, into his H .ven of Health, 1588.
X As its sapient " Ventum saepe capis, si tu vivere rapis." — Sylvius, 1649, says of the physicians of the continent, " None but has the whole Regimen on his lips and on every occasion."
To put medical precepts into verse was the mediaeval manner ; as shown in the same twelfth century by the Salernitan Aegidius of Corbeil. Metrical form was also supposed to be particularly gratifying to the Normans who had the reputation of cast- ing everything into verse, including their celebrated epitaph for Rollo, beginning Dux Nortmanorum cunctorum norma bonorum Rollo ferus fortis quem gens Nortmannica mortis Invocat articulo loco jacet in tumulo. ^ Sage was given more space than almost any herb by the Regimen Salerni ; 7 lines : Cur moriatur homo, cui salvia crescit in horto ? Contra vim mortis non est medicamen in hcrtis. Salvia confortat nervos manuumque tremorem ToUit, et ejus ope febris acuta fugit, Salvia, Castoriumque Lavendula, Primula veris. Nasturtium, Armoracia, haec sanat paralytica membra, Salvia salvatrix, natura conciliatrix : — or, beginning Holland's version, P- 130,
" Why should man dye (so doth the sentence say), When Sage grows in his Garden day by day ? " Avicenna, 3, l, remarks, " Ars quidem sanitatis tuendae nos a morte securos non facit," and Arnald de Villanova, commenting on the above, " Nulla tanien invenitu^ quae moriendi necessitatem medicina." But as Cogan, p. 32, puts it, "Such is the vertue of Sage, that if it were possible, it would make a man immortall."
240
Aster History ; The Regimen
Plant remedies and diseases form however by no means the chief subject of the Regimen. It discusses air, food, exercise, sleep, bodily functions and temperaments. It attempts its greatest exactitude in telling the number of the bones, putting the number 219* into such a form of verbal jugglery as to fasten it to the memory :
Ossibus ex denis bis centenisque novenis.
So with the number of the teeth, 32 :
Constat homo, denis bis dentibus, et duodenis ;
and it even assumes to count the veins, 365 :
Et ter centenis decies sex quinqueque venis.
A great effort with the Regimen was to mark out the four temperaments, outlined in much detail. Characteristic lines in- clude these : of the sanguine ( agreeing with its description in Galen and Avicenna ),
Natura pingues isti sunt, atque jocantes, Rumoresque noves cupiunt audire frequentes, Hos Venus et Bacchus delectant, fercula, risus Et facit hos hilares et dulcia verba loquentes. Largus, amans, hilaris videns, rubrique coloris ;
the bilious,
Hirsuta, fallax, irascens, prodigus, audax, Astutus, gracilis, siccus, croceique coloris;
the phlegmatic.
Est huic sensus habes pinguis facie color albus ;
the melancholic,
Non expers fraudis, timidus, luteique coloris.
The Regimen Salerni does not mention the Aster ; in fact the plants in it are few and all are common, and under their usual
* But as to their exact number Arnald remarks ' • Hand parva dissensio inter scriptores," saying "here 219 are claimed, but Joannes Tagaultius, excellent physi- cian of our age, claims 246 in this distich :
Adde quater denis bis centum senaque, habebis Quam sit multiplici conditus esse semel. And some make 304. Rhazes proves them to be 248 by authority of Galen ; with which agrees the vulgatissitnus versiculus
Ossa ducentena atque quater sunt et duodena." Reference to anatomy to decide, rather than to Galen, which we should have ex- pected in case of the bones comes at last when Arnald would consider the 365 veins, saying of them
Cuius rei certitude ex anatomia petenda est.
Aster-uses in The Regimen
241
names, except Morella, line 350, the Maurella of Macer, our Solaiium nignmi. Many plants, however, occur in its spurious aggiimta as edited by Renzi ; verses 41 1-499 treat of edible herbs, and 600-782 *' de Simplicibus virtutibus," consisting of 90 para- graphs treating 90 plants, with some much-disguised or metrically- shortened plant names, as Melangia for Melanthium, and Nastur for Nasturtium.
But in the genuine Regimen Salerni, while Aster is not itself to be expected, there are a few items which relate to its history. Re- liance on Aster and other wild plants to cure bites of serpents and mad-dogs had now given place to confidence in the onion ; the Regimen recommending against poisonous bites :
AUia, ruta, pyra, et raphanus, cum Theriaca nux,^
of which Arnald remarks : " Onions are potent against the stroke of the viper," and again, '.'Against the mad-dog's bite they avail much ; by rubbing on and in food."
Purple violet, to which the property of healing epilepsy had been transferred from Aster among the Greeks, still retained the power among the physicians sanctioning the Regimen, though they were careful to say that they knew of that efficacy only by hearsay :
" Purpuream Violam dicunt curare caducos."f
More of the anciently reputed Aster virtues are here ascribed to elecampane ; including digestive use, and for hernia, and in time of Arnald, two centuries later, for serpent's bites and sciatica. The Regimen treats elecampane in these three lines :
Enuld campana reddit praecordia sana,J Cum succo rutae succus si sumitur ejus, Affirmant ruptis quod profit potio talis.
Rue itself had borrowed one of the Aster's prerogatives, to clear the eyesight :
Nobilitas ruta haec, quod lumina reddat acuta.
* " Onions, rue, pear, radish, and with a Theriaca (antidote), walnuts." •j- See Sylvius' edn., p. 294-5, \ Or, as Holland has it,
"It cheers the heart, expelling griefs away."
242
Aster History; Arnald
XLIII. Arnald de Villanova. Arnald de Villanova,* the celebrated alchemist and physician of 1 240-1 3 1 3, known as the commentator, about 13 10, on the Regimen Salei^iii, becomes of chief interest to the student of Asters from his attitude in that commentary toward the Aster properties ascribed to Viola. He seems to have been the first to separate the purple violet of Dioscorides into its two components, suggest- ing that Dioscorides' repeated violet properties belong to a different Viola purpurea from that with which his chapter begins, and that they belong to a Viola purpurea which has a double, i. e., radiate flower. In this commentary,f his ExegesisX page 293, chapter 64,
* Arnald de Villanova, translator of Avicenna, who also appears as Villanovanus, Arnauld de Villeneuve, Arnaldo de Villa Nova Barchinoe, Arnoldus de Novia Villa, etc. and as *' Arnald Bacliuone, the learned philosopher and physician," Poggendorff, ''the celebrated alchemist " as others style him, lived 1240-1313 or some say 1248- 1314, born at Villanova, Catalonia, fide Meyer, 01; at Villeneuve near Montpellier ac- cording to others lived as a physician in Barcelona, Paris, Montpellier, Rome Bologna Florence, Naples, and Palermo. Having fled from France and Italy he was received and held in great esteem in Germany by Frederick to whom he dedicated his commen- tary on the Regimen Salerni, " that he might secure some good will and credit for him- self with that king," says Sylvius. This Frederick, known as Frederick the Hand- some, had become Duke of Austria in 1308, and was elected Emperor of Germany as Frederick HI. in 1314. Arnald's death at Schiffbruck is placed in 13 14 by Poggen- dorff, by Meyer and most authors in 13 13. Arnald is claimed to have been the discov- erer of muriatic acid and of free alcohol.
f In Zacharias Sylvius' edition of the " Schola Salernitana," as printed by Leers, Rotterdam, 1667 [ex libr. Bu. ).
\ Arnald's Exegesis or De conservanda sanitate, was printed in 1493 Paris by Bocard, was soon translated into French and appeared in a Spanish translation at Burgos as early as 1552. Perhaps its edifio princeps was Hain's number 1817, without date, place or printer's name, entitled " Regimen sanitatis ad inclitum regem Ara- gonum a Magistro Arnaldo de Villanova."
Among Arnald's numer< us works on alchemy, 20 or more, are his Rosarius Phil- osophorum, Lumen novum, Flos florum, Speculum alchymiae, De lapide Philosophorum, etc. Among his other works are his De arte cognoscendi vcnena (Milan, 1475). Practica medicinae (Milan, 1483; Venice, De Fhlebotomia (Leyden, 1 5 17),
his Tractates de Finis, his De Aquae Vitae, his Speculum medicinae, all printed before 1500; and his De salubri Jiortensium usu, Paris, 1607. His complete works. Opera, etc., were published at Leyden, .1509, 1520, 1532; Lyons with life, and with notes by Tolerus, 1520, Strasburg, 1541, Basle, 1585. For comment upon him see Mangeti, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, and Hoefer, Hist, de la Chimie, Paris, 1842; also "Ar- naldo de Vilanova y sus yerros teleologicos," by Chabas, 1899
The Encyclopedia Britannica, giving his dates as 1235-1313, remirked that " if the Breviariuin Prarticae be rightly ascribed to him, his medical writings rise above the rank of compilations "
Arnald's "Other Violet"
243
De Viola purpurea, his text consists of the two lines on the violet in the Regimen Salemi,
Crapula discutitur, capitis dolor, atque gravedo, * Purpuream Violam dicunt curare caducos ; f i. <r., Intoxication itjdissipates, and a head full of pain and heaviness, And they say that the purple violet can cure the epileptic —
in which the first line is to be accepted as relating to Viola odorata, but the second is the imported character from Aster Atticus.
Of this second line Arnald says that this property appears to correctly understood % as belonging to that other kind of violet which possesses, in the middle of the violet, something resembling a col- lection of hair-like threads"; i. e.,
" Videtur itaque accipiendum esse de altero flore, qui in medio Violae instar capillamentorum inest."
Arnald's phrase may apply to a violet-rayed flower-head with slender or thread-like disk flowers forming its center ; like Aster Amellus. He immediately proceeds to speak of other double flowers, quoting the words of Theophrastus, bk. I., c. 21, of "the double flowers which have another flower in the midst, as the rose, the lily and Viola 7dgra,''% or, in original Greek,
dtai^dkc;^ . . . ojcTTief) to fjodou, xo.i to xptvou, xai toi> to jiiXav.
Arnald seems to pass at once from reference to double flowers in the sense of radiate Compositae of two colors, like Aster Amellus,
Arnald appears (by name of Arnoldus de Nova Villa) in a woodcut showing him discussing plants with Avicenna, on the first page of the Vincentian edition (1491) of the Herbolariuni or Aggregator practicus, causing many to credit him with authorship of that Aggregator. Gesner in 1552 pointed out the error. Yet the error has been so persistent that it still appears in catalog so late as 1902. See infr^, under the Aggre- gator.
* Taken from Macer Floridus, line 1350,
Crapula discutitur bibitis, capitisque gravedo. f This is line 1353 of Macer Floridus, without change.
\ So Holland, also, the English translator, was surprised at finding this property ascribed to the violet ; he rendered the line, p. 137,
The smell of Violets doth soone allay, And cures the Falling sicknesse, as some say ; commenting, ** Violets helpe them that have the Falling sicknesse. Though some say thus, yet this effect is not commonly ascribed unto Violets. And, therefore, if Violets have this property it is but by reason of their sweet smell that comforteth the braine," etc, Cogan, p. 67, transferred the property to the pansy.
\ Arnald's quotation of Theodoras Gaza's translation of Theophrastus' lov ftklav.
244
Aster History; Arnald
to that of double flowers in our ordinary sense, the two applica- tions blending in his mind. Still other applications of the term double flowers were common ; Scaliger for example (1484-1558) remarks on proliferous roses and proliferous carnations as another kind of doubling ; " they are called duplex at Padua," he remarks of the latter, commenting on Theophrastus, i, 21.
The tendency to term radiate Compositae double when the flower- heads show such different colors as purple and yellow, finds an- other example in 1570, in Pena and Lobel, who. Adversaria^ 123, say oi Aster Tripolium L.,
" duplicis est floris, nempe lutei et purpurei." *
That Arnald is not to be understood as saying his second kind of Viola purpurea is a double flower in the same sense as the rose appears from his description of its center as "instar capilla- mentorum," or composed of something resembling filaments ; which would be applicable to Aster Amellus, but suggests some- thing much narrower than the inner petals of our present double violet. It might be urged that the present breadth of the super- numerary petals in our double violet has developed entirely since Arnald's time, say 1 280, A. D., and that the double violet of his ac- quaintance had its center filled with staminodes reverting but slightly as yet toward petals. But this seems unlikely, since Theophrastus^ reference, c. 320 B. C, speaks of the double violet in the same way as of the double rose, and implies therefore that the violet was in Theophrastus' time fairly double, the double rose which is
* Said by Pena and Lobel when explaining the current reputation of Aster Tri- polium as "changing color thrice a day" {Dioscorides)^ which reputation they ex- plained as arising from the earlier development of the yellow center and the rapid opening thereafter of the whitish rays which soon turn purple; or, as they say, "in other respects Tripolium agrees exquisitely, though not indeed experiencing change of color quite three times a day ; but because the flower is double, namely, yellow in part, and in another part of a purple color inclining to reddish-purple or even to blue, the yellow leaflets radiately situated (disk flowers in a circle) are accustomed to open in flower first, yet when we have carefully observed them (while the purple or whitish ones are beheld, partly bent over inward, some of the leaflets meanwhile still remaining in place) , there are numerous whitish stamens [unopened florets] and surviving purple ones, which caused the common opinion of a change pi color three times a day, which kind of change we have also already observed may happen in a different manner [succession} in some plants of our own. ' '
Mediaeval Violets
245
linked with it having been already called a flower of 60 petals by Herodotus,* and of 100 by Theophrastus.f
That Arnald should have seen Aster Amellus himself or should have known of it from others, is not improbable, considering his numerous changes of abode, conversant as he was not only with Italy and France but with Alpine Germany.
That he should speak of it loosely as a purple violet is not surprising, when we consider the strength of the mediaeval tend- ency X to call anything a violet if it was sufficiently showy — modesty in the violet not yet impressing the mediaeval observer as its chief characteristic.
A7Jio7tg other comments by Arnald upon the plants of the Regimen Salerni, the following relate to plants allied to Aster or confused with it.
Conyza, fleabane ; species of PuHcaria, etc., p. 288, Arnald quotes Pamphilius as mentioning this, among his numerous flea- remedies and saying " aut conizae coctae decoctum irroratum."
Chelidonium, p. 305. Beside its usual potency, used by swal- lows to open the eyes of their young, adding, " hence it is known
* Herodotus (born B. C. 484), book 8, avro^aTa (spontaneous) p'66a' ev iKaorov i^T/KovTa (pvTiTia, " in Macedonia, more fragrant than many other roses."
f Theophrastus, 6, 6, the J^osa centifolia of Theodorus Gaza ; " also in Macedonia \ but small and of little odor."
X Witness the following examples among applications of the name Viola in the half century following Fuchs in 1542 :
Viola agrestis, Eock, = Saponaria officinalis L.
Viola alba, Bock, Wm. Turner, Fuchs, Dalechamp, = Leucoium.
Viola anonymos inodora, Gesner, = Specularia.
Viola Candida, Bock, = Cheiranthus incamis L.
Viola domestica, Anguillara, = Cheiranthus incanus L.
Viola flammea, V. barbata, etc., — Dianthus sp.
Viola latifolia, Dodoens, Clusius, Dalechamp, = Lunaria rediviva L.
Viola Lunaria, Tabernaemontanus, Gerarde, Lunaria rediviva L.
Viola lutea, Bock, Gesner, =: Canielina.
Viola lutea, Fuchs, Dodoens, Caesalpino, Gerarde, = Cheiranthus erysimoides L. Viola Mariana, Gesner, Lobel, Dodoens, = Campanula.
Viola matronalis, Fuchs, Wm. Turner, Caesalpino, =Cheiranthus incanus L. Viola matronalis, Gesner, Dodoens, = Hesperis matronalis L. Viola Peruviana, Tabernaemontanus = the Marvel of Peru, the Admirabilis Peru- viana of Clusius.
Viola purpurea, Bock, Lobel, purplish form of Cheiranthus incanus L. Viola purpurea, Dalechamp, = Hesperis matronalis L.
246
Aster History ; Arnald
that the juice is good for the eyes of men," Arnald continues to quote the imported Aster-property, saying : " With anise and white wine in drink it is a remedy for the king's evil and for ulcers which creep."
Inula Helenium, p. 302. To the two properties ascribed by the Regimen, Arnald adds (what the ancients had believed of Aster) its root is good for the stomach, and for serpents' bites, and for all ruptures and epileptic convulsions ; and its leaves boiled in wine are good for sciatica."
Primula veris, p. 285. " Primula veris . . . paralysi . . . atque articulorum vitiis . . . auxiliatur ; atque inde Arthritica etiam a non- nullis et Herba paralysis appellatur."
XLIV. Plateario and Family
The Plateario family of Salerno, as source of the Circa intans^ mark the center of the middle ages for botany and medicine. At least nine or ten members seem to have been writers.
Meyer, 3: 460, states that "to the Platearius family belong at least three generations one after another, man and wife, father, mother and son, all Salernitan physicians, Meistern iind Meisterin- nen."
Renzi, Collectio Salernitana i : 180, arranges the Plateario family as follows: Giovanni I, about 1050; Giovanni II and Matteo I [writing from] 1 070-1 090 ; Matteo II, 11 30-1 160.
But Giacosa (65) complains that Renzi contradicts himself in his Storia documaitata, 208, assigning the Practica brevis to Giovanni II and to 1 090-1 1 20, but on page p. 237 to 11 20-1 1 50.
I endeavor below to bring together the facts accessible and state my inferences.
First Generation I. Giovanni Plateario I di San Paolo,* medico a Salerno nel secolo XI," fthe Platearius of citation respecting medical practice, author of the Practica ; died perhaps 1040 A. D.; called "Giovanni about 1050," by Renzi;! called "Platearius" and mentioned first, before Copho, in a Breslau list of Salernitan writers deemed
^So called by Haller, Bibl. Botanica, i: 221. 1771. f Camus, 8.
j: Renzi, Collectio Salernitana, I : l8o.
Giovanni Plateario
247
of chronological arrangement by Meyer (3 : 480) ; mentioned as Joannes Platearius, first of a family of physicians, whose Practica or medical compendium was several times printed," P^nc. Brit, art. Medicine. Haller, Meyer and Camus allude to the Practica vaguely; "la Practica di Giovanni," Camus, 6, n. Sometimes it is confused with the Scrapioiiis de practica which was printed in 1488 and was bound with the Circa instans, the Circa instans itself appearing in the reprint of 1497 as J. Platerii practica brevis ; but seemingly the J. Platerii there referred to is Giovanni Plateario III. The Practica of Giovanni is perhaps the Salernitan Medical Practice cited, when writing c. 1256, by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, who enumerated, fol. 251, among his authorities, not only Platea- rius medicus (meaning the Circa instans of Matteo Plateario II), but also a Salernitanns Practicns'' (by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495 printed Salvicaniis Practiciis).
Two Platearian works are catalogued by the British Museum as " Joannes Platearius," and may have been written by Giovanni I ; the Expositio Platearii, of which the British Museum has two folio copies of 1495 and 1497, bound with the " Antidotarium Nicolai," and the Canons " of Mesue ; and 2d, the " Regulae urinarinmy in Renzi's Collectio Salernitana, 1852.*
2. Sapiens Matrona, the GeleJirten Salerfutanerin,'\ or Sapient Matron of 1045 5 claimed by Renzi to have been wife of Giovanni I ; and to have been identical j with Trotula (whom Meyer con- sidered distinct and a generation later) ; was doubtless one of the nameless mulieres Salernitanae § called by Camus le medichesse Salernitane.\\ She is called qna7idaui sapientem niaironani by Orderic, and is the one most skilfid matron of his translator Fores- ter. When, perhaps 1 043-1045, the Norman warrior-councillor and medical adept, Rodolf Mai Corona, was pursuing medical studies at Salerno, she, the widow then perhaps of Giovanni I, was his only rival in knowledge.
* See Camus, L' Opera Salernitana, 8 n. (Modena, 1 886). t Meyer, 3 : 454.
\ She might instead have been the Meistcrin named Genesia Cleopatra : see p.
220.
^ So cited, as famihar but nameless medical authorities and practitioners by Saler- nus often, and also by the Domian reviser of Matteo Plateario, both about 1160. II Camus, 16.
248
Aster History ; Plateario
Orderic the Norman historian, writing about 1 140 A.D., with particular reference to the monks of St. Evroult, Normandy, nar- rates* of this one, Rodolfus Mala Corona f or Ralph Mal-Corona, Rodolf Apple-crown or Evil-crown, that he was studious from his childhood, and was versed in medicine, and in many deep secrets of nature, so that old men even now speak of him with wonder to their children and grandchildren. He learned the secrets of science with signal success, in the schools of France and Italy, being deeply skilled in astronomy as well as in grammar and dialectics, and also in music. He J was so complete a master of the art of medicine, that at Salerno, where the most ancient school of medicine has long flourished, he was unrivalled except by one skilful matron." Such were the attainments of the man whom the Salernitan matron excelled. §
*Ordericus Vitalis, Forester's tr., i : 394 and 423. 1853.
f Rodolf was one of the 7 sons of the Norman Giroie (grandson of the Breton noble Abbo) and Gisela ; and himself uncle of the second abbot of St. Evroult, Robert de Grentesmesnil, who about 1063 had removed to Aquina (Aquinium, birthplace of Juvenal and of Thomas Aquinas) in Campania, and was later abbot of St. Euphemia, between the two Calabrias. Rodolf s nieces, the nuns Judith and Anna, followed Robert also into Italy ; the former, called Eremberga in secular life, became wife of Count Roger the Great of Sicily, 106 1, son of Tancred de Hauteville and brother of Robert Guiscard. Eremberga, the brave heroine of the siege of Troina in 1061, lived as countess of Sicily till her death in 1089.
i " Physicae quoque scientiam tarn copiose habuit, ut in urbe Psaleritana, ubi maximae medicorum scholae ab antiquo tempore habentur, neminem in medi- cinali arte praeter quandam sapientem matronam sibi parem invenerit," Ordericus Vitalis.
^The time of Rodolf s coming to Salerno seems probably to have followed the inordinate devotion " to arms and such frivolities " by which Orderic characterizes a part of Rodolf s younger years; and probably his Salernitan period preceded that "long residence at his native place Montreuil " when he made the experiments and cures mentioned by Orderic ; which again must have preceded his entrance upon monastic life in 1055 closed by his death January 19, 1062. Rodolf s principal dates then be- come : Born perhaps loio, 4th son of Giroie ; he and one older son were not of age at his father's death, 1020-1030 ; was studious at home, and in Paris? or Rheims ; probably fought in theCampagna and Apulia, during the struggles intervening between Richard I's founding Aversa in 1030 and William Bras de Fer's becoming Count of Apulia in 1043 ; reverted to studious life, at Salerno, perhaps as long a time as 1043-5, renowned there for skill as physician ; we may suppose in the lull after the work of the Seven Masters and Gariopontus and Giovanni Plateario I, and before Copho the Younger and Con- stantinus ; by 1050 he may have returned to Montreuil ; was at Rheims 1054, became a monk 1055 at Marmontier, at St. Evroult, I'^So, was seized with leprosy, returned 1061 to Marmontier, dying January 19, ic62.
Extant Writings of Trotula
249
Second Generation
3. Matteo I, said to have written a Glossa ; flor. 1070-1090, Renzi.
4. Giovanni II, also a medical writer; flor. 1070-1090, Renzi ; if born c. 1040 may have written c. 1090 and died c. 11 20; author, according to Renzi, of the Practica breids.
5. Trotula, author of work on diseases of women, of which an extant abstract * was printed by Renzi in the first volume of the Colleciio Salenntana, Naples, 1852, In this she cites Copho (the elder?), c. 17, and twice in c. 57 cites "the Salernitan women physicians." f She is commonly called the wife, and by Renzi the mother, of a Joannes Platearius. She may have been wife of Giovanni II, and mother or aunt of Matteo II ; but not mother of Giovanni II, as Renzi thought, if Meyer is right in at- tributing chronological order % to the Breslau list of Salernitan writers reading " Platearius (/. e., Giovanni I), Copho (the younger) Petronius, Joannes Afflacius (scholar under Constantinus ; about 1 170-80?), Bartholomaeus, Ferrarius and Trotula." — The Encyc. Brit, says of her : " The most noted female professor was the cele- brated Trotula in the i ith century, believed to be wife of Joannes
* Five editions of the abstract of Trotula are in the British Museum, yfd/e' its catalog of 1897, viz.:
"Trotulae de mulierum passionibus, ante, in et post partum . . . liber," a folio of I544> bound with the treatise " Experimentarius Medicinae."
"Trotulae curandura aegritudinum muliebrium, ante, in et post partum," being another edition of the preceding and bearing the more usual title ; also printed 1544 and bound with the Experimentarius."
" Trotulae curandum," etc., bound with Victorius' Empirica ; 1554.
" Trotulae sive potius Erotis, muliebrium liber;" an edition of the preceding, forming part of the Gynaecium, in the volume (i), edited by Caspar Wolff, of Zurich ; Basle, 1586 (first published 1566, as '* Gynaecium, hoc est de mulierum . . . morbis," ** with commentaries of Greek, Latin, Barbarous and recent writers, four tomes," which finally all appeared at Basle, 1586-8; tome ii, edited by Caspar Bauhin ; iii, Hippo- crates, by M. Cordaeus ; iv, by L. Mercato).
"Trotulae curandarum," etc., " libellus e recensione Aldo emendationibus atque animadversionibus illustratus." With Kornmann's " Questiones de virginum statu de jure," Leipsic, 1778.
1 " Die salernitanischen Weiber, das heisst Aerztinnen " as Meyer, 3 : 480, trans- lates her words from Collectio Salernitana, I : 149.
J But chronological order may very probably have been intended by the scribe only for the men ; had he mentioned two or more women he would probably have begun a new chronological list with them.
250
Aster History ; Plateario
Platearius. Many of the teachers were married and their wives and daughters appear among the professors." — Renzi beHeved her to be identical with the rival of Rodolf, No. 2.
Third Generation
6. Matteo Plateario II, the Matthaeus Platearius or Plataire of botanical citation, lecturer and writer on materia medica, author of the works known as Glossae and of the Circa installs, focus and center of mediaeval botany ; the latter so called from its first words, and also known as Liber de simplici inedicina, or De virUitibus Jier- barum or De virtutibus shnplicium. He may also have been him- self the one who expanded his Circa instans into the Conipeiidiiim Salernitamnn (or Breslau codex or Liber sinipliciuin inedicinarui)i), if that differ from the Compcndimn written bySalernus (see p. 224).
He flourished 11 30-1 160, Renzi, who nevertheless regarded him as son of one of the generation which flourished 1070-1090; which seems unduly remote. Meyer (3 : 507) was probably right in claiming that his activity extended " not far into the middle of the century." If born c. 1070, writing his Circa instans c. 11 30, and then his Glossae, and if he was lecturing on in venerable and still inspiring and powerful age at about 1 140 or possibly even to II 50, the few discovered facts of his life may be understood ; in- cluding Matteo's known juniority to Nicolaus Praepositus (writing c. 1 1 10) and to Constantinus Africanus (who died c. iioo, and whom Matteo calls "of recent memory"); and the fact that Aegidius of Corbeil, who lived till 1 200, says he had instruc- tion at Salerno from Matteo (perhaps about 1 140), which put its stamp upon him for his whole life, and to the impressiveness of which he doubtless referred in his line :
Mysticus erumpit verborum vortice sensus.
This Matteo II was doubtless the Platearius * who was cured of dysuria by use of the plant Strucium [LnperatojHa ? ; see p. 264).
* " Hoc rimedio Platearius fuit liberatus," says the printed Ferrarese Circa instans under Strucium as a remedy for dysuria, and which Macer, line 917, recommended for calculi (see supra, 206, 213). The Domian Platearius says of this cure, tit ariiculus [i. e., avunculus) indiicet, or, ■' as my mother's brother remarks." The Secres, the French translation from the last, written in 1458, ljut only recently made known to the world, says, " en ceste maniere fut gary le maistre qui fist eel iure."
Personality of Plateario
251
Another personal reference appears in the MS. Secres de Salerne of 1458 (sQQ infra, p. 270), undQY Appiuni (perhaps Ranunculus scelfratus L.). " And they state in some books that it is deadly to man. And I, Plateario (Plentaire in the Fr. MS.), have myself found through experience that to those who have taken it, it works great harm. And on that account I prefer that it be used externally in guise of a plaster only." (Camus, 22.)
Evidence of Plateario's sound sense and restraint is shown in his refusal to share in popular delusions current about the man- drake ; remarking its *' natura frigerandi et moytificandi'' he says it is a remedy for bilious disorder ; its juice applied with mother's milk is cooling and produces sleep ; its cold puts out the sacred fire of erysipelas (herba frigida, extinguit ignem sacrum) ; it may promote conception, though the similitude of man or woman claimed to be found in its root is not to be found in nature, but instead has been fraudulently fashioned by rustics or evildoers — a rusticis vel nialefidis sophistice sic formatur.'' And so Bartholo- maeus Anglicus cites him, fol. 51, de Mandragora!'
For other indications of Plateario's personality, see supra, pp. 221, 222, and infra, p. 261.
Plate arid s Glossae, — Glossae super antidotariuni, is a commen- tary, to be dated perhaps 1140, on the Antidotarium of Nicolao Preposito of about 11 10. The Glossae formed the basis of the four books of medical verse by Aegidius of Corbeil, about 1180, called De Laudibus et virtutibus coinpositorum viedicaniinuni.''' Their relation to Plateario's Glossae is thus stated by Aegidius himself : Substranientum et materiam nostrae expositionis sumen- tes Glossae super Antidotarium a magistro Matthaeo Plateario editas." Aegidius laments the death of Plateario in his lines 110-113 :
Vellem, quod medicae doctor Platearius artis Munere divino vitales carperet auras ! Gauderet metricis pedibus sua scripta ligari, Et nurneris parere meis."^
Aegidius, in his opening lines, chanted the effect upon him as a young listener when Plateario's disclosures of the mysteries of
* Quoted, Meyer, 3 : 507 and 467, from Ae^idii Corbolicnsis carmina meJica, edid. Choulant, 57.
252
Aster History ; Plateario
medicine came to him as a voice from a new world,
Quae secreta diu noctis latuere sub umbra.
Clausa, verecundi signo celata pudoris,
Gesta sub involucro mentis, clarescere quaerunt.
Plateario' s greater work, his Circa instajis, receives separate treatment, p. 258.
7. The inedica Salernitana whom we may call the lady Licinia, from her use of the remedy liciniuin ; sister of Matteo II and mother of Giovanni III ; our knowledge of whom comes from the chapter of the Circa instans headed Ambra,^ Italian and late Latin for amber. Under this remedy, administered contra suffocationeni matricis, it is further stated only by use of the fumesfrom such a licinium (usually used of linf)^ soaked in oil, put on fire and then extinguished, and applied to the nostrils, the mother of Joannes Platearius purged and cured a certain noble lady." Those who doubt the existence of 8, Giovanni III, must also doubt that of 7, and assign the references to her f to the mother of Giovanni II.
Fourth Generation
8. Giovanni Plateario I II, J writing perhaps 1160 A. D., son of the lady Licinia (whom he calls mater') ; nephew of the great Matteo II (whom he calls avunculus); the reviser of the Circa instans, whose name appeared as its author in the first printed edi- tion, Ferrara, 1488, in the form Johannes Platearius, with the epi- thet excelle7itisshnus vir.
Subsequent Platearii
9. Sociiis Platearii. — Some Salernitan sufficiently intimate with the Platearius family to know who was the giver of the licinium
■^Another early use of the word is by Odo Creraonensis, line 18, " Laudes ambra merens levis est et dentibus haerens."
f The revision of the Circa histans by her son, c. ii6o, the oldest reference (assuming it to be correctly preserved in the Tractatus herbaru??i of c. 1330), reads under Ambra, *' Solummodo licinio tali oleo intincto accensum et extinctum et naribus appositum m. [mater, i. e., mihi mater] purgavit et liberavit quendam nobilem." The French version of 1458 reads " le maistre dit que par la fumee de ce linegnon devant dit il garist une noble dame du cas." The Ferrarese editions, 1488, etc., read "Sol- ummodo licinio tali madefacto in oleo et extincto et naribus apposito mater Joannis Platearii liberavit quendam nobilem."
J Such a "Giovanni posteriore, vissuto circa, gli anni, I130-1160," was claimed as probable by Camus, 8, though remarking " others doubt the existence of this Platearius."
Plateario's "Circa Instans "
25B
remedy seems to have inserted Joannis PlatcarW after mater in alluding to that incident, and seems to have been the author of the Ferrarese redaction of the Circa instans, of perhaps about 1 1 90 A. D., in which he may have ascribed the work to "Joannes Platearius," because he was its last redactor in the family, which would explain that authorship claimed in its cditio princeps, Ferrara, 1488, and onward.
10. Matthaeiis Plate aiins junior, Pisanns,^ or Crisostomo Pla- teario,t a Pisan writer of the 15th century, but of whose existence modern history is uncertain ; perhaps meant for no. 6.
" Circa Instans "
The dictionary of medical plants by Matteo Plateario which is known J from its first words as the Circa instans,^ marked an im- portant point on the highway from the ancient to the modern botany. It is the center into which the botanical knowledge of the earlier middle ages was focused, and from which much of the botanical work of the next 300 years was an outgrowth. Meyer says of it " One must see the book itself ; it is the richest and most botanically valuable of the works on plant-remedies which the west had yet produced since Pliny and Dioscorides." ||
Its exact form as it left the hands of its author, Matteo Plateario II, cannot be stated with entire verbal accuracy, as in that form it has never been printed and it is probable that no unaltered manuscript exists. But assuming with Professor Camus that the Modena MS. 993 in the Bibl. Estense known as Tractatus Herbarnm represents Plateario's original text supple- mented by certain additions, we arrive at the original by deduct- ing plant-figures, verbal changes and citations introduced by Bartolomeo Mino, c. 1330, and additions and citations made by the Domian reviser, c. 1180, also a few others by Giovanni Plateario III, c. 1 150.
*Sprengel, Geschichte, l : 276,
t Camus, 8; quoting Haller, Bibl. Bot. 2: 658, as saying: "Liber Plateari Chrysostomi, opus pro quo fuit intoxicatus ab invidis. Is liber tractat de variis simpli- cibus presertim de herbis. In B. Coll, Caj. Gonvil. Cantab, n. gg6.^^
J Also called Liber de simplici medicina,^^ and cited in Salernitan codices as " De virtutibus herbarum " and as De virtutibus simplicium.''^
^ "With the force of '* in the beginning."
II Meyer, 3 ; 513.
254
Aster H istory ; Plateario
Following out the above process, we find in Circa installs 480 alphabetic chapters, treating 435 plant remedies*; the other chapters are on mineral and animal remedies. Its plan is to give the Latin name and some synonyms, v/ith brief descriptive re- marks for the less familiar plants, and with the medical uses of all.
The partial editions of Circa instans printed, 1488 to 1582, from the Ferrarese recension, are, unfortunately, very rare and very little known. But its botanical names are now accessible, as published, t 1886, at Modena by Professor Giulio Camus, under the title L Opera Salernitana^'X etc., forming the result of his recent discovery in the Este library at Modena, of two important MSS., representing early texts of Circa instans^ one, § its amplifi- cation, the Tractatiis Hcrbariim^ || the other its French transla- tion, the Secres de Salernc.
Sprengel,** as long ago as 1807, noted that Circa in- stans furnishes **the first mention of three of our common plants, Galeopsis Tetrahit,\\ Clematis Flaniviiila, and Spiraea filipen- dulay
* Camus identifies among these, 30 Compositae, 32 Endogens besides 14 Grasses, 30 Umbellifers, 27 of the Leguminosae, 20 Rosaceae, 20 Labiates, etc. There are 13 cryptogams, including 7 ferns and 2 fungi.
f Presented by Camus in 508 numbers or chapters of which 40 are minerals, 13 animals, as Spongia, II products of animals or of plants elsewhere counted ; leaving 444 plant descriptions, of which 8 are in the Latin index only and not in the French trans- lation at all ; and 8 others are in the French Sieves only ; leaving 436 p'ants separately treated in the Latin text ; one of which, however, Ralnosa, is an exact duplicate of another, his Herba rabiosa. Were I to make allowance for the numerous cases where two or more species, as the garden species and the wild, are described under the same heading, it would raise the total number of plants in Circa instans above 500.
+ "L'Opera Salernitana Cir a inslans,'' ed il testo primitivo del '■Grant Herbier en fraticoys^ . . . Per Guilio Camus, Modena, 1886." 4to, 155 p. {ex libr. Bu. )
\ Also reviewed by Choulant, Handbilch der Bilcherkunde der dlter^i Medecin, 298. 1841. The names in the similar Compendium Salernitaniim were reviewed by Henschel, in Janus, 2 : 66. 1846.
II This Latin MS. of 142 sheets begins, as doubtless did the original Circa instans, without title and with the words '* Circa instans negocium in simplicibus medicinis nostrum versatur propositum. Simplex autem medicina est que talis et qualis est natura producta."
**Sprengel, Hist. I : 276.
ff * Tetrahit, or herba judeyca ;" " F/ammula, idem vincula" and Filipendnla seu fissalidos," are the names Plateario gives them.
Rediscovery of "Circa Instans "
255
Camus, in 1886, claimed that "by reason of mention in Circa vistans^'^ the Italians can prove that their now abundant Agave Americana, ^ Oxalis corriiciilata and Xanthimn strumarium, are not, as has been believed, immigrants from the New World."
Singularly, Plateario fell into obscurity and finally into un- merited contempt. He shared the fate of the Salernitan school when fuller translations from the Arabic appeared ; although his work remained a rich quarry from which the next three centuries builded.
Finally the unlocking of the treasures of the Greeks in their original tongue gave to Europe a direct path to antiquity, and Pla- teario's half-way house of mediaeval knowledge was left far aside. So thoroughly was Plateario forgotten that no attempt to print his Circa instans occurred, it is believed, from 1582 to 1886. Pritzel omits him entirely ; and Seguier, usually so accurate, guessed, p. 292, at his date as "circa initium XIV seculi," 200 years too late.
Brief references by Haller and Sprengel, publication of extracts by Henschel and Renzi, and of comments by Meyer, have recalled Plateario to modern consciousness, though Renzi was so far from appreciating his value as to call the Circa instans " nothing but a mido catalogo.'' Henschel's enthusiasm over his discovery of the Breslau MS. in 1837 and especially Meyer's judicial observations on its position (in 1856), did something to rehabilitate Circa in- stans, the latter pointing out its importance " to any who would follow the knowledge of plants from earlier to later times." Camus' study of its names and publication of the descriptive text in 1886, as already indicated, has now given the world its first opportunity to appeciate Plateario.
* Camus also calls particular attention to the remarkable number of binomials used in Circa instans, enumerating 54 different adjectives so used, as silvestris, agrestis, aquaticus, etc. I may add that Dioscorides had far excelled this however ; of olive alone he distinguishes in binomial form over a dozen different kinds, and Columella distinguishes as many of his Brassica or cabbage. — Camus also calls attention to 28 binomials in the 13th century Sinoniviia E tense.
t Of the Agave of southern Italy it was claimed by Bertoloni, Fioia Italica, 4 : 156, that it is native there and a distinct species from the American. Meyer, 3 : 512, remarks that Bertoloni' s claim is contirmed by the figure and description in Circa instans and merits the attention of botanists, and notes that the Konigsberg MS. of Secres gives a good figure of it.
256
Aster History ; Plateario
Proceeding as it does from the south of Italy, there was Httle hkelihood that Aster would be itself described or recognized in Circa instans. But various relatives appear which were formerly lodged in Aster, and now abide in Inula, Pulicaria, Anthemis, etc. We pause a moment to take inventory of the status in which this center station of the middle ages shows these and some related plants ; — in this Circa instans, in which appears the mediaeval spirit with its name Solannni inortalc for Belladonna, which still retains its Polliiun from the ancient theogony of Hesiod, and yet in which the modern world meets us full-grown in such names as Primula veris, Sumac and Alkekengi.'^
Aster Earths. — Still survives in Circa instans the use of the term Aster for an earth, the Aster Icucas, Aster Saniins and later the Terra Aster of Greece, Terra stelle of Plateario, who writes :
Terra stelle, quod Lucanium {i. e., the ancient aster leticas, assimilated to the Italian province Lucania) dicitur, terra est quasi- lapis ; " in Sec. terj-e estoille."
The old habit of stamping such earths with a seal still remained, as well as that of palming off substitutes and adulterations :
''Terra sigillata ; calx est odorifera et dicitur terra argentea vel creta sarracenica ; facile ex nostra creta sophisticatur ; " in Sec, " terre scelle,'' etc.
Aster Tripoliuin. Turbith, used as the Arabic for Aster Tri- poliinn L., was more commonly used as Arabic for another plant, an imported root, so appearing first in Costantino (p. 235), here again as ''TnrbitJi, an herb which is found in parts beyond sea." f
Relatives of Aster sometimes Confused zvitJi it 174. Enula . . . duplex est manieres, seu ortulano (Inula Conyza DC.) et campana (/. Helenium L.). The larger is more efficacious ; it heals the bowels." In Sec, " Enula which they call Eaune; the E. campana grows in plains cJiamps.''
47. Anthemis Cotula L. appears as Arthemisia letaphilos, or matricaria ; with remark, " flos ejus similitur camomille et habet
* Numbers used, and identifications, are those of Camus as published in his " V Opera Salernitana.^'' Sec. refers to the French version, Secres de Salerno.
I In Sec. as ** Turbith, c'est la racine d'ung arbre " ; in the Alphita (a little later?) as " Turbith radix et herbe similia trifolio, et est perforata." Camus identifies it as probably including Ipomoea Turpethum L.
Plants Allied to Aster
257
odorem sambuci (5. nigra), quando earn tunseris." In Sec, Arthemisia leptaphilos, armoise la moindre, matricaria."
144. Repeats the preceding in part, Costiila fetida,'' an herb much Hke " camomilla," but ''very fetid." There are two kinds, major [Antheniis cotula L.) and minor (^A. arvcnsis L.). In Sec. the second is called cajicsson, the first amouroiiqice (it is the Amariiscus of the Alphita, Amarisca of Macer; see p. 208).
97. Matricaria Chamomilla L. is given these names: "Matri- caria or Camomilla ; vocant Italii virolorosa, Romani beneolente, Galli ohlaodia, Tuscii abiana^ In Sec, " Cliamomille que aucuns appellent ehermiere. ' '
379. Pulicaria vulgaris, dyscnterica, etc., occur as Ptclicaria : triplex est manieres, major et minor et media."
239. In Sec a figure of a yellow composite, doubtless Puli- caria odora Reich, (called Tncensaria in Italy, by Caesalpino and others), accompanies a text for Incensaria in Sec and in Trac- tatiLS, both described as " similia borago," and named from odor of incense.
Anacycliis Pyrethrum DC, appears as 373, Piretlirum is a well known herb."
Senecio vulgaris L. does not occur in Circa instans ; in which '' Senacione-s " and " Crescion " (cress) and " Nasturcium " stand as synonyms for our Nasturtium officinale L., watercress.
Senecio vulgaris L. does appear, however, in the Grant Herbier developed from this, in the form "Senechon, by some called Selechion, by us Chardon."
Eupatorium suffers its usual inequalities of fortune. Eupatorium caiiJiabinuin L. appears as " Eupatorium," no. 22, also as " Canapa silvatica, by others called Agrion cannabin " ; in Sec as *' Chanvre," no. 99 ; it is still known in Italy as Eupatorio ; shar- ing the name Eupatorio with Salvia pratensis L., called " Eupa- torium or Salvia agrestis," in Circa instans no. 181 ; and sharing it also with " giallo Eupatorio " of modern Italy, which is, in Circa instans, Ambroxiana, similis eupatorium sed longiora et magis similatur mentastrum." — Of the former confusion of Arge- monia and Eupatorium, no trace now remains. The Sinonimia adds Marrubium subitaneum = eupatorium."
Artemisia vulgaris L. appears as " Arthemisia major, or mater
258
Aster History ; Plateario
herbarum, regia of Romans, caristellum of Onnani (Domiani ? ren- dered les antres in Sec^ and resembles Canapa."
Others confused ivith Aster. — Among plants at some time con- fused with Aster, though having no real relationship, the following appear in Circa mstaiis (none showing any such confusion there).
Asperula, under the names Aspernla, Herba vitis and Sqiii- nancia.
Rubia tinctoria as Rtibea herba.
Galium as Spargula or Rubea minor ; in Secres, as j^uel/e (it is now rieble in Fr.).
Lonicera Caprifolinni as Matrisilva herba or Periclemon ; in Sec, inatrisilve ox periclonienon.
Centaurea Calcitrapa as Secacul, Yjingi, Calcitrapa, Cardi- nelli ; in Sec. as cliardon, sec acid ox yringe.
Centumcapita occurs as name for Affodilum, Albtttiiini, or Astula regia, i. e., our AspJiodelns albns Willd.
Eryngium does not occur separately, its name having become confused with Calcitrapa.
Gariofilata occurs for Geinn urbamnn.
Bellis does not occur (nor Margarita, except for a pearl) except as it is figured for the Consolida minor of the text, the text appa- rently intending Brunella.
Primula veris occurs as Primile veris, Herba Sancti Petri, or Paralisis ; in Sec. as Primida veris, primerulle, priimile, I 'erbe a paralisie.
Argemone and Argemonia do not occur ; Papaver appears instead, in three species taken from Macer, adding the name Rosa fetida to our Papaver Rlioeas.
Alchemilla occurs as Leontopodium and Ocidis Considis (the latter by mistake for Leontodon ?).
Plantago major occurs by that name, without aster, but adding *' Galli vocant tarpidolopion.''
Melilotus appears as Mcllilotum or Corona Regia.
Melissa as Melissa or Citrina ; in Sec, as melisse or citraire or herbe de citre. Melissa is perhaps the plant here meant by Sisym- brium, with the remark that Constantinus states that Sisymbrium sylvestre is not properly called that but calamentum.
* Rendered in Sec. " Eupatoire, sauge sauvage."
Notable Plant-names
259
Among the plants significant in Macer {ste ^y^. 205—7), d^'^'^ instans bears the following comparison :
Strignum and Manrclla of Macer for Solaniun nigrum occur as Strignum, Morella, Faba inversa, or Solatrtim ; in Sec, Strig- num, Morelle.
Boracho does not recur ; the nearest like being burit for Sapo- naria ofijicinalis L. (the boritJi of the Alphita); and borrago for borage.
Brassica does not occur as the accepted name for cabbage, but Caules instead (as Caulis in Macer) ; Rappa (rape), Nappa (turnip) and Rapistrimi occur for other species ; one kind of cab- bage appears as Carabie, in Sec. Carambia, renewal of its Greek name xpdji^'fj. But interesting testimony to the survival of Macer' s Brassica still as popular name for cabbage occurs with no. 469. ** Strucium, id est, Caulis agrestis, Quidam dicunt * Braxica non plantata," — Sec, does not contain this. The French Grant Herbier has "Strucium," or ''Ghoul sauvage," Pietro Crescenzi has " Stutio cioe cauolino salvatico."
Paratella occurs again but seems transferred from a Rumex to an Abrus, and is given the synonyms patella herba and basilica. The Sinonimia has " Aurigea = Paradella."
Lolium perennc, L. Italicum, etc., are called Lollium and in Sec, " Lolium est yvraie " to which a gloss adds that is properly loeil. The Sinonimia has " Zizania = lohum."
Agrimonia, confused by a Pseudo- Macer with Argemonia, here occurs as now for Agrimonia Eupatoria L., and so in Sec, with name Agrimoine.
Among other notezvortJiy names of special interest we add :
Hepatica triloba L. appears as " Trinitas, unitas, idem est ; herba similis asarum, et habet tria folia in uno folio;" in ScC " Trinite ou unite, c'est tout ung." The Epatica of Circa instans, as of more ancient authorities, appears to be Marchantia.
Physalis Alkekengi L. appears as " Solatrum majus or Al- chechengi, fructus ejus simulatur serasie (cherry) que fit intus quedam vesica."
Parietaria officinalis L. appears as Parietaria^ or " Vitreola quia vitres vasa ea optime mundantur."
Rhus coriaria L. appears as ''Sumac, the seed of a shrub or tree which the Greeks call Anagoda^
260
Aster History; Plateario
Traces of the Botanical Garden of Salerno Waterlilies seem to have been cultivated by Matteo Plateario in the botanical garden at Salerno if we may judge from his inter- ested warning to his reader that the "Nenuphar purpureum " [Ne- lumbiiun spcciosrim Willd.) produces the flowers which are more desirable, qui meliores sunt," while the yellow {Niiphar luteiini) makes crocus-yellow flowers which are not so good — croceos facens flores qui non sunt adeo boni." Nenuphar with white flowers is not here mentioned, but occurs in the Alphita, " Nenuphar, . . . apud nos tantum in albo et in citrino colore," and in the Grant Herbier as printed perhaps 1480, as "I'une est blanche I'autre est jaune." Pliny had described his yellow nymphaea of the Peneus in Thessaly [Niiphar lutemn L.) and his lily-like Neluinbimn of Marathon and of Orchomenia, in terms as if they were not cul- tivated and he had not seen them in Italy.
Regarding carnations^ over which northern Italy was almost wildly enthusiastic by 1450, Plateario's evidence is more doubt- ful, and they may not have been grown in his garden, although his Gariofilata, interpreted to mean Geiiin iirbanum L., by Camus and by Sccres too, may perhaps have covered the carnation also, as it certainly did perhaps a century later, when, in the Sinonimia added to the Latin MS. of Circa instans at Modena, we read Gariofilata as a synonym * for Geinn not only but also* for Dianthiis Caryophyllus. t
•* Armeal (armeria) = Gariofilata." Also, " Avanciana, Gariofilata or sana- munda or herba benedicata or pes leporinus."
f The carnation, remarks Camus, 133, is sculptured and painted on monuments of Ferrara of about 147 1 ; and was cultivated in the garden of Ferrara in 1460 ; a Modena MS. of that year mentions "the flower-pots of Garofalli " brought in to adorn a feast given by one Serzanela. — For Da Manlio's enthusiasm about them, c. 1450, see infra.
Plateario and the Salerno of his time thought much of the peach, quince, lemon and pomegranate ; cultivated plums and damsons of many kinds ; the black mulberry, fig, medlar and service ; sweet and bitter almonds (his amidalis) (directions by Plateario for care in the culture of almonds are quoted by Bartholomaeus Anglicus from "in li[ber1 de Platis," adding "Bene culte, plus fructificant amigdali, ut dicit in Plate"), and numbers of cherries (his cerasa), etc., etc. Among other plants which he mentions as then cultivated "in ortis " occur the melon, citron, cucumber and other gourd-fruits, the egg-plant, alkekengi, lettuce, parsnip (his Baucia), Mentha i-ofandi- folia (his or(olana), etc., besides plants cultivated more exclusively for medical use, as his Salvia, his " Consolida major," our SvmphytuDi officmale L. [his " Consolida
Favorite Flowers
261
Traces of flower-culture at Salerno among the ladies, besides the cultivation of the rose, lily, gladiolus and iris — appear in references to marigold, amaranth, sea-mallow, marjoram and Arabian jasmine.
''Calendula {^Calendula arvensis L., and C. officinalis L.) (the soussicle of Scares, and soucicle of modern French) dicitur florem omnes mense, nascitur locis humerosis, et eciam mulieres ponunt in ortis ad faciendum coronam, quod habet pulchros colores citrinos, subrufos, et dicitur calendula quia omni mense gerit florem."
" Gelesia " (Amarantus tricolor L.) with leaves red, green and yellow, ** quedam mulieres tenent in orto."
Malva ortensis {Lavatera arborea L.) crescens in ortis." Origanum . . . domesticum {Origanum majorana L.) . . . in ortis."
** Sambacus, id quod Gessominum, herba est cuius flores valde sunt , . . ?,\xd.v\?, odiOXdAA'' J a smiiium Sambac V^2^}j.
Traces of use of wild flowers for ornament on the part of Saler- nitan ladies appear in Plateario's account of the periwinkle, and immortelle.*
Traces of Plate arid s own persojial regard for certain wild flowers appear in the details he gives of the following :
'* Caprifolium or Capprificus herba, which some call Oriola ; with leaves resembling viatrisilve {I.onicera Caprifolium L.) but larger," etc. [I^onicera nigra L. in part?).
" Sponsa solis or dehor ea Intiba or Solseqidum or Eliotr opium ; which herb is a diviner of the course of the sun ; it has twisting stems, and a flower of celestial blue, and when the sun rises the flower opens, and when the sun sinks the flower is also closed," etc. {^Cichorium hitybus L.).
Cennerugio, an herb similar to celandine, and which some call celidonius mascidus because its leaves have a color similar to celandine ; it bears a purple flower in the middle somewhat whitish ; the root is almost black, but is white within ; growing in size about
media or Consoualdis," the French " consoude moienne," is Sy77iphytum tuberosum L.; his " consolida minor " is Briinella vulgaris Moench.].
**'Provinca ( Vinca minor L. ) herba est satis communis, de qua mulieres faciunt coronas." \n Sec. *'pervence." Helichrysiim stoec/ias DC, " Sticados citrinum que herba Jovis dicitur . . , tempore veris producit florem, colligitur, suspenditur et per annum servatur ; " in Sec. it is called " Sticados citrin . . barba Jovis, . . . et I'erbe de Hercules."
262
Aster History ; Plateario
two cubits high. It grows in ditches and in dark and damp places, you may find it near the blossoming in the month of April and of May." (Glauciiun corniciilatmn Curt., still called cienerognola in Italy.)
Traces of Plate arms himself* or of the preceding works of his school may be recognized in at least in the following passages :
Under Diagridmin he speaks in the first person, hoc aiitem dice.
Under Esttia, recommending a powder made by a physician Petricello, about which there has been discussion, he adds *'ut dictum est in Antidotario," i. e., that of Nicolaus Praepositus.
Under Radix he writes ut in Passionario invenitur," i. e., that of Gariopontus.
He cites Macer under Canipliora, Emda, Ysopiis ; he refers also to Constautimis Africamis ; and he cites (his own?) Compen- dium Salernitaniiin under Acetiim (unless this passage was added later).
Evidence of loss since pagan times of the use of certain wild plants appears in what is said of his Mellilotiim or Corona regia, so called, says Plateario, quiaformaturadmodum semicirculi." The Romans had so called it, says Pliny, because they twined it into wreaths ; that use had apparently ceased so that Plateario (followed by Ortus), seeking a reason for the name Corona regia, finds one in the
* Plant Ecology found in Matteo Plateario an early though unconscious advocate, as he is in nothing more remarkable than the care with which he notes the associations of plants, not merely giving their habitats but a hint of their characteristic surroundings. Examples of these references to localities are as follows :
Inter castaneta ; so grows his Trinitas {^Hepatic a triloba)^ Morsus dyaboli {Scabiosa succisa), Palma Christi (an Orchis), Incensaria, etc.
Inter triticum, his Uvz^imz. [Lolium sp. ).
Inter frumenta, his Nigella (ours?).
In arundineis, Alchemilla.
Super quercus, Polypodium vulgare L., and Ceteruth.
In tectis, and in parietibns, Parietaria.
In maceribus, his Vermicularis {Sedum acre L. ).
Supra doJHUs, his Semperviva (houseleek).
In sepibus, briony, hyssop, etc.
In locis sabulosis. Ranunculus, " Paratella," etc.
In locis humorosis, Primula veris, & his Persicaria {^Polygonum Hydropiper L. ). In aquis, Lemna, Nyrnphaea, Nelumbium, Polamogeton nutans, Marchantia, etc. In lapidosis, Geranium columbinum L. , Lonicera Caprifolium L., etc. Ex-t)andit super terr am, of his Serpillum (thyme), Lactuca leporina (dandelion), Pilosella (a hawkweed), Penthapilon [Potentilla reptans), etc.
The Compendium "
263
semicircular seed pod of a related plant to which the name seems then to have been extended, perhaps, suggests Camus, a Trigonella.
So also his ''Verbena, Verminaca or Columbaria" {Verbena officinalis L.), the sacred plant of Rome as well as of Greece, now appears stripped of such associations, and in the Sccres it has assumed modern garb entirely, the Secves translating it Vervaine.
The infliience of the Church had already resulted, as shown in Plateario, in the name herba sancti Petri for the primrose, herba sancti Joannis for the plant still called St. Johnswort, lierba sancte Marie for Tanacetiim Balsainita L., lierbe sainte PJiclippe (in Secrcs ; not described in the Latin Circa instans) for Sapouaria officinalis L.; sigilliLin sanct Marie sive sigilhim Salanionis for Polygonatum multiflorum AIL, Gracia Dei (in Sec, Grace Dieii) for Gratiola offi- cinalis L., Alleliiya herba (and also pane de cnccho, cuckoo's bread) for a yellow oxalis,* and Incensaria (herb with odor of incense) to perhaps three plants, Cerinthe minor L., Onosma ecJiioides L., and Pulicaria odor a Reich., the latter still called incensaria in Italy. And of Betonica officinalis L., he says " Bethonica . . . sancta dicitur ab omnibus personis, . . . vocata domina omnium herbarum."
Works Derived from " Circa Instans " I. Compendiiun Salernitaniuny as cited in chapter Acetiini of the printed Ferrarese Circa instans ; Liber simpliciiim medici- narum " as its Breslau MS. entitles itself, found in 1837 by Prof. G. T. Henschel, of the University of Breslau, in the Bibl. Magdalena of that city, composed of 35 treatises forming one codex, dating from toward the end of the 12th century or from perhaps 1180. It describes 447 remedies, including all of the 276 of the printed Ferrarese Circa i^istans except 14 ; and 185 more, mostly of animal or vegetable origin. Parts chiefly medical were printed in two volumes by Renzi ; but because the botanical matter was still un- printed, Meyer in 1856 was imploring that it might soon find another editor. A synopsis of its articles had been given by Henschel in Janus, 2: 65. 1846.
* So maintained with vigor (against those " malignos herbaricos " who bestowed this name Alleluia upon the winged fruits fallen from the elm) by Jacobus de Manliis, about 1450. Camus identifies it with Oxalis corniculata L., finding thus the proof that that species did not come to Europe from America as had been claimed ; and find- ing similar proof in Circa instans for Xanthi iin striimariuvi, and Agave Americana L.
264
Aster History ; Plateario
This prezioso codicc, as Camus terms it, dates doubtless from about 1 1 80, or not long, as Meyer remarks, after the death of its original author. It seems to have been an expansion from Circa instans ; possibly prepared by Matteo Plateario II himself; per- haps by his nephew Giovanni ; or by some compiler soon after ; it might be Salernus (page 224), if this should prove to be the same with the Compendium of which Salernus makes constant citation, about 11 60? in his Catholica. Evidently the author felt that for the purposes of this MS., subjects other than plants should receive emphasis ; he expands his chapter on Lac into 4 columns, and that on Viimni to 8 ; he adds new chapters on Axungia, Oleum, Caseus viridis, Aqua vitis. Cerebrum, Cor, Lingua, Spina, Caballi marini, Cantarides ; in fact some 50 similar subjects are listed by Camus (p. 14).
2. Giova?inian recension of Circa ijistans, probably prepared hy Giovanni Plateario III, nephew of Matteo II, its author, per- haps by 1 150, adding to his uncle's MS. the following citations or j-eferences and perhaps others :
a. Reference under Ainbra to his mother's curing a noble lady, naming her by initial only, M.
b. Reference to his uncle's cure by using Strucium, calling him avunculus ; this word and the letter in just mentioned, surviving unchanged in the Tractatus.
c. Reference to (his uncle's?) Compendium, under Acctuin.
d. Possibly he, rather than his uncle, inserted the references to the Antidotarium and to the Passionarius.
e. Arabic citations (unless these were by his uncle). Our knowledge of this recension consists of inferences from the printed Ferrara edition and from the composite state of the Tractatus Her- barum. That his revision was made very early after his uncle's death is shown by its lack of any of the later Arabic knowledge ; "he had not yet known," says Camus (15), "the translations of Albucasi, of Serapion, etc., with which Gerard da Cremona (i 1 14- 1187), exercised so great an influence on mediaeval medicine." His Arabic citations are from Rhases and Avicenna and include the remark under Cepa that " its use among the Arabs is shown by the writings of Isaac, made known to the physicians of Salerno by Constantinus."
The Printed Circa Instans
265
3. Ferrarcse recension of Circa instans, prepared from the pre- ceding, perhaps by 1190 A. D., by one who knew of the cures hinted at under Ambra and Strucium in no. 3, and who inserted * the names Joannes and Platearius accordingly, and whom we may therefore term Socius Platcarii ; prepared with view to form a med- ical dictionary of plants only and therefore dropping chapters on minerals and animals, also some on plants ; contains 276 chapters. f Printed together with the Practica of Serapion, Ferrara, 1488, I call it the Ferrarese recension because first printed at Ferrara, but its writer doubtless wrote at Salerno. Perhaps the fragmentary 14th century MS. of Circa instants, 5 leaves, found by Puccinotti in the Bibl. Barberina at Rome, belonged to this recension ; as also may the Turin 14th century MS. (Circa instans to Zt^ccarnin), the only Circa instans exhibited at the great Italian exhibit of medical MSS. in 1898 {Giacosa, 4ii).t
The world's knowledge of the Circa instans was confined to this form of it till the discovery of the Breslau MS. in 1837, the publication of extracts from the Modena codex Estense in 1886; the printed Circa instans (the Circa instans stanipato of Camus), being printed from some MS. of this Ferrarese recension ; first at Ferrara,§ 1488, Choulant, together with the Practica of
* Another possible interpretation is that the initial in for mater Joannis and the word avunculus for Platearius had descended through an unaltered text through per- haps four generations of family revision, from Giovanni I, supposing that Matteo II in writing his Circa instans incorporated in it without change the statements under ambra and strucium written by some ancestor like Giovanni T. But these pivotal words are just the words Matteo II would have been likely to have changed, had they existed in matter coming down to him and now revised by him to make it true to the present.
f Of the 276, five short chapters are not found in no. 2 or no. 4, but found in the Sinonimia Estense, ?i?> Abrotanu?/i, Anagallidos^ Arnoglossa, Aaron, Celtica ; and it contains 4 others, Malabratuvi, AHtrttm, Siseleos and Siajisagria, which are lacking in both 4 and 5, but are listed in their index, Camus (13).
J This, the Asti codex, is one of 53 leaves, of which Circa instans fills the first 29 ; the Alphita, Gerardo da Cremona on purgatives and Constantinus' translation of **Isacco Giudeo " fill the rest. This valuable 14th century codex, now in the Bibl. Naz. of Turin, was bought (says its inscriptions) while in the papal college, in 1408, for ■6 florins, by one Magister Sysmondi de Asinarii de Asti, artium et medicinae doctoris," and, later, another hand writes that it "is the book of Magister Johannes Nicolaus de Ferrario de Asti, doctor of medicine and of arts, practicing at Asti."
^This FerrarsL editio princeps of 1488 bore, as title, "Incipit liher de simplici medicina secundum Platearium dictus Circa instans " and ended " Explicit liber de sim- plicibus medicinis eccellentissimi viri Johannis Platearii." Probably both were added
266
Aster History; Plateario
Serapion, under the title " Serapionis practica sive breviariumy The remaining printed editions'are thought to be reprints from this of 1488 ; they also were bound with the Practica of Serapion, in case of the editions, folio, of Venice, 1497 * (printed by Bonetus Loca- tellus), 1499, 1530, of Lyons 1524, Leyden 1525 (by Fradinus); or were bound with the Dispciisarium attributed to Nicolaus Prae- positus, 1 5 17, and Leyden 15 12 (by Fradinus) and 1536, Paris (by Nicolaus. Bonsonius) 1582. All are rare; Meyer had the 1530 edition, the British Museum has those of 1497, 15 17, 1524, 1525, 1536, which it catalogs (1893) under Joannes Platearius. A synopsis of the printed Circa instans was printed by Choulant in his HandbucJi der Biicherkunde der altern Medecin, p. 298.
4. Doniian redaction, perhaps by 11 90 or ]:200 A. D.; pecu- liar in its use of the adjective Domiani. The Ferrarese redaction was distinguished by copious omissions ; the Domian by slight additions. The former is now represented by the printed Circa i^istans ; the latter by its outgrowth, the MS. Tractatns Herbariim. The name Domian I apply from its peculiar use of an adjective domiani and doniani with plant-names, apparently to specify, as Camus points out, those names current at home to the reviser (L. domns), a reviser, who was perhaps a Calabrian, for his names indi- cate a home in southern Italy and a dialect influenced by Arabic f and Greek % elements.
by the printer ; probably the printer inferred Johannes Platearius as author from the occurrence of his name in the body of the work under Ambra.
*The first Venice edition, 1497, bears the title J. Platearii practica brevis felic- iter incipit, — Incipit Liber de simplici medicina," etc., as in 1488 ; shortened in 1525 to " Pra. J. P. Liber de simplici," etc.
f Arabic and Greek elements had both influenced the dialect as Camus points out in its name lonie, a resin, modified through Greek speech of Calabria and Sicily in the form eletnvii, from the Arabic el-luban, resin, these Greeks replacing Arabic b by /// / as in the chapter Gumma Elemmi, the Domian writes " Sarraceni vocant elemtni, nos autem vocamus lome.
So also under Aloe^ Domianus writes, " nos autem vocamus eam cimbar," which is not in the printed or Ferrarese Circa instans ; nor in the Ortus samtati , though it cites its /^/cd- largely from Plateario; nor in the Breslau MS. of the Compenditim Salernitanum; but only in the Modena MS. of the Tractatus, representing the Domian redaction. Cimbar received the tardy but effectual confirmation of the nineteenth century, when Danielli reported Zambnron and zabbara (the Arabic sab r, aloe) as the vernacular survivals to day in Sicily and Calabria.
X Examples include the following (of which the first and second were observed by Camus) : " Altea Domiani vocant eam 7?toloche agrie,^^ i. <?., we at home know the Al- thea as wild-moloche (mallow); Theophrastus had called it MaMxn aypla. The
DoMiAN Plant-names
267
This reviser, Domianus we may call him, seems to have made extensive observations in Calabria and Sicily, and to have added references to localities and to race-names, such as the Apulian, * Lucanian, "Cicilian "I (Sicilian) and perhaps others. Camus attrib- uted all of these to his Bartolomeo of Siena ; but the Domian names seem to have come from some one whose home had been further south ; Domianus may therefore have come from the borders of the Greeks of Calabria to reside later at Palermo and at Salerno.
5. Tractatus Herbannn, an illustrated MS. J Cirra instaiis% pre-
French Secres renders Damiani here by Ics Donnens. " Arthemisia; Domiani vocant grisantemis ; " the xp't^'^o-vdejunv of Dioscorides, corrupted and applied, as identified by- Camus, to Helichrysum Stoechas L. " Aristolongia longua, Domiani vocant pexionus " (in Secres, " Les Romains I'appellent pecionus").
Similar examples may be his Grias in Lucaniam " ( = Pinguicula ?) and his tridaxaga ( = Leontodon ?); and such as these :
Galeopsis Tetrahit L., Tetrahit, herba judeyca idem est. (First mention; called in Alphite, tehahiscus; in Italy still, ej ba gtiidaica.)
Arum, ^'■iarus,^'' and " barba Aaron" ; and in Sec. also " oueil a prestre " ; the name larus may have been Calabrian?
Hedera Helix L., " Hedera nigra ... est quot greci vocant cissonwielle.^''
Crithmum maritiniuni L., "Cretanus. Herba. . . alio nomine dicitur /^7<ra/^."
Mandragora " Apollinaris herba . . . Greci vero vocant eam dicea.^''
Allium, Allium . . . Succus eciam interius ore receptus excutit venenum, unde dicitur tiriaca (Gr. theriaca) rusticorum " ; in Sec. " I'appelleon tiriacle a villains."
Rosmarinus officinalis L., Ros marinus . . . Flos autem dicitur anthos.''^ * Some of his Apulian examples are :
Spiraea Filipendula L. (first mentioned here), " Filipendula, que fissalidos alio nomine appellatur in ultra maris partibus et Ampulla."
Aloe . . . reperitur eciam in Ampulla" ; in Compendium Sal., Bfeslau MS., "Aloes. . . Apulia reperitur."
f Some of the Sicilian examples are :
Fertda nodijlora L. "Ferula . . . reperitur in Calabria et in Sicilia " (in Sec.y ** trouve grant quantite en Calabre et en Cecile " ).
Sesaffium orientale L. " Sisamus idem est qui ginginlena. . . Semen ejus in Cicilia . . . reperitur in magna copia."
Thapsia garganica L. "Tapsia. . . invenitur ... in Calabria et Cicilia et proprie circa Palormum."
Sugar from Saccharum officinale L. "Zuccarum fit de cannamelle (sugarcane) ... in Cicilia et in Spania ; fit versus beati Johannis Baptiste" ; in Sec. "Zuccara, c'est succre.^^
+ Codex 993, of the 15th century, at Modena, in the Bibl. Estense ; 167 leaves, in Latin, written in 2 columns, in Gothic letters, with numerous abbreviations ; arranged alphabetically, in 480 chapters, and 470 colored figures. Only the nomenclature has been published (in Camus' V Opera Salernitana, Modena, 1886).
\ Bartolomeo' s work begins like the other recensions, " Circa instans negocium in simplicibus medicinis nostrum versatur propositum." Its end is peculiar to itself^
268
Aster History ; Plateario
pared from the Domian recension, perhaps at Siena, by Barto- lomeo Mino da Siena,* about 1340. Copyists have corrupted his name into Bartolomeo MiniLV sens and Mundsens.
Bartolomeo's title "Tractatus herbarum Dioscorides et Platonis atque Galieno et Macrone translatate " impHes that he made some additions from a text of Galen and from one that he understood to be of Plato but which was really of Pliny. So we find the Ortus when printed, 1491, etc., ascribing matter to Plato which should have been credited to Pliny. He also implies his belief in Macer as a Greek by calling him Macron or Macro, f ''greats He evi- dently thought the Latin poem of Macer a translation from an original Greek % form. He certainly seems to have made indus- trious use of Macer ; for Camus' list of less usual citations made by Bartolomeo, comprising Pliny, Ipocrates, AppoUonio, Platon, Aristotele, Asclepias, Pitagora, Olympia Thebana," are all found in Macer and were quoted by Macer from Pliny. Bartolomeo's other citations may be classed as follows :
2d. Such as already existed in Matteo's Circa instans, or in its Giovannian form ; namely, citations from Isaac, from Con- stantino, viulieres Salernitanac, Preposito's Antidotarium, the Pas- sionarius, the Flos Medicinae, and some of those from Macer.
* Explicit tractatus herbarum Dioscorides et Platonis atque Galieno et Macrone trans- latate manu et intellectu Bartholomei minid' sens in arte speciarie semper infusus," listed in the Modena Bibl. Estense catalog of codices, about 1790, as " 993," "Dios- corides Tractatus de herbis, cum Platonis Galieni et Macri hujusmodi a Barth ; Mund- sens."
* Bartolomeo, Camus suggests, was perhaps father of that poet of the 14th century Andrea Mino da Siena, one of the celebrated family of the Piccolomini and sur- named Ciscranna, '* the folding chair. "
1 The Tractatus cites him rarely as Macro, Macron, usually in ablative, Macrone ; the Compendium Sal. of Breslau, as Mac. ( abbreviation for Macro, Renzi) ; the printed Circa mstans has guessed at it as ** Macrobius." Crescenzi, 1305, as well as Barthol- omaeus Anglicus, c. 1 256, knew the name as Macro, but were also interpreted by printers as meaning Macrobius.
\ It is possible that Macer wrote part of his matter in the native Greek of his Calabria and when working it up into the Latin poem, with continuous use of nos, Jtostri, in sense of "we who speak Latin," may have neglected to translate certain Greek words as sciasis, cacostvmachon^ incaustrum^ etc.; this would account for their now occurring in the Latin. That Bartolomeo, an Italian enthusiast for manuscripts (he calls himself in arte specia7'ie seinper iiifusus), should have seen among Salernitan or other manu- scripts something indicating that Macer was a Greek is not improbable ; he may have guessed from that fact alone that the Latin poem by Macer was a translation.
Tractatus Herbarum
269
3d. Certain citations quote Matteo Plateario who was indeed the source of the whole body of the work. Possibly they are due to Matteo's nephew, Giovanni, who may have inserted his uncle's name when mentioning certain remedies, to show that they had been specially tested and used by him.
4th. Additions made from the Pandectae mcdicinae of Matteo Silvatico, 13 13.
5th. Additions and figures from an illustrated Dioscorides ; Bartolomeo's text and figures serving, it may be, as chief source for early MSS. of the Ortiis Saiiitatis, perhaps by the year 1400.
From what MS. of Dioscorides these figures came, demands further investigation. From some Dioscorides many figures in the Modena (1458) and the Konigsberg MSS. of the Secres de Salerne seem also to have been derived, as well as those in Benedict Rinius' Liber de simplicibus, 141 5 ; long before the removal by Busbecq (i 522-1 592) of the great Anician MS. of Dioscorides, Codex C, from Constantinople to Vienna.
Bartolomed s Synonyms. — Out of Dioscorides, Bartolomeo ob- tained the numerous synonyms, which he credits to the " Affri- cani, Egipcii, Dacii, Ostani, Profeti," and perhaps those to the "Siculi, Corinti and Romani." Some of these may have come, however, with his " Punici," out of Apuleius. He may as a
Some figures, says Camus, show flowers and fruit both, some so true to the plant as to suggest direct copying from nature, as in Viola, Borrago, Pervinca, Cichoriura sylvaticum. Crocus ; and in corncockle, rice, fleur-de-lis, strawberry. Many figures in- clude accessories, as the elegant vase for culture of marjoram, the ornate iron cofler for preserving mastic, and very rich chests containing gums and minerals. A number of animals are figured as the frog, stag, elephant, snake, lizard, salamander. Often the rude figure is made interesting by the introduction of some characteristic personage : as a rubricund monk frying dough in his padella to make zihulle ; a vender of cocoa- nuts with his balances; a cleric with censer of incense ; a man heaping up a pile of gold ; a man extracting sulphur from the brink of a volcano in eruption ; a poor beaver who sacrifices his castoreum to the assailing huntsman ; barbarians with black visage and with their dogs, before whom flies a musk deer ; a frightful horned devil threaten- ing with his hoof a hare hidden behiftd a plant of Sparagi sehatici with red berries, the plant Asparagus tenuifolius, caWtd Pa /ad um lepo7'is, i. e., "rabbit's palace," in the text, still so called in Italy in the time of Caesalpino, 1583, though in Ortus the name is transferred to an endive-like plant. This figure was probably added to explain an insertion in the text by Bartolomeo, stating that this is the plant under which the timid hair secura est a dyapolo.
270
Aster History ; Plateario
Tuscan have added from his own knowledge those which he at- tributes to the " Tuscii." Of the rest, those ascribed to the Do- miani, CiciHani, Lucani," and some of the Greci," were doubtless added by the Domian redactor ; and those ascribed to the Spani, Latini, Itali, Ytaliani, Gallii, and part of the Greci, may have been in the MS. from Matteo onward.
6. Senses de Salente, the French MS. translation of the Ciira installs, made by Le Petit Pelous in central Italy in 1458 (in Siena?) chiefly from the now-existing Tractatus, MS. 993, on the blank end of which Pelous transcribed his Sinonimia, according to his own signature, the same year. The nomenclatural part of Secres was published 1886 by Camus at Modena in his L' Opera Salernitana," with the claim that the Secres is the primitive text of the Grant Herbier," and proving by comparison the direct deri- vation of that French herbal from Circa instans. The contents of Secres, its succession of chapters, its index and its figures, are almost absolute copies from the Tractatus ; though more prolix. But certain slight differences show that Pelous also used other MSS. of Qrca installs, from which he made supplementary re- marks. 1st. The French Secres besides reproducing all that is in the Latin Tractatus, adds 8 new chapters, as Stafisagria, Saliunca, Fuligo, Lacca, Siseleos, Sistra, Lepidos calcis, Trifolium, mentioned in the index to the present MS. of Tractatus and doubtless pre- sented in Bartolomeo's original.
2d. Certain chapters after translating all the Latin which now remains in Tractatus, add etc., as if there were more un- translated.
3d. In chapter Appiuni risus, a quotation from Plateario in the first person is given which is lacking in Tractatus.
4th. Pelous adds 7 or 8 new chapters not in the text or index of Tractatus ; of which Crisomiles, Culcasia, Robellia, are in the Breslau MS. of Plateario's Compendium ; and Gran froissie, Sapo- naria, Senechon, Herbe d'ancens, from sources which Camus found difficult to trace.
Besides using other MSS. of Circa instans, Pelous also supple- mented his author from his own observations and from certain more recent writers whom he quotes ; as under Soldanea (= Con- volvulus Soldanella L.) he cites " un nouvel acteur appelle Gentil
Secres de Salerne
271
[Gentile de FuUgno, Jide Camus], and under Spinaca, " un acteur appelle Tacuin."*
The figures in Pelous' MS. Secres are less varied than in the Tractatus 993, but better executed ^nd more vividly colored. The artist has however at times represented a plant wholly dif- ferent from that of the text ; as under hiceiisaria. Probably the artist was the assistant Abourg (in the Modena catalog, Abourt), whom Pelous f names as aiding him.
This MS. Secres bears the name of two owners, one in a hand of the i6th century, Livre des simples A Monsr. Durfe," and another similarly old, Jehan Duboys."
The MS. begins without title, directly as the original Circa instans, with En ceste presente besoingne cest nostre propos et entencion de traitier des simples medicines " and ends with the words Et pour eviter prolixite cy est la fin de ce livre on quel sont contenus les secres de Salerne. Explicit cest herbollaire," etc.
One other MS. of this French Secres de Salerne is known, that
* Either or both of two works may have been meant, the Tacuinus sanitatis, a translation of an Arabic work, Tagwim azszihhadt, attributed to Elluchasem Elimithar ; or the Tandnus de ctiris viorboruin corporu?n, attributed to Abu AH Jahia Ben Gezlah ; both translations occur in the same codex, 175, in Bibl. Estense at Modena, written about 1290, in part at Aversa, in part at Rome.
t Of the personality of Le Petit Pelous, as the translator signs himself, we may in- fer with Camus from the form of his words, that he came, not like many writers of that time, from Normandy, but from central France ; and that he came, like so many English, French and German copyists of manuscripts in that century in Italy, as a young man to study in one of the Italian universities. Many such students, remarks Puccinotti, copied manuscripts under direction of their professors ; and in the city library at Siena alone, among codices of the fifteenth century are some signed by Conraduin de Alemannia, ego Joannes de Guerrandia in Bfilannia, ego Daniel De Insulis natione Picardtis medicine auditor, etc. Such a student was Pelous, who wrote as his colophon to his "Explicit cest herbollaire Auquel a heu asses affaire
Abourg. II a este escript Mil CCCC cinquante et huit. Et la escript cest tout cer- tain Le patron de sa propre main Pries pour luy Je vous en prye Pour amour De la com- paignye. Le petit pelous 1458."
At the end of the MS. Tractatus 993 (of which he was not himself the copyist, its hand is somewhat different and its figures are ruder) Pelous wrote on 25 more folios of the codex, along Sinonimia (probably composed about 1200 A. D. ), adding : *' Hoc scripsi totum pro pena date michi potum ; Nomen scriptoris, Le petit pelous plenus amoris 1458."
Should any one claim that Pelous was merely copyist and not the French trans- lator as well, Camus observes that the French translation has in its language " an in- contestable character of the 15th century," so it could not have been much older than Pelous if not his own work
272
Aster History ; Plateario
found by Meyer in the Royal Library of Konigsberg, and described by him in his History, 4 : 187 ; containing 202 small folios, written in two columns, without title, but ending, exactly hke the Modena MS. with the words " Et pour eviter prolixite cy est la fin de ce livre en quel sont contenus les secres de salerne." The colored figures of exotics and little known plants are quite fantastic, but others, says Meyer, are quite true to nature, as those of Apiitin, Aristolochia, Asanun. The handwriting was thought by Professor Voigt to be of about i 500 A.D. Meyer judged it must have pre- ceded the first printing of the French herbal derived from it about 1480, and remarked, 1857, that it must have been copied from some lost MS. Camus' discovery of its source in the Modena MS. followed in 1885.
Meyer described it as of 463 chapters, some taken without acknowledgment from Isaac, as those on Castanea, Phaseolus, etc., and many seemingly from an abridged MS. of Apuleius Platonicus, and many from unknown sources. Meyer also partic- ularly remarked the interest of the folk-names, often introduced with the words, " Les domiciens appellent." These we now know are traceable to the Doiniani of the Domian MS., see p. 266.
7. Arbolayre, the first printed edition of the French Grant Herbicr'' ; a rare work, the colophon of which as furnished to Camus by L, Delisle, director of the Bibl. Nat. of Paris, reads Ce est fin de ce livre ou quel sunt contenus les secres des erbes et communes medicines et drognes a vray translater de latin en francoys et bien corrigees selon pluseurs docteurs de medicine," i. e., the Secres de Salerne was used as a true translation (referred to as les Secres des Erbes) and after corrections and additions from many physicians, was printed by the name Arbolayre, at Paris, about 1480 by Pierre Caron, Jide Haller and Meyer. Lacroix, who dates it 1495, less accurately entitles it " a new herbal, called L' Arbolayre, extracted from the medical treatises of Avicenna, Rhazes, Constantine, Isaac and Plateaire."
8. Le Grant Herbier en francoys was the title borne by the 8 or 9 rare subsequent editions of the Arbolayre ; one at Paris, printed about 1490 by Guillaume Nyvert, one by Jacques Nyvert, one by Jehan Janot, one by Denis Janot and Alain Lotrian, others with dates 1499 and 1521, and another printed by Alain Lotrian
The Gkete Herball
273
about 1530 which Meyer possessed, being no. 11,669 of Pritzel. This latter contains 176 numbered leaves and 22 more, with poor print and paper, and rude wood-cuts, smaller and poorer than the similar ones of Ortns, though really the same figures. It contains 5 chapters more than in Scores, 468 in all. Aloe to Zucarum ; 4 of the 5 additional having been supplied from Circa instans, which it represents quite completely. Its explanatory title states " it contains the kinds, and powers of herbs, trees, gums, seeds, oils, and precious stones, extracted from" many medical works, as of Avicenna, Rasis, Constantin, Isaac, Plataire et Ypocras." The colophon omits ''Ypocras" (Hippocrates), and makes amends by elevating Plateario among the canonized as St. Plataire."
9. '* The Crete Herbal, zuith cuts,'' of I 5 16, first book of its kind in English, was a translation from Caron's 1499 edition of the Grant Herbier, with some alterations and additions ; was mistaken by Pulteney for a translation of the somewhat similar Ortus Sanitatisy Its translator is not known, but its printer, Peter 'Treveris, of London, is called its translator by Pritzel ; he printed it again with figures in 1525, 1526 and 1529. Meyer points out the error of those who thought the translator to be the Louvain professor Jeremias Triverius, who died 1554.
Three other printers reissued it, Laurens Andrews, 1527; Thomas Gybson (with corrections, Seginer, 216), 1539; Jhon Kynge (reprinting Gybson's), 1561. Besides the 7 now men- tioned, there was an edition without figures, in 1550.
The issue of 1526, in the Oxford University Library, contains 505 chapters each with a small rude woodcut from a block hardly two inches square. It adds to the Grant Herbier 30 descriptions and figures, an address by the printer, and a treatise De iirina.
Pulteney terms it the first printed botanical work of any consequence or popularity in England," adding that it "abounds with the barbarous and misspelt names of the middle ages," and quoting the words of Turner's Herbal regarding it, that " as yet there was no English Herbal but one, all full of unlearned cacog- raphies and falsely naming of herbs." Pulteney remarks that the 505 chapters are alphabetically arranged by their Latin names; the English name follows the Latin ; the woodcut is prefixed ; there is scarce any description, but a statement of temperament, hot or
274
Aster History ; Plateario
cold, dry or moist, a prolix account of the diseases for which the plant is applicable, and the method of using it. Over 400 of the chapters represent plants ; about 150 are English plants, but are not so designated ; many of the figures are imaginary, many are misplaced ; several times the same figure occurs used for different plants ; those with animals are particularly absurd ; that of the mandrake, Pulteney remarks, " exhibits two perfectly human figures, with the plant growing from the head of each " ; a familiar mediaeval conception.*
Works which are very largely based upon the Circa instans also include the following, which I treat separately :
10. Natiira Rcrnm, in Latin, by Thomas de Cantiprato, a Fleming, 1244; never printed.
1 1. Dc . . . plantis^ by Albert Magnus, about 1265 ; in Latin ; printed i 5 1 7.
12. Riiralium, etc., of Crescenzi, 1305 ; his Book 6 is very largely drawn from Circa instans.
13. BitcJi der Nahir, translation of Cantiprato into German of Bavarian dialect, by Conrad von Megenberg, 1349, printed 1475
14. Aggregator Practices, in Latin, author unknown, Italian or German? of perhaps 1350; printed circa 1473? etc., and with German and Italian translations, 1480? etc.
15. Ortiis Sanitatis, in Latin, author unknown, Italian ? of per- haps 1400? printed 1491, and earlier but undated; early French, Dutch and Lower-Saxon translations, printed 1492, etc., more or less close to the original.
*This 1526 volume is a small folio, of about 350 unnumbered pages ; its title is The Crete Herball which geveth parfyt knowledge and understandyng of all manner of Herbes and there gracyous vertues which God hath ordeyned for our prosperous welfare & helth, for they hele and cure all manner of dyseases & sickenesses that fall or misfortune to all manner of creatoures of God created.
" Practysed by many expert and wyse masters, as Avicenna and other, etc. And it geveth full parfyte understandyng of the book lately prented by me (Peter Treveris) named the noble experiens of the vertuous handwarke of surgery.
" Imprynted at London in Southwarke by me Peter Treveris, dwelling in the Sign of the Wodows, 1526, the 27th day of July."
The Introduction states that it was " compyled, composed, and auctorysed by divers and many noble Doctours and expert Maysters in Medycynes ; as Avicenna, Pandecta, Constantinus, Wilhelmus, Platearius, Rabbi Moyses, Johannes Mesue, Haly, Albertus, Bartholomeus, and more other, etc."
See Richard Pulteney, *' Historical and biographical Sketches of ... Botany in Eng- land": 46-50, London, 1790. See also Meyer, 4 : 391.
Survivals from Plateario
275
1 6. Gart der Gesicndheit, German translation of the preceding, with modifications, by Dr. Johann von Cuba; 1485, Mentz, and often after, to i 530, etc.
17. Garde der Sunthcyt, Lubeck translation of 15, but with changes in text and in figures ; 1520, " Lubeck in saligen Steffen Arndes' druckerye," folio.
18. Kreiitterbiich, modii^^di from 16, by Eucharius Rhodion ; Egenolff, Frankfort, 1533, 1540, 1550.
19. KreuterhiicJi^ in German, by Adam Lonitzer (greatly modified from 18); Egenolf, Frankfort, 1557, and often after.
20. KreiiterbttcJi, by Peter Uffenbach (modified slightly from 19), Frankfort, 16 16, and often after.
21. Kreiiterbiich, by Balthazar Ehrhart (modified impercep- tibly from 20), Ulm, 1737, 1765, 1776, Augsburg, 1783.
GERMAN AND MISCELLANEOUS PLANT-WRITERS.
XLV. Hildegardis
The description by St. Hildegardis,* about 1150 A. D.,of 166 native plants of the Rhine provinces, has been called by Meyer " the beginning of German Natural History," and is also note- worthy as one of the earliest contributions made by her sex to botanical knowledge.
She was author of four books Der physica,'' of which books II and III are on plants ; printed at Strasburg by Joannes Schott, 1544, but rare. They contain numerous folk-remedies not from Dioscorides but from the people, and many first-mentions f of important German plant-names. Among the names she uses for plants confused with Aster are the following :
* Born in 1099, at Bechelheim on the Nahe, of a knightly family, she lived a cloister life from her 8th to her 80th year, dying in 1179, having been 31 years an abbess near Bingen, at St. Ruprechtsberg, and for 12 years before, the abbess of the convent at Disibodenberg.
t Sprengel, recounting her "barbarous names," finds in the Physica of Hilde- gardis {his sanc^issima virgo), the follovi'ing names used for the first time : Herba Aaron or Arum ?7iaculalum ; ZyivQ[, Artemisia Santonica ; Christiana, Hellebortis niger ; Storchenschnabel, Geum Robertianum ; Razela, Polygonum Persicaria ; Huofladtheda major, Tussilago Petasites ; Huofladtheda minor, Ttissilago Fai-fara ; also Wehdystel, Pandonia, Hunesdarm, Himmelschlussel, mentioned above.
276
Aster History : Hildegardis
Fridelsouge or Fridelsaiiga, * for Tragopogon porrifolius ; see infra, under Anguillara. Alentidium, \ Inula Helenium, the German Alant. Febrifiiga and Mettra,-\ for Pyrethriim Parthenium. Rubea, f for Rubia tincto7'um. WehdystelX for Ceritaiirea Cal- citrapa. Stignns,^ for Atropa Belladonna. Hiinmelschh{Ssel,X for Prinmla viilgaiHs. PandoniaX for Chelidoniuni majus. Hiines- darniX for Stellaria media.
XLVI. Albertus Magnus
Albert of Lauingen, commonly known as Albertus Magnus, or as Albert Graf von Bollstadt, remarkable among mediaeval writers for his attention to the physiology and philosophy of plants, was born in 1 193 at Lauingen in Suabia (now in Bavaria), was bishop of Ratisbon in 1260, and died in 1280, aged 87.
In his De vegetabilibus et plantis,^ expanded from Nicolaus Damascenus, whose work he took to be the genuine work of Aristotle, he devotes the sixth book to individual notices of plants, the only part of his work with which our present subject is con- cerned, but not that on which he himself set a high value, for of these small details of fact he speaks slightingly, remarking " De particularibus enim philosophia esse non poterit."
Notwithstanding this self-depreciation, this part of his work is of the greatest interest and service, on account of peculiar names and realistic descriptive touches with which his own experience filled it.
To edit this work was one of the fond hopes of the historian of classic and mediaeval botany, Ernest H. F. Meyer, and when his death left his work partly finished it was ably continued by Jessen and published in unusually elaborate completeness, in 1867, at Berlin, under the name Alberti Magni . . . De vegetabilibus libri VII,'' to the pages of which my references will relate.
Its seventh book treats 398 plants in alphabetical chapters, based primarily on Avicenna, Plateario (in the Circa instans) and Isidorus Hispalensis. With the material taken from these authors " he weaves in his own observations, and these often of the acutest,"
* Fide Jessen. f Fide Meyer. \ Fide Sprengel.
\ Rarely printed ; first at Venice, 1517 ; by Jammy at Leyden, 1651 ; and again, the critical edition of Meyer and Jessen, Berlin, 1867, 8vo, 752 p.
Albertus' Compositae
277
as Meyer and Jessen observe, p. 339, while "from Avicenna he takes all he wrote about the medical properties of the plants treated, quoting it with or without use of the identical language."
Considering the beauty of Aster Amellus in the subalpine region, and observing Albert's wide personal acquaintance with subalpine Bavarian plants, we would have expected mention of this Aster, and perhaps its omission does not indicate his failure to notice it but his failure to regard it as of medicinal utility. The wide difference be- tween his treatment of plants and that of Roman and of Renaissance botany is to be noted in the absence from his work, not only of Aster as such, but as veiled under such names as Stella, Bubonium, Inguinalis, Unguinaria, Ynguinaria, or Alibium.
He treats about 23 Compositae, mostly familiar plants like his Enula campana, the most important of which in the present con- nection are his Oculus porci (Tragopogon), see infra under A n^-ui/- lara, and his Rostrum porcimim (Leontodon), already noticed under Hippocrates, p. 108.
Sponsa solis he uses for Cichorium, as did Plateario, and also for Calendula officinalis L., which he says, p. 570, is (like Aster) valu- able for poisonous bites : ''trita confert morsui venenatorum, posita super vulnus."
Senecio he uses, but Jessen could not decide for what plant. Policaria, also doubtful ; perhaps Pulicaria vulgaris Gaertn. " Yppia, quae tanacetum agreste"; i. c.,Tanacetum vulgare L.*
* Among plants confused by others with Aster, his usage is as follows : Eryngiuni campestre L., under Yringum, Iringum or Hyringum, p. 568, confused by him as by Plateario with their secacul,^^ Pastiitaca secacul Russ.
Geum urbanutu L. is his Gariofilata or Benedicta (the Benedicta of Hildegardis ; whence its present English name bennet). He mentions only two herbs with the odor of cloves, this Gariofilata, and his Ungula Caballina, Asaru7n Etiropaeum L., which has more of the odor, but he says nothing of the odor of cloves in Dianthus nor in roots of Aster Amellus.
Chelidonium seems to appear blended with some other plant unknown, in his sin- gular name of Venae tinctorwn, Painters" Veins, derived from Avicenna, and by both recommended for the eyes. The name is said by Albertus to be from its use for dyeing and because the plants extenduntur sicut venae, p. 578.
Viola, pp. 575~^ ; of the imported Aster character few traces remain ; perhaps the use of his viol i for aposteniata or tumors, for inflation of the stomach, and eminentiae ani. An echo of the minglings of two plants under the name 7-iola is found in his re- mark that " all parts are certainly frigid and humid, though there are some that call the violet warm."
278
Aster History ; Albertus Magnus
Camomilla for Matricaria cJiainomilla L. Cotiila fetida for Anthemis Cotula L. Caniica perhaps for GnapJialium, Crocus for Carthanms tinctorius L.; with the usual endivia, cicorea, lactuca, lappa, carduus, centaurea, absinthium, artemisia," abrotanum, ''piretrum," and millefolium, are his other chief Compositae.
XLVII. Raimundus Lullus
Raimundus Lullus, 123 5-1 3 15, surnamed Palmensis from his birth at Palma on the island of Majorca, in youth a hermit, later a missionary among the Arabians, and finally a Franciscan monk, became known as one of the greatest alchemists of the Middle Ages. Two of the writings which emanated from his monkish cell concern plants directly. One of these, his " Quintessence "* or "Arcana of Nature," arranges plants in "canons" according to temperament or supposed qualities. He does not mention Aster itself ; among plants which this survey of Aster history has in- cluded he makes the following references :
Canon 8 of Book I, among the 40 plants listed here as " calida " in the ist degree are absintJiiiun, borago, eiipatoriurn, cainomilla, folia gariofiloriini, sarcocolla, etc.
Canon 9, warm in the 2d degree, 35 plants, including poiimn.
Canon 10, warm in the 3d degree, eiiuia, gariofili \i. e., Dian- thus ; see p. 260] .
Canon 14, moist in the 3d degree, y^^Tc.? violae coelestis, and violae viridis [compare Arnald's contemporary distinction, p. 242].
Canon 27, astringents, including terra sigilla and plantago.
The other work by Raimundus which requires allusion here is his translation of the Greek treatise f known as Kiranides. f
Tures^o, for Melissa officinalis, p. 94, deemed by Jessen a verbal torsion of Citrago, Palladius' name for it ; but it is almost as likely to be a copyist's perversion of borachoy Macer's Calabrian name for Melissa.
* Printed 1541 by the title '■^ De secretis naftirae sive Quintessentia libri duo sive Naturae Arcanis"; with name of its author in the form "Raimundus Lullus Majoricus." A copy is in the Latimer Clark collection, in the library of the Amer. Institute of Electrical Engineers, N. Y. City.
■j- This treatise seems to have existed first in the form of a single book [Jide Meyer, 2 : 356), the Kyranis, written (or edited from the work of an earlier writer whom we may call Kyranis?) by an alchemist, one Harpocration (not the Alexandrian) ; and cited (as the Kyranis of Hermes) by Olympiodorus, perhaps 425 A. D., together with
Raimundus' Kyranides
279
Meyer, 2 : 361—6, comments upon some 24 plants which appear in the first book (the original Kyranis) of Raimundus' translation under peculiar names : among which is " Eryngius." This chapter on Eryngium is of particular interest, as showing none of the blending with Aster which appeared in Serapion, the Arabic plant writer of the west ; instead, in the Arabic writing of the east (in which form the Kyranides may have existed long before the trans- lation by Raimundus), the blending of Eryngium is not with Aster but with the verbena, and we find the Kyranides using Centum- capita and Peristereon as synonyms, /. Eryngmm campestre and Verbena officinalis.
a lost work by Harpocration, the Liber Archaicus, of similar character. Harpocration may have been but a redactor, and if but half a century older than Olympioiorus, may have been living as late as 370 A. D.
It was thought by Meyer that a reference in Tertullian may have applied to the original work which came to be called Kyranis. If so, Harpocration may have made additions to the work of some unknown Greek writer whom we may call Kyranis, and who may have written before Tertullian, i. e., before 200 A. D.
A second redaction of Kyranis followed much later, perhaps 700 A. D.; its un- known author we may call Kyranos (or, with Raimundus, Kiranus); the treatise now consisted of four books or Kyranides, i. e., the amended Kyranis and three additional books : first mentioned by Georgios Synkellos in 792.
The third redaction, pde Meyer, was the translation by Raimundus Lullus, and seems to have been made 1280 or later. This translation was attributed by Aldrovandi in the i6th century to Gerardus Cremonensis ; but was credited, as edited by Rivinus, to one " RA. PA. infimus clericus," — which gave to Meyer the hint that the translator was Raimundus Falmensia ; in which theory he was confirmed by finding in it traces of the alchemist, of Spanish (or Italian ?) idioms and of Arabic, and many other features pointing to Raimundus as translator. Raimundus cites Simon Januensis, his Italian contemporary, but seems not to know Albertus Magnus, the great Bavarian of a half century before.
By writers from Olympiodorus to Scaliger and Salmasius, the Kiranides had been variously attributed to an Aegyptian, Arabic, Syrian, and Persian origin ; it remained for Meyer in 1855 to show that it was probably written at first in Greek, with quota- tions from Dioscorides, Pliny and Theocritus, with arrangement of its articles on plants, minerals and animals in the order of the Greek alphabet, and with indications of Greek conceptions and names.
j What is called its first edition appeared as Kirarii Kiranides,'''' or "Liber physico-medicus Kiranidum Kirani... aureus gemmeusve," 1638, without place ; with addition of notes, entitled the " Rhyakini coronides,^^ written by Bachmann (Rivinus) the Leipzig professor, who here styled himself in Greek fashion Rhyakinus. Meyer commented, 1855, on the poor quality of the notes, paper and printing, the great rarity of the book and the ever advancing price. A copy was offered in London in 1901 at 2ls. A 2d edition, Frankfort. 1681, printed by "Jo. Just. Erythrophilus," bore the title " Mysteria physicomedica," etc.
280
Aster History : Pupils of Albertus
XLVIII. Albertus and Henricus de Saxonia
Albertus Magnus, like most great writers, was doomed to have his fame beclouded by spurious and unworthy works ascribed to his pen. One of these, the De inirabilibus mundiy is of unclaimed authorship ; another, the De Secretis Mulierum,'^ a treatise on em- bryology (of great interest in the history of medicine, though dif- fuse and wordy like much mediaeval speculation), was by one Hen- ricus de Saxonia, a pupil of Albertus Magnus, and who may have studied under him together with Thomas de Cantiprato at Cologne. A third, the De virtiitibus herbanun, better known as Liber aggrega- tionis, an oft-printed f but most worthless % production as Pritzel deemed it, is now ascribed to one Prater Albertus de Saxonia, § a master of philosophy, says Echard, at Paris, about 1300 A. D.,
* Earlier printers issued the Secretis and the Aggregationis separately ; my edition of the former, ^'■Albertus Alagnus de Secretis Mulierum cum commento," Rome, 1499, has no hint regarding the dated Liber aggregationis of Strasburg of 1493, of the existence of which its writer seemingly was not aware.
This 1499 edition of the Secretis \s a thin quarto of 1 12 unnumbered pages, in four books ; it begins with the words " Tractatiis Henrici de Saxonia, Alberti Magni disci- puli, de Secretis Mulierum, quern ab Alberto excerpsit."
The discursive commentary by some unknown Joannes, which accompanies the text, cites the ancients as Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen, also Macer, Avicenna and Averroes : it bears the name " Expositio super Henricum de Saxonia de secretis mu- lierum."
Among plants mentioned by this commentator Joannes, is his list of aphrodisiacs in chapter 3 of Book I, including " piper, pillegium, testiculi vulpis, crocus orientalis, semen lini," but with no mention of the eryngium by which Phaon charmed Sappho.
Later than the commentary, the printer prefixed another title, " Albertus Magnus de Secretis Mulierum cum commento " ; merely a device of the printer to gain notice ; and so far successful that it has caused the identification of his work with Albertus Magnus on the part of some bibliographers to the present time.
Meyer had an earlier, edition, printed by Anton Sorg, at Augsburg, in 1489 (and another, at P'rankfort, 1615), which agreed with the preceding (Meyer, 4: 70). A still earlier edition, which has recently come to America, is that entitled " De Secretis Mulierum et Vivorum," thought to have been printed by Reyser at Eichstadt about 1479-
f An early edition of the Aggregationis is that ascribed to Reyser at Eichstadt, of about 1478.
X Libt'i miser rimi,^^ Pritzel's no. 11849 — a thin octavo of 31 unnumbered pages, without name of place, writer or author.
^ " Echard discovered (Meyer, 4 : 83) among its rare MSS. (one in Paris and two in England) an English MS. of uncertain age claiming to be written, not by Albertus Magnus but by Frater Albertus de Saxonia."
Plants of the Planets
281
who may have been another pupil of Albertus Magnus, and who is known as a commentator on Aristotle. His Liber aggregationis is cited in the Aggregator practicus^ perhaps 1350 A. D.
Early editions of these works were separate ; later ones * com- bine the three. The last, that on plants, which from its name might be expected to be an extensive treatise, is but a meagre af- fair and full of superstition ; it describes the medical use of Cheli- donia, Melisophylos, and a few other plants, f only sixteen in all, and then tests the herbs of the planets, ascribing its Affodillns to Saturn, Poligonia vel Corrigiola to Sol, Chrynostates to Luna, Arnoglossa to Mars, Pentaphilon to Mercury, Achaton vel Jusqid- amns to Jove, and Pisterion (/. e,, verbena) to Venus.
Superstition and magic permeate the ^vXw^ Aggregationis^ and it bears the lineaments of the astrologer throughout. It is in fact an offshoot of the race of Hermes Trismegistus, its lineage tracing back to the Kiranides, which spoke in similar tone of the plants of the planets a thousand years before ; and to Raimundus' transla- tion ; which had just made its appearance. Its author, egomet Albertus," as he styles himself, acknowledges his indebtedness to Kiranis in set terms, remarking in his preface that he will place in his book the sorcerer's plant lore which he finds in the book Chy- randis and in the book Alcorat "; the first of these no doubt refer- ring to Raimundus' Latin version of the Kiranides.
The medical uses described are chiefly those of magic rather than of medicine, and it is remarkable that this slight work, de- scribing only about twenty plants should, have sufficed to eclipse
* As in 1 601, and in the ^^Libelhis de Secreto Mulierum et de Virtutibus Her- barum," Amsterdam, 1740, ex bibl. Columbia, — which treated of plants on pages ii8- 130 only.
f They are Eliotropia, Urtica, Virga pastoris, Provincia (periwinkle), Lingua canis, Jusquiamus, ^Lilium, Viscus quercinus, Centaurea, Salvia, Nephta, Verbena, Rosa, Serpentina : besides Chelidonia and Melisophylos.
+ Meyer, 4 : 83, claims that Albertus de Saxonia could not have been a German, for he says of a plant *'dicitur Martegon id est Sylphium quem admodum scribitur in lingua Theothisca'''' ; and could have had no conception of Greek, for when in using Albertus Magnus, he attempts to quote Greek names, he mixes those of Greek and Latin origin inextricably. Albertus Magnus had said "■Jusquiamus is a Greek name " ; but Albertus de Saxonia has it Jusquiamus is the Latin name of a plant which in Greek is Ventosius.''^ Albertus Magnus had said, "the plant which is called Quin- quefolium in Latin, is named in Greek Pentajilon'''' ; he of Saxony has it " Quinquc- folium is the Greek name of a plant which in Latin is called Serpentaria
282
Aster History ; De Cantiprato
the great genuine work of Albert Magnus with its nearly 400 plants, and to do that for over 500 years, or until in 1836 Meyer made known the true proportions of the two to the world. Alber- tus Magnus had been held in veneration in other lines of mental activity ; but his plant writings remained substantially unknown till Meyer's rehabilitation. It was a singular fate that had befallen them ; only one writer of their time, Crescenzi, is known to have mentioned them, and they passed into neglect. Meanwhile the three spurious works were constantly reprinted, and finally becom- ing combined, they formed one farrago of diffuse inanities, which did much to cast disrepute upon the real learning of the Middle Ages, — obscuring even the towering forms of such men as De Lauingen, Crescenzi and Plateario, looming behind its little shadow.
XLIX. De Cantiprato
Earliest of the three contemporary encyclopaedists who shine in the bright but transient glow of the thirteenth century Re- naissance, was Thomas Brabantinus or Thomas de Cantiprato, called Cantimpratensis, from his home at Cantimpre, Belgium. Born 1 201, at Leuwis, a little town near Brussels, entering school at five years, he was first an Augustinian, then, about 1232, a Domin- ican monk, became a scholar and associate of Albertus Magnus at Cologne, made journeys in various lands, especially about Ger- many, lived later at Paris, and died in 1270. He was called by Roger Bacon " one of the few men of Grecian learning of this age."
His great work, still unprinted, Natiira rerum^''^ is a treatise on natural history in nineteen books, written 1230 to I244.t For
* It begins " Incipit prologus in librum de natura rerum," Cracow MS.,/?<i'^ Pfeiffer.
t So concluded Pfeiffer in 1861 ; Meyer, 1857, had thought it written about the same time with Bartholomaeus Anglicus' similar work (which would be about 1 256), and claimed that neither was cognizant of the other ; but see infra, p. 287. At the end of his nineteenth book De Cantiprato remarks of his purpose, that "the aim I have kept before my eye was the Christian doctrine of Augustine, — ' It would be most use- ful if any one would undertake the labor, to assemble in one volume the natures of things and especially of animals.' Therefore I have assembled them, nor did Gaul and Germany suffice me, which are among all regions the most copiously supplied with books ; but also in transmarine parts, in England and in the Orient, I accumulated books written concerning nature, and from all these I extracted the better and the more suitable things. Whoever may come upon my collections, let him give me his prayer, that according to my labor, so may God render me reward in the future. Amen."
Natura Rerum
283
fifteen years he labored, writes Pfeiffer, " to gather the sum of the natural history of the middle ages into one compendium."
The nineteen books treat first of the human body, and the races of man, then of quadrupeds, birds and other animals, trees and herbs, waters, precious stones, metals and climate, the planets, storm and thunder, the four elements, etc. Three books relate to plants, the loth, de arboribus communibiis (beginning leaf i 5 1 of the Stuttgart MS.), the de arboidbiis aroinaticis {\Qdii 158),
and the 12th, de Jierbis aroinaticis et niedicinalibus (leaf 164-
169).*
The work is best known to the world by its use by Conrad de Megenberg in 1349 as basis of \\\?, BucJl der Natur, which, as reprinted by Pfeiffer in 1861, brings the substance of de Cantiprato into light, though in rearranged and expanded form, and with additions.
Several MSS. of De Cantiprato exist in Paris. One in the li- brary of the University of Cracow has an added 20th book, concern- ing eclipses, the motion of the stars, etc., which is not by Cantiprato but is the Sphaera naturalis of Joh. de Sancto Bosco or Johann von Holywood."t One in Paris (dated by its scribe in 1276)13 also in 20 books, t
De Cantiprato describes 1 14 plants \ X does not mention Aster; and is apparently free beyond most authors from traces of blending of other plants with the common Aster. § His plant chapters are very largely drawn from Platearius, with Pliny as ultimate source ; only 16 sources are mentioned, chiefly Latin (with Galen), including Palladius, Ysidorus," and "Jacobus Aconensis Bishop de Vitriaco."||
* Quoted in the original Latin by Pfeiffer (in his reprint, 186 1, of the Bu(?h der Natur, p. xxxii), from the Stuttgart MS. (a MS. of 200 leaves, of the 15th century), t Pfeiffer. X Meyer.
\ Fide the Buck der Natur.
II Vincent de Beauvais mentions De Cantiprato, writing himself but little later, but covering much of the same ground. Meyer thought that the other contemporary encyclopaedist Bartholomew Anglicus, showed no knowledge of the existence of De Cantiprato. But it appears to me that phrases which Bartholomaeus uses of the violet and of '■'■Jios ca?npi'" are very suggestive of De Cantiprato' s similar remarks about those flowers, and are indications of topics suggested by perusal oi De Cantiprato.
284
Aster History ; Bartholomaeus
L. Bartholomaeus Anglicus
What may be called the popular cyclopaedia of the middle ages, is the work De proprietatibus rcnun by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Bartholomaeus was cited by authors from Leland to Fabricius as " Bartholomaeus de Glanvilla or de Glanvyle, a Franciscan monk of about 1360." Latterly proof has been ad- duced that he must have written about 1256* and in Paris : and two undated MSS. may be as old as that year.f His learning was very wide ; his mind fully saturated with Aristotle ; his re- marks on plants a quaint mixture of sagacity and childishness. He has no chapter on Aster, and few on the Compositae. His w^ork is in Latin, in 19 books of which the 17th is on plants and describes 144 species largely from Plateario and from Constan-
* The true date of Bartholomaeus as about 1256 has been reached by a most inter- esting series of steps, detailed by Meyer. After being taught to believe his date as 1360, Meyer found two documents in the Paris University of the press mark 1 300 and 1303 which contained Bartholomaeus. A dated MS. of Bartholomaeus' proved to be 1300. Two undated MSS., on examination, seemed to be earlier, from 1260 to 1300. In England, a MS., bearing the author's name as Bartholomaeus Anglicus, proved to bear also the date 1 296 (two others bear his name as Bartholomaeus de Glanvilla), Echard then pronounced Bartholomaeus' date as 1 256-1 296. Finally Jourdain, followed by Meyer, limited it to about 1256, observing that Bartholomaeus knows noth- ing of Vincent de Beauvais (though reputable authorities have been so hasty as to assert that "Bartholomaeus' work is principally taken from Vincent de Beauvais"), or of Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, or Aegidius Romanus, who wrote immediately after 1256, and that Bartholomaeus quotes Aristotle from a poor translation out of the Arabic when a better from the Greek direct appeared in 1260-1267.
f Bartholomaeus Anglicus has also by confusion with Bartholomaeus Pisanus, been credited with the authorship of the Sermones de contemptu mundi," first printed at Milan, 1498 (a copy is in Columbia Univ. Libr. ); of " Liber conformitatum vitae Sancti Francisci,"a rare folio of Milan, 15 lo, edited by Frater Franciscus Zeno ; with reissues to 1620; also of Summa venerabilis Fratris Bartholomaei de Sancti Concordia, Pisani, ordinis fratrum Praedicatorum," Paris, without date; but presumably earlier than hxs,^^ Su!?u?ia sen Pisanella,''^ Venice 1474, 1476, Milan, 1479. AH of these however were by Bartholomaeus Pisanus. Two others of similar name are to be distin- guished also among early printed books ; Bartholomaeus Brixiensis, a copy of whose Coji- cordiaox Decreta Gratiani (Basle, M. Wenssler, 1481), is in Libr. Union Theol. Sem. ; and Bartholomaeus de Chaimis, whose Interro^^atoriutn sen Confessionale is represented in Libr. Union Theol. Sem., by a copy issued at Venice in 1480, and in the N.Y. Public Library by the earlier issue by Valdater at Milan, 1474. The sermons of still another Bartholomaeus de Ursinis appeared at Naples, 1473, Quadragesimale ; and an
Epitoma Aledicinae by another, one Bartholoma"eus de Pisis, was of that period also.
Editions of Bartholomaeus
285
tinus Africanus, but citing over lOO other authors ; * especially Pliny, Aristotle and Dioscorides, through Latin translations ; together with a great number of almost unknown mediaeval writers. His great work has been 12 times translated; first into English f at Berkeley Castle, at command of" Syre Thomas Lorde of Berkeleye that made me to make this translation," ist Feb., 1398. The Latin original was often printed before 1500; first by Caxton J (fide Lowndes ; and so Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's pupil and associate, expressly states), at Cologne, about 1470, 55 lines § to the page.
* Especially from the Norman Alfred [de Sarchel, a translator of Pseud- Aristotle], from ''Aristotle de plantis," Pliny, Dyascorides, Isaac [Ben Honein, especially his In diaetis\, Huguitio Pisanus [a jurist and grammarian], Papias [his Vocabulisf\, etc., with Oribasius, Aegidius medicus, Stephanus, Strabus, Bernhardus and Rabanus, — to use Bartholomaeus' spelling. He quotes from a number of previous English writers, as Robertus Lincol', Gilbertus and Michael Scotus, Alquinus (Alcuin), and Simon Cozn; and from the Xo'sX. De natiiris reriivi of Alfred Anglicus, i. e., Alfred bishop Cridiensis in Devon, of the loth century, earliest perhaps of English names to be coupled with nature, unless we make exception of Alfred the Great, of the translator of Apuleius into Anglo-Saxon, and of the lost writers of the early medical formulae which became incorporated in the Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms of uncertain date.
■j- Lowndes (accepted by Proctor, 1898) states that this translation was made by John of Trevisa — Watt, in his Bibliotheca Britannica, in 1824, said that the translator was Thomas Berthlet ; apparently a false reading for Thomas Bercklei, i. e., Berkeley, by whose command the translation was made. — A new English translation appeared in 1582, " Batmann upon Bartholome his book the Propr. Reruni, newly corrected, en- larged and amended, with such additions as are requisite unto every several booke." Lon. 1582, folio.
X Hain, 1826, ascribed this, his No. 2498, to Cologne, without printer ; Johnson, Typographia, Lon. 1824, deemed it the work of Caxton. Sotheby, 1858, approved by Lowndes, 1859, considered the question settled in favor of Caxton, after comparison of fac-similes of type, and accepted in full the reference to it by Caxton's disciple, ap- prentice and successor, Wynkyn de Worde, who wrote, I495,
" And also of your chary te call to remembraunce The soul of William Caxton, the first prynter of this boke, In laten tongue at Coleyn, etc."
Recent biographers of Caxton reject or ignore this explicit evidence. The latest to pronounce on the matter, Proctor, 1898, indexing two copies of this in the British Museum (and one in the Bodleian Libr. ) leaves it uncertain, classing it by its type as by his 8th printer of Cologne, the unknown printer of the Flores Sancti Aitgustini.
§ My citations are from my copy of the so-called second Latin edition, the 61 -line edition, printed 1468-70 by Berthold Ruppel of Hanau, first printer of Basle, who was printer's assistant to Gutenberg in 1455 (See ''Early Printed Books,"" by E. Gordon Duff,. Lon., 1893; Index \.o Early Printed Books in the British Museum," by
Robt. Proctor, Lon. 1898). The last Latin edition appeared 1619 at Frankfort. The
286
Aster History ; Bartholomaeus
Much of the puerile in Bartholomaeus * is borrowed from Isido- rus, Bishop of Seville in 596, whom he took as his standard for names, and whose name sometimes appears in full as Ysidorus, but usu- ally in abbreviated form as Ysi, Ysid, or Ysidor, or disguised as Ysyder. From Isidorus he takes his absurd etymologies, as that of aster a star from auster the south,* his stellae, a stando sunt dictae^' * and his punning explanation of sidera, his third name for stars, Sydera a consider mido dicta ^ \ because considered by mathematicians in making reckonings !"
Little that is new occurs among Bartholomaeus' plant chapters ; perhaps the most distinctive so far as name-form goes, are his Quisquilia (certain doubtful foreign seeds), his Thimiama (a prep- aration made for use at the altar, of galbanum, incense, etc.) and his Armoninin, from Syria, which appears to be the gum called Annoniactini % in Circa instans.
More familiar names disguised § by his spelling are his Sico-
first edition in English was of 1 495, in black letter and pronounced " the most magni- ficent production of Wynkyn de Worde's press" (Lowndes). Columbia Univer- sity and the N. Y. Public Library are the fortunate possessors of two of the few copies existing. A copy from the library of the late Henry Newnham Davis sold in London, Nov. 1900, for £,212. A fourth copy in N. Y. is the Latin edition by Koberger, Nur- emberg, 1483; in the N. Y. Public Library. The French translation made 1392 by Corbichon, was first printed at Paris perhaps 1480, and six times at Lyons before 1500 ; the first Belgian, 1479, printed by Bartholomaeus de Engelsman ; the first Dutch, 1485, the first Spanish 1494, etc.
*Lacroix's remarks on Bartholomaeus, although based chiefly on his puerilities, are so good an index of the usual modern attitude to him that I quote them : " Another book inferior to the above [the debatable Herbarius ascribed to Jacobus de Dondi] in every respect but very much better known, was that of Bartholomew Glanvil, an Eng- lish monk, who compiled for the benefit of the wealthy, an encyclopaedia of natural history, filled with popular stories and a mass of worthless erudition [a remark more applicable to his animal than to his plant chapters]. This singular work . . . had a great reputation so late as the l6th century. It was translated into French by Frere Jean Corbichon, under the amphibiological title of Proprietaire des choses " at the re- quest of King Charles V, and it was one of the works most frequently published in dif- ferent languages when printing was first invented." — An antidote against too great dispar- agement will be found if needed, in William Morris' admirable sketch introductory to recently published selections from Bartholomaeus.
t Fol. 74, book 8.
J Produced from Dorerna Ammotiiacutn Don.
\ Some of his authors are also well masked ; as his Pictagora for Pythagoras, Haylj medicus for Haly, to say nothing of Ypocras (Hippocrates) and Ysaac, Plat, Dyas ; and Ysyder, mentioned above.
Bartholomaeus' Compositae
287
morus, Rutha, Rampnus for rhamnus, Kastanea, Ysopo and Isopus for hyssop, Tycorea for chicory, Draguncia for arum.§
We glance a moment at the treatment of Aster relatives by Bartholomaeus, venerable among Englishmen for his antiquity if not for his sagacity.
Relatives of Aster Artemisia^ est mater herbarum. Abscinthium, or Absinthium.
Centaurea major = Centaiirea sp. His Centaurea minor," which he also names herba amarissima " or fel terrae " — Pla- teario's names — is doubtless meant for ErytJiraea Centaiirhnn Pers.
Eniila {hmla Hclenmin L.) " est duplex, ortolana et campana." Collect the root in the beginning of summer — principio estatis, and dry it in the sun against coughs and chills," etc., etc., "as is written in Macro,* ' Enula campana reddit precordia sana.' " f
" Elytropia, Solsequiuni sive Ty chorea,'" are his names for chicory.
*• Elos cainpi'' which Albertus Magnus and De Cantiprato were using at about the same date for Tragopogon porrifoliiis L., may have been also meant for that by Bartholomaeus, fol. 146, c. De flagello ; writing ''Flos cainpi, Flos specialis, sic dictus, quia per se crescit in locis incultis nec sulcatis " ; a trace of influence of De Cantiprato upon Bartholomaeus.
* " Marco " here in the 6i-line folio is evidently a printer's or scribe's transposi- tion of Macro, the form which Matteo Plateario used in Circa instans ; not Macr', the form occurring in the Breslau codex of Plateario.
Bartholomaeus seems to have understood Macro as an abbreviation for Macrobius, and accordingly Macrobius and not Macer appears in his concluding list of authorities (fol. 215 of the 6l-line Latin edition; and so in Wynkyn de Worde's first English edition).
■f This line occurs in Circa instans, in Plateario's chapter Enula. It is the first of the three lines on Enula in the Regimen Salerni, where the other two lines are the lines which end the genuine chapter of Macer Floridus on Enula (as decided by Chou- lant). All the conditions suggest that the line Bartholomaeus cites from Macer had long been an integral part of Macer' s poem. Sylvius in 1667 credited the three lines on Enula in the Regimen Salerni to " Macer, lib. I, c. 20," using probably the Cornarius edition of Macer, 1540, or the Ranaovius edition of 1590, in both of which the chap- ters are arranged in " books," Enula occurring as chapter 20 of book i in both. The latter edition was made from a different MS., the codex Bredenbergensis, which may prove to represent the text of Macer at Bartholomaeus' time in other variants besides that of the precordial line.
288 Aster History ; Bartholomaeus
Lactiica, of which he quotes one etymology from Isidore that is correct, " Lactuca ex lactei humoris substancia est vocata."
Lappa (Arctium Lappa, etc.) "of many kinds and all medicinal ; also called PJiilanti-ophos because it clings to garments as with affec- tion ; and also called Virgulta caballina * ; cures struma ; et exccra- bilia vitia stoinachi curat.'' The chapter is taken from Pliny, Dioscorides and Isidorus ; retains nothing of Pliny's Lappa canaria or Argemon with its Aster mixture ; but adds from Plateario Lappa or Lappacium consumit apostematum."
Plants Confused ivitli Aster. Plantago, arnoglossa or agni lingua ut dixit Ysidorus li, xvii ; ... est herba maxime conveniens medicine. Nam vulnera sanet etiam canis rabidi . . . tumores sedat . . . venenos repugnat . . . apostemata dissipat . . . , ut dicptur] Dyas[corides] , qui multriformiter laudat virtutes magnificas arnoglossae."
Celidonia is an herb of yellow flower and fruit, staining the hand that touches it." Its notabiles virtutes " are reported from "Dioscorides, Plinius and Platearius" ; but imported Aster char- acters no longer appear.
Gariopldliun = cloves ; not Dianthus nor Aster root nor Geum.
Viola retains practically no imported Aster characters ; none at all unless that of relieving inflation and hastening delivery. He begins by adopting Isidorus' foolish etymology, "Viola propter violenciam odoris sic est nominata ; ut dicit Ysido." The inter- esting feature of Bartholomaeus' chapter on Viola, is the addi- tion of a new portion which reveals Bartholomaeus' own affection for the flower, and which lost no quaintness in the Berkeleyan translation made into English a century later, which runs, as Wynkyn de Worde printed it in 1495, in this wise : "Violet is a lytyll herbe in substaunce, and is better fresshe and newe than whan it is olde. And ye floure thereof smellyth moost ; and so the smelle thereof abatyth hete of the brayne ; and refressyth and comfortyth the spyrytes of felynge ; and makyth slepe ; for it
* From the breadth of the leaves of the burdock ? since Ungiila caballina had now long been in use for Tussilago and with Bartholomaeus for Asarum, on account of the broad leaves ; Coltsfoot being its modern representative.
Bartholomaeus' Aster-Properties
289
helyth and emptyth and moysteth the brayn. And the more ver- tuous the floure thereof is, ye more it bendyth the head thereof dounwarde. Also floures of spryngynge tyme sprynge the fyrste and shewyth somer. The lytellnes* thereof in substaunce is nobly rewarded in gretnesse of savour, and of vertue, as Dyascorides and Plinius meane." f Dc proprietattbus, bk. 17, c. 191.
Aster Samiiis, the white astringent earth stamped and exported into Greece since the time of Aretaeus onward, from Samos, now in Saracen dominion, still appears in Bartholomaeus as Terra sigillata, of which he remarks that that kind is specially called Terra sigillata, and is the true earth, singularly frigid and dry, which is called according to Platearius, Terra Saracenica or Terra argentea, which indeed is somewhat whitish, aromatic and clear ; its most potent property is to constrict. For its powder worked up with white of egg arrests the flow of blood from the nostrils. Very powerful it is also against inflation of the feet and against rheumatic joints if its plaster is bound upon the suffering spot ; as is said in Platea[rius] ." J
Reputed Aster-pozvers. — Bartholomaeus has much to say of the mad dog's bite, for which aster, plantain, and onion were classic reme- dies, and for which we find him still recommending his planiago and allium though aster has dropped out of his knowledge. His gen- eral remedy for poisonous bites is to secure vomiting or evacuation ; but for the morsus rabidly which is " mortifer et venenosus'' \ he would " sear the wound with fire or iron "; or, says Bartholomaeus, use a compound cataplasma, made from a river-crab with Genciana and
* Parvitatem eius in substantia, magnitudo odoris pariter et virtutis nobiliter recora- pensat ; ut dicit Dyas,
t Tiie violet was also the plant which aroused Matthioli to one of his most ex- tended allusions to his personal observation of flowers ; this violet which kindled his enthusiasm was a white species, unmentioned he remarks (Latin edn. of 1560, pp. 574-5) t)y Dioscorides, "growing so close and full in April in the Araniensian fields above Trent as to seem from a distance like linen sheets spread on the ground {extensa lintea).''^ Matthioli described and figured in his Italian edition of 1568 four other species of violet, including the pansy, which he calls laccea (the Jacea of later botanists) or Herba della Trinita (from its three colors), and his " altra laccea," which seems to have been Viola arvensis L.
X Fol. 131, in book xvi ; taken largely from Platearius.
\ Fol. 63, book 7, and fol. 64.
290
Aster History ; Bartholomaeus
juice of Caprifoliiim ;"* or use a tyriaca repressiva, a decoction of rue in wine ; or rub on dried figs with ground hazelnuts ; or take balsam in a mother's milk ; but take quickly, — perictdum est in mora. Or use the antidote of onions % called Tyriaca rusticorum, the countryman's poison-cure ; indeed without an onion in it, it is said it will still avail if hen's lard be put in it ; for so it is said according to Constantinus in his Liber de siinplici inedici7ia!'\
Viper-bites, he would cure, not with aster, but with a "Tyriaca" of " Genciana " in wine or **with rue, mint or onions, well-salted"; so says Constantinus, who would use as well a com- pound of hen's brain and pomegranate leaves. J His ''Draguncia " or Arum is particularly efficacious ; "from its odor serpents flee." (Book 17.)
Ulcers and tumors, as the struma and apostema which we have seen treated with aster poultices by Greece and Rome, are by Bartholomaeus treated with "Tyriaca cum vino"§ taken, like the chief part of his medical chapters, from Constantinus Africanus. So he prescribes it for the tumor which he calls " noli me tangerej* and for his cancer, which he remarks is " vero magis."||
Sciatica, for which Pliny recommended the aster, Bartholo- maeus cures X with galbannin, \ also recommended by Pliny for the same.**
* So in his liber xvii, de Allio, " Allium is powerful against all venoms, so that not without cause it is named ab antiquU doctoribus, Tyriaca rusticorum ; ut dicit dyas. Maxime autem valet contra morsum et venenosum canis rabidi."
I Bartholomaeus also praises for poisonous bites the effi.cacia and virtus of " cala- mentum " dried, caulis (the cabbage ), orobus seeds, " nasturcium," "porrum," " aris. tologia," walnuts cooked up with rue, the root of " aspagus (asparagus), genciana," "menta diptanum et multa alia infinita," adding *' Enim multa sunt venenosorum pe- ricula ; ideo divina bonitas multa super addit antitoda (sic) et remedia"; fol. 63.
I Dicit et Const., ... de frondibus malorum-granatorumque ; fol. 64.
I Fol. 63.
II Fol. 62.
^The dried juice of Ferula galbanifera Boiss.
Indeed in case of galbanum, which happened to stand next to Aster Amellus in Vergil's series of remedies for bees, it is remarkable how close its reputed properties approach those of Aster throughout ; Pliny (24, 13) saying of galbanum, " serpents are driven away by its fumes ; it neutralizes poisons, cures scorpion-stings, is used in pro- tracted deliveries, and for sciatica, ruptures, ulcers and inflamed tumors ; its odor is efficacious for epilepsy, hysterical suffocations and faintness at the stomach." Every one of these properties was ascribed to Aster also by one or more of the Greeks or Romans. That Galbanum is still in use as an application to ulcerated sores is noted by Fee.
Bartholomaeus' Personality
291
Bartholomaeus' great indebtedness to Salerno * by no means diminished when, from his treatment of diseases, so largely taken from Constantinus, he passed on to take up individual plants, which are very largely described from some MS. of Platearius' Circa instans.f For example, his whole long chapter on his " Aloa " of Indica, !ign-aloes,J is, as he himself says § at its end, transferred from Plateario ; that on his "Aloe" of India, chiefly Aloe vulgaris L., is, he says, at the outset, wholly extracted || from Dioscorides, Plateario and Avicenna.^f
Traces of Bartholomaeus'' own delight in special flowers creep out occasionally, though his purpose was simply to write of the plants of Scriptural mention and of such others in England as were of special importance. His own feehng for nature occasionally gets the better of these restrictions as we see in his Violet. So in his chapter De flagello, fol. 146, speaking of twigs and sprouts, he can- not forbear to turn aside for a slender-stemmed red field-flower, perhaps scarlet poppy, remarking ''Est itaque Flosculus stipite quidem gracilis et modicus, flore rubicundo." Again in the same chapter he remarks, Among other flowers place first the blos-
* " Haec omnia de Dyas. et Plat, et Avicenna extracta sunt."
f With such differences as that where under Aloa, Plateario quoted from Constan- tinus without specifying the book, Bartholomaeus looked up the reference and quotes the book, " Constantinus dicit in de graduum," and under Aloe, the three kinds which Plateario calls, fide the Modena MS., " Cicotrinum, Epatis, et Caballinum," appear in Bartholomaeus, fide the 61-line edition, as *' Concitrinum, Epaticum, et Caballinum, ut dicit Platearius."
X Excoecaria A: aloe ha L.
I " Hue usque Platea."
II Haec omnia de Dyas. et Plat, et Avicenna extracta sunt."
^ Of Macer' s peculiar plants, Bartholomaeus retains these traces : Lolium of Macer, " Zizannia herba (or) lolium." Boracho ; neither this nor Melissophyllum occurs. Brassica or Caulis of Macer appears as his " What is called Bratica silvestris or Caulis per se nascens, has stronger effects than the ordmary Olus (cabbage) — *' for Caules are vulgarly called by the name of Olus" ; as says Ysido.. .Pliny says it avails against poisons and the bite of a mad dog ; and the odor of its seeds makes serpents fly." Bartholomaeus has some sapient remarks on his Olus or cabbage, saying " Olus ab olendo dictus, Ysi[dor]. On apples and cabbages the antediluvians were nourished, as the animals are on grasses and herbs ; as says Ysido. All herbaceous plants {^ornnis graminosa in terra nascentis) which can be cooked que ...coqtienabilia—zx^^ are fit for food for men, are in general called by the name Olus ; but Caules are so in particular; as says Ysido. Olus is an herb nielancholicum, generans, horribilem odorem faciens,'' ut dicit Ysa[ac] in diet[is]...Est autem herba qua profecit per trans- plantacionem."
292
Aster History; Bartholomaeus
soms of lilies, roses and violets, especially for wreaths of noble worth, to be made beautiful by them." The culture of garden plants and trees, like the almond,* was of great interest to Bar- tholomaeus, and in his chapters on the rose and the lily, after speaking of their primacy among flowers, he shows his great interest in their cultivation by the length to which he describes the effects of pruning and forcing, remarking of the Agrestis rosa " that cultivation produces in that wild rose more frequent mutations than in the rosa vera of the garden. f The rose is on the whole the first of flowers to him, "Flos rose J inter flores optinet f principatum," its "multitudo" of flowers charms his eye, and its medical value his mind, observing "the rose is a tree which is medicinal from flower, to leaf, to seed."
LI. Vincent de Beauvais
Vincent de Beauvais, or Vincentius Bellovacensis, was the latest and most copious of the three great contemporary encyclopaedists. Sprengel calls him the Pliny of the middle ages, a bookish man, and one who quoted nothing except on authority." He is said to have been a Dominican monk and a bishop, and to have died 1264; was from Beauvais in the department of Oise ; his great " Speculum naturale " is one of the three parts § of his encyclopae- dia II the "Speculum majus tripartitum," printed first and best by Mentelin, Strasburg, 1473-6, in 33 books, || six of which treat of plants ; his sources being the Bible, the Church fathers, and to a less degree the Greek, Latin and Arabic writers, including Dios-
* Saying " Amigdalas Grecum est que Nux longa vocatur. Hanc Nuculam multi vocant quasi minorem nucem ; unde de qua virgi," quoting from Ysidorus, and then quoting its culture from Platearius ; see sup7'a.
I Remarking that when the " Rosa silvestris " is planted in the gardens and culti- vated, it is with it just as with the grape vine ; if it remains neglected and is not purged from its superfluities (pruned) it degenerates into the wild,"
f For rosae and obtinet.
\ A fourth part, the Speculum morale, attributed to him, is a later addition. — Meyer.
II "The enormous necyclopaedia, in which he says the mandragora has the shape of a human body ; the Scythian lamb is an animal plant attached to earth by stem and roots ; the tree of life or weeping tree is still to be found in Eastern harems," Lacroix ; — all of which are the familiar mediaeval fables with which monks could then fill their books if they would avoid the contemporary imprisonment of Roger Bacon for heresy.
Vincent's Eryngium, etc. 293
corides and Pliny.* Some of his more unusual citations are of special interest ; he quotes twice from the Dialogus de rerii^n causis of the early English traveller Adelard f of about i lOO ; and quotes Thomas de Cantiprato, whose ink was hardly dry. J
Vincent de Beauvais treats of plants in 828 chapters, some of which describe two or more plants and some none (as chapters like his De varietate friicttnuii) ; book X, I 56 chapters, on " herbs of the earth ; " XI, 171 ch., herbs of the gardens and fields ; " XII, 1 34 ch., seeds, grains, and fruits ; " XIII, 112 ch., " trees ; " XIV, 1 1 5 ch., " cultivated and fruit-bearing trees ; " XV, 140 ch., " fruits of trees and plant-juices." He makes no mention of Aster by name, nor under the names hcrba mguinalis, yngidnalis or tingtiin- alis which were so soon to reappear in the Ortiis. The nearest approach made to Aster is under Eryngium, book X, ch. 156, § De ypoglossa et yringion.
But it is doubtful, however, if anything in that chapter is really an importation from Aster: it is probable that the confusion be- tween Eryngium and Aster did not spread till Simon Januensis translated Serapion, about 1292.
Other plants noticed by Vincent include his Absinthium, Arthemisia, Abrotanum, Gariofilatum, Butalmum, Camomilla, Coniza, Enula, etc. Etrabitli (= tetrahit). Sarcocolla est arboris spinosae gumma. TnrbitJi, quoted from Plateario as root of a
■'^Also Aristotle, Avicenna, Isidorus, Palladius, Cassius Felix, Macer Floridusand Varro ; rarely from Ipocras (Hippocrates), once from " Euribasius" (Oribasius); also from Haly, Ysaac, Rhases.
f Adelard Anglicus, "one of the first Englishmen after Alfred the Great to con- cern himself with nature," Meyer. He travelled through Greece and the Orient.
X He also quotes Haymo or Isaiam, Bishop of Halberstadt, the friend of Rhabanus Maurus and scholar of Alcuin : from one Gulielmus de Conchis, who died in 1(50, author of a work " De naturis " ; from Helinandus, a historian, who died 1 227 ; and often from a work he called Herbarius^ but which differs from the Herbarms or Aggre- gator practicus which we now possess.
\ From this I quote, italicizing the parts which repeat aster characters :
** Dyascorides, Yrgingi vel Yringion sive Nux-agrestis herba est spinosa [17 lines of description properly applicable to Eryngium follow ; then, among colors mentioned, the blue species which became confused with Aster appears], quasi albam aut viridem cum colore iacindino — Virtus est illi naturaliter calida, ideoque bibita deducit menstrua. Urinam cit inflamationes ac tortiones stomachi solvit. Epaticis prodest adhibita. Mor- sibus venenatis occurrit cum zitto bibita. Meliusque potest id agere id addatur ei semen pastinacae. Denique cathaplasmata et colle suspensa corpus limpidiat.
294
Aster Historv: Vincent de Beauvais
tree growing in India and Arabia, etc.; and from Constantinus and Avicenna.
Vincent's series of herbaceous plant-chapters begins,* bk. X, with Absinthium, and ends, bk. XIV, with Zuccarum ; just Hke Circa installs, and many an Hei'barius of the following centuries.
LII. Crescenzi
Pietro Crescenzi, t unique among Italian botanists, and called the restorer of agriculture," completed, about 1305, J his great
* I quote from the 1473 edition by Mentelin, father of printers at Strasburg ; a copy of which is in the Libr. Union Theol. Sem., N. Y., and another in the Latimer Clark collection, forming part of the Wheeler Gift" to the Amer. Institute of Elec- trical Engineers, N. Y. This edition includes the 33 books in two volumes, royal folio, 66 lines to the page ; without date, printer's name or place, paging, catchword or signature ; vol. i has i8 books, 318 leaves, and begins " Incipit, speculum naturale Vin- centii beluaces " ; vol. ii has 15 books, 327 leaves. Described as "of the greatest variety," " a superb monument of the typographic art," — " a more noble work than the present was never produced by the first printers," — it is of special interest from the claims set forth in behalf of its printer Mentelin to have antedated Gutenberg ; or with more probability to have been his early associate.
A later copy by Mentelin, 1476, is in the collection of the Grolier Club. A 1474 edition, in 52 lines, at Augsburg, was printed [Jide the type) by Antoine Sorg. The celebrated Nuremberg Chronicle printed by Koberger was a derivative.
I Petrus de Crescentiis in original Latin form ; Pietro Crescentio in original Italian, 1478; this is also Sansovino's form, 1561 ; Pietro Crescenzi, the form used by Meyer and others, and in the 1605 or Florence edition ; some scholarly Italians still say either Crescenzi or Crescentio indifferently.
\ Too little is known of the life of this lover of nature. His birth and death and much of his life were at Bologna ; his youth was given, as he says, to logic, medicine and natural history; and in after years he returned from his labors as a jurist lo his love for the country, finishing his Ruraliiim when past 70, as he remarks in his pref- atory letter to Aimericus de Placentia, head of the Dominican order, who had been elected so at Toulouse, 1304. He dedicated his work to King Charles II of Sicily, who died 1 309. He was himself of a Ghibelline family, and speaks of peace existing at the end of his labors Meyer observes that this remark fixes the date of his writing as before March, 1306, when the ever-smouldering feud between Guelf and Ghibelline factions broke into active hostilities. Documents of the time styled him Judex, and editors. Senator of Bologna ; he himself simply terms himself Civis Bononiensis. Near Bologna he had a villa, lo miles out, at Urbizzano. Feuds at Bologna kept him much of his life way, it is said for 30 years, acting in legal capacity as assessor before various podestas. Besides life in other parts of Italy, he had spent much time in Provence, to which region many of his agricultural observations relate. He lived to extreme age, if the received dates for his birth and death as 1230 and 1321 are correct ; the latter rests on his will, made, he says, *'in full health of soul and body," in June. 1320 ; and on its probate by his son in February, 1321.
CrESCENZI's RURALIUM "
295
work on agriculture, written in Latin in twelve books, speedily translated into Italian, a work modelled on the plan of Columella and Palladius, and ending with a Farmer's Calendar ; but unlike them in containing a formal alphabetical series of chapters descrip- tive of separate plants. His work included also many original ob- servations and results of personal familiarity with nature. It was first known as Ruraliiim coinmodoriini libri (earlier Latin editions), or as De agnciiltura (Latin editions of Basle, and earlier translations *),
Some facts were gathered regarding him from the Bologna archives by an unknown biographer and prefixed to the Bologna edition of his works in Italian ; 1 784.
It is said by Tiraboschi that Crescenzi left Bologna in 1272, the year of the expul- sion of the Lambertacci faction.
He was probably son or nephew of that Crescenzi of Bologna, who died while ambassador to Venice, 1268.
Meyer, 4 : 140, points out that three types of MSS. of Crescenzi have given rise to three classes of the printed text, those of Augsburg, Louvain and Basle, as follows :
147 1, Augsburg, by Johann Schiiszler, with title Petri de Crescentiis, civis Bonon., Ruraliuin commodorMvi libri duodecim. — Reissued with figures (but no date) ; and in 1493 Mentz (Main's 5832).
1474, Louvain, by Johannes de Westfalia ; with similar title; without signatures; (two others undated were deemed younger by Meyer because with signatures) ; seems to have been made from Crescenzi' s original MS., at least the passages inserted in it from Palladius often present better readings than any of the MSS. of Palladius himself, and were accordingly used by his editor Schneider. The same printer issued it at Louvain again in 1478, and some one at Strasburg in i486.
1518, Basle, by Henric Petri ; also 1538, 1548 ; has a chapter De riso, lacking in the others; bore the title '■^ De agricultural'''' by the Agricolo et Philosopho Petro Crescentiensi^ Qui haec Senator Bononiae,^^ etc.
* Translations Include :
Old Tuscan translation wrongly attributed to Crescenzi himself and made in or about his own time ; printed by Nicholaus Laurentii, Florence, 1478, and often, Meyer using one of Venice, 1542. One of the important monuments of the Tuscan tongue. Title, Libra della agricultura.^^ Other editions are those of Vicenza, 1490 (by Leonhard Achates of Basle), Naples 1724, Bologna 1784, Milan 1805.
Second Italian, " Pietro Crescentio tradutto nuovamente, per Francesco Sanso- vino," printed by him at Venice, completed early in 1561 ; its dedication to the Duke of Urbino, Nov, 29, 1560 ; a quarto of about 520 pages, finely executed, with nearly 200 small woodcuts of plants ; these figures are different from those included in the con- temporary edition of Matthioli's Commentary, Venice 1560.
The figures are often excellent but sometimes strangely misplaced, as when the figure of the moss Polytrichum is used to illustrate the chapter on Maidenhair, here called Capelvenere (Capillus Veneris). For Celidonia he gives figures of Chelidonium and of Ficaria both, explaining that either is used but the larger is better. The trans- lation was made doubtless from the Augsburg edition, both agreeing in having two chapters on Pianteggine, while the Louvain form has but one.
296
Aster History ; Crescenzi
a title represented by ''Delia villa of Pictro Crescentio'' in the Italian version by Sansovino. It holds a deservedly high place among the achievements of that too brief outburst of literary activity which formed the period of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer. J. M. Gesner included this work in 1735 in his Rci Rusticae Scripiores.
Crescenzi's 136 plant-chapters form* his 6th book ; he begins each with the plant's name and gives often a few synonyms and a few characteristics, but is mostly occupied by the direct utility of the plant to man, — which is chiefly medical and for which Plateario is his constant source, though cited by name only thrice. Book V treats of 52 kinds of trees in 53 chapters ; book IV of the vine ; book III of grasses and forage plants, in 23 chapters. Meyer made an unprinted synopsis of 292 plant-species in Cres- cenzi : had he included varieties the number would have been over 350.
As a whole, Crescenzi's work is based on the Roman writers on Agriculture, on Palladius, Columella, Varro and Cato ; with much indebtedness to Albertus Magnus and some to Nicolaus Damascenus ; and very much to Avicenna, who is cited by name over 80 times, or next in frequency to Palladius. f
Crescenzi does not seem to have known either of the three encyclopaedists, though writing, 1305, only a half century later.
Third Italian translation by '' Nferigno, i. e., Bastiano de Rossi (Florence 1605) ; praised by Meyer, but confounded by the Biographic Generale with the preceding ; it is, instead, a revision of the 1478 or Tuscan translation ; title, " Trattnto del A'gri- ctiltura.''^
Old German translation, with cuts, Strasburg, 1493, 1499, etc., etc., and Strasburg, 15 18, as " Von dem Nutzen der Dinge."
Old French translation, a MS. called " Rustigan," of " Pierre de Crescens," made at desire of Charles V, in 1373, printed by Verard, Paris, i486, as " Proufifits cham- pestres et ruraulx, par Pierre Crescensi"; again, entitled " Le bon Mesnaiger " (with additions by Gorgole Corne), Paris, 1540.
Polish translation, Cracow, 1539? 157 1-
* I quote chiefly from my copy of Sansovino's Italian edition, Venice, 1561.
f Among earlier plant writers Crescenzi used Pliny, Galen and Dioscorides ; also a Historid Alexandri ; among later writers he cites from Constantinus, from Gerardus Cremonensis (his translation of Abulcasis) and from Macer, whose name appears as Macer'xn the early Latin editions; but as Macro in Sansovino's Italian version, 1561, which is presumably the name the poet bore in Italy when not in Latinized form ; in the Latin Basle editions, 15 18, etc., Macro had been misunderstood (as earlier by Bartholomaeus Anglicus) and is erroneously printed Macrobius.
Crescenzi on Eryngium
297
while Thomas de Cantiprato had presumably finished his Natiira Rerum'm 1244, Bartholomaeus his De proprietatibtis about 1256, and Vincent his S^^eculwn about 1260. But Crescenzi seems to have known the traveller, Jacobus de Vitriaco, De Cantiprato's patron, to whose trophies brought from the Orient Crescenzi seems to refer in his chapter on palms. He knew Simon Januensis, for his chapter on the Ivus or the yew, Taxus baccata, doubtless de- rives its name Ivus from Simon's remark in the Clavis that " Taxus is popularly called Yvo or Yvum." Probably it was through Simon's translation that Crescenzi knew Serapion, whom he quotes concerning his Ciisc2ita (bk. 6, ch. 29). He also cites, as Burgimduis, an unknown plant writer, — the translator, concludes Meyer, of some Geoponic work from Greek into Latin, which appears by name of LibiT de Vindemio.
Crescenzi's ''Iringio"
Crescenzi does not mention Aster by name ; his chapter 7, book 10, dcir Astore, relates to a sparrow-hawk, Lat. astur. Writing his plant-descriptions largely from Plateario,* and himself also liv- ing south of its normal range, it was natural that Crescenzi should devote no special chapter to Aster Amellus. He should naturally be expected to come closest to Aster in his chapter on Eryngium, his Iringio and Irincii. In such a chapter Serapion, or his trans- lation at least, had blended Aster with Eryngium, and as Crescenzi knew and used Serapion, the repetitions of such a blending might have been looked for in him. But he was too wary ; at least, little definite trace occurs; Crescenzi's references to Eryngium as an aphrodisiac f may have come from Pliny as well as Serapion ; the
* He does not fail to copy Plateario in his account of Nenufar, ' ' of two kinds, one with purple flower, which is better, one yellow which is not so good ; the Saracini use it for headache ; it is excellent for fever." (Both are in error in the two colors for Nymphaea, remarks Meyer, 4 : 158. ) But he is more careful about trusting Pliny, and trims down his story of the swallows' use of celandine to what seems to his good judg- ment the real use that Pliny might have meant, saying Pliny says that with the juice of Celidonia the swallows [rondini) restore the eyes of their young to their primitive state, when they may chance to have become coated over in any way."
f Observing "iringio" is " ottimo al coito " ; later he adds that from Satyrion (the orchid Serapias) they now make similar aphrodisiacs, making /d'jY/VW/ cotifetd with honey ; but they are better if the confection has dates added to it, or pistache and honey," bk. 6, c. 108.
298
Aster History : Crescenzi
chapter otherwise is taken up with description of methods of pre- serving the root with ginger, honey and pepper. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of his Eryngium chapter is his nomenclature, beginning with the opening sentence :
''Irincii et Salvinca * eadem est herba." The names appear as Iringio and Saliunca in the Italian translation by Sansovino, 1 561, but both had been replaced in the original Italian of the 14th cen- tury by Calcatreppa,t now the modern Italian name for Eryngium % canipestrc L.
Simon Januensis had used the name ''Irringus"; probably Crescenzi's use of " Irincii " was an outgrowth of this ; and it was in Simon's rendering that Crescenzi came to know Serapion. Either Crescenzi or his unknown early Italian translator seems also to have been influenced by Plateario's blendings ; Plateario said " Yringi, Calcatrippa, Cardinelli and Seccacul are all the same," and is interpreted by Camus as intending Centaur ea Calcitrapa L.; Crescenzi's original Italian version adhered to the same equivalence^ i. e., rendering Eryngium by Calcatreppa.
Whether Plateario also identified Saliunca or Salvinca with Eryn- gium is doubtful ; his Circa instans seems to have used it for some- thing else, and has the name only, as a heading without descrip- tion ; the French translation, the Secres, has a figure for it which Camus identifies with Sanicula Europaea L., a plant perhaps for- merly confused with Eryngium on account of its bur.
Crescenzi seems thus to have confused Sanicula, Eryngium and Centaurea Calcitrapa under Eryngium. Serapion, with his trans- lator Simon Januensis (and later his follower Matteo Silvatico), had established such a confusion, only that instead of Sanicula the third member of their mistaken equation was Aster Atticus (see pp. 74 and 183). Matthioli, in 1560, besides blaming those who confused Calcitrapa with. Eryngium, added that "Serapion regards
* Salvida in Augsburg edition, 1471, and Basle, 1518 ; seemingly a form unknown elsewhere.
I Matthioli claimed this was no Eryngium, saying, page 364 of his Latin edition of 1560, " Some make the mistake of thinking Cacatreppola is the same with Eryngium."
X Centum-capita, by Pliny and in the Renaissance used for a white Eryngium, was not so used by Crescenzi, who followed Plateario in making it a synonym for (he asphodel and wrote (edn. Sansovino, fol. 120), Anfodillo or Centocapi or Albutio are the same."
Crescenzi's Aster-uses
29^
among authors, most of all, Dioscorides and Pliny ; qiLos maxime in siinplichun historia sequitiir. But it is also to be noticed that Sera- pion confused Aster Atticusor Bubonium with Eryngium, deceived by the similarity of its stars ; by which they imitate each other, and in their blue color; although the whole plant of the Bubonium has not one horrid spine on it."
Crescenzi's Relation to Aster-uses
Among potencies formerly credited to Aster, Crescenzi makes the following recommendations : I use the ItaHan names adopted by Sansovino, 1561.
For aposteme (apostema of the Greeks), use Camomilla, Man- dragola, Mortella (quid est ? Belladonna ?) Pianteggine or Lingua d'Ariete (Plantago), Papaver, Loglio or Zizania (to this form Macer's Lolitun * had now come), Striggio f or Solatro or Morella and Viola.
To confortan lo stomaco, Melagrane (pomegranate) Ella (Macer's Elna, i. e., Inula Heleniuvi L.), Gariofilata {Geum urbanum L.), Porcellana (purslane), and Vetrivola (Parietarid).
Against serpents, Serpentaria or Colombaria or Dragontea {Ami} I).
Against a mad- dog's bite, etc., Gentiana, and Cavolo (Macer's Caiilis ; including our cabbage, which is Crescenzi's variety Ca- puccio ; — he remarks " Capuccio is of the nature of a Cavolo)."
For quinsy, Celidonia, and Pianteggine (Plantago). J
* Lolium temulentum ; of its fame as an intoxicant Crescenzi writes oppila la mente, la perturba, et I'inebbria" [Sansovino).
f The Strignos of the Pavian Erbario, Strignum of Macer ; chiefly Solamim ni- grum L., sometimes covering Atropa Belladonna L., and so here.
J Plants Confused with Aster. — Other plant names of Crescenzi (in Sanso- vino's Italian form) of interest to the student of Asters include :
Robbia (Rubba in his Latin) (Rubia) ; ch. 6, c, 104 ; free from the confusion witli Aster which appeared later.
Ella [ — Inula Helenium) *' bears its crowns not in summer but through the greater part of the month of October in grassy land," "Take it with wine, that di campagna,^^ ** contra il dolor dello stomaco ; * L'Enule campane sanno i precordi sani ' " (Macer's line).
Gariofilata (Geum) "is so called perhaps because it has an odor resembling that of Garofoli or according to the taste and effect."
Lingua d'Ariete or Pianteggine (Plantago); he cites Dioscorides as using it for mad dog's bite ; says it is chiefly useful to dissipate tumor and posteme and quinsy ; so
300
Aster History; Simon Januensis
LIII. Simon Januensis
After centuries of disuse in Italy, Apuleius' name Asterion reappears about 1292 in the Clavis sanationis of Simon Genuensis * or Januensis, lexicographer,f botanical investigator and papal chap- lain. He found the plant name Asterion, in a mutilated copy of Apuleius Platonicus which he was using. The name of his author,
repeating its continuous parallel with Aster which may have occasioned its borrowing of the name Aster as well, at the hands of Apuleius {sup7'a, p. 171).
Papaver. Pliny, Dioscorides and Macro speak of the juice of the poppy and of its heads, whence opium, which provokes to sleep. The Salernitan Meisterinnen, Le femine di Salerno, use the powder of poppy. Use it against the posteme.'"
Sposa del Sole or Cicoria or Incuba or Sulsegnio (Cichorea).
Viola ; no mention is made of its Aster use for epilepsy ; nor other common prop- erties except for the postctne and to provoke sleep : many properties genuine to it are mentioned, and the mode of making sciropo violato and olio violato.
Crescenzi is also an early example of the names Fegatella or Epatica ; Senecione ; Tetrait or L'Herba Giudaica, etc.
* Simon Genuensis (i. e., dweller in Genoa — Lat. Genua — so correctly printed in the earliest edition) or Simon Januensis (so printed in the 2d ed. and others, so pass- ing into citation) or Simon Geniates (for Simon Genoa-born) or Simon de Gordo (prob- ably from a Genoese village of his birth) or Simone da Genova — known as the Lexi- cographer, and once a Minorite monk, became court-physician to Pope Nicholas IV, whose pontificate was 1288-1292. His friend Campanus, himself Canon of Paris, states that Simon Genuensis was subdeacon and chaplain to Nicholas IV, and was Canon of Rouen. Besides authorship of the Clavis, Simon Genuensis was translator of two Arabic words, under the names Serapion de Simplicibzis^' (see p. 183) arid Abul Qasim's Liber Servitoris.''^ Meyer also found in Paris a MS. Glossary by "Simon de Janua on Alexander latrosophista " which DuFresne had used in preparing his Glos- sary of Mediaeval Latinity.
f His Clavis Sanationis or Synonyma Medicinae, an encyclopaedic dictionary of medicine, characterized by Meyer as full cf errors and containing more grammar than nature, but certainly a monumental work, Meyer himself remarking of its value (4 : 165) : " Earlier than Caspar Bauhin I know no more reliable aid to the older synonymy than this Clavis sanationis." — Campanus refers to his receiving a copy of the Clavis through the Prior of Paveranum ; an old Genoese cloister, probably the place in Genoa to which Simon retired in 1292 on the death of Nicholas IV.
The Clavis was first printed, 1473, Milan, by Antonius Zarotus of Parma (Pritzel ; Meyer has it that it was printed at Parma) ; again, 20 Apr. 1474, at Padua, brought out by "Peter Maufer, Norman, of the diocese of Rouen," seemingly as editor and printer both ; a copy says Meyer, exists in the Konigsberg Library, and is "one of the greatest of literary curiosities." A 3d edn., i486, Venice, of which Meyer possessed a copy, was printed by De Tridino, from Montferrat. Four later Venetian editions followed, to 1514, with additions from Pliny by De Varolengo (in 15 14), — and becoming blended with Matthaeus Sylvaticus.
Search for Classic Plants
301
Apuleius, was wholly unknown to him : he describes the MS. as "an ancient book from which the title was missing."
Simon Januensis produced a greater effect upon the history of Aster, however, through his Latin translation of Serapion's Arabic De Simplicibus : thus making Serapion's Aster-chapter the com- mon property of Europe. As now known, * and especially as in- terpreted by Matteo Silvatico, this Aster-chapter confused Aster with Eryngium ; whether any of this blending was due to Simon Januensis or was wholly present in Serapion's original, remains to be determined, when, if ever, an Arabic MS. of Serapion can be discovered.
Simon Januensis was indefatigable in his search for the plants of the ancients as recorded in their writings. He knew the then rare works of Celsus ; he used many ancient MSS. which are now lost to us ; he knew the now unknown works of the Pseudo- Demosthenes and of Cassius Felix ; he made diligent study of a work which he calls Biitaniciis de simplicibus inedicinis^ and of an- other book without title which he refers to as a work de siinplici medicina, copiosus in hoc re'' ; and he used two Latin translations of Dioscorides which science would give much to recover. One translation, which Simon considered f the later, was alphabetic, as the oldest existing codices are to-day, but contained far fewer chapters than the other Latin translation, which Simon deemed the original, and which was divided into books, but was at that time composed of six books ; looking as if to the five universally ac- knowledged books of Dioscorides, one (but not both) of the two so- called spurious books was added ; and Meyer had believed that one of these could not be of the same authorship as the other. (See p. 140).
Simon Januensis was equally indefatigable in his endeavor to seethe plants of the ancients for himself. J He was the first, says
*See its discussion under Crescenzi, p. 297, and under Matteo Silvatico, p. 304. f Simon's preface to the Clavis Sanationis.
X Simon Januensis among the many travellers of that century of restless activity and exploration, vv^as the one traveller to make his results of permanent botanical importance. It will be of interest to note how he compares with the other explorers of the Orient of the century beginning 1 2 20. ( He had been long preceded by the English botanical traveller Adelard, of about iioo A. D. ; seep. 293, n.).
1220, Jacobus de Vitriaco, a French monk, who had been Bishop Jean d'Acre, returned in 1220, dying at Rome in 1224 ; author of a history of Jerusalem, " Gesta
302
Aster History ; Simon Januensis
Meyer,* "to undertake those journey -labors of which the follow- ing centuries were full." He ''herborized," says Lacroix, t "in the Aegean islands and in Sicily " — as Sprengel remarks, J " ut plantas in loco natali observaret." From Simon's own preface Meyer quotes him as saying that " for almost thirty years he had followed the investigation of the right names of medical plants and of economic plants, and with that aim he not only made dili- gent study of the works of the Greek, Roman, Arabic and later writers, from which he made a long catalog and which he com- pared with each other, but also out of many different quarters of
Dei," printed at Hanover, l6ii ; with " brief botanical part, not a whole page ; " was revered by Cantiprato ; "knew Greek and Arabic; but mixed the seen and unseen, the truth and the fable." Meye?; ^: ill.
1246, John de Piano Carpini of the Grey Friars, was sent as ambassador to a Tartar chief from the Pope ; his " Travels of Carpini " was translated by Vincent of Beauvais.
1253, Guillaume Picard, another Grey Friar, and Guillaume de Rubruquis, a Franciscan, were similarly sent to Tartary by St. Louis, Lacroix.
1260? Pierre Ascelin, a Franciscan, sent to Mongolia by the Pope, Lacroix.
1260, Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, Venetian brothers, leave Constantinople for com- mercial projects in the Crimea, and finally to Bokhara and thence to the Court of Kub- lai Khan, from whom they returned in 1269 with Kublai's request from the Pope " for 100 educators." Two Dominicans sent soon turned back.
1 27 1, Marco Polo, son of Nicolo, begins his famous journey to Kublai Khan, with his father and uncle, reaching him 1 275, starting home 1292, all reaching Venice 1 295. His "Travels" were first taken down from his dictation in 1299 in French, while a prisoner in Genoa.
1280, " Gilbertus and Henricus de Arviell travelled from England, Gilbert through Greece, Henry through Asia, their object being to study plants and prepare a botanical treatise," Lacroix. " An Englishman of the name of Henry Arviel, who had travelled much, and resided for some time at Bologna, about the year 1280. He left a MS. De Botanica^ sive Stirpiu7ii Varia Hisloi'ia,^^ Pulteney, I : 22, quoting from Bishop Tanner.
1321, Marinus Sanutus, the elder, surnamed Torsellus, travelled to the Orient in 1321 ; his " Liber secretorum...Terrae Sacrae " was printed in 161 1.
1 3 18, Odoricus de Porto Naonis, or Odoric of Pordenone, the first to go in Marco Polo' s footsteps ; a Franciscan monk, born 1286, missionary to China and Thibet; died 1330 ; author of a description of his journey, by way of Constantinople, Trebizond, Ormuz, Malabar, Ceylon and China; described the " Vegetable Lamb" which soon began to appear figured, as a plant-animal monstrosity.
1336, William of Boldensele ; a traveller and writer respecting the way to the Holy Land ; from whose work and the preceding it is claimed that the celebrated and popular but fictitious Travels of Sir John Mandeville were compiled, professedly the experiences of a knight starting for Palestine and India from St. Albans, in 1322.
* Meyer, Geschichte, 4 : 165.
f Lacroix, History of Science and Literature in the Middle Ages. X Sprengel, Geschichte, i : 283.
Pandectarius' Botanic Garden
303
the world, through men who went there or who came thence, he pursued his inquiries, yea, to such an extent that he roamed through mountains and woods and fields and coasts in the com- panionship of an old Cretan, to search out the plants, to learn to know their Greek names, and to obtain knowledge of their med- ical properties."
In short, the conclusion of Sprengel was that Simon Januensis and Matthaeus Sylvaticus were, ''without doubt, the most cele- brated writers of their age."
LIV. Pandectarius or Matteo Silvatico Next among authors mentioning the Aster is Matteo Silvatico, commonly cited as Matthaeus Sylvaticus or as Pandectarius,* of about 1 3 13, a Mantuan physician, resident at Salerno, where he continued the traditions of that center of mediaeval plant-study, and maintained its ancient botanic garden, in which he cultivated such plants as Colocasia f and experimented with seeds J brought from the Aegean. During previous centuries the School of Salerno had already produced its long line of botanico-medical celebrities ; in him it now reached its best known botanical outcome, and for 200 years more his Liber Pandectai'iim § was regarded all over Europe
* Matthaeus Sylvaticus, generally cited as Pandectarius or Pandecta ox Alitor Pan- dectarum or simply by his great work as Pandectae Medicinae''^ ; born perhaps as early as 1270 ; was making botanical observations in 1 297 (as he says when describing the plant he called Bruculus — i. e., broccoli?) and is claimed to be mentioned in a Salernitan document of 1337 as " Matthaeus Silvaticus Salernitanus, Doctor in Physica" ; and again in 1342 as " Matthaeus Silvaticus de Salerno Miles et Regis physicus"; but perhaps these last two references belong to a son. He dedicated his Pandects, per- haps in 1313, to King Robert of Sicily, who reigned 1309-1316 ; they were quoted by Petrus de Abano, who died 131 6. He has been said to be the Matthaeus Sylvaticus who is mentioned as physician and professor of medicine at Milan in 1 367 and 1388; but the physician of Milan may more likely have been son or grandson. We know little else of him, except that he travelled in Sardinia and some say in Tunis.
t Pandects, c. 197. Colocasia was perhaps first introduced to Salerno by him ; it does not appear to have been cultivated by the Plateario family, and was not mentioned in Circa instans till it was inserted in the French translation of I458.
J Seeds of the plant he calls, c. 134, Cantalidis ; probably, says Sprengel, Atha- manta Cretensis.
\ Liber or Opus Pandectaruni, often printed before 1 500; the first edition, per- haps as early as 1470, is without date, place or title page, has 724 chapters, was prob- ably printed at Strasburg, was edited by Matheus Moretus Brixiensis, who refers to *' the uncertainty as to the author, whose name he is informed by one worthy of ere-
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Aster History ; Pandectarius
as a great authority. He owed, however, his special debt as an author to Simon Genuensis, whose dictionary had served as pioneer where his was to follow. Simon was, at least as claimed by Meyer, the superior in insight and in critical talent. Matthaeus Sylvaticus, remarks Lacroix, though having many fine plants in his Salernitan garden, could not get their botanical names right. Sprengel chides him for confusing Inula with Lascrpitmm ; how- ever, men of better opportunities were still confusing Inula Helen- iuni with Aster 200 years later. Sprengel blames him again for thinking that Rubia tinctoriuni was the same as Isatis ; but 200 years later, men were still confusing Rubia with Aster (because of its radiate leaves, like stars) though without even the excuse of common properties as in Isatis. Fuchs reproves him with regard to Aster itself, claiming that when he was describing the Alibiuni of the Arabs and identifying it as Eryngijun,'^ he was really describ- ing Aster Atticus without knowing it. This passage forms the 34th and last chapter of Fuchs' Annotationes, 1531, his first work, printed in De vera cognitio'' of Brunfels, p. 152, as an appendix to tom. ii, of Brunfels' Novi Herbarii. Fuchs' remarks about Ali- biuni as synonym for Inguinaria or Aster are as follows :
De Alibio, Autor Pandectarum in litera A, Alibiuni falsissime pro Eryngio interpretatur, quando sit ea verus herba, quem Ingui- naria Latinis dicis. Id quod in hunc modum ostendimus. Cum Arabibus, Aliben vel Alhaliben t sit inguen, aut abscessus qui fit in inguinibus, hoc quod etiam Pandectarius fatetur, consequit neces- sario, ut Alibium sit Inguinaria herba ; quae id nominis fortita est, quod prosit inguinibus."
dence, was Matthaeus Sylvaticus." This and three other undated editions were in the hands of Meyer. The first dated edition was of Naples, 1474, as '■'■Liber cibalis/'' Editions 1498 and onward were largely blended with the Clavis of Simon Genuensis. His arrangement is alphabetical, naming the plant in Arabic, Greek and Latin, follow- ing with a description, from Dioscorides, Pliny, Serapion, etc., then with the properties, and lastly the enumeration of diseases for which the plant is used.
*Eryngium or Iringo was in ancient and mediaeval lore the center of much fable ; Brunfels (tom. iii, p. 60) calls attention to the belief that Phaon secured the favor of Sappho because he carried this magic root about him.
f A little after the introduction of Arab medicine the word Alipta for a medical preparation came into use as Aster for a similar compound had been used among the Greeks; Petrus of Apone writes of an Alipta conjita^ about 1 290, and the glossary known as Alphita, of that century, has Alipta muscata.
Works called Herbarius
305
LV. Aggregator Practicus
Of all much-vexed subjects in early botany, the next work to be mentioned, the work which calls itself the Aggregator Prac- ticus, has perhaps given rise to the largest number of uncertain- ties. Contenting ourselves at present with conclusions, we may say it is an alphabetical series of i 50 uniform plant-chapters with figures, from Absinthium to Usnea, each plant being allowed two pages, the text restricted to the medical uses and chiefly extracted from Plateario, Matteo Silvatico and Serapion ; followed by 96 other chapters without figures, of which 60 relate to plant products, gums, etc. It is a work cast in the Salernitan mold, may have existed as a Latin MS. as early as 1350, and is now known to us as a small quarto volume, either in Latin, German or Dutch. Its author and his nativity are unknown ; but whether written in Italy or in Germany as variously claimed, it is certainly a late outcome of the Salernitan school, and Meyer censures it for making little if any advance upon the Pandects of Matthaeus Sylvaticus. Long known as Herbarius, in its various editions it forms the series treated separately by Pritzel, p. 349, under that name Herbarius, * — a name also used for the Ortiis Sanitatis, for the
* 77^1? na7ne Herbarius, so often used for the Aggregator Practicus, is a source of confusion because too general. Other works or authors hable to confusion with it in- clude the following :
1. Herbarius, in Latin, often cited as " Herbarius" by Vincent de Beauvais, but not now known to be extant ; Sprengel thought it a compilation by some monk of the twelfth century from Arabic writers and from Pliny ; I have entered it in the tabular view, p. 97, as probably a Salernitan herbal.
2. Aggregator Paduanus, in Latin, written 1355 (Schrank) by Jacobus de Don- dis (Giacomo de Dondi, 1298-1359 ; maker 1344 of the horologe of Padua; friend of Petrarch); completed 1385 by a Jacobus Paduanus {^preface). To be distinguished from the other great medical encyclopaedia of similar name, the Conciliator Paduanus, (printed 1472, etc.), the work of Petrus Paduanus (also called Petrus de Apone or de Abano, 1253-1316, called by Meyer, 4 : 109, the most renowned alchemist of his age ; the Glosses of Petrus Paduanensis were published in 1887 in the Anecdota Oxo- niensis as a reprint from the Venice 1589 edition with Mesue. )
3. Promptuarium Medici, a Latin work based on the preceding, but not the same with the Aggregator practicus ; it cites 44 authors ; was printed, Venice, 1481 and 1576 ; and in a Low Dutch translation, place not known, 1483.
4. Ortus Sanitatis, the Latin original of the next, both sometimes called Her- barius.
306
Aster History ; The Aggregator
Gart and Gartlem, its German translations, and for various similar works. Among the important differences, we may note the follow- ing : The plant chapters of the Ortus number about 435, these 210 ; there is more descriptive matter in the Ortus, though that is little ; the figures of the Ortus are ruder but are many of them drawn from nature ; these are more skilfully, but more rigidly, treated and are more uniform, more diagrammatic and conventional ; Ortus has a chapter on Aster ; this has none ; Ortus has an Eryngium drawn to represent an Aster, and Eryngium itself, its
5. Gart der Gesundheit, a German rendering of the plant chapters of the Ortus ^ (by Dr. Johann von Cuba), Mentz, 1 485, etc., commonly called Herbarius in its intro- ductory pages : the Der Grosser Herharhis of modern German citation.
6. The Favian Erbario, an unpublished codex of Pavia, written perhaps not later than 1390. See p. 228.
7. Erbario di Fadova, an unpublished MS. of Padua, apparently derived from the preceding, written before 1421. See p. 228.
8. Hieronymus Herbarius, a citation form commonly used by Brunfels, 1 53 1 5 for Hieionymus Brunsvicensis, the Salernitan surgeon of Strasburg, author of the Liber de arte distillandi, etc., Strasburg, 1500, and later; and author, Jide Biainfels, of the Apodixis Cernianica. See p. 332.
9. Hieronymus Herbarius, a citation-name by Brunfels for Bock (/. f. , Tragus) and his writings, yf^/^" Meyer.
Earlier authors or tvorks of similar title include :
10. The work oi Andreas Herbaritis, perhaps 230 B. C., in Greek, known only by quotations. P. 1 20.
11. The Rhizotomica of Cratevas Herbarius, in Greek, c. lOO B. C., now known to us only by extracts and by probable survival of traces of its figures in those of MSS. of Dioscorides. See p. 120 and p. 150.
12. The similar works of the Rhizotomists Metrodorus and Dionysius. See p. 124.
14. The Herbarium Dioscoridis, a Latin translation of Dioscorides not now extant, mentioned by Cassiodorus, before 562 A. D., as the " Herbarium Dioscoridis, qui herbas agrorum mirabili proprietate disseruit (2. e., descripit) atque depinxit," see p. 152.
15. The Latin Dioscorides used by Simon Januensis; see p. 232, under Gariopontus.
16. The De herbarium VirttUibus by Apuleius Herbarius or Flatonicus, in Latin, about 400 A. D. See p. 171.
17. The De herbarum virfutibus by Macer ; often called Macer'' s Herbal ; see p. 196. Some have hastily claimed Macer' s work, after allowing for rearrangement and rendering Latin verse by German prose, to be the same with their Herbarius or Gart der Gesundheit. Menge (author of a Flora Gedanensis, 1839) wrote such an opinion in the copy I now pos.sess of the Gart. But there were in actual fact many distinct stages of development between the two.
Very many other Herbals, as the Italian Erbario of Durante, 1585, etc., I omit here because their names are sufficiently distinctive to prevent any blending with the Herbarius of Mentz.
Authorship of the "Aggregator"
307
Yringus, is represented by a thistle * (probably Scolymus) ; the Aggregator presents still a different plant, a combination instead of any single plant, as its Eryngium -Aster figure.
The figures in the Latin Aggregator Practicus as published in Italy are often highly expressive of the characteristic habit while not correct in any exact detail. Many of them had many copy- ings between them and the plant in nature. The tendency of the more schematic figures to exact balancing suggests an origin for many in the exactly symmetrical figures of the Pavian Erbario (see Salernitan writers, p. 228) ; and singularly enough, the first printed edition in Italy (Vicenza, 1591) was the work of a printer who in that year called in a Pavian printer as his partner, and who may have been the link between the Aggregator figures and their evidently Salernitan origin.
Who was the author of the Aggregator remains a mystery ; only one thing is evident, that he worked on Salernitan models. Once-current beliefs that he was Arnold de Villanova or Hierony- mus Brunsvicensis may be said to be proved untrue, and the sug- gestion that he was Giacomo de Dondi, is proved improbable. f
One of the 17 Dioscoridean synonyms for Eryngium (3, 24) was Capitulum Cardui, in Italy. He ascribed its name centum capita to Spain ; Pliny uses that as its Roman name.
I That the unknown author of the Aggregator was a German was claimed by Chou- lant and in 1 85 7 maintained by Meyer (3 : 183) ; that he was a Salernitan in Italy was held by Meyer (3 : 182) in 1855, but in 1857 he concluded that he was probably a German writing under Salernitan influence. But Meyer's reasons (3 : 183) for adopt- ing the theory of German authorship seem highly inconclusive. His strongest argument is the fact that its first printing in Italy was so much later than its first printing in Ger- many. But printing came to Italy later than to Germany ; the first Italian printed book, the Lactantius of 1465, was six years later than the famed Gutenberg Bible of 1459, and a quarter century later than Gutenberg's completion of his discovery when returning to Mentz in 1440, If then the first edition of the Agf^regator in Italy, in 1491, was seven years later than the first dated edition in Germany, 1484, it but followed the natural order. As it was, the Vicenza Aggregator of 1 49 1 had been preceded by very few printed books devoted to plants ; chiefly by its own editions in other languages, and by the Gart der Gesundheit.
That the author was the Salernitan Hieronymus Brunsvicensis, of 1500 A. D., was the theory of Trew and Sprengel, but as this Hieronymus was an older associate of Brunfels he was quite too young to have written the Aggregator, though he might have been its translator into German.
That the author was Giacomo de Dondi, of Padua, of about 1340, was suggested in 1552 by Gesner, has been widely believed and was accepted by Pritzel ( p. 349). But the synopsis of Dondi' s writings in 1560 by Bernardinus Scardeonius, canon of Padua, gives no confirmation to the suggestion.
3 08 Aster History ; The Aggregator
Date. — The Aggregator cites only 1 5 authors, as its Avieerma, Mesne, Averroes ; and its " Diascorides," known to its author chiefly if not wholly through Serapion. The latest authors cited are its Bartholomaeus Anglicusy circa 1256, its Pandecta,'' by 1 3 17, and its Albertus de virtutibus,'' the Pseudo-Albertus or Albertus de Saxonia, who may have written about 1300. The Aggregator may therefore have existed, concludes Meyer, as a Latin MS., from about 1350. It may have been first printed*
That the author was Arnald de Villanova, of about 1280, was a still earlier belief hard to eradicate, and yet current after 400 years, a copy of the 1499 edition having been exhibited in N. Y. in 1901 as of Arnoldi de Novavilla, and another in 1902.
The ascription to Arnald arose from the ornamented first page of the Vicenza edi- tion of 1491, which was embellished with two figures of philosophers discussing herbs, under which their names were printed as Arnoldi de Nova Villa and Avicenna. The 1499 edition omitted the figures but repeated the names ; thus beginning by seeming to declare itself (and so Hain [no. 1807] recorded it) as *'the Avicenna of Arnoldus de Nova Villa." Gesner in 1552 observed that it certainly was not by Arnald, and Meyer in 1857 called attention to the fact that its author expressly mentions Arnald and Avicenna in his preface as men of a past era.
Name. — The specific name Aggregator practiciis is given to the work by its author in his own preface, remarking "The diseased human body requires the act curative, that of medical practice. From this the present opiiscuhini takes its name, Aggregator practiami de simplicibus .'' ''
* As this work may prove to be the first printed treatise on plants, I take the space to present its entire bibliography so far as accessible.
Latin editions. 1473; *'editio antiquissima of circa 1473, in the Hulthemian library at Brussels," Fritzel, no. 11867, n. ; who writes from recollection only.
1473? ^ copy cited by Pritzel, I1867, as in the Royal Library at Berlin, and in- scribed " Herbarius in latino cum figiiris,'" perhaps same as preceding; unless that prove not to be Latin.
-|- 1473, another copy in the Royal Library, at Berlin, bearing as title the word Herbarius alone, accompanied by an heraldic lion ; possibly not a Latin edition.
1485? Louvain, Belgium, a quarto edition of "the Herbarius or Aggregator" ; this and the next and three other works were printed at Louvain by Jan Veldener ; these undated but the others 1484-1485 ; see p. 309. Three copies in British Museum, one imperfect (Proctor, 9298).
1485 ? Louvain, by Jan Veldener, " Herbarius or Aggregator, in latino cum figuris ; 4V0." Three copies in the British Museum, 2 imperfect (Proctor, 9299).
1491, October 27, Vicenza, by name of " Herbolarium, seu de Virtutibus her- barum" ; Hain, 8451. Pritzel and Hain had not seen a copy, but Meyer possessed one {Meyer, 3 : 183). The British Museum has an imperfect copy {Proctor, 7131). Printing was begun early in Vicenza, in 1474, the 25th Italian city to establish printing within nine years. It was brought to Vicenza by Leonardus Achates of Basle, who had been printing at Padua and brought his first type from Padua to Vicenza, printing alone I474-1490, when he brought out a folio Crescenzi in Italian. In 149I he had working with him one Gulielmu: de Pavia (Proctor), and the two partners printed this Herbolariutn, and in May, 1491, an edition of Euclid. Perhaps Gulielmus de
Eryngium in the Aggregator
309
about 1473, 3-nd may prove to have been the first work printed which concerned itself primarily with plants. From the Latin, early German and Dutch translations appeared in 1484, and Italian in 1538.
Astei' blended with Eryngium. — " Irijtgus,'' subject of chapter 76 of the Aggregator, represents the Eryngiuin of Dioscorides and of modern botany, the Irincii of Crescenzi. The chapter is taken
Pavia was the means of introducing figures from the Pavian Erbario into the Herbo- larium. Achates may indeed have seen, when in Padua, the fewer figures of the Paduan Erbario, and now, by means of Gulielmus, was able to get access to their source at Pavia.
1499, Venice, with misleading title ^'■Arnoldi de nova villa Avicenna,^^ calls itself in preface, like the others, the ^'■Aggregator pracHcus de simplicibus'''' \ calls itself in the colophon, " Liber vocat [us] Herbolarium de Virtutibtis kerbarum^^ ; was known, to Meyer but not to Pritzel ; a copy was exhibited in New York by Chatto, of London, in 1901 ; from my own copy (apparently first brought to America about i866), I have made the citations above. Hain knew a copy, his 1807 ; there are two copies in the British Museum (one slightly differing). My copy states in the colophon, that it was printed at Venice, December 14, 1499, by " Simon Papiensis dictus Bivilaqua." Proc- tor calls the printer "Simon (de Gabis) Bevilaqua," and lists him as the I2th printer of Vicenza, 1487, when he removed to Venice and became its I2ist printer, 1492-1500, issuing some 39 works, chiefly classical poets ; the 35th was this Herbolarium, in which he was evidently repeating the traditions of his earlier life at Vicenza, and which was just preceded, 8 October, 1499, by his printing the Statutae urbis Vicen- tinae. He was also printer, 23 October, 14.99, Sacro Bosco's Sphaera mundi, and, 1500, of Avicenna's Canons; otherwise his works were chiefly classical poets as Ovid, Lucan, Plautus, etc.
1502, a reprint of the preceding, by his friend Christophorus de Pensis, July 4, 1502, Venice, known to Pritzel from Geneva and credited to Bibl. Webb. De Pensis seems to have used the same font of type with Simon de Gabis in 1498 and 1499.
1509, Mar. 15, another reprint, by "Jo. Rubeus at Bernardinus, fratres Vercel- lenses," Venice. A copy belonged to Rivinus ; another, the Rice copy, is now in the Library of the N. Y. Botanical Garden.
Dutch translation, the editio Belgica of Pritzel, following Hain, 8449, quoted by Hain as '* Een Herbarius of Kruydboek, 1484, typis Joh. Veldener Culemburgi," (i. e., of Culenberg or Kuilenborg, in Guelderland, near Amsterdam). Hain adds, that "besides its figures of plants it bore two printers' marks (duob. xylographismis ) used, it is claimed, by Laurens Coster," of Haarlem, " who brought the first print into the world in the year 1446," says the Coster pedigree. A copy is in the British Museum (Proctor, 9158; Campbell, 918) entitled " Kruidboek in Dietsche," quarto. Jan Veldener began and ended his printing at Louvain, Belgium, 1474-1485 ; see p. 308; printing also at Utrecht, I478-1481, and this Kruidboek at Kuilenborg in 1484.
German translation, 1480? " Herbarius, with names in Latin and German ; with 150 figures ; a quarto without date, name of place or printer ; but similar to the edition by Schoeffer of 1484, and perhaps older." So Hain, quoting Trew ; Hain's number 8443 ; not listed by Pritzel; Meyer deemed it " no doubt similar to the Mentz edition, following" (3: 178).
310
Aster History : The Aggregator
from Serapion with additions from Pandecta " and Avicenna ; the accompanying figure is a singular one and of blended identity, showing a stout plant with pinnatifid leaves, spreading and thorny above, each branch ending in a flat star-like flower, seemingly meant for a small composite disk with five long stiff sharp rays, like Matthioli's Aster-heads drawn in 1560 to represent /^(^//^v//^ spinosa. Perhaps the flower was in part influenced by that latter plant ; and in part by an attempt to represent words of the Aggre- gator's text, as Yringus est species spinae." That the flower- heads suggested, in these radiately-set spines, the likeness to a star, was observed as far back as Dioscorides,* who observed that the spines are wanep dar/jp, ''spines set just like a star." But the
1484, the Herbarius Moguntiae, printed by Peter Schoeffer, and bearing his red shields, Hain, 8444. Pritzel knew two copies in Germany, at Vienna and in the Senckenburgk library at Frankfort. Proctor (1901) records a copy in the British Museum.
1485, the Herbarius Paiaviae, a reprint of the preceding with little or no change ; at Passau, Bavaria, not Fadua, Jide Hain, 8445. Meyer possessed a copy, but incom- plete. Pritzel knew copies at Vienna and Bibl. Candolleana. Proctor records an im- perfect copy in the British Museum : comparison of type convinced him that its printer was Johanni Petri, the chief early printer of Passau (preceded only by Benedictus Mayr, in 1482) ; it was perhaps the first book printed by him ; he used for it a large type, very much like one used by Anton Sorg, the 5th printer of Augsburg ; and also a smaller type, apparently the same as the first type used by Conrad Zeninger, 8th printer of Nuremberg.
1486, reprint of preceding, also, says Pritzel, with very rude figures ; he knew a copy at Vienna and one in Bibl. Senckenb. at Frankfort, Hain, 8446 ; who credits it, like the preceding and the next, with 32 lines to the page.
-|- i486? reprint of the preceding, known only from Hain's imperfect copy (his 8447) of which he says the first four leaves are lacking " in nostro exemplo." Perhaps the same issue as the entry for 1485.
-(- i486? reprint in typis Reyserianis, 31-33 lines, but same pages as the preced- ing ; the first five leaves lacking " in nostro exemplo "; Hain^ 8448.
All of the preceding, 1473 to 1509, are, so far as known, one identical work, un- changed by editing or rearrangement, having the same 150 ^gwxes, Absinihiuinio Usnea, and are similar small quartos, printed with about 32 lines to the page, and having about 174 leaves.
Italian translation the Herbolario volgare, 1536, octavo, at Venice, Meyer, 3 : 183 ; unknown to Pritzel, who knew its reprints 1539 (in Bibl. Delessert), 1540 (in Bibl. Paris), printed at Venice by Palamides in octavo, repeating the 150 woodcuts, ending Usnea, but placing Aaron overo Serpentaria (Arum) at the head ; after the manner of Ortus.
* There was no confusion of Eryngium with Aster on the part of Dioscorides, and only two features of strong resemblance in use, those of Eryngium "for venomous bites" and " for epilepsy."
Iringus and Viola
311
maker of the present figure is far from the thought of spines, and thinks rather of stiff rays. In these aster-Hke flower-heads we see the blending of Eryngium with Aster which was made by Mat- teo Silvatico, but we see no proper expression of the globular stellate-spined bur of the plant Eryngium.
The text of the Aggregator's Iringus, 32 lines, seems to blend Aster flowers with Eryngium in its remark that a kind of Iringus bears a flower whose color is as the color of violets, except that they are larger than the violets, and when they fall they have a seed in great quantity like a chicory * seed "; but other quotations from Serapion are mingled with this which have no relation to Aster
A more extended description transferred from Aster occurs where the Aggregator writes of his Iringus that " Pandecta in the same chapter on Yringus or Secacul, recommends the leaves of Iringus and Plantago boiled in water and vinegar, * inflationi sto- maclii, et aposteniatibus oculi et aliis aposteniatibus calidis ' .• and some say that the flower of this herb, which is of a purple color, if you drink its decoction in water, cures squinantia and cpilentia quae accidit infantibus'' Working from the Pandect's mixed description of Eryngium, " Secacul," and Aster, the Aggregator perpetuated this blending in its text, while the Ortus of not far from the same time still entangled the two somewhat in its text (retaining the potency of its ''Yringus" for ''squinantia") and also confused them still more in its figures. It remained for Fuchs, in i 531, to clear the subject finally, and show that Aster had been intended. See supra, p. 304.
Viola forms another of the Aggregator's uniform chapters, this time of 34 not 32 hues. The figure, though readily recognized for the violet, is unusually conventionalized, uniform hearts replac- ing the leaves, and uniform narrow pendant bells, the flowers, while, heedless of nature, the artist has sought to complete the symmetry of his perfectly balanced figure by forking the central flower stalk and dropping a flower from either side of it.
The author credits his chapter on the Violet to " Avicenna, Platearius, Pandecta." Aster-uses of his violet are those for
Chicory, if the printed ciceris was an error in writing for cicoree, the Aggregator's spelling for cichoreae, which was a plant highly esteemed by him and forming a previous chapter, while cicer does not receive any separate description.
312
Aster History ; The Aggregator
apostemata * and for inflatio stomachi, and these uses may have been of independent growth. This lack of the customary men- tion of ''violets potent for children's epilepsy" seems to have caused some one of the plant- writers of the period to feel that something more should be said ; so that in one copy of the 1499 edition of the Aggregator, we find added to Viola in apparently a 1 6th century hand, the note " Viola purpurea dicitur viola ad cadu- chos," (sic^, i. e.^ ''Viola purpurea is called tJie violet for the falling sickness,'' the epileptic's violet.
LVI. Conrad von Megenberg
Bavarian ecclesiastic and writer, Conrad von Megenberg was author, in his Buck der Natnr, of the first general natural history in German, written by him probably at Vienna, in 1349 and 1350, as an amplified translation of De Cantipratd s Natura rernm.
The Buck der Natnr was first printedf in 1475, ^'^d five times again by 1499, but became rare and finally obscure, though re-
A77iong other plants which have reference to Aster history, the Aggregator says of " Camomilla, < sedat dolorera apostematum,' " c. 37 ; like the Aster of Greece and Rome. Otherwise this Camomilla is distinct, and its figure is very expressive of the plant.
" Emda is of two kinds, ortulatia et cavipesiris,^'' c. 54 ; " nothing is to be said here of the former." Like its relative Aster, it is powerful "contra dolorem stomachi et intestinorum." The famous line from the Regimen
Enula campana reddit precordia sana is quoted ; see supra, p. 287.
Gariojffilata (c. 67), i. e., Geinii, is recommended, like the Aster of Greece, for the stomach.
'■^ Se7'pentaria or draguntea inajor^^ (c. 127), the Aaron of the Italian version, Aram of modern botany ; to this plant has passed the former Aster property of mak- ing serpents to flee, the Aggregator saying of this, " it makes the venom of serpents to flee away."
Solatrum " stands here in 4 species for Solanum nigrum and the four species of " Strychnos" of Dioscorides.
'■^ Mellissa'''' here replaces Borachum and Melissophyllon for balm, and with little or no importation of Aster characters.
*The classical repute of the violet for sores and tumors, reappearing here for those called aposie??iata, receives a new revival after its long disappearance from the pharma- copeia, in the claims put forth for it in England in 1901 as a cancer-cure.
t Editio princeps, '475 j printed by Hans Eamler at Augsburg (and again in 1478, 1481); Pfeiffer possessed a copy; Pritzel numbers it 1 1764 among his "Opera anonyma." This first edition, a folio of 292 leaves, begins with " Hye nach volget das puch der natur, ...Welches puch meyster Cunrat von Megenberg von latein in teutsch transferiert und geschreiben hat."
The Buch der Natur
313
Tnembered as an epochmaking work by Lacroix, who in his His- tory of Science in the Middle Ages alludes to it as a sudden emer- gence of light in darkness, and as the work '*of an unknown German -of the Rhine provinces." Meyer, in 1857, had learned its author's
Early editions followed, 1482, 1499, t>y Hans Schonsperger, and 1482, by Anton Sorg, all, like those of Bamler, Augsburg folios, with woodcuts. An early quarto, ■without date or place, is in the Altdorf library (Pfeiffer); unknown to Panzer and Hain.
Egenolf, at Frankfort, reprinted parts of the Buch der Natur with modifications, 1536 and again 1540, a folio of 66 pages, with woodcuts and the title, Nattirbuch ...durch Conradum Megenberger. "
The next was Pfeiffer' s reprint (from which I quote), Stuttgart, 1861, an octavo -of over 870 pages, without figures, identification of species, or annotations, but with ex- cellent biographical and critical introduction, many textual comparisons, and an exten- sive Worterbuch (255 pages) to adapt the work for use in the study of its early Bava- rian dialect and the development of German. This reprint was entitled '■^ Das Buch der N^atur^ von Konrad Von Megenberg, die erste Naturgeschichte in Deutscher sprache, Herausgegeben von Dr. Franz Pfeiffer."
The MSS. of the Buch der Natur are numerous ; seventeen are known in Munich, ■eight in Vienna, three in Stuttgart, mostly of the fifteenth century ; one dated MS. is of 1377, and seven others bear dates from 1406 to 1476."
* Conrad von Megenberg was born 1309, studied at Erfurt in youth, recalling in after years the abundance of certain plants there (Scandix and " Eleborus "); for eight years was at the University of Paris, studied philosophy and theology, becoming a doc- toratus " or a " maister " ; came back in 1337 to Germany, spending the rest of his life at Vienna and Regensburg ; in 1358, " having been fifteen or more years at Vienna," a paralysis, as he says, " came over me, possessing my feet and hands ;.,.but I was made whole while prostrate before the altar of St. Echard in Ratisbon, while the alle- luia • O gemma pastoralis lucida ' was sung, and as they followed with < Salve splendor iirmamenti.' " He became canon of Regensburg, and was set over the church of St. Udalric. He died April 14, 1374, aged 65, his death being recorded asof "maister Chuonrad von Megenburg seligem."
His name appears in the MSS. also as Chunrat de Megenberc, Maide-, Maiden-, Maigen-, Magde-, -berg or -burg, also as Frauenberg ; he himself sometimes wrote it Conradus de Magenbxirg, i. e., de Monte puellarum," merely a fanciful rendering. Pfeiffer suggests (xix) that he was son of one Vogt zu Meigenberg or Meygenberg, i. e., of Mainberg, a mountain town east of Schweinfurt, near the R. Main.
His other works include the following :
1337, a poem Planctus Ecclesiae in Germania,^^ beginning with an address to the pope, in the words :
Flos et apex mundi, qui totius esse rotundi,... Tu sidus clarum, thesaurus deliciarum, etc. 1340? the " Deutsche Sphaera,''^ a biief translation from the Latin *' Sphaera materialis ' ' of Joh. Sacro Bosco ; the first handbook of physics and astronomy in Ger- man ; two MSS. of it are in Munich, one in Gratz ; it was printed 15 16 at Niirnberg.
1348, " Speculum felicitatis hu/nanae,^'' two books addressed to Rudolf of Austria ; of passions, friendship, and moral and intellectual virtues.
314
Aster History ; Von Megenberg
name and had briefly collated its plant chapters with their source in De Cantiprato, a source revealed shortly before by Echard ; but it remained for Dr. Franz Pfeiffer, in 1861, to make the his- tory of its author clear, in the introduction to his reprint of the Bncli der Natur of that year.
Conrad von Megenberg * wrote in a Bavarian dialect, with Aus- trian forms ; Pfeiffer's edition giving in 1861 the first opportunity for critical study of the Bavarian dialect of the 14th century. The nineteen books of De Cantiprato are in Conrad rearranged in 8 ; the book on herbs becomes book V, and the two books on trees are united as book IV. Conrad also made many additions, having 173 plant-chapters against De Cantiprato's 114; of these 84 are of trees, and 89 of herbs, from Absinthium to Zuccara and Zizania, occupying pages 380-430 of Pfeiffer's edition. Like its source, it is more a work on animals than on plants.
Some of Conrad's additions to his author are introduced by the phrase IcJi Megenberger waiz wol, I, Megenberger, know well " as of barley, das rokkenkorn ; of arum, his basilig ; etc.
Traces of his early home at Erfurt survive in his mention of Scandix and '* Eleborus " as common there : and of his life at Paris in his mention of " Portulaca " and Orpinum " as found there ; together with his reference to the comet* he saw there, in 1337 (bk- 2, c. 11) and to the arumf which grew in his professor's garden. He also refers to a death from Boletus poisoning while he Hved at Vienna. J
1352, or later, his " Oeconomica,^^ concerning the regimen of the Court, etc.
1354, his " Tractatus pro Romana ecclesia et pontifice Joanne XXII. contra Wil- helmimi Occam."
, a " Chronicon magnum,'' a MS. which seems lost.
1359? his life of St. Echard, written in gratitude after healing at his shrine.
* "Also, as one reckons from God's birth, in the year 1337, saw I a comet in Paris, which fell like a star over German lands;... and then shortly after, I came here into German land, and there had V:)een many houses wrecked [by it] through Hungary, and Austria, Faiern and along the Main and Rein."'
■f- Of which he says " Basilicon is called Basilig, also Traguntea, or Serpentaria or
Colubrina, and is twofold It is hot and dry and has the power, some also say,
that it drives away serpents from the man who carries it with him ; and, says Alex- ander, this plant grows best in the places to which frogs and snakes are native. That know I Megenberger not, but I know this well, that the Master cultivated it in his Gartleinn before his sleep-chamber in Paris."
{Chapter 38, ''Fungi are called 5w<?w;;/^«. ...Take with wine; there is also one kind, which is called in Latin Boletos and in German PJifferling ; they are poisonous and deadly, that I know well, for it happened at Wienn in Oesterreich, that one ate and drank of pjifferling and died "
Conrad's Oculus Porci
315
To judge from his citations almost the whole of his book V, on plants, came direct (to De Cantiprato) from Platearius ; the authors cited being as follows : Platearius, 24 times ; Alexander der arzt 5, Avicenna 5, Galienus 4, Diascorides, Democritus, Isidorus, Constantinus, Michael * Scotus, each once.
Only one of the subjects of his plant chapters seems of doubtful identity, his ''Altcrana or Verbkraut, very good to heal wounds."
Of aster-uses which might have been looked for, his chapters on viola, f celidonia, % camoinilla, § seem wholly free. He has no chapter on Eryngium, and so escapes any confusion with Aster there.
The potency once ascribed to Aster for epilepsy is by Conrad ascribed to his peonia, salvia and eleborus. As a poison -antidote he recommends cicorea as sleep-bringers, /^^/^^^'^r, neniifar^ and alraimol, an oil made from Mandragora. The fame of Aster for tumor or apostema has with him passed to his camomilla and papaver,** especially the latter.
Ocidiis porci. Most remarkable of von Megenberg's plant chapters, so far as relates to Aster history, is that which he styles Ocidus porci, equivalent of Hyophthalmon, Dioscoridean name
^ Michahel der Schott spricht that the Cucurbita spreads its bloom in the night and as the day comes it closes."
t " no. 85, *' ist er pesser vrisch und griien ;" as Bartholomaeus reiterated.
Conrad's chapter is mainly concerned with " violol " and " violsyropel " and " viol in wazzer."
X Celidonia^^ or " Schelkraut," no. 19 ; he now has it that the part of this plant which the swallow brings to give sight to her young, is the blossom.
§ Camomilfa or Gamillen, no. 16, '*of three kinds," one with white pltwwen,^^ one yellow, one purple. It heals what is called an " apostem.''^ "Our women make Gainillen-zvazzer ixoxa it."
II " Cicorea,''^ no. 28, "has the names Sunnenwerbel and Ringelkraut ; and in Latin, Solsequium or Sponsa-solis, which is to say, Sunnenpraut ; and the plant's blos- som is ca.\]ed Dionysia, — which expands itself and goes after the sun ;...It is cold, as Platearius says. It is good against poisons and for the liver."
^ * '■Nenufar is Sewurz or Sekraut ; has broad leaves which swim on the lakes or on standing water ; and has its bloom called Nenufar, yellow and white ; the root comes from the land of India [the phrase he also uses for Caniphora and A^ardus ] : it is of two kinds, white and black, and that with the black root is stouter than the other. This root is good for many things. It brings sleep and takes away the headache."
** /'^/rt!z/^'r," No. 61, "is called Mdgenkraut ; is of two kinds, white and black ; its seed brings sleep ; use plaster of Mdgensamen to bring sleep till morn ; it helps the aposlem ; and when one adds rdsendl to the Magensat/ieu, daz ist pezzer for the said apostem. From it is made the electuary diapapaveron.^^
316
Aster History ; Von Megenberg
for Aster. He adds as Bavarian common name for this Ocuhis porci, the name Himmelschlussel, " Heaven's-key," a name of Aster Amelhis among Bavarian maidens of to-day. In addition to these two coincidences, when we identify his Ocuhis porci we find it to be Tragopogon porrifolius L., which plant some citations would imply was actually mistaken, perhaps about 1525, by Anguillara, for the true Aster of the Greeks. Strange that all these coincidences should arise independently; and yet they have no doubt done so ; but they lend to his chapter on Oaihis poixi a peculiar interest. This interest is enhanced still further by its moralizing digression which illustrates the character of the man ; we hear in it not, as in any contemporary Herbarius, the Doctor pliysica, enumerating nothing but the uses of the plant current among approved Salernitan masters ; but instead we hear the Canon addressing his audience and in his enthusiasm for his pretty flower and its moral, forgetting to say one word about any disease it is good for. So I translate the whole as literally as may be, its obscure early Bavarian often proving unintelligible to the Bavarian of to-day.
Book V, c. 58, Von der Veltpluomen. ''Ocuhis porci^ is a Veltpluom and is also in Latin Flos-cainpi,^ and is also in common speech Himelsliissel. J The bloom grows readily on the high ground along the roads, and has a pleasant tasting root,§ so that people || dig it up and that swine feed on it.
The bloom has a high stem that holds up the bloom toward heaven ; and it is very bright and beautiful, and if one should dry it, it nevertheless keeps the color just the same. The plant has little leaves which are very narrow.
* Veltpluom, literally Field-bloom, i. e., Flos-cainpi ; Bartholomaeus Anglicus also refers to Flos-campi similarly as specific name, and as if suggested to his mind by its use in this chapter of De Cantiprato, — which probably ended with the statement of tem- perament.
f See supra, pp. 107 and 108 for similar occurrences. Another swine-name in Conrad is in his chapter 23, " Cyclavieti is called S^t'einkrant and has also the name Panis Porciniis, that is to say, S-ioeinprdt '' Eng. Sowbread.
J Not the same plant as the modern Himmelschlussel, of Passau, the Aster (or, sometimes, Gentiana verna) nor as an ancient Himmelschliissel of the Apodixis, which is the cowslip ; see pp. 73 and 333.
\ " Lusiig Wurzeiy
II Tragopogon por^'ifoliiis L. is now eaten in Bavaria under "the name of Schwartz- wurzel, and sometimes I used to see its flower there, yellow and red," Bavaria.
Editions of Ortus "
317
The bloom is hot and dry in amazing degree. The blooms and the lilies are likened to Our Lady in Scripture, and it says ' Ego flos campi,' etc. ; that is to say, * I am a Veltpluom, and a lily of the valley.' Yea, now take notice ! it is a light-bestowing Veltpluom, when it stands in the pathway of Grace ; when the sinner comes that way, then the bloom shines out with full mercy, and is a lily of the valley where the two mountains rise one over against another; justice and mercy; otherwise the sinner were lost."
LVII. Ortus Sanitatjs Perhaps the earliest post-classical work to present a chapter on Aster without admixture with other plants, was the Ortus * Sani- taiis, that great storehouse of mediaeval lore, including minerals and animals as well as plants, which appeared in many editions for forty years or more before 1517, but whose author and original date t remain still unknown and almost without a guess. Meyer claims that it existed some time as a Latin manuscript, perhaps fifty years or more before the printing of the undated first edition. f
* Ortns Sanitatis was continuously the form of its name when first printed ; not Hortus Sanitatis as now often corrected, with a desire to make it conform to Augustan Latin.
f Provisionally, the date may be conjectured as about 1400, which is midway between the last author cited, Pandectarius, 1 313-7, and its first printing, 1475 or earlier. If written in Italy, the fact of only one edition appearmg in print in Italy against so many in Germany, may be due to the greater avidity for herbals in Germany.
J The following outline of the editions of Ortus Sanitatis is based on Pritzel's Thesaurus and Hain's Repei-toriiivi.
Ortus Sanitatis, including De herbis, to fol. 202 ; Tractaius de Anima/ihis, to fol. 297 ; Tract, de lapidibus, to fol. 332 ; Tract itus de Urinis, to fol. 342. In all 360 leaves, folio, 2 columns, 54 and 55 lines to the page, without place, date or printer's name, with woodcuts. Hain 8941, Pritzel 1 1876. Two reissues with but slight change, are Hain'' s, 8942, 8943.
1491. Ortus Sanitatis, includes the preceding and an Eneca in naturalibus ques- tionibus " or " Liber septinius " ; folio, 453 leaves, 47 lines to the page, 2 cols., with woodcuts ; printed by Jac. Meydenbach at Mentz, under authority of Bertold, Archb. of Mentz, 23 June, 1491. Hain 8344, Pritzel " I1879 copies seen in Bibl. Dresd., Goett., Fran cof., Webb." Hoefer in 1856 mistook this for a Latin translation of the Gart der Gestmdheit ; Meyer established the priority of the Latin Ortus in 1857.
1498. A Strasburg reprint of the last, claimed to be of about 1498 ; I quote the chapter on Aster from a copy in the Congressional Library, Washington, D. C.
1511. Venice, " per Benalium,'' an edition used by Meyer, not known to Pritzel. A copy (from the Rice library) has recently been added, June, 1902, to the Libr. of the N. Y. Botanical Garden. '
318
Aster History ; Ortus Sanitatis
It contains, in the Venice edition of 151 1, 1066 chapters, 144 on minerals, 392 on animals, and 530 on plants.
Ortus on Aster. Under the title not of Aster but of Yngtmtalis (i. e., inguinalis, Pliny's name for Aster), Ortus devotes its chapter 520 to an account of Aster Atticus, consisting mainly of quota- tions from Paulus Aegineta and Galen.
" Ynguinalis vel stellaria latine, grece asterion vel aster acticus vel bubonium. Plin. ca. Asterion, § nasc[itu]r infra petras et loca aspera. Hac herba nocte tanq[uam] stella in celo lucet adeo ut eam videntes ignorantes putent se fantasma videret, pastoribus maxime videtur.
"Paulus cap. Aster vel asterion. est quidam herba radiata ut Stella, foliis oblongis duabus aut tribus, in acumine capitella stella modo radiata.
Operationes. Galie. vi. sim. far. ca. aster acticus sive ynguiri- alis.* Alii vero bubonium vocant, qo non solum supplasmatum sed etiam ppinatu Jcreditur bubones sanare. Habet aut qo dyafore- ticum, Habet etiam nomino refrigerativo qd reperissi, ut mixte sit potentie sicut rosa, non tamen sic stipticat.
1517. A quarto, 355 foil,, two columns, 57 lines each ; with woodcuts ; copies at Vienna and Frankfort, /"r. II 880. Translations of the Ortus include : Gart der Gesundheif, in Ger. , see the next title.
" Gaerde der suntheit...dat boke der Krude," Lubeck, printed by Steffen Amdes. 1492, 562 plant figures, Artemisia-Zuccarum.
" Garde der suntheyt," Lubeck in saligen Steffen Arndes' Druckerye, 1520, folio, text and figures different from Ortus.
" De Grote herbarius, die Ortus sanitatis ghenaemt " in Dutch, 15 14.
'* Ortus sanitatis, in French, typis Verard, 1501 or circa.
" Le Jardin de Sante,^'' Paris, 1530.
Copies of the Ortus Sanitatis, once so common in Germany, have become biblio- graphical rarities, especially in the early editions : one of the first French translation, of about 1 501, bringing £6(^ in Lon., Nov., 1900.
* The author here supposes himself to be quoting from Pliny, from a supposed chapter on Asterion. He was really quoting from Apuleius Platonicus, through Simon Januensis, who used a mutilated copy of Apuleius in preparing his Clavis sanationis ; a copy of the Clavis lay doubtless before the author of the Pandects when writing ; and one of the chief sources of the " Ortus " was this volume of the " Pandects."
■\ i. e., " Quoting next from Galen's 6th book of pharmaceutical simples, chapter on Aster Atticus or Inguinalis."
\Yor peripifiatum, seemingly intended to represent TrspiaTrrofievov, of Paulus, 7> 3 rather than " suspensum " of Galen.
Aster- Citations in Ortus
319
Et idem code li, magis infra, cap. bubonium sive aster acticus sive inguirialis noT atte ex eo opere die pferre bubonib' ta cataplasmatil qz assumptum.
"Est autem mediocriter dyaforeticil eo 9p mediocriter est ca,"^ et neqz vehementer aeqz intense desiccat, maxi[m]e aGt cu adhuc tener. est et recens dictum est prius.
This seeming jumble of ideas contains no new matter, but is a mixture of wrongly credited quotations. That credited to Pliny is really from Apuleius ; that credited to Paulus Aegineta is really from Pliny ; that credited to Galen is partly from Paulus Aegineta, the rest from Galen ; from his chapter on Aster Atticus and from that on Bubonion.
None of these authors were quoted at first hand, howev^er, for the Ortus Sanitatis f according to Meyer's judgment, was com- piled, so far as the botanical part is concerned, entirely from four great Latin encyclopaedias of the Middle Ages, the Pandects of the Salernitan Matteo Silvatico ; the Speculum uatur'ale of Vincent de Beauvais ; the De natura reruin of Thomas de Cantiprato ; and the " De proprietatibus rennn " of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, All of these works were written about 1256 or shortly after, except the Pandects, and that was written by 1 3 1 7. The latter is occasionally named as a source in the Ortus. J
* ca' , i. e. , calidum.
\ On the whole, the Ortus Sanitatis is an outgrowth of the Salernitan school ; largely in its text ; considerably so in its figures ; and even also in its name ; in which we see a modification of the Salernitan Regimen Sanitatis. We find the name reappearing in English in Eliot's Castle of Health, and in the slightly later of Health, oi
1584, a curious treatise by Thomas Cogan, professedly " amplified upon some words of Hippocrates" and " verbatim, ...especially out of Scho. Salerni." In \\\\% Haven, in which plants are described in 125 chapters (pages 22-110 of my copy, Lon., 1612 ; printed by Bradwood for John Norton, the publisher of Gerarde's Herball), the long- standing Dioscoridean combination of the Aster-use for infantile epilepsy with \'iola, is broken up and this Aster-use is assigned to " Heart's-ease or Pansies," — " thought good for the falling evill in children, if they drink it oftentimes." But the plant which perhaps most fully takes the place here of Aster and of camomile is a new remedy, — the " Carduus benedictus, or Blessed Thistle, so worthily named for the singular virtues that it hath," which '< comforteth the stomache, promoteth appetite, and hath a speciall vertue against poyson, and preserveth from the pestilence, and is excellent good against any kinds of fever," so that it is called Benedictus OfJini?norbia, that is, a salve for every sore, not known to Physitians of old time, but lately revealed by the speciall provi- dence of Almighty God" (seeedn. 1612, pp. 54-55).
:j: Some idea of the proportion drawn from the different authors may be gained from
320
Aster History ; Ortus Sanitatis
The lineage of the Aster-chapter may be traced through Mat- teo Silvatico's Pandectae to Serapion in Simon Januensis' version.
There is also a separate chapter on Yringus, i. c, Eringium, c. 429, on " Yringus vel centum capita, latine, grecc byoman, arabice astaruticon vel secacul." Here Yringtts in description and uses is properly based on Eryngium, until the chapter proceeds to cite Serapion. At this point the description of properties, the opera- tiones," becomes a confused blending of a blue Centum-capita with Aster and with a white Eryngium. Serapion is quoted as saying of his Astarnticon^ id est, Centum capita, " that one kind is of coe- lestis coloris,'' another is white ; and continues in words derived from Aster, Its flower is similar to that of the camomile ; the little heads resemble stars, but the leaves which are on the branches^ have their chief development in length instead, and are pilose. Serapion on authority of Dioscorides says it is useful for inflam- mations of the stomach, for apostenis on the eyes ; and others say the flower of that plant which is of purple color is useful against quinsy, if taken with water, and is potent against epilepsy of infants and against aposteina liLinboruiny
Altogether, the long chapter in Ortus on Eryngium is derived; as a whole from Serapion's chapter ''Astaruticon id est Centum- capita,'' with a little from Avicenna on Secacul. Serapion by identifying Aster Atticus with Centum-capita led to the identifica- tion of Aster with PIryngium in the Pandects ; and the blended; description then passed on into this Eryngium chapter of Ortus.
Aster as a name for the Samian or Lemnian earth does not occur in the Ortus, the name being replaced as in Circa instans (which is duly quoted) by a chapter, No. 400, on Terra sigillata or Lemnia fragida.
comparison of the last 20 chapters of the Ortus, citations occurring as follows (using its- German version) :
*' Die meister " (without indicating who) II ; " Das buch Pandecta," 4 times. " In dem buch Circa instans " 2, besides " Platearius," 6.
" Paulus, 5 Plinius, 6 Platearius, 8
" Serapio, lo Galienus, 7 Diascorides, 7
"Avicenna, 2 Mesne, i R. Moyses, I
The order in which the author esteemed these sources may be inferred from his- reference c. 422 to those very learned masters, Avicenna, Galienus, Serapio, Diascori- des." The bulk of matter transcribed in these chapters is very largely from Serapion- and Plateario.
Aster Figures in Ortus
321
Figures. The Ortus contains woodcuts of nearly all the plants described, some of which bear evidence, remarks Meyer, of having been derived from those in the Circa instans of Matthaeus Platearius ; with others added from sketches made from nature in the Orient." The woodcut for Aster shows no derivation from any Aster at all, but was copied or modified from an Eryngium ; its small stiff-borne flowers, and its few deeply-slashed leaves are drawn with long, sharp radiating points ; the illustrator may have had in his mind the stellar, but not the Attic, star. See p. 3 1 1 for comparison of this Eryngium figure with that in the Aggregator Practictis.
The unknown author of the Ortus Sanitatis himself traces some of his figures to the Orient, saying in his preface that he was moved to write the book not only of his own purpose but by a certain noble lord who had travelled through '* Alemannia," Italy, Slavic lands, Aegypt, and Crete, " who had acquired great knowledge concerning their rare or unknown or medicinal herbs, animals and minerals, and great skill in describing them, and had taken care that their likenesses should be figured in suitable draw- ings and others in colors." Strieker judged this noble botanical traveller and artist or art-patron to be the Ritter Bernhard von Breydenbach, who was returned in Jan. 1484 to Frankfort from a pilgrimage to the Orient.* Meyer believes that the date of the Ortus is far older and the pilgrim must have been another.t
* Breydenbach' s Peregrinationei ad Montem Sion which "appeared in Latin at Mentz in i486, with woodcuts," has become a collector's rarity, a copy selling in Lon- don, Nov. 1900, for 60 pounds.
f The botancal traveller claimed by Lacroix for the end of this 15th century are Jean Leon, the African ; who wrote of the natural history of Egypt, Arabia, Armenia, and Persia, from his travels.
Peter Martyr, "Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, on a diplomatic mission to the east, verified book in hand, the statements of Aristotle, Theophrastus and Dioscorides."
John Manardi, the doctor of Ferrara, " herborized in Poland and Hungary." Jacques Dubois, surnamed Sylvius, "travelled all through France, Germany and Italy, in order to study nature."
Another botanical traveller of the end of the 15th century was Benricus Calcoen- sis, a Scotish Benedictine prior, author of Synopsis Herbaria, and translator of Palladius about 1493 into Scottish ; so says Pulteney, i : 24, adding, from Dempster, that Calcoensis "travelled through France, Germany and Italy, solely to enjoy the conversation ^of the learned."
322 Aster History ; The Gart der Gesundheit
LVIII. The Gart der Gesundheit This work, which often appears under the title Herbarius,'^ or Der grosser Herbarius^ is a German translation f from the Latin Ortiis Sanitatis, chiefly confined to the plant-chapters, containing 435 chapters in all, of which 15 are on animals, 11 on minerals, and the remainder, 409, on plants. The translator was Dr. Johann Wonnecke (or Dronnecke) von Cuba, also called Cube and C'aubJ, who was first a physician of Augsburg, and became city physician of Frankfort, 1484— 1495. Usually he translates exactly the words of the Ortus ; so mostly in the chapter on Aster, but sometimes he omits a few words or a clause, as, in Aster, the clause stating that it is most often found by shepherds. Otherwise this chapter is a direct translation of that in the Ortus.
The chapter on Aster is no, 431, and is headed " Unguirialis, Sternkraut oder Krotterkrut." Apuleius' story of the aster shin- ing by night loses nothing in the German translation, and the " phantasm " the ancient traveller thinks he sees in it, now becomes a devil ; I quote that sentence, in its Moguntian dialect, from my copy of the first edition, Mentz, 1485.
* See supra, \). 317.
t Its edifio princeps is held to be that of Mentz, 1485, Mar. 28, with superior figures, and bearing the red shields of its printer Schoeffer, son-in-law of Fust, Gutten- berg's partner {^ex libr. Bu. ; this is Pritzel's 1 1884, Proctor's 123, Hain 8948. Copies were found by Pritzel at Goettingen and Frankfort : and one is in the British Museum.
Pritzel regarded several undated editions of Augsburg and of Mentz as earlier, but Meyer does not. Many other editions followed, known by the printer's name ; who was apt to be also editor ; as follows :
Augsburg, by Anton Sorg, 1485, i486.
Augsburg, Schonsperger's Herbarius, many editions by Hannsen Schonsperger, i486, 1488, etc., to 1502. Ulm, 1487.
Strasburg, the Kreuterhuch of Joannes Pruss, 1 507, I509-
Strasburg, the Kreuterbuch of Renatus Beck, 1515, 1521, 1524, 1528.
Strasburg, the Kreuterbuch of Balthasar Beck, 1530.
Frankfort, Rhodion' s Kreutei'buch, 1533 ; printed by Christian Egenolph, as " Kreutterbuch...von Dr. Johann Cuba. ..new corrigirt, und... gemehrt...." With the Distillirbuch. Small folio, 212 -[- 12 ff., xylog. Mar. 26, 1533 ; by Eucharius Rho- dion, or Roslin, City Physician of Frankfort. Reprinted 1 540, with 307 -f 29 pages ; and 1550.
For later Kreuterbuchs to 1783, founded on this but remodeled under the names of Lonitzer, Uffenbach and Ehrhart, see infra, under those names.
X Hoefer calls the translator " Dr. Jean Cuba, M.D , German naturalist, one of the first authors who treated of natural history with addition of figures to his text."
Aster in Gart der Gesundheit
323
" Diss krut schynet in der nacht glich den sternen an den hymmel und schynet also hecht das dich der mensch wenet es sy ein gespenst oder bedrugniss des diifels."
As a general thing this German translation is simplified from the Latin Ortus in other ways than merely translation ; the abbre- viated forms are almost entirely written out, Pli. appearing as Plinius, Galie. as Galienus, etc.
As in Ortiis a woodcut of Eryngium does duty for Aster, but much enlarged and otherwise different. In my copy this and other figures are rudely colored by hand, apparently by contemporary works ; leaves and stem are green, and the bristling flower-heads a blue-green. The figure occurs on the previous page ; it is usual in this work that the figure precede the title and the plant-descrip- tion. The figure used for Eryngium is a thistle, or a Scolymus,
The article following Yiiguirialis (Aster) in the Ortus was on the plant Ypoquistidos, i. e., the hairy rose-gall ; in the Gart der Gesundheit this disappears and the article following is Yacea, the pansy (with figure of the small form, the old time Ladies' Delight of the gardens) ; just as the violet followed the aster in Dios- corides' arrangement ; though this is a mere coincidence, as here the order is founded on the alphabet, and in Dioscorides it is irreg- ularly related to use.
LIX. Da Manlio One of the least known botanical writers of the fifteenth cen- tury was Giacomo da Manlio or Jacobus de Manliis, a Pavian of about 1450.*
Da Manlio' s writings include his Luminare inajiis, a work on materia medica, of which editions appeared at Leyden 1536, Ven- ice 1549, 1 55 1, 1561 ; and his Explanationes, preserved to us
* Sprengel, who devotes a page to him, ireats him last of the botanical writers of his so-called Latinobarbara aetas,^'' or just preceding Theodorus Gaza, who brought the study of the ancient manuscripts from Constantinople into Italy. Linnaeus in his Bibliotheca Botanica, 8 (1747), lists Da Manlio as the sixth among his " Patres Bar- bari,^^ calling the botanical writers of the Middle Ages before 1500 " Bai-bari.^'' Linnaeus cites only one work of Da Manlio, the " Lzifuinare majus,^^ on which he amuses himself by adding the ironical inquriy, Quid minus ? Sprengel remarks of Da Manlio, " the good man wasted oil and labor while he was endeavoring to harmonize Matthaeus Sylvaticus and Simon Genuensis with the ancients ; yet he merited the praise bestowed on him by Euricius Cordus."
324
Aster History ; Da Manlio
only as printed by Brunfels in his De vera, 1531, forming its pages 167-182, and bearing the title Joannis Jacobi de Manliis Alexan- drini, difficihorum Herbarum explanatio," etc., and the running title ''Explanationes Herb. Jacobi de Manliis." It consists of notes on about 140 plants, beginning De Assaro, and ending De Hyperi- coji, arranged in no definite order, but full of curious mediaeval names and of quotations from Simon Januensis, Pandectarius and Platearius. Da Manlio is particularly concerned with the deter- mination of synonyms, and takes Circa mstans as a chief author- ity, though he adds much matter of his own.
Da Manlio was omitted by Meyer, Winckler, Pritzel, and Bu- maldus ; was an Italian, and lived at Pavia ; was not much younger, thinks Sprengel, than Antonius Guainerius, another botanical writer of Pavia of date 1440, whom Da Manlio, 167, calls a "modern.*' Linnaeus, 1747, calls Da Manlio by the name " De Bosco Alexan- drinus"; Seguier, 276, names him ''Jacobus Manlius de Bosco, Alexandrinus "; Sprengel, following Brunfels, names him as ''Joannes Jacobus de Manliis, Alexandrinus (Italiae)." Sprengel mentions him as first to describe a Scabiosa, to call the daisy Mar- garita, to make observations on Angelica, Archangelica, Gratiola officinalis, etc.
De Manlio quotes also, besides Antonius Guainerius and those before mentioned, Christophorus de Honestis, Manfredus (see infra, p. 380), Serapion, one " Compositor " (author of the Bictanictis ? cf p. 228) and earlier writers as Mesne and Avicenna.
_Da Manlio s " Compositor'' is quoted by him under Herba S. Mariae, Herba Crassida and Centuinnervia ; under Spargjda, as say- ing that it is Rubea tinctorum minor ; under Herba Paralysis as say- ing it is the Herba Sancti Petri (i. e., Primida veris : Circa-instans had already said that " Herba Paralysis or Herba Sancti PettH is Primida veris'' ; while also applying Herba Paralysis to another plant, per- haps tansy). Under Cichorea, "Compositor" is cited as saying that " it is Rostrum porciniim, et est herba cuius flos est coelestis."
As to the name Rostrum porcinum see supra, p. 108. Circa instans does not mention it for its Cichorea, though it uses the phrase " of the coelestis color." Under Endivia, Da Manlio quotes Avicenna as saying it is " Taraxacon . . . quam Gentilis dicit esse Cicerbitam sive Rostrum porcinum" ; quotes " Nicholus in proprio
Da Maj^lto's Ascaracon-
325
libro " as saying ''Rostrum porcimini est Cicerbita'' ; and quotes ''Joannes Anglicus " as saying '' Altavaxacon est Rostrum porci- num vel Cichoreay adding of Joannes, Idem sentit in capitulis de Fistula."
Da Marino's Plant Names. — Among names which enter into this present Aster history, Da Manho uses Jierba Morela for his Sola- trum hortnlana ; Rubea tinctorum for madder ; Matersylva for Cap- rifoHum {i. c, Asperula) ; Agrimoiiia, Ferraria and Eiipatornim as synonyms ; he says " Melissa in modern opinion is Ozymum citra- tum or Citraria"; ** Aleluia est Panis cuculi "; ''Crispula est Oculus bovis seu Buphthalmos, sive Cotula," adding "Ladio7i, i. e., Ocnhis bovis, seu Ociilus vaccae, quod idem est, hanc nostri rustici Cotulam dicunt." He also states that his Pnlicaria minor is " Satureia or Timbra," adding the remark that " in partibus Comae unus Grae- cus dixit mihi quod Pnlicaria minor apud ipsos vocatur Coniza seu Timbra, et fecit versiculos sic dicens."
Da Manlio's most direct reference to Aster is in his attempt to classify Iringus, Centumcapita, Secacul, Affodillus, and Ascara- con," i. e., ''Aster AtticonJ' his treatment being as follows :
De Iringio (p. 170), Iringus, aut Iringion aut nux agrestis, ut •dicit Diosc. ab aliis Cardopanis dicitur ; et est species Centum- capitum, ut apparet apud Serapionem. Etiam ipse Serapion ait *' Ascaracon," id est, Centumcapita, est coelestis colons," inferius dicitur Iringi. Sed Centumcapita alba, est species spinae, Et sic est. Et non est secacul, sicut quidam falso opinantur. Iringus autem est planta spinosa, que in uns ac pratis nascitur.
De Secacicle (p. 167), Secacul * est Sigillum sanctae Marie t et non Iringus, ut quidam herbolarii volunt. Quare Serapion aliud capitulum facit de Secacul, aliud de Iringo....
De Affodillo (p. 170), Secundum Circa instans, Affodillus [Asphodel] est quidam herba, quae vocant Centumcapita. Sed hoc est falsum....
Da Manlid s attitude toivard Aster is therefore briefly as fol- lows : he knows Aster only as he reads of it in Serapion under the name Ascaracon ; he understands Serapion as identifying this
* Camus identifies the " Seccacul, yringi, calcatrippa, cardanelli idem est'' of Circa instans as Centaurea Calcitrapa L.
f The plant of this name in Circa instans is identified by Camus as Polygouatitm jHultiHorum All.
326
Aster History ; Da Manlio
Ascaracon with a blue Centumcapita ; he points out that Iringus (Eryngiiiui) and Centumcapita alba {Eryngiuni) are also kinds of Centumcapita, and of spina, that is, of spinous plants ; and that Secacul and Affodillus were wrongly classed as their synonyms.
RENAISSANCE PLANT-WRITERS
LX. DiOSCORIDES AT THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING
We come now to that body of men who labored for a hundred years over the plants of Dioscorides, and whose struggle to identify those plants was the first great botanical endeavor of the Revival of Learning. Each of these writers had something to say of Aster ; sometimes, as mere translators, simply repeating the words of Dioscorides ; sometimes, as annotators, discussing his phraseology ; sometimes, as workers with nature, comparing his description with plants actually known.
Translations of Dioscorides, usually adding brief annotations, include the following :
Into Latin, 1478, at Colle, hy Petrus PaduanensiSy-^'ith " utilissimis annotation- ibus"; reissued Leyden, 1512 ; he is perhaps the same, conjectures Pritzel, as Petrus Aponensis. In 1480 or soon after, Hermolaus Barbarus made a second Latin transla- tion ; not published perhaps till 1516 ; see p. 334 ; but probably written before he went on the embassies of i486 and 1488. Other Latin versions were those of 1516, Paris, by Ktiellijis ; 1 5 18, Florence, by Marcellus Vergilius ; 1 529, Basle, by Jamis Cornarius ; 1549, Paris, by Jemi Goupyl ; 1554, Venice, by Matthioli ; followed, 1598, Leyden, by the famed version by the Leyden physician Janus Antonius Saracenus, deemed by Sprengel the translation optima ; since whom the chief editors of Dioscorides have been Salmasius (Utrecht, 1689) and Sprengel (Leipsic, 1829).
Into Italian, first, Venice, 1 542, the translation by Fausto da Longiano ; that by Matthioli following in 1 544 (Venice), and that of Andrea Martigniano in 1 545 at Florence.
Into German, Frankfort, 1546, by John Dantzen von Ast ; again also at Frankfort, by Peter Uffenbach, the Frankfort physician, 1610.
Into French, Lyons, 1553, by the physician Martin Mathee, with addition of new plants.
Into Spanish, Salamanca, 1563, by Andreas de Laguna, known as Lacuna, and as Segobiensis; one of those who interpreted Aster Atticus as properly a blue-rayed * flower rather than yellow ; he had issued notes on Dioscorides' plants, in 1552 with figures, and in 1554 with criticisms of Ruellius' translation.
Annotators on Dioscorides. — There follows the long line of an- notators on Dioscorides, with whom it was common to have some- thing to say about Aster. I append a selection of such Renaissance
* C. Bauhin, Pinax, 267.
Italian Commentators
327
commentators, some of whom were also more general in their scope, and among whom some mention of Aster is to be expected ; prefixing to each the date of his first known authorship. For further particulars about these authors, see Bumaldus, Seguier, Sprengel, Meyer and Pritzel ; as well as for many contemporary writers whom I omit as less important, less likely to have men- tioned Aster, and whose works are not in reach in America.
1480. Hermolaus Barbarus began, probably in this year, at the age of 26, his translation and commentary on Dioscorides ; his short life, 1454-1493, was mourned by Leonicenus in a " Lamentatio mortis," 1493 • see p. 334.
1481. Antonius Gazius, of Padua; wrote there his Florida Corona^ hoc est de conservatione Sanitatis, describing 300 plants; printed Venice, by Forlivio, 1481 ; again, Leyden, 1534.
1490, Guido de Cauliaco, French physician, whose Antidotarium appeared at Venice, 1490, again 1519, 1546, etc.
1492. Leonicenus * Nicolaus, 1428-1524, critic of Pliny, in his De Plinii...er- 7-oribus (Ferrara,i492, etc., and again, much enlarged, Basle, 1529). Under the title " In Plinii Errata'''' it was printed by Brunfels, Strasburg, 153I, from an edition pre- faced at Ferrara, 1504 ; forming pages 244— 89 of Brunfels' De vera herbarum cognitione appendix. In this Leonicenus has much to say " De T7'-ipolio,'''' p. 24, and ** De Turbit,"
p. 81, which relates to the literature of Aster Tripolitcm L. Leonicenus' De
Plinii''' is also source of many quotations by Brunfels in his own writings, tomes i, ii and iii of his "Herbarum," 1530-7- Marcellus Vergilius praises him as "vir nostra aetate dignus," and refers to Leonicenus' copious writings about Coronopus, which was soon after known as Stellaria and finally confused by some with Aster Atticus ; I find nothing on Coronopus, however, in Leonicenus' '•^Errata.''''
1501. Gerardus Nocito, a Sicilian, known as Pharmacopaeus ; his Lucidarium Medicinae, Naples, 1511, " librum copiosum, et valde utilem, atque curiosum," giving " a notice of all simples " (Bumaldus, 17).
1510. Collinutius, or Pandolfo Collenuccio ; author of Pliniana defensio,^^ a response to Leonicenus' criticisms (Ferrara, 1510; repeated by Brunfels, 1531, in his De vera, forming pages 89-I16). He treats de Tripolio''^ [Aster Tripolitim, etc) p. 91 of Brunfels' edition.
1516. Ruellius' translation of Dioscorides into Latin ; Paris, 1516 ; seep. 337.
15 18. Marcellus Vergilius' translation of Dioscorides into Latin, with copious notes; Florence, 1518; see p. 337.
1 5 18. Joannes Tollatus de Vorchemberg, author, Strasburg, 15 18, of '* Alarga- rita Medicinae, ...de remediis herbarum."
1 5 18, Vigonius, Joannes de Vigo, Genuensis, archiater to Pope Julius II ; his Chirurgia Practica treats in its 7th book " de natura Siniplicitwi " / printed Leyden,
* Born of the Leoniceno family of Vicenza, or in their neighboring Castel di Lonigo, Latinized as Leonicum ; became one of the greatest masters of elegant Latinity of his age ; living to be 96, his long life confuted the conclusions too hastily inferred from the early deaths of Hermolaus, Kyber, Valerius Cordus, Conrad Gesner, etc., that botan- ical studies were unfavorable in the i6th century to longevity; the fact being that it was the century of the plague, and many young botanists fell victims.
328 Aster History; Renaissance Annotators
15 18 ; Brunfels in his *' Rhapsodies " makes many concise quotations from hira ; he was also vigorous as well as concise, if we may judge from his remark about Asarum (Br. I : 74)that its root applied in a lotion vehementer cerebrum confortat."
15 1 9, Manardus, 1462-1536, critic of Dioscorides, see p. 338.
1525, Luca Ghini began this year his famous lectures at Bologna on the plants of Dioscorides, lectures continuing 28 years and meeting great applause, though as yet un- published, but lying in MS. at the Univ. of Bologna. Ghini " was the first who erected a separate professorial chair of botanical science ; he was the preceptor of Caesalpino and of Anguillara, who became two of the soundest critics in the knowledge of plants that the age produced," Pulteney. Wm. Turner was also Ghini's pupil at Bologna. Ghini afterward founded the botanical garden of Pisa ; see infra, pp. 367, 369.
1527 Euricius Cordus, Simesius, 1486-1538 ; see p. 355.
1528, Giorgio Valla, of Piacenza ; his De sifnpliciu?>i natura was printed at Stras- burg, Aug., 1528, 8vo, 104 fol. He is one of the authorities Brunfels used, citing him for Safyi'ion^ Chamaedrys, Capnon (Valla's caption for Futfiaria), etc.
1529, Janus Comarius' Dioscorides ; see p. 339 and {infra under Rivius).
1529, Count Hermann von Neuenar, author of " Annotations " printed by Brunfels, 1531 (forming pages 1 1 6-1 29 of his De vera) and prefaced by a letter by Count von Neuenar from Cologne in 1529 to Schottus, John Scott, the Strasburg printer. These Annotations are concerned with the nomenclature, etc., of 28 plants of Dioscorides: "discussing Buphthalmum, Chamomilla, Anthemis, Chrysanthemum, Argemone and Eupatorium, pp. 118-II9, among plants sometimes confused with Aster. Count von Neuenar remarks, p. 128, that he uses "opera Symonis lanvensis, atque Pandectarii, ■uf>i non halhicinantur.'''' He was " the last of a noble family ; was born probably in 1476; died 1530 at Cologne ; was translator of Psalms into Latin hexameter; edited a life of Charlemagne, an edition of Theodorus Priscianus, etc.," Meyer, 4 : 242-6.
1530, Baptista Fiera, of Mantua, author of " De virtutibus herbarum," Strasburg, 1530; probably the author whom Brunfels lists among his authorities, 1530, as " Bap- tista ferrar."
1530? Baptista Pius, another of Brunfels' recent authorities, 1 530, perhaps Bumal- dus' Jo. Baptista Theodosius, physician, professor of medicine at Bologna, an edition of whose Epistles to Manardus, Victorius, etc., on medicinal herbs was printed at Basle, 1553.
1531, Brunfels, " Father of botany " ; Exegesis, Dioscorides ; seep. 340.
1531, Leonhard Fuchs, 1501-1566 ; " Annotationes " on Dioscorides ; ia Brun- fels' De Vera; see p. 348.
1531, Bock or Tragus; " Dissertationes " on Dioscorides; in Brunfel's De vera.
1531, John Lonicer ; his Scholia on Nicander, 1531, on Dioscorides, 1543.
1532, Symphorianus Campegianus, of Leyden ; his Castigationes.^ Leyden, 1532, consisted of four books of emendations, chiefly of Arabic physicians ; his Elysium Galliarum followed, Leyden, 1 533.
1533, Joannes Franciscus Rota, *' medicus...peritissimus," of Bologna; his De Graecortwi medicaminibtts, Bologna, 15.33-
1533, Cornelius Petrus Leydensis ; notes on Dioscorides, Amsterdam, 1533.
1534, Benedictus Textor, Stirpinm differentiae ex Dioscorides, Paris.
1536, Antonius Musa Brasavola ; born and died (like Manardus) at Ferrara ; 1500-1555 ; court-physician 1525 to Hercules II, Prince of Ferrara ; was in high esteem as physician with the Pope, German emperor, Alfonso I, and Francis I ; author of ' Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum," Rome, 1536 ; does not describe
Amatus, Cardanus, Goupyl, etc. 329
plants ; unlike its praises of " optime meritus," * Sprengel considers *' it but added to the hallucinations then current."
1536, Amatus Lusitanus, friend of Musa the preceding ; author of notes on Dios- corides, Antwerp, 1536, reissued at Antwerp, 1554, etc., with the Grk., It., Sp., Ger. and Fr. names for the plants of Dio.scorides. See under Matthioli.
1539, Agricola Johannes, Ammonius, by birth Paeurle ; wrote on the medical his- tory of plants of the ancients and moderns, his Medicinae herbariae lihri duo, I)a.sle.
1540, Dorstenius' Botanicon ; seep. 353.
1541, Fuscus, or Remaclus Fusch a Lymborch. His '* Flantarian omnium quarumhodie apud pharmacopeias usus est vt\2i^\%{xto^QXi% Nomendaturae,^'' Paris, 1541, catalogues these names in Gr. , Lat., Fr., It., Sp. and Ger. It contains i^fide copy ex bibl. Columbia Univ. ) no Aster at all, agreeing thus with Fuchs, 1542, and Ryff, I543> who assert that Aster Atticus was not then in officinal use.
1541, Conrad Gesner, 15 16-1565 ; see p. 358.
I543j Walter Ryff, or Rivius ; his Dioscorides, 1543, see p. 389.
1543, John Lonitzer or Lonicer, in Dioscoridae ...scholia nova, Marburg.
1544, Petrus Andreas Matthiolus, Senensis ; or Matthioli ; Discorsi ct Covivienh on Dioscorides, Venice, see p. 381.
1544, Gisbertus Horstius, of Amsterdam; " libellum de Tuxpeto et Thapsis radici- bus pulcherrimum edidit," Rome, 1544 {Bumaidus, 21). For Turbith, see p. 327.
1545, Hieronymus Cardanus, of Milan, and a citizen of 'Bologna, professor of medicine there, author of "Z><? simplicium,^'' etc., Venice, by Hieronymus Scotus, 1545 ; author of De Cyna radice, item de Sarza-parilla," Leyden, 1548, and other works 1550, 1557, etc. After his death, 1576, his heirs in 1580 published at Rome as if by the irony of fate his manuscript work " De sanitate tuenda et vita producenda." = His " De Stibtilitate " in 21 books, 1550, devoted the 8th book to plants ; a copy is in the Latimer Clark collection, N. Y.; it seems not to mention Aster.
1548, Robertus Constantinus ; his notes on Dioscorides (Bumaidus, 25), appear in an edition of Amatus Lusitanus' notes, Leyden, 1548 ; his notes on Theophrastus ap- peared in the edition of those of Scaliger, Leyden, 1584, and of Bodaeus a Stapel, 1644 ; he it was who suggested that Theophrastus' Asteriscos was meant for Astericon, not Aster ; see p. Il6.
1549, Jean Goupyl f of Poitou ; his edition of Dioscorides, based on the Latin translation by Ruellius, was printed in Paris, 1549, by Petrus Haultinus. Goupyl prints the Latin and the original Greek in parallel columns, as Saracenus and Sprengel after him. He so divides his author as to make 8 books ; separates what he judges to be later accretions, as " Notha," pp. 354-382, which are the same as those of Saracenus' subsequent arrangement. He follows with his notes," Castigationes," pp. 383, " offered with much diffidence" after the work done " by Hermolaus Barbarus, Marcellus Ver- gilius and Johannes Ruellius ' ' ; they were suggestions from variant readings in the Paris MSS.; none apply to Aster Atticus. Aster Atticus is described, p. 231, bk. 4, c. 120 ; the color-phrase used is " purple or yellow."
1549, Valerius Cordus, son of Euricius Cord us ; see p. 355.
1 55 1, Adam Lonicer or Lonitzer, nephew of John (Joannes Lonicerus) , his " Natu- ralis Historia " was issued at Marburg, 1551 ; by Egenolph ; see p. 391.
1552, H. B. P. scripsit ociiltato nomine in Dioscondan^'' ; Seguier, 54.
* See Bumaidus, 20.
I " Jacobus Goupylus," the printer Haultinus calls him : fide copy ex bibl. Colu.
330 Aster History; Renaissance Annotators
1553, Bellonius, — Pierre Belon — the Cenomanian, traveller through the Orient to recover the plants of the ancients; his " Les Obse}'Z'ations...QVi Grece," etc., Paris, 1553 ; in a Latin translation by Clusius, " Phirimarum ...rermn'xn Graecia," Antwerp, 1589; 8vo, 468. Seep. 368.
1556, Casma ; Joannes Casma Holzachius, of Basle ; Annotationes in Dioscoridem^ Leyden, 1556.
1557, Guilandini's De Siirpiurn ; see pp. 360, 367, 386.
1559, Bartholomew Maranta ; whose Methodiis in simplichim, Ven. 1 559, includes ** innumerable notes made from his own observation," SprengeL 1561, Anguillara's Semplici ; see p. 365.
1561, Antonius Stupanus, on the Pi'operties of Dioscorides' herbs, 1561. 1561, Valerius Cordus, Annotationes in Dioscoridem, Strasburg, 1561 ; seep. 355. 1565, Gesner's edition of Dioscorides' Etcpoj'ieta, Strasburg, 1565 ; finished by Gesner after the death of Moiban his coadjutor, — Jacobus Moibanus Augustanus. 1 581 Caspar Wolft's Alphabetum empiriaim sive Dioscoridis, etc.; see p. 364. 1586, Camerarius' Epitome, from Matthioli's Dioscorides ; see p. 388. 1 591, Aldrovandi, Coininents on Dioscorides.
1591, Jean Bauhin, whose series of works on the plants of the ancients and finally of the whole world, began with his De planiis, Basle, 1591.
1592, Antonio Pasini, Annotazioni on Dioscorides, Bergamo, 1592,
1596, Caspar Bauhin, whose works on the plants of the past and of his own time began with his Phytopinax, Basle, 1 596, and culminated in his Pinax, 1623, in which he formulated the results of his labor of 40 years in establishing the complete synonymy of 1 6th century plant writers, and formed the bridge by which the modern and the ancient botany are joined.
1598, Saracenus' notes on Dioscorides, Leyden.
1608, Nicolao Marogna, Commentarii on Dioscorides, with emendations of Mat- thioli, Basle.
1 610, Peter Uffenbach's German translation of Dioscorides, modified from that of von A St.
1628, Jacques and Paul Contant, father and son, apothecaries of Poitiers ; Notae on Dioscorides.
1689, Salmasius' notes on Dioscorides, Utrecht. 1829, Sprengel's notes on Dioscorides, Leipsic.
LXI. Hieronymus of Brunswick In I 500 first appeared the often -reprinted Distiller ung Buck " of Hieronymus Brunsvicensis, Hieronymus Brunsthwygk von Salern, as Pritzel calls him, i. e., " Jeronimo the Strasburg physi- cian, of a Brunswick family sprung from Salerno," — if we combine his titles. Little is known of him ; in his preface he calls him- self Hieronymus Brunschwyg, des geschlechts Salern, biintig von Strassburgk." The printer of 1500, Grueninger of Strasburg, calls him Jeronimo," and "vvundt Artzot," physician of wounds, or surgeon, and locates him at Strasburg. Sprengel (Geschichte, I : 295-6) calls him therefore chiriirgus Argentifiensis,'' and notes
The Old and the New Learning
331
how he exercised himself in the botany of antiquity, and how he showed himself but a " rudis homo litcrarum " in making many a
ridicuhim plane errorem'' about the identification of Arabic and Hebrew names of plants. But these mistakes of that period were the stepping-stones on which rose the knowledge of the next. Meyer ignores him almost entirely. Brunfels calls him " nobilisy meaning of a noble family (expatriated from Salerno ?) and
experimentator,'' sWwdXw'g to his efforts to distil medicinal or other waters from a great range of plants ; and usually simply //'(fr^^nV/.y, " the herbalist." Perhaps no other among the many plant-workers of the Renaissance time united so fully the old and the new attitudes toward nature ; like the old, he was continually copying the remarks of the ancients on properties : like the new^ he was himself wandering in the fields to get a knowledge of plants at first hand. Though using Latin, he was fond of the vernacular, wrote in it and recorded the names that he heard from the lips of the people. Though submitting the properties of plants to the scientific test of the retorts in his laboratory, he was still of the age of Ponce de Leon who believed in a fountain of youth ;: there were plants which Hieronymus believed could confer the gift of beauty ; and he remarks of the fumitory-vine, that " Fn~ mariae potio. . .pulchritudinem inducit." *
Hieronymus' Distillening BiicJi. — Hieronymus' best-known work, his Liber de arte distillandi, — von der Kunst der distil- lerung," Strasburg, 1500, is a folio with 212 leaves and over 200 figures of plants, among which one, the widely distributed Gentiana cruciata of the European continent, was here figured for the first \AmQ, fide Sprengel.
The Distillening Buck has, remarks Sprengel {Gcschichte, i : 295), almost the same plant descriptions and the same figures as in the Ortus Sanitatis ; i. e., nearly the same as far as they go, the woodcuts numbering only 2 fide Pritzelf
* Quoted by Brunfels, i : 102.
•f-This Distillening Buck'''' as it was often termed, was reissued in innumerable impressions {Pritzel) especially 1505, 1512, 15 15, 1519, 1521. All were printed by Griininger before Brunfels wrote ; an anonymous English version had also already appeared, Southwark, 1525, under the title " The vertuose boke of Distyliacyoti of the waters of all maner of herbesy Important German editions which followed later were those of Egenolph, Frankfort, 1533, bound together with the enlarged Ortus Sanitatis
332
Aster History; Hieronymus of Brunswick
HiERONYMUS' ApODIXIS
Hieronymus was also author of an early alphabetical flora of Germany, entitled Apodixis Gennanica, i. e., German Guide to Native Plants,* containing brief descriptions in German of 207
of Eucharius Rhodion ; and that of Egenolph's heirs, Frankfort, i6io, reissued, but without its figures, in one volume with the German translation of Dioscorides by Peter Uffenbach.
Brunfels, using the Distillerung-Buch, quotes from " Hieronymus Herbarius " often, throughout his plant-descriptions, or Rhapsodies, as he calls them ; referring to him as ^' Hieronymus Braunschwigius, non ineptus Herbarius " (tom. iii, 78) and as " Nobilis Experimentator et Herbarius, Hieronymus " (i : 55), as " Nobilis Herbarius Hierony- mus " (i : 79, 81), but generally simply as " Hieronymus Herbarius," often with long extracts, as that, i : 96-98, on our familiar Cowslip, which Brunfels knew as Herba paralysis from supposed curative powers. Brunfels' quotations from Hermolaus and from Hieronymus indicate a long-standing confusion between our Cowslip and the Oxeye or Buphthalmum or perhaps with Aster, many of the properties which Hieronymus enumerates for his Herba Paralysis being those once ascribed to Aster, including its use for burning stomach, for headache, for the bite of serpents and all venomous animals, for certain tumors, and for labor-pains. Hieronymus' description of Aristolochia sug- gests also some influx from Aster, the Aristolochia like the classic Aster being used especially, he says, for inguinal tumors. (" Ususejus est in ulceratione colis et puden- darum ; et vomicas in muliebribus pudendis sanat," Hieronyinus in Brunfels, i : 55.)
Sprengel deemed the citations of Brunfels from Hieronymus to be taken from the book "Herbarius" of Mentz of 1485, which calls itself the Aggregator practirus^^ and of which Sprengel (Sprengel, Geschichte, I : 295 ; following Gesner and Trew) considered that Hieronymus, of Brunswick, was the author ; a supposition for which he seemingly had no evidence and which Meyer in discussing its authorship ignores, but which appears at first not an unlikely guess, since the Aggregator's author seems like Hieronymus of Brunswick to have been an explorer of the classic learning, and to have been strongly tinctured with the influences of Salerno. A fatal objection to their identity is however the fact that Brunfels distinguishes between them ; as in his Rhap- sodia XVI." " De Satyrion," the orchid, when, i : iio, he quotes first " Ex Aggrega- tor Herbario," and next proceeds to quote separately " Ex Hieronymo Nobili Empirico."
*This '■^Apodixis Gernianica''^ was published by Brunfels in tom. ii oi\ns A'ovi Herbarii at Strasburg, 153 1 ; it formed the last part of that volume ; the printer, the famous "Joannes Schottus, Librarius," in his colophon records the date of completing the presswork as Feb. 14, 1532. Brunfels seems to have printed from an old and imper- fect manuscript, not from a printed book ; at least I find no evidence of previous print- ing of the Apodixis ; unless Bock's quotation of 1 53 1 regarding Alatris-sylva, may have been made from the Apodixis and not from the Distillirbruch (see infra, p. 343). In fact the Apodixis seems to have been commonly overlooked (due probably to the rarity of Brunfels' work) and it is neglected by Meyer and Pritzel ; as well as by Seguier and Bumaldus among earlier bibliographers at hand. If written shortly after the Distillerung Buch it may date from perhaps 1505 ; but it may have been an early work of its au- thor, in rough draft to be afterwards worked in part into his Distillerung Buch, Its full printed title reads " Hieronynii herbarii Argentorat. Apodixis Germanica, ex qua facile vulgares herbas omne slicebit per discere, coacta in seriem Alphabeticam."
HiERONYMUS' HiMMELSCHLUSSEL
338
plants. It does not include any Aster by that name, but will be often referred to in these pages, for its descriptions and current names of a number of plants which were in that day often mistaken for Aster and by different writers were identified with the Aster Atticus of Dioscorides : as the plants then known as * Cliben- kraut or Rubcd' (madder), p. 187, " Gundelred or Hedcra terrcs- trisj' p. 189, Mans-trew or Iringus," p. 193, " Scholwurtz or Chelidonia,'' p. 197, **Synnaw or Alchiniilla,'' p. 197; cf. also his " Lienenblum or Caprifoliiun'' p. 192, his Leberkraut or Hepatica,'' "p. 192, his Epphew or p. 188, his " Nachts-
chatt or 5<?/<^z'r^^;;^," p. 194, and especially his Waldtmeister or Matrisyhay p. 198 (/. e., Aspcrgida).'^'
Hieronymus of Brunswick may have intended Aster Amellns L. by his true HimmclscJdussel ; judging from the application of the latter name to Aster Amellus in southern Bavaria ; vide p. 73. He distinguishes between three plants for which the name was used ; one (undescribed ; the Aster ?) to which he says it properly belonged ; another, Bellis perennis L., the daisy, with white rays, — but white color, he says the true Himmelschliissel does not possess at all ; and a third, Prmmla veris, the cowslip, which is, he remarks, " a very different flower altogether ; though
Some misunderstanding seems to have arisen regarding this authorship. Meyer, ignoring the Apodixis and its title, states that Brunfels meant Bock by his term " Hier- onymus Herbarius." The fact seems to be that " Hieronymus Herbarius" was some- times used for either Bock of Zweibriichen, or for Hieronymus of Brunswick and Stras- burg. But when Brunfels wished to be specific he referred to the one author as " Hier- onymus Tragus " and the second as " Hieronymus Herbarius Argentoratus " or " Hier- onymus Brunsvicensis " or equivalent. He thus specifies the identity of the author of the Apodixis in its very title, as written by '* Hieronymus Herbarius Argentoratus," i. e. , by the Hieronymus of Strasburg.
That others early understood the author to be the Hieronymus of Strasburg and Brunswick is indicated by my own copy, where on the title page of the Apodixis, opposite to the printed caption " Hieronymi herbarii Argentorat Apodixis," a seem- ingly contemporary hand has written " £s^ i/cm ille Hieronymus Braunschioyg.'''
Caspar Bauhin in his Pinax, on the 4th page of his Nomina Anthoriim, quotes this Apodixis as written by " Hieronymus Brunsuicensis."
From that time till now the Apodixis seems to have fallen into unmerited oblivion.
* Among his other names are " Ye lenger ye lieber o\ Amara dulcisox Arbor dulcis or Hynschkraut or Osterlucey " [i. <?., Dulcamara) ** Wilder Saffron or Crocus Iiortu- lanus,^^ or *' Cartamus," " Widertodt or Capi/lus-veneris,''^ " Wegweiss or Solsequium or Cicorea or Sponsa solis or Weglug or Wegwart."
334 Aster History ; Hieronymus of Brunswick
all three are called in Latin Herba Paralysis^ * The second and third had been called Herba Paralysis minor and major by Da Manlio.
LXII. Hermolaus Barbarus
First of Italian botanists to begin a new science of botany from direct study of the classics was Hermolaus Barbarus, f 1454-
* Literally in the German of the Apodixis, p. 190, " Hymt?ielschlussel, Herba par- alisis, Hymmelschliissel or Heaven-key \_Aster Amelltis L. ?] in Latin is called Herba Paralisis, and in German tongue is Hymmelschliissel or Paradeis-schliissel ; but by some [it is said that it is the same as] white Barheng [/. e.^ daisy, Bellis perennis L.; the Herba paralysis minor or Margarita of Da Manlio]. And that its leaves [rays] are of a white color ; but [this] is false ; as I have written before, under the letter B in the [article] Bethonig \^Betonica, including also, daisy and cowslip]. By some the Doc- tores herba, Artotica, Primula veris, is called [by the same name, i. e., Himmel- schliissel]. That however is false [i. e., a wrong application of this last name]. What Pritnula veris is, is the plant Zeitlossen, and I will speak of it under the letter Z."
Under Zeitlossen, Primula veris, p. 199, he says, " Zeitlossen kraut is very com- mon, and familiarly known by the Latin [namel Prit)iula veris and in German Zeit- lossen kratit or Masslieblin.
Under Betonien, p. 185, he had said, " Betonien-kraut in Latin is Betonica
And the Brun Betonien or Betonig is to be separated, that has the brown blossoms,...
There is a kind with white [daisy] and another with yellow blossoms [cowslip] That
kind with yellow blossoms is also called by the Latin name Herba paralisis, and in German tongue Hymmelschliissel; and that with the white leaves [rays] is so too. That is however not right ; since Hymmelschliissel is not of that kind."
* Ermolao Barbaro, born at Venice July, 1454, of an ancient noble family ; son of Zaccaria and nephew of the Venetian scholar Ermolao Barbaro of 1410-1471, who was himself son of another Zaccaria. Bred to diplomacy, the botanist Ermolao was ambas- sador (styled " orator " ) of Venice, as were his father and grandfather before him. He had studied at Verona, and Rome ; and Padua, a baccalaureate there, 1477-
Hermolaus' first work, begun when he was 18 and finished when 26, was a Latin translation of Themistius the commentator on Aristotle. His next was a translation of Dioscorides ; an elegant edition of which in folio was printed by Egnatius at Venice in 1516 ; but it was soon replaced by the translations by Marcellus Vergilius and by Ruel- lius. With it were published his Corollaries on Dioscorides, annotations published first, it has been claimed, at Rome in 1492, but known best from the editions of Venice, 15 16, and of Cologne, 1530. A third author considered was Pliny, in whom Hermo- laus claimed he had corrected 5,000 errors, made plain in his " Castigationes Plinia- rnm^^ Rome, 1492, which he had wrought out in 20 months, dating his dedication to Pope Alexander VI in Sept., 1492.
At the end of that year his father died, and he journeyed on a mission to Rome where in a letter he wrote, — almost his last words, " Twelve years have 1 given myself to statecraft, not from my own impulse, but my father, my friends and my brother im- pelling me ; but knowledge has been all this time, lost. To seek knowledge was I born ; to that I have given myself ; without that I cannot live. O marvel of fortune, that
Her MO LA us' Stella.
335
1493, eminent in affairs of state, patriarcha Aquilegiensis^' a scholar fired with intense ardor for the acquisition of knowledge.
Hcrmolaus' Aster. — He was first, first of the greater names at least, to identify the Aster Atticus of Dioscorides with Alcheinilla or Lady's-mantle, an error against which Matthioli was yet doing battle eighty years after Hermolaus' death. Where Hermolaus writes of Aster Atticus, CoroL lib. 4, corol. 734, his phrase is " vulgo Stella dictus"; Stella, of which Jean Bauhin's Historia * remarks " Pedem Iconis ct Alcliiinilla f vocamus."
In short, Hermolaus was more of a philologist than a botanist ; was interested more in the names of plants than in their descrip- tions ; otherwise the Alchemilla's current name Stellaria could not have led him to identify it with the Aster Atticus of Dioscori- des in disregard of the purple daisy-like flower heads specified by the Greek description.
Hermolaus' BiiphtJialmuinor Herba paralysis. — Hermolaus Bar- barus (cited in Brunfels, 3 : 8) may have had Aster and Leucan- themum, or possibly other daisy-like flowers, in mind in his name Buphthalmum, when discussing the various plants called Herba Paralysis, — " laudatur ad paralysim, a quo et nomen ; " including Primula veris, Bellis perennis, a plant called Paradel % and one
committed knowledge to me, me to knowledge !" (Quoted in book 12 and last of the Epistles of Poliiiaims and others," Strasburg, 1513 ; and, in part, by Meyer, 4: 221.) But stricken down in a few days with the plague, Hermolaus' death followed near Rome, when only 39, in July, 1493. * Historia plantarum, 2 : 1044.
IThis plant, the Stellaria of Renaissance botany, and sometimes simply called Stella as by Hermolaus here, seems to have derived this name from the radiate-lobed leaves, which were probably a factor in Hermolaus' identification. Brunfels figured it in torn, ii, and described it in torn, iii, and Matthioli figured it again in his chapter on Aster Atticus. Jean Bauhin enumerates. Hist. 2 : 1044, six other plants called Stellaria in his time, about 1600, his Bubonium [Inula], Coronopus, Carduus Theophrasti, Mya- cahtha or Calcitrapa, Perdicium, and a Rubia ; concluding safely, Stellaria, iiomen equivoctiDi. Brunfels when traversing the ground covered by Hermolaus, avoided the identification with Stellaria, figuring that plant by its German name Synnaw, and baying of Aster Atticus that he was not yet ready to identify it. Brunfels, in his earlier and more elaborate treatises on plants — " rhapsodies," as he called them — quoted very ex- tensively from Hermolaus; as in article on Conyza, Brunfels' Herbai-um, tojii. ii, 16- 17; Lilium, do. 84; Solanum, do. 30; Nasturtium, do. 73; and in tovi. i, herba Betonica, pp. 89-90, herba Paralysis (cowslip) 97-8, herba Fumaria, 100 ; Asarum 72, Dracontium 64-6, Arum 57, etc.
J *' Flos, qui quonium a longinquo conspicuus est, Paradelos vulgo dicitur ; folio etiam non admodum diversa, nisi quod serratum est huic, non Paralysi."
336
Aster History ; Hermolaus
called Buphthalmum. Of the latter he says " Sunt qui Buphthal- mum, et bovis oculum appellent. Nam qui Antipatrum vulga- rentur eum esse, liquido falluntur. Haec Barbarus."
Hermolaus' Asicriscus. — Hermolaus has another remark for which I have not discovered the Greek foundation, when, corolL 680, he states that the Greeks called poppy-heads by the name of d(jTe[H(7xo^, Asteriscus (/. Bauhin, Hist., 2 : 1044.); [from the radiating grooves on the top of the capsule ?] .
Hermolaus' Identification of A melius as CJiamomile. — Another remark of Hermolaus Barbarus which relates to Aster, is that in book I of his Corollaries, c. 59, where he suggests the identity of chamomile with the Amellus of Vergil, since believed to be the Aster Atticus, of Dioscorides. Hermolaus' suggestion is founded on phonetic grounds. That there may be a phonetic connection between these words had occurred to me independently in 1900, before I learned, on May 19, 1901, that Hermolaus had thought out the same solution four hundred years before. My hypothesis was that of the existence of an early generalized plant name, amilla or amella, meaning little bushy plant, widely diffused in Mediter- ranean mountain lands anterior to Greek or Latin culture ; and that this name survives, ist, in the modern Greek local name in Arcadia for the mistletoe, of Mella, which the Greeks interpret as due to black berries (jiMci, black) ; 2d, in Amellus of Vergil ; 3d, in Chamomilla, the camomile, yafialixqlov, which latter became, from the apple-like scent of its flowers, assimilated to Greek iiYjloi^y an apple.
Hermolaus offers his theory in this form : " Amilla flos apud Graecos autores quosdam, Gallico vocabulo herba ea qua vocatur anthemis, sive chamaemilon, ut forte amilla vel idem vel similis sit amello, nihil asseveramus, sed in medium posuisse nihil offecit," i. e., Amilla is a flower among certain Greek authors, called so by a Celtic name ; it is the plant which is called Anthemis or Cham- omile ; that perhaps Amilla may be the same or similar to Amel- lus, I do not assert, but it does no harm to consider it." *
* Wedel, De Amelia^ 4 (1686, Jena), considers the above a peadiaris conjectura, and dismisses it as repugnant alike to both Chamomile and Amellus. But Wedel's own judgment was so -'peculiar" that he identified Amellus itself with the yelloto nielilot.
Color of Aster-rays
337
LXIII. Marcellus Vergilius The author known by these assumed names is called Marcel- lus Adrian! by the historian Tiraboschi ; was professor of belle lettres and chancellor of state for Florence, and hence often entitled Secretarius Florentiniis ; was born 1464, or perhaps 1474, suggests Meyer, — as the Secretary describes himself in 1491 as "me adhuc puero " ; died Nov. 27, 1521, from a fall from a horse.
Marcellus VergiHus was learned in Greek and Latin, and his notes on Dioscorides* have been much esteemed ; Gesner in 1545 pronounced his work " utilissimus " ; Haller praises it, Sprengel deems it laudabilis," and ''of the greatest sagacity."
The description of Aster Attiais, in Marcellus Vergilius' Latin translation of Dioscorides, forms chapter 1 1 5 of the fourth book. In this chapter Marcellus was first to settle the disputed color- phrase for Aster flowers as " purple attd yellow," by inserting xo.c in place of 1^ in Dioscorides' text. He was also first to separate from Dioscorides' genuine text, the account of Aster as shining by night ; rejecting this as superstitious and unsupported by the oldest Greek and Latin authorities. In this he has been followed ever since, f
LXIV. RUELLIUS
Ruellius, Jean Ruel of Soissons, 1474-1537, canon of Paris, was physician to Francis I, of France, and so remarkable for the learning, elegance and number of his translations into Latin that he has been styled the Prince of Translators. In 15 16 he issued his oft-printed translation of Dioscorides, in 1528 that from Scri- bonius Largus, in 1529 from Celsus, 1530 the Veterinariae medicinaey 1539, that of Joannes Actuarius.
The chapter on Aster Atticns formed number 105 in Ruellius'
* His Latin translation of Dioscorides with his copious commentary was printed at Florence, 1518 ; again in 1523 from a revision of his translation which he had made shortly before his death ; again at Cologne, 1529, when Soter printed the translation, commentary and the second Aldine text together ; joining to it in 1530 the Corollaries of Hermoldus Barbaras. Meyer was the fortunate possessor of the 15 18 and 1529 editions.
* Marcellus Vergilius was quoted at length and continuously by Brunfels in his Rhapsodies " ; especially tom. i, p. 220-I, on Capillus- Veneris, t. ii, p. 85, Polypodium,
ii, 73, Nasturtium, ii, 38, Herb Robert, ii, 31, Solanum, ii, 17 ; also Conyza ; etc.
338
Aster History; Ruellius
translation of Dioscorides' fourth book ; the flowers he calls " purple or yellow." *
Identification of Aster with Asperula odorata L.
In 1536 (at Paris) Ruellius published his De natura stirpiiim libri ires^ a compilation of all that he could find about plants in the ancients ; besides recapitulating, p. 63 3, f what was said of Aster Atticus by Dioscorides and Pliny, he adds (in Latin), It is deemed by many to be the plant commonly called Aspergiila minor,'' an identification based on the star-like radiation of the As- perula stem-leaves ; (see p. 339, 343) and " There is another Aster (/. e., star-like leaf) now commonly called Stella,'' meaning Alchemilla doubtless ; also What plant the Aster meant to the ancients I do not know," and " What was the herb which Pausa- nias calls Asterion, I have not ascertained."
The following uses of Aster are quoted by Ruellius in slightly 'different form from his predecessors as now known.
" Ad herniam puerorum commendant banc (Stellam, Ruel- lius' ''Alius Aster," (= Alchemilla)).
"Ejus decoctio quae virgines videri volunt insident (also
meant for Alchemilla ; a use explained in i 568 by Matthioli).
Bibitur aster adversus serpentes, sed ad inguinum medicinam sinistra manu decerpi jubent et juxta cinctus alligari ; (modifica- tion of Cratevas' use of Aster).
" Prodest et coxendicis doleri admota " (modification of Pliny's use of Aster).
LXV. Manardi
Joannes Manardus, a true son of Ferrara, was born there 1462, and died there 1536 ; was professor of medicine there, and famed as a practicing physician too, becoming court-physician I 5 13-15 16 to King Ladislaus of Hungary. ''A worthy critic of Marcellus Vergilius " Meyer terms Manardi ; his critical revision %
* Quoting from my copy of edition 1543-
t Quoting my copy of Ruel, 2d edn., Basle, 1537, from the Froben press.
X An edition also of his Epistles, Leyden, 1549, entitled as of lo. Manardi Fer- rariensis" was used by Sprengel, whose judgment however often differed from Ma- nardus. The Epistles were earlier published at Basle, by Isingrin, 1540, under title " Epistolaruni ... libri xx."
Manardi's Herba Stella
339
of Marcellus Vergilius' translation and commentary on Dioscorides appeared in three books, 15 19-1523, at Ferrara.*
Manardi's Herba Stella. — Manardi was an early observer of the use of the name Herba Stella in Italy for Plantago Coronopus, the crowfoot-plantain of Europe. Some confusion with Aster Atticus seems to have grown up later, Jean Bauhin's Historia in 1650 citing Coronopus among the Stellarias liable to that confusion. Dioscorides, or his scholiasts, had mentioned Astrioji^ little star, dazpcov, as a synonym for his Coronopus, and Apuleius Platonicus had quoted Aster as a synonym for Plantago. Perhaps these synonyms led Manardus to his assertion that the Coronopus of the Greeks was the plant viilgo dicitur Herba Stella as he puts it.f
LXVI. CORNARIUS
Janus Cornarius, by birth Hanbut or Hagenbut, issued a Latin translation of Dioscorides at Basle, 1529 ; called the Aster flowers purple or yellow ; and remarked on the fact that many herbalists of his time deemed the Aster Atticus of Dioscorides to be the Aspcrgula (Woodruff) which the Germans called Sternkraiit. So also Ruel- lius observed, in 1536. The foundation for this erroneous identifi- cation lay in the star-like divergence of the narrow whorled stem- leaves of Aspergula (see pp. 63, 333, 338, 343, n.). See p. 390, under Rivius for notice of Cornarius' controversial works.
* From notes printed at Ferrara, 1521, Brunfels published extracts, 1531, under title " lo. Mainardi Ferrarien. Medici nostri seculi clarissimi, Annotationes aliquot Simplicium, e scriptis ejus extractae." These extracts, under the running title of
Censurae lo. Mainardi," form pages 32-43 of Brunfels' Deve7-a. Others than Mar- cellus Vergilius fall under the lash of his censure ; and the extracts end with one
De Turbith'''' (cf. Aster Tripolium L.) under the title '* Reprehensio Messue per Mainardum, et ... de pertinaci errore CoUinutii Leoniceno. "
\ Fuchs, a little later, 1542, remarks of Coronopus : " Sunt qui Herba7)i Stellae nominant, alludentes haud dubie ad graecam appellationem Astrion.^'' But the phraseology of Anguillara, 1561, himself notable for his observation of popular names, in his words "Coronopus in multis Italiae locis vocatus //erda Ste/ta ,^ ' points to a. vernacular use of the name which might be due to its spreading cluster of leaves like a star on the sea-sand. Gesner {De hortis Gennaniae, 1561) calls it "Coronopus varus, Herba stella Italorum." Tabernaemontanus, 1588, calls it "Stella maris." Dodoens, 1583, distinguishes it from Aster Atticus, saying that Herbarn Stellam non pauci nominant ; sunt et qui Stellariarn nuncupent ; " adding that by recent writers the name Stellaria is used for " Alchymilla," and that Aster Atticus is also called Stellaria. ( Dodoens' /'cw//ac/i?j-, no.)
340
Aster History ; Brunfels
LXVII. Brunfels
Otto Brunfels, first * of the three German Fathers of Bot- any," son of a cooper at Castle Brunfels at Mentz, was born prob- ably not long before 1500, and died Nov., I534t (when between 35 and 40 according to Meyer's conjecture).};
Brunfels' great work, figuring 229 plants, the Herb arum in tomis tribus " § of 1539, '^^^s ^^^^ published in its three parts or tomes at Strasburg at different dates, 1 530-6.
The figures || are the earliest work of genuine botanical art ; the first true and well-executed representations of plants from nature, accurate in detail and exhibiting the whole plant.
Had Brunfels added to the figures new descriptions of like verity, his volume, remarks Meyer, would have been far more an epoch-making book than it was.
A posthumous work of Brunfels, Strasburg, 1543, was his In Dioscoridis...adaptatio,'' being a list of the Greek names of Dios- corides with Latin and German equivalents, without preface or text.
In his preceding and monumental work, the Herbariuii, Brun- fels occupied part of each volume with his Simpliciiim Pharma- coriun^' which consisted of copious accounts of plants, on an exten- sive plan, each called by him a " RJiapsodia,'' and containing a verbatim citation of what each previous author had said of the
* Sprengel, and after him Meyer, entitled Brunfels, Bock and Fuchs " the Fathers of Botany. ' '
f Brunfels was at first a student of theology, then a Carthusian monk at Mentz. Becoming a Protestant, he preached at Strasburg three years or more, taught a school there for nine years, studied the Greek and Arabic physicians, took a degree in medi- cine at Basle in 1530, and was made city-physician i^stadtai'zt) of Berne, but had held it only a year and a half at his death in 1534.
X See Meyer, 4 : 295 + .
g The first tome, Herb arum vivae eicones^^ being printed by Joannes Schottus (John Scott) at Strasburg in 1530 {^ex libr. Meyer) and reissued without change 1531 (^ex libr. Bu. and ex libr. E. L. Greene) ; and the second tome begun 1531, its print- ing finished Feb. 14, 1532. In German translation, as " Contrafayt Kreuterbuch," it appeared 1532 at Strasburg, and the 2d part 1537.
II The figures were executed (till toward the end of the third volume) by one Hans Weydiz or Guiditius, of Strasburg, whom Brunfels calls "Johannes Weiditz, the begin- ner of wood engraving."
Joannes pictor Guidictius ille Clarus Apellaeo non minus ingenio,
says Brunfels in the prefatory verse.
Brunfels' Garvophyllon
341
plant, followed by Brunfels' own '' Judicium^ Life did not hold out to carry on this plan very far, and in the third or post- humous volume the shrinkage on each species is very manifest. The plants taken, some 229, form a Strasburg flora, with additions from the more remote parts of the Rhineland and from the Hartz mountains. No figure or description of Aster occurs ; he did not live long enough to reach it. He twice figures the Stellaria of that day, (the Alchemilla), which many were identifying with Aster, an identification from which he carefully refrained.
In his second volume the principal bulk is formed by a series of papers on the plants of the ancients by Leonicenus, Collinu- tius. Count von Neuenar, Manardi, etc., etc., among which Bock and Fuchs appear as authors for the first time. Brunfels entitles all De vera herbarum cognitione Appendix." I have frequent occasion to cite this neglected collection, calling it De vera. It is headed by an examination of Dioscorides' plants by Brunfels him- self entitled Exegesis oinnhim simpliciimi Dioscoridis.
Brunfels says of Aster Atticiis, p. 29, in this Exegesis, De hac herba passim multos consului nec expiscari a quaquam valui quae non essent."
Brunfels' Astericuni. — Brunfels carefully distinguished from Aster, the umbellifer celled Astericum by the Romans, the Impera- toria of more modern botany ; and he accepted, torn. 2, p. 18, the names Imperatoria and Astericum as equivalents, adding that As- tericum is not Meu.'^
Aster included in Garyophyllon? — Brunfels, 3: 5, may perhaps have been thinking of Aster Amellus when he wrote that Hermo- laus, Barbarus and Marcellus Vergilius deemed that a certain plant could not be Garyophyllon because its flowers being blue (caerulea) do not agree. Of this plant Brunfels continues : " Vid- imus nos inter hujusmodi GaiyopJiyllos eo colore easque frequen- tes vulgari nomine RoemiscJi Negelin, etiamsi odore minus grato " ; i. e., We have seen among the plants called Garyopliyllon [sev- eral such had been discussed, Dianthus, Cheiranthus, etc.] some of that blue color and occurring frequently, known by the com- mon name of Roman Pinks \^NailJieads'\ although with less pleas- ant odor." See p. 380.
* Cf. J. Bauhin, Hist., 2 : 1044.
342
Aster History ; Brunfels
Perhaps the resemblance which Matthioli remarked upon, of the odor of the root of Aster Amellusto a Dianthus blossom, had led to the inclusion of Aster Amellus under the name GaryopJiyl- lo?i, by herbalists of Brunfels' time. See infra, under Angiiillara.
LXVIII. Bock
Second of the " Fathers of Botany," and author of the first thorough-going survey of the plants of Germany, was Hieronymus Bock,* also known as Tragus, a man of a single book, different edi- tions of his Kreiiterbuch f forming his life-work.
Before these he had written once on the subject of Dioscorides' plants at the request of Brunfels, whom Bock regarded as friend and master, and to whom Bock sent from Zweibriichen (Bipontium) on ''the nones of March, 1531," his "Opinions" on some 50 plants, of which Aster was the ninth. Brunfels published these remarks, 1531, under the title Dissertationes Hicronyini Tragi,'' forming pages 156-165 of Brunfels' De vera cognitioney appended to toni. II of Brunfels' HerbarumJ' and its printing completed by Joannes Schottus, at Strasburg, Feb. 14, 1532.
Bock's first expressions regarding Aster. I translate Bock's remarks % concerning Aster, from the foregoing, p. 157 of Brun- fels' edition of 153 1-2.
* Hieronymus Bock, 1498-1554 ; in English Jerome Kidd ; called by himself Tragus when he wrote in Latin ; born at Heiderbach in the Zweibrlicken ; was destined for the cloister ; embracing Protestantism, he studied medicine at a university, became school-master at Zweibrlicken, and was, 15 23-1 532, superintendent of the garden of the prince Ludewig ; then became pastor of the Church of Hornbach in Wasgau ; "here he preached the gospel, and also practised as a physician, and con- tinued the free pursuit of his loved science, botany," Meyer, 4 : 305, etc.
f Bock's Neiv Kreutterbuch, Strasburg, 1539.
X Their Latin original reads :
" Herbae Stellariae. Inguinalem Dioscoridis, (quod ego sciam) nusquam vidi ; licet flosculos et plantas, quorum capitula et folia per orbem incisuris divisa similibus Stellae viderim. Qualis autem Dioscoridis, Plinii, aut Apulei Aster sit, non video. Nam Stellariae permultae. Caprifolium \_Aspe7'gula\, sive Matris-sylva Hieronymi [of Brunswick] stellis ornatur, vestitum, et Aparine stellulis ; atque ambo tinctorum Rubiae sylvestrera quandam stelleam herbam, specie et flore Caprifolio non dissimilem, nec tamen ut caprifolium tenax, aut hamata, sed pinguis et lenis herba, quasi calamus filigineus, undique stellulis circumamicta. Est et alia herba [a yellow Galium] lignosa, et omnino ferulacea, quae pari modo stellis vestitur, oblongis tamen, et gracilioribus foliolis, floribus flammeis atque candidis, sed muscosis et densis ; quam nostra mulier- culae vocant suo idiomate, Unser lyeben fru-wen wagstro. Putavi Dioscor. esse Gallion. Lactuca et Endivia congeneres plantae sunt," etc.
Bock on Aster as a Stellaria
343
" Plants Called Stellaria The IngLiinalis of Dioscorides, so far as I know, I have never seen ; but I have seen various little blossoms and plants, whose heads and whose leaves around the flower's circle were divided into incisions similar to a star. What plant however might be the Aster of Dioscorides, Pliny or Apuleius, I do not see. For there are very many Stellarias. Caprifolium * or the Matris-sylva of Hieronymus (Brunsvicensis) is adorned with stars [/. e., the narrow stem-leaves form stellate whorls], and is clothed with them ; and Aparine f is so clothed with little stars, and of both of the kinds of Rubia or dyer's madder, J one kind, a cer- tain wild § and starry plant, is not dissimilar in appearance and in flower to Caprifolium, although not as Caprifolium so tenacious, nor so covered with hooked bristles, but being a succulent and smooth herb, like a reed drawn out into a thread, everywhere set about with little stars. There is also another herb which is woody and altogether like pipe-stems, which is clothed with little leaves equally similar to stars, but oblong, and more slender ; with yel- low and white flowers, but the inflorescence mossy and dense, which our little girls call in their native tongue, U)iser lyeben frazven ivagstro^ or Our loved lady's Way-straw. I have supposed it to be the Gallion ** of Dioscorides."
* Caprifolium here means the modern Asperula or Woodruff ; called '■'■Caprifolium vel Stellaria^'' by Brunfels, Matrisyh)a by Brunsvicensis, Bock, Cordus, Lonicerus, and Thai, Hepatica stellata by Tabernaemontanus, Asperula by Dodoens, Lobel, etc.
Caprifolium was applied to the honeysuckle by Dodoens, Femptades, 411 (publ. 1583), as the Caprifolium italicuni, was so maintained by Boerhaave and Tournefort ; and by Linnaeus, I753j became Lonicera Caprifolium ; as is familiar.
The name Matrisylva which we may render Motherwood, had as its German counterpart of the time, Waldtmeister or Woodmaster. Of which Hieronymus Bruns- vicensis in his Apodixis Germanica (in Brunfels, 1531, tom. II, p. 198), writes (in German) "Waldtmeister, in the Latin Matrisylva or herba Stellaria, has its leaves around the stem like a star."
I Aparine here as ever, means Galium Aparine L., the Aparine of Pliny, Brunfels, and Tournefort, the aixaplvi] of Dioscorides.
:}: Meaning chiefly Rubia tinctorum L. ; the Rubia saliva of Brunfels, etc., Rubia of Pliny, kpvdpo&avov of Dioscorides, 3, 160, the kpovde^avov of Theophrastus, 6, i,
§ Meaning Galium Mollus^o L. ; the Rubia sylvestris laevis of Caspar Bauhin (Pinax, 333), the Alyssum of Pliny, 24, 2 ; the Rubia sylvestris of Brunfels, etc.
^ For weg-stroh ? i.e., wayside masses of straw or yellow-flowered stems. See p. 361, under Gesner,
**The Galium verum L. and of Jean Bauhin ; Gallion luteum of Caspar Bauhin (Pinax, 335), 6^a/?z/'« of Matthioli, Cordus, Lobel, etc., the jdAAiov of Dioscorides, 4, 96.
344
Aster History ; Bock
Bock' s KreiitterbiicJi. — Bock's continued studies of the Rhine- land plants presently resulted in the production of his great Ger- man work, his KreiitterbucJi or Herbal, the work which has given him an enduring name, and which was first printed * at Strasburg in I 539, without figures, describing about 319 plants. A second f edition, 1 546, figured 365 plants, a third in 1551 figured 437. J; In a translation § into Latin as Bock's ''De Stirpitim . . . libritres " it appeared again the next year, 1552. Many subsequent editions of the German followed, down to Glaser's Strasburg edition of 1630.
Bock's Kreutterbuch is devoted to the plants of Germany and names no plant which he had not himself seen. He remained unfortunate, however, in his attempts to identify Aster Atticus, still striking out in different directions, and finally settling down on his " Uva lupina."
Blending of Aster Attiais with Herb Paris. — One of the most singular errors made in attempting to determine the plants of Dioscorides, was that by which the radiating ray-flowers of Aster were confused with the radiating circle of leaves of Paris quadrifolia. One Golius is cited as stating the existence of this belief, /"^/^ Bauhin's Historia, 2 : 1044, Theoph. Golius in Onom. — Asterem Atticum ab aliis warn Lupinam vocari tradit ; " Bauhin adding "Aster quidam dicunt, sed non Atticum multi ; " /. e., " Golius states that Aster Atticus by some is called Wolf-berry e., Herb Paris). Many do say that it is some certain kind of Aster, but not Aster Atticus." The persons meant by aliis and by multi above, are to me obscure. They may pass as the
* A rare folio of 262 leaves, entitled A^ew Kreictterbuc/i,'^ \n 319 chapters; a copy was once seen by Pritzel in bibl. Goettingen.
f Meyer possessed the 2d and 3d edition, which drop the word New from the title, but retain the dialectic repetition of the t. These and many subsequent editions were folios similar in appearance, printed at Strasburg by Rihel, the 2d in 2 parts, with 350 chapters, 354 leaves, and figuring 365 plants.
% Adding to the 2d edition a 3d part with 72 figures " by a young burgher's son of Strasburg, David Kandel by name." Many figures were derived from Fuchs' 1542 Historia.
^, The 1552 Latin edition, derived from the 155 1 edition, printed like the foregoing by Rihel at Strasburg. The translation was made with Bock' s approval by young David Kyber, who died the next year of the plague, aged only 28, just as his next work, a Lexicon rei herbariae, was issued from the press by Rihel.
Bock's Uva Lupin a
345
indefinite background of shades behind Bock, who stands as sponsor for the Aster-lineage of Herb Paris in botanical literature.
Bock describes Herb Paris as an Aster. — Take up Kyber's Latin translation of Bock, and turn to his chapter on Aster, p. 307-8,* and we find an unmistakable figure of Paris quadrifolia, headed " WaxTji), scd non Atticus, Wolff sbeer, oder Sternkraut, Diosc, bk. 4, €. 115 ": that is, combining Dioscorides' chapter on Aster Atticus, and Fuchs' German name for it, with the common German name for Herb Paris, f while yet distinguishing between them by the dis- claimer "Aster, sed non Atticus"; under which latter name C. Bauhin indexed Bock's plant in his Pinax.X
Bock's accompanying text is entitled "[chapter] 102, de Uva hipina seu Astere." He then describes the appearance of the plant (Herb Paris), remarks that it is called Wolffsbeer and Sternkraut and that by some midiercidae it is called from its form, not only Sternkraut but Augenkraut, i. e., " plant which looks like an •eye." Bock then adds its uses, taking them largely from Dios- corides on Aster Atticus, prescribing it like that for tumors in the groin, and for a sty on the eye. The next property seems to be due to confusion with the whitlow-wort, Paronychia, (sometimes confused under its name Ungtmialia with the Aster under its name Ingidnaria or Ingidnalis^ ; for Bock proceeds to remark, "some say, use it for abscess about the roots of nails." The next prop- erty is more uncertain in origin, — " Others say that the berries produce sleep if eaten." Bock closes by remarking : " This plant Uva lupina is evidently, according to my judgment, an Aster; but not that Aster Atticus which Dioscorides called asteriscus, asterion, bubonion, hyophthalmum, i. e., suis oculus, herba inguinalis, Rathibia, and Alibium." The last name was an Arabic equivalent, already used by Matteo Silvatico and by Fuchs. §
Bock also describes Aster as Tinctorius Flos. — In another place
* Here I quote from the copy ex libr. E. L. Greene.
t Herba Paris was its name with Anguillara and Matthioli.
J Under Bauhin' s Solanuf?i quadrifoliu?)i bacci/cnwi ; classing Herb Paris here because of its berry.
§ Other wolf-names used by Bock were Lupinus for the Lupine, Lupiilus for the hop, as familiar still ; and Ltiparia for an Aconitum, or Wolf's-bane, the latter name becoming confused with that of Herb Paris among botanists of the period, so that Herb Paris appears in Fuchs, Valerius Cordus and Tabernaemontanus as an Aconitum.
346
Aster History; Bock
Bock had unknowingly hit upon the real Aster Atticus, fide C. Bauhin {Pinax, 267) ; who pronounced the Aster Atticus of Dios- corides and Fuchs to be the same with the Tmctorius flos primus of Bock's De stirpitini libri tres ; some three centuries later, this same Aster was given the synonym Aster tinctoritis by Wallroth.
Bock seems to have classed a number of Compositae together as a loosely conceived genus under the name Tinctorius flos ; like Dioscorides' familiar practice of grouping plants with reference to properties, still strong with the brothers Bauhin a century later.
Of Tinctorius flos primus we learn from Bock * the following : Flos tinctorius primus, tinctorius spirensibus t Schartenkraut dicitur"; and again, " Hunc florem tinctorium vocat Tragus, et Chamaemelum tertium, et tinctoribus spirensibus Schartenkraut dicitur" ; i, e., "the dyers at Speier call Aster, Schartenkraut" or Share-wort, /. e., Inguinalis ; ''and Bock calls it Tinctorius flos or his third Chamomile." %
Bock's remaining species called Tinctorius flos. These include, 2d, Erigeron acre L., = Bock's Tinctorius flos alter, the Conyza caerulea acris of C. Bauhin, the Amellus montanus of Colonna. § Gesner had called it Dentelaria, probably comparing the rays to little teeth.
3d, Inula spiraeifolia L.?= Bock's " Tinctorius flos j " as the Jean Bauhin marginal citation * runs, otherwise appearing as
" Tv'rt'i? Jean Bauhin's Historia, 2 : 1049.
f Some might claim that the dyers at Speier meant merely madder ; citing the modern Ger. Schartenkraut=saw-wort ; or literally, notches-plant ; if applied once to a prickly Galium, it might possibly have been transferred to madder, the well-known dye plant, Rubia. But nomenclature does not favor this ; madder is the Ger. der Krapp and die Farberrdthe ; and in time of Bock, its name (besides the Latin Rubea, Hieronymus Brunsv., Rubia Bock following Pliny') was Cliben-kraut, similar to our name cleavers. Its clinging relative Galiiiiii Aparine I>. , Cliberkraut, survives now in the modern form " Klebenkraut. "
X Bock's species of Chamomilla or Chamaemelum — both forms were seemingly in- different to him, or to his translator Kyber — include his C. vulgaris which is our Leu- canthenmtn vulgare, his C. nobilis which is the Anthet7iis nobilis of more recent bot- any, his C. fatua and his C. sylvestre which are the C. inodorum and C. foetidum respectively, of C. Bauhin.
\ Colonna' s 'EKopdo/.-, 2, p. 25, t. 26 ; i6i6(<'j: tibr. Bu. ). Here Colonna, describ- ing E7'igeron acre under the name Amellus montanus Aequicolorum (and figuring it on the next page as Afnellus /W(?«vz«.'* ), remarks that his plant seems in acridity and habitat " to agree with Virgil's Amellus " ; adding that '* a relative is the Amellus of swamps, which others call Aster Conizoides."
Bock's Tinctorius Flos
347
Tinctorii floris tertium genus, das dritt Schartenblumen ge- schiecht." Gesner also cites this, but as ''Tinctorius flos liitcuSy Tragi." Jean Bauhin deemed these as probably synonyms of his " Conyza media Monspeliensis, quibusdam Asteris Attici genus folio glabro rigido ;" called by Caesalpino ''Asteris Attici altera by Lobel, Aster montanus \ by Caspar Bauhin, Aster 5. Jean Bauhin notes of it that " Frater Casp. Bauhinus misit collectam Basiliensibus montibus, nomine Asteris conyzoides Gesneri." This plant appears in Linnaeus as Inula spiraeifolia.
4. Chrysanthemum segetum L., = Bock's Tinctorius flos ^ ; Cas- par Bauhin {^Pinax, p. 134) styled it Chrvsanthemmn foliis matri- cariae, etc.
Such are the plants Aster Amellus L., Erigeron acre L., Inula spiraeifolia L., and Chrysanthemum segetum L., which Bock classed together ; the first and last, at least, used in a rude way for dyeing, and all, if not first-class dye-stuffs, at least looking as if they ought to be so. Singularly enough, Bock, who was a law unto himself, is at variance from his chief co-workers in the use of this term " Flos tinctorius,'' which in the usage of many others meant the Genista tinctoria * of modern botany, a plant much more important to dyers than those chosen for the title by Bock.
When Bock was classing together his dyer's plants as Tinc- torius flos,'' it would have seemed natural had he included among them the Anthemis tinctoria of modern botany ; but for that he used the old name Buphthalimim, in which practice he was followed by Matthioli and Clusius and at times by Gesner. Perhaps Bock varied at times, however, and at the time of writing of his Tinctorius flos primus intended to include Anthemis tinctoria under it, under his name of CJiamaemelum tei'tium.
Finally, Bock is cited by Jean Bauhin, i: 1044, as using the phrase Aster Atticus flore medio luteo as a name for what Jean
* Genista tinctoria had also the right of authority to the name in question, being the Flos tinctorium of Brunfels, Bock's master, and the Flos tinctorius of Fuchs and Lon- itzer, as well as of the later Italian herbalist. Durante, in 1585 ; but Bock called it Ferula. Anguillara and Caesalpino termed it Coroneola. Valerius Cordus named it Cha?naeleuce, and again Hedera terrestris. Its modern name, Genista tinctoria, made a contemporary appearance among them in Dodoens, was seated in use by adoption by Caspar Bauhin, and was sealed for the future by acceptance by Linnaeus.
348
Aster History; Bock
Bauhin there calls CJiamaemeluin ei^aiitheimwi,^ and his editors endorse as also the Cliamaeiueluni aureum of many. This plant was the " ChamaemeliLm aureum peregrinum capitulo sine foliis'' of Bauhin's Hist., 2: 119, where it is described in full, but without synonyms earlier than Clusius' translation of Dodoens, 1557. Linnaeus recognized it as a congeries of species, his Ana- cyclus aiireits, Cotula aurea and part of his Anthemis nobilis being its equivalents.
Bock uses the folloiving Aste?' 7tai?ies :
1. Aster, sed non Aster Atticus = his Uva lupina, Paris quad- rifolia L.
2. Aster Atticus flore medio luteo = Anthemis nobilis L., etc.
3. Asterion = Cannabis sativa L.; "to Cannabis the name Asterion also belongs," Bock.
4. Asterion = Marrubium album L.; which, says Bock, " may be the Asterion of Pausanias."
5. Tinctorius flos primus = Aster K\.\\c\ks, fide C. Bauhin, i. e., Aster Amellus L. Perhaps Bock also included in it Anthemis tinctoria L.
6. Tinctorius flos alter = Erigeron acre L., the Amellus mon- ta7ius of Colonna.
7. Tinctorius flos iii = Imda spiraeifolia L. = Aster conyzoides of Gesner, some say, = Aster Atticus alter of Caesalpino, Aster montanus of Lobel, Aster 5 of C. Bauhin.
8. Tinctorius flos iv = Chrysanthemum segetum L.
LXIX. FucHS Leonhard Fuchs,t the third and youngest of the " Fathers of Botany," completed, with Bock and Brunfels, the trio of workers from nature who mark the beginnings of the modern spirit in botany. He was himself the first to print an identification of the Aster Atti-
* Chamae7nehi77i ^r(7«///£'?«//w among other authors leads far astray from the original chamomiles ; to Dodoens and Gesner it v(\t.2C[\\. Adonis vernalis L.; to Fuchs it meant a larkspur, the Consolida regia of Bock. — Bock used the name Chamaemelum (in his form Chamomilla) for most of the species so called by his contemporaries and still called chamomiles to-day ; he named at least four so ; but this fifth chamomile he separated, deeming it an Aster Atticus.
f Leonhard Fuchs, 1501-1566, born at Membdingen in Bavaria, in school at Er- furt, 15 1 2, distinguished himself in the University there in Greek and Latin studies ; went in 15 19 to Ingolstadt, where he took his doctorate in 15 24 and soon, learnmg of
FucHs' Alibium
349
cus of the ancients with the plant which was since known as Aster Amellus L. Hermolaus Barbaras had taken it to be the Stellaria of that time, which we now know as AlcJicniilla ; Ruel and at first Fuchs had let it pass as such ; but between 1532 and 1542 Fuchs had made a more careful reading of Dioscorides' description, per- ceiving his Aster Atticus could not be Alchemilla, that no star- like leaves would meet the conditions, and that purple or blue rays around a yellow center with hairy oblong stem-leaves and woody little stem must all be combined in the plant meant. Such a plant he found among the wild plants of Germany,* apparently at the time known to him by no German name ; identifying it with Aster Atticus he called it Stcrnkraut or the star plant, and Sternkraut has ever since remained the formal name in German for the flower.
Fuchs early disthiguishes Aster front Eryngiiivi. — Fuchs' first work, his An7iotatioiies on Dioscorides, appeared 153 1-2 as an appendix to Tom. II of Brunfels' Novi Herbarii. Its last chapter, No. 34 (p. 155 of the De vera cognitione), is devoted to Alibium, Arabic name for Aster Atticus as Fuchs claims, attacking the identification by Matthaeus Sylvaticus of Alibium as Eryngium ; under which author find the passage of Fuchs quoted, p. 304.. Fuchs then continues :
" Annotandum tamen, eandem herbam alio nomine a nostris- appellari Stellaria, e positura et forma, quibus stellae modo radiata," alluding to the common identification then current of Aster with Alchemilla.
Fuchs follows with quotations about Aster from Paulus. Aegineta and Dioscorides, but adds nothing new ; except this, remark :
Praeterea non praeter eundem, quod apud Avicenna secundo Can. cap. ij falso scribatur Atratisus, pro Aster Atticus, ita fere omnia herbarum nomina apud eundem corrupta sunt."
Luther's writings, and becoming a Protestant, began medical practice at Munich. In- 1526 he was professor of medicine at Tngolstadt ; in 1528 he became court-physician to Margrave George von Brandenburg at Anspach, where he remained five years and wrote a translation of the Hippocratic writings ; at 1533 he again became professor of medicine at Ingolstadt ; and 1 535-1 566 he was professor at the then young university of Tubingen, where he died 1566.
* Possibly Valerius Cordus first made it known to Fuchs ; Cordus made the same identification, perhaps in 1539.
350
Aster History; Fuchs
Fuchs surpasses all of his Century in his Figures. — In 1 542 Fuchs published his masterpiece, his De historia stirpium,'^ at the Isengrin press of Basle, a foho of 896 numbered pages, famous for its 512 large and life-like woodcuts (over 400 of which repre- sented plants native to Germany), styled pulcherrima by Pritzel (no. 3427). Sachs (History of Botany, transl. by Garnsey, 1890, p. 19) says of it that "Fuchs' splendid figures remained unap- proached." Fuchs himself says that his figures were new and original, that they were delineated from nature, that the plants figured had never been figured from nature before, and that his work had been wrought out at great expense and elaborated in long vigils. He says that his sole care had been that the figures be absolutely true ; that his utmost diligence was devoted to make sure that in every plant depicted, root, stem, leaves, flowers, seeds and fruits should all be exhibited ; that " he took heed that no shading or other device by which printers sometimes seek to add to their art, should obscure the clear native form of his plants, nor would he permit his painters to indulge in any embel- lishments of fancy. The wonderful industry of the painters (Hein- rich Fiildmaurer and Albert Meyer)t was rivalled by that of the engraver, Vitus Rodolphus Speckle,t the best woodcutter in Stras- burg, who so ably expressed the lineaments of each painting that he seems almost to have entered into a strife with the painters for victory." So Fuchs describes J his work in his Epistola nuncu- patoria" — "at Tubingen, in the calends of March, 1542."
Fuchs' Aster Figiire. — A view of Fuchs' life-size figure of Aster
* Fuchs' Historia was soon translated into Dutch, French and Spanish ; but the most notable translation was that of the very next year, by Fuchs himself, into German, forming his " New Kreuterbuch " of 1543. Fuchs' descriptions of species in the shorter Latin editions do not equal those of Bock ; but in his German rendering he made the descriptions much fuller and more lifelike. So at least Meyer considered them ; but Fuchs was not himself satisfied, said that to him " pleraque non erant satis distincte " and in 1 556 wrote to his friend the Konigsberg professor and physician Aurifaber, that he had begun to revise it from the beginning ; that it was proving a great undertaking ;
" crescit tamen operis moles," he said, but that he believed it would not be unpleasing to the studious —
' ' studiosis non ingratam . . . confido. ' ' He kept at work on it the next ten years, when it was still unpublished at his death, and the last known of the manuscript was its appearance at a sale in Vienna in 1732.
f The likenesses of the three are given, edition 1542, page following 896.
X See page 10 of this Epistola ; edn. 1542 {ex libr. Bu. ).
FucHs' Aster-Figure
351
Atticus in this rare and expensive volume may be sought in America in my own copy and in that at the Missouri Botanical Garden, where the Sturtevant collection of Prelinnaean botany contains a copy of this as well as of many of the subsequent reduced editions. In the small editions which followed, the figure was greatly diminished, finally even to only 2 ^ inches in length. * It may be seen, reduced, in the little edition of Basle, i 545 (figures only, without text), cx libris Colu., and in the edition of Leyden, 1551, ex libr. Bu. This figure shows about a dozen heads terminating rather stiff upright branches, the whole plant double from its base, two stems rising together from the same mat of thickened fibers. A peculiarity is the presence near the base of the stronger stem of an irregular dense cluster of six or seven stem leaves, brought together by sup- pression of internodes, a common abnormality, common especially in Aster, and scrupulously retained by copyists of Fuchs' figure and so serving as sign-manual of Fuchs' original as it passed on almost to the present time by repetitions in Ryff's Dioscorides, in Lonitzer's KrcuterbiicJi, in the Historia Plantamm of J. Bauhin and his editors as late as 1650, and perpetuated apparently even to the Ehrhart edition of Uffenbach's Kreuterbuch of 1783.
On the other hand it is not the figure of Matthioli, nor does it bear close relationship to those of Dodoens, Lobel, Gesner and Camerarius, Gerard or Parkinson, none of which, for example, possess the mid-cauline rosette.
Fuchs' Aster description. — Fuchs' chapter on Aster Atticus in the Latin edition, the De historia plantariim (I quote from the edi- tion of 1542) occurs in its alphabetical place, p. I32,t as chapter 47. Fuchs followed Brunfels' plan of dividing each plant chapter into topics, the topics printed as titles. I quote all except the matter under his heading vires " or properties, which repeats without change what Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen said of the Aster's virtues.
It will be observed that in his description under the head " Forma," Fuchs makes the received identification of Dioscorides' Aster for the first time.
* Numerous later editions of Fuchs continued, with poorer and poorer execution, as far as the French edition of Leonard Fucus " printed by Oudot at Troyes as late as 1673, wit^^ woodcuts styled <*pessima" by Pritzel.
fOr in the Leyden edition of 1551, p. 139.
352
Aster History ; Fuchs
De Astere Attico. Cap. XLVII.
NOMINA.
'''AcTTTjp \4tt(x6^, Boo^tbvcov Graecis, Aster Atticus, Inguinalis Latinis dicitur. Officinis ignota herba, Germanis Sternkraut [Gallice Petit Muguet ou Herbe de I'estoille] * commode appellari potest. Asteris autem nomen, non a foliorum in cauli- bus, sed in floribus potius figura et situ, accepit. Si quidem folio- rum in huius herbe flore numerus et forma, stellam prae se ferunt, vel ut Plinius ait, capitula per ambitum divisa foliis pusillis, stellae modo radiata sunt. Errant f itaque qui singula folia in caulibus stellae formam repraesentare putant. Bubonium et inguinalis, quod inguinem praesentaneum sit remedium, dicta est.
FORMA.
Cauliculus lignosus purpureum et % luteum in summo florem habens veluti Chamaemeli capitulum undique per orbem incisuris divisum, foliolis stellae similibus. Quae vero circa caulem sunt folia oblonga et densa hirsutave. Ex qua quidem deliniatione omnibus perspicuum fit, herbam cuius picturam exhibemus esse Astera Atticum. Nam caulis ejus lignosus est, foliis vestitus oblongis et densis, in cacumine flos illi purpureus et luteus, stelle modo radiatus, qui subinde in pappos abit : radix fibris multis. capillata.
locus.
Nascitur in coUibus, montibus altis, et sylvis.
TEMPUS.
Augusta mense ut plurimum floret, durantque in magnani Autumni partem ejus flores.
TEMPERAMENTUM.
Mixtae est potentiae, uti rosa ; refrigerat enim, non tamen vehementer, et digerit atque exsiccat, quod scilicet illi amara insit qualitas.
^ Additions in the Leyden edition of 1 55 1 I enclose in brackets.
"j- Evidently Fuchs here intends to express his repudiation of the identification of Aster with Alchemilla, which he had cited in 1531-2.
I It will be noticed that Fuchs understood not disjunctively but collectively the " purple and yellow " of Dioscorides fide Marcellus Vergilius ; unlike Cornarius, 1529, who had made it " purple or yellow."
FucHs' Identification of Aster
353
VIRES....
[adnotatio.] [Aster atticus tuus hie non cognitus.*]
Fjichs' Second Aster or Fidicaria
In the editions with figures only (1545, Basle; 1549, Basle, etc.) Fuchs entitles his figure " Aster Atticus piirpiireitsy^ as if Fuchs was now perceiving the existence of more than one Aster Atticus. Citations indicate that in some subsequent edition he must have definitely named a second species, cited as the Aster Atticus hitetis of Fuchs, by Lobel, Obs. 187, in 1576, who repro- duces and modifies Fuchs' accompanying % figure, which represents Pulicaria dysenterica Gaertner.
His name, however, is usually associated only with the first plant, Aster Atticus purpureus of Fuchs, which became the Aster Italoimni et FticJisii of Clusius, the Aster Atticus FucJisii% of Jean Bauhin's marginal notation, the Aster Atticus Fuchsii flore puniceo of Benedictus Aretinus ; \ and which is our familiar Aster Amellus L.
LXX. DORSTENIUS
The Botanicon by Theodorus Dorstenius,** printed 1540 by Egenolph at Frankfort, was a rearrangement of the plants of the ancients. The plants follow chiefly in the same chapters as in Dioscorides, rearranged alphabetically, with figures. His chapter on Aster Atticus, p. i 5 7, ft does not appear under that name but as De Inguinali ; an abstract is as follows :
* " Not known here'" ; an addition in the Leyden edition. But evidently it was familiar in nature to Fuchs from some source ; as perhaps at Basle where he printed first ; or Ingolstadt where he had studied ; possibly only from the Jena plants discov- ered (1539?) by Valerius Cordus.
f Adding as a German name, " Braun Sternkraut," aj^parently misprint for " Blau Sternkraut."
I Page 427 of Fuchs' Hist. , edn. 155 1, misapplied there, to his " Calamintha tertia."
§ J. Bauhin, Hist., pi. 2 : 1045.
^ In Aretinus' three-page list of plants growing on Mts. Stockhorn and Ness in Switzerland, printed with Valerius Cordus' works at Strasburg, 1561.
Theodorich Dorsten, born in Westphalia, a professor of medicine at Marburg and practicing physician at Kassel ; died in 1552.
If Citing from copy ex bibl. E. L. Greene.
354
Aster History ; Dorstenius
Annotatio ; derived from "Galen, Aegineta, Dioscorides, Pli- nius," and Marcellus Vergilius.
Descriptio ; quotes Dioscorides, including the appearance as a phantasma," adding Vergilius Marcellus hoc confutat atque reijcit, tanqu superstitiosum aliquid, quia in antiquissimis Graecis Latinisque autoribus non inveniatur.
" Quidam etiam Bubonion a bufonibus, hoc est, venenosis vermibus dictum volunt, quod non solum ineptum ac falsum est, sed etiam contra omnem autoritatem veterum, fingunt enim quod bufonibus Inguinalis magna sit medicina, quando in pugna cum araneis habita victi fuerint et vulnerati atque icti ab eis. Et quod bufones aliaque animalcula venenosa huius herbe gratia in locis petrosis se contineant, atque ea herba se reficiant atq sanent.
" Vires (good for burning stomach, for the eyes, for buboes, hemorrhoids, in labor, — ' quod in flore ejus purpurascit,' — and in epilepsy) : pluck it with the left hand ; ' caduco morbo laboranti- bus opitulatur, ut Apuleius testatur.' "
" Si baccas Asterii, id est inguinalis dederis manducare Luna decrescente, quum erit signum Virginis, et ipsam herbam laborans habeat in collo suspensam, remediabitur.
De iringo'' follows as the next chapter.
Dorstenius story of the Aster's usefulness to toads and other animalcula venenosa was doubtless one of the reasons leading Meyer [4 : 336] to term his Botanicon " a puerile, uncritical com- pilation." But his 284 figures supplied by the printing house of Egenolph are of great value for so early a date as i 540. Though he gives figures for most plants mentioned, and in particular for those discussed immediately before and after Aster, for Aster itself he gives none. Egenolph's house must have had a figure of Aster in stock, that made from Eryngium and used in the Gart dcr Gcsuftdheit (issued by Egenolph 1533 and 1536 in Rhodion's re- vision); but Fuchs in 1531 had discriminated Aster from Eryn- gium, and Dorstenius, — or Egenolph, — had discernment enough not to repeat the error. In fact, he seems to have perceived that he did not know what native plant was true representative of the ancient Aster Atticus. He forebore to mention any native equivalent in his chapter on the subject. The first step toward true knowledge is the perception of ignorance. Dorstenius had
EuRicius AND Valerius Cordus
355
reached that stage in 1540. By 1542 Fuchs had advanced the next step, had discovered the correct plant and had pubHshed its figure; and by 1543 Egenolph had appropriated this figure and was publishing it reduced in his " Ryff's Dioscorides."
LXXI. EuRicius Cordus Euricius Cordus, Simesusius, 1 486-1 538, physician, botanist and philologist, friend of the philologist Eobanus and of Joachim Camerarius, was born at Siemershausen in Hesse, i486, and died at Bremen 1538-9. He was father in 15 15 of the great Valerius Cordus ; called by the Landgrave Philip to the new Protestant University of Marburg, he there translated Nicander into Latin verse, 1527; and wrote a German Theriaca (1532, Frankfort, by Egenolph) ; and also his chief work, his Botanologicon (printed by Gymnicum at Cologne, 1534, a rare octavo; in bibl. Meyer) chiefly concerning errors in interpretation of Dioscorides' plant- names ; with an index summarizing the results for 350 plants. The latter was reprinted i 549 by Egenolph at Frankfort in a 9th edition of Ruellius' translation of Dioscorides, forming pages 534-541, under the name Judicium de herbis" {ex bibl. Columbia Univ.)
Euricius Cordus joined with the current opinion of his period in identifying Aster Atticus with the Stellaria of that time, mean- ing probably AlcJiemilla. He was influenced by Fuchs' judgment as published in Brunfels' Dc vera, 1531, and followed him in identifying the Alibium of the Arabs with Aster Atticus, not with Eryngium. His words are as follows : Jjidiciiiui, p. 534, etc.
Aster Atticus, est Inguinalis, quem male apud Serapionem per Eryngio accipium, nomine decepti Herbarii."
Again, p. 535, Bubonium, id est Alibium, Inguinalis, Aster Atticus, Stellaria."
LXXn. Valerius Cordus
Valerius Cordus, son of Euricius Cordus, born I 5 15 at Siem- ershausen, Bavaria, studied medicine in the University of Witten- berg (where he became the friend of the renowned Breslau physi- cian, Crato von Kraftheim), and as early as 1535, at Nuremberg, published first his oft-printed Dispensatorium pJiaj'macoruDi omniinfi, the oldest German pharmacopoeia. After lecturing on Dioscorides
356
Aster History ; Cordus
at Wittenberg, he turned as Meyer remarks from the ancients to nature herself, and roamed in search of plants and minerals over the mountains of Middle Germany, especially the Erzgebirge, the Hartz and the Thuringerwald. Perhaps it was first in these jour- neys that he found, on the mountains about Jena," as he says,* twenty years or more before its famed university was founded, f the wild Aster Atticus growing in its violet and yellow, as he declares with much positiveness in his notes on Dioscorides. Pos- sibly it was earlier still, and may have been while still a student at Wittenberg, from whence a walk to Jena was but a trip of some fifty miles.
Possibly it was about the time of his attendance at Wittenberg, in 1539, when he listened with his friend Crato to Melancthon lecturing upon Nicander. At all events it seems to have been the first modern discovery of apparently genuine Aster Atticus that we know, unless it was anticipated by that of Fuchs, who pub- lished his first genuine identification in 1542, and must have made it some time before, text not only being written but the intervals for the painters and the engraver and the presswork, all to be deducted from his date of 1542. So far as appears, Valerius Cordus J and Fuchs both deserve the credit of independent discovery of the wild plant, and independent identification with the plant of Dios-
* I quote all which Cordus has to say of Aster : " Astera Atticum Arabum inter- pretes, et Pandectarum autor Matthaeus Sylvaticus, cum Eryngio confundunt, sed foedo errore. Sunt enim diversissimi generis herbae. Ruellius quoque Astera Atticum non recte indicat, quamvis non suam, sed aliorum de hac herba opinionem ponit. Ego autem scio me verum Aster Atticum in montibus circa Jenam invenisse. Non enim melius historiae convenire posset, tam exquisite respondent descriptioni omnes ejus herbae partes. Nascitur in petrosis montibus, ut quaedam etiam Dioscoridis exem- plaria indicant. In quibusdam etiam exemplaribus de floribus eius leguntur avdn^ TTopipvpovv 7; iiTjT^ivov, idcst, flore purpureum aut luteum, sed false, Non enim in quibus- dam locis purpureos et in quibusdam luteos habet. Sed utrunque colorem simul iisdem flores ostendunt. Quapropter TTop<pvpovv Kai jur/livov idest, purpureum et luteum, leg- endum est. Hoc enim alia exemplaria et ipsa floris figura testantur. Media namque floris pars luteam habet colorem, circa quam parva et purpurea foliola, ut in Chamae- meli floribus videmus, disposita sunt, quo sit ut purpureo et luteo simul colore Asleris flos describatur." Valerius Cordus' " Annotitiones in... Dioscorides," 4, cv (in Rivius' Dioscorides, 1549, p. 515, ex bibl. Colu.).
tin 1558.
X Cordus gave three lecture courses at Wittenberg on Dioscorides that were so successful that even older men attended them, as Professor Andreas Auritaber of Konigsberg ; Meyer ^ 4 : 3 1 7.
CoRDus' Discovery of Aster at Jena 357
corides ; though it is not impossible that information from some of the pubHc lectures by Cordus may have given Fuchs a sug- gestion that set him on the true path, Fuchs' language, however, indicates personal knowledge, and his description of the continu- ance in bloom from August to October seems to be a statement that is peculiar to himself Perhaps Cordus and Fuchs may have both discovered the wild plant as early as 1 539.
In 1542, the year that Fuchs was publishing his great work, Cordus was travelling in Italy. There he spent a year in Padua, Ferrara and Bologna, then went to Florence, Pisa and Lucca, and finally to Rome, where he was taken ill, died and was buried, September, 1544, before completing his 30th year, though already taking rank, in estimation of Meyer, as one of the greatest botan- ists that Germany had produced.
Posthumous works of Cordus included his Annotations * on Dioscorides and his Histoviae Stirpium.^ In both he treated the Aster Atticus of Dioscorides as the species now known as Aster Amellus {^fide C. Bauhin).
Cordus also described, by the name AntJiyllis minor, a plant, the Tripoliiiui III of C. Bauhin, which was regarded by the latter as closely similar to the Aster Tripolium of modern botany.
Cordus' second aster, Anthemis Tinctoria. — Cordus and his editor Gesner indicate a perception that the ancient Greeks some- times included Buphthalmum in their Aster ; a probability which I have pointed out under Hippocrates' plant polyophthalmon, p. 107. This appears in Cordus' posthumously printed Historia stir- pium'' ; written 1540,^ but to which Gesner on printing it in 1561 added figures from Bock and some fifty of his own. Among these added figures was one labeled Aster Atticus but really represent- ing a type commonly received for Buphthalmum in that century and which became later the AntJieinis tinctoria L. Probably the figure was one of those received by Gesner from Bock ; which
* First published by Egenolph, at Frankfort, 1549, in the second edition of Rivius' Dioscorides {ex bibl. Colu. ) and again with corrections, Strasburg, 1561, by Rihel.
f Written 1540, printed Strasburg, 1561, bound with the preceding, 4 books, de- scribing in a masterly manner the plants of Germany. A fifth book described 25 plants he had observed in Italy (Rihel, at Strasburg, 1563 ; and again, in Schmiedel's Gesner, with additions from a MS. of Gesner, Nuremberg, 1751).
% So Gesner remarks.
358
Aster History ; Cordus
strengthens the probabiUty that Bock meant to include Anthemis tinctoria L. in his Tinctorius flos primus or Aster (p. 347).
CordiLs' third aster, Anthemis nobilis, etc. — A third Aster so called, which was credited * to Cordus in Gesner's edition of 1561 was a figure representing the Chamaemelum aureum of that period, chiefly Anacychis aureus L., but claimed f to include forms later classed as Anthemis nobilis L., and Cotida aurea L.
So Cordus, who probably himself recognized ovXy on^ Aster Atti- cns and that the true one, in his posthumous work by the addition of mistaken figures was made to recognize three kinds of Aster Atti- cus, one of which alone represents three different genera of to-day.
Cordus finds both purple and yellozv in Aster, — Cordus was a principal authority for the emendation of Dioscorides* color-phrase for Aster from purple or yellow" to ''purple and yellow," see citation, p. 356, n. He was so strong an authority that Saracenus, in opposing that view, mentions Cordus first, though his emenda- tion was last to be published. Perhaps no stronger proof of Cor- dus* power as a botanical influence need be sought.
LXXHI. Gesner Conrad Gesner, perhaps the most broadly developed naturalist of the sixteenth century, was a man whose intellect had the whole world for its range, but whose actual travels were singularly cir- cumscribed for that active age. He lived and died in Zurich, his birthplace, was during much of his life professor in its university, and strayed but little beyond, though he visited Paris and Strasburg, Baden and the Rhaetian Alps. The son of a poor Swiss furrier, and born 15 16, his uncle pastor Friccius is thought by Meyer to have given him his first schooling and his impulse to botany. But Gesner's boundless thirst for knowledge and his tireless activity were limited by bodily weakness and cut short by his death of the plague while yet in his prime, December 13, 1565. %
* Fide J. Bauhin, 2 : 1044. t Fide Richter's Linnaeus.
X The very year of his completion of the labors of Moiban in editing the Eupo- rista ascribed to Dioscorides, as referred to p. 139.
Gesner' s writings va^M^Q, botanical, bibliographic, linguistic, medicinal, mineralog- ical and zoological works ; especially, among those non-botanical, his " Alithridates,^^ Zur., 1555, sen de differentiis linguarmfi,''^ 8vo, called by Meyer the first research
Gesner's List of Aster-Names
359
Gesner's Botanical Writings. — Those published in his lifetime formed but a fragment of what he planned ; as Meyer remarks, **in comparison with what had been printed by Brunfels, Bock, Fuchs, and even by the early-dead Valerius Cordus, Gesner stands far behind, though really taking rank as the greatest among them."
These botanical writings actually published by Gesner still remained few at his death, though beginning so early as i 541, when his Enchiridion historiae plantarum'' appeared at Basle, Paris and Venice, a work of nearly 300 pages, intended as a compend of the botanical knowledge of the ancients, but rare and not within my reach.
In 1 542 he published at Zurich his complete catalog of plant names, under title " Catalogus plantarurny giving names in their Latin, Greek, French and German equivalents ; together with their names then in use among apothecaries ; and with addition of the Dioscoridean synonyms.
Other botanical works of Gesner include his quarto De raris et admirandis herbis,'' -\ 1555, itself now rare and practically unat-
on the German language ; his " Bibliotheca tmiversalis,'''' Zur., 1 545, and its continua- tion the Pandect ae^^'' Zur., 1548; and his Historia Anifjialium,''^ 1550-1587 (chiefly included in the great folio of 1554, ex libris Bu. ), which, as Cuvier remarked, laid the solid ground for the newer zo5logy.
Gesner's linguistic work caused him to be termed the " father of German phil- ology " ; and many traces remain of his sagacity as critic of the classics ; as his copy of the Aldus' edition of Didymus' Homeric Scholia (1521) with additional MS. notes on the text in Gesner's hand {^ex libr. Bu.).
*I think Gesner's catalog contained the fullest list of ancient aster names pub- lished prior to the present issue. In 1549 (not 1543 as Pritzel has it, no. 3594) this "catalogus" was republished; or, rather, it formed the basis of Gesner's /«^/<?x pub- lished by Egenolph, pages 541-554 of his 1549 edition of Rivius' notes on Ruel's Dioscorides. This Index consists of the Latin and Greek names only, striking out the French and German, and omitting all remarks. Its Aster names include (p. 543, ex bibl. Colu.), besides Aster Atticus :
" Asterion = Aster Atticus,"
" Asterion = Cannabis,"
* ' Asterion = Sphondylion. ' ' Asteriscus = Aster Atticus."
" Asterope of Aegineta = Marrubium." Astertiphen [among] Aphris = Chamaemelum."
" Astrismunim [among] Aphris = Solanum hortense."
" Astrion= Coronopus. "
t A quarto of 86 pages, printed at Zurich by two of the Gesner family, Andreas and Jacobus Gesner ; and of which a copy bearing the autograph of the great Conrad
360
Aster History; Gesner
tainable ; his Epistles to various botanists, as to Wm. Turner in I 562, the father of English botany ; those to Caspar and to Jean Bauhin, to Collinus de Tiilipa Tiircarum,'' and to Joannes Kent- mann ; his unaddressed epistles pubhshed jointly with Guilandini ; * his De hortis Germaniae, f and his great unfinished General His- tory of Plants. In this and in the preceding De Hortis Gesner's chief Aster contributions were contained.
Gesner's great contribution to the knowledge of Asters resulted however from his clear perception of plurality of species in the genus Aster. This belief was indicated in Gesner's publication of three different plants by the name of Aster in his edition in 1561 of Valerius Cordus ; and it showed its influence within two years on Matthioli, primate of conservative botany, in the appearance in 1563 of the Aster Atticus verns, of Anguillara and of Gesner, as Matthioli's second Aster, Aster Atticus alter.
That Gesner should recognize other Asters than Aster Atticus was characteristic of his outlook upon botany. He did not believe in monotypic genera. He stands still to-day as perhaps the most notable of examples of that disbelief In a letter he said There is probably no genus of herbs which is not to be divided into two or more species. The ancients described one gentian ;
Gesner himself was sold in London, 1846, for los. 6d. In this work, various new plants of Gesner's discovery were first published, both in descriptions and figures ; with additions regarding the Alps, including descriptions of Mount Pilatus near Lucerne by Gesner and by DuChoul, and of the Stockhorn near Berne by a native, Rhelticamis Stockhor7iius.
* '■'■De stirpium ... nojuinilnts zetustis,''' or " Two epistles, one by Melchior Guilandini the Prussian, the other by Conrad Gesner; on certain ancient names of herbs, of which through ages physicians have been ignorant or have been in doubt ; as Mamiras, Moly, Oloconitis, Doronicum, Bulbocastaneum, Granum alzelin and habbaziz, etc.;" Basle, 1557, p. 45, with figures; in Latin; a rare octavo, in the Dresden library. With additions from Guilandini of three epistles comprising 26 opening pages. This was republished 1558 at Padua, a rare folio of 48 pp. ; also in the Dresden library, its title beginning " De stirpibus aliquot epistolae
f Printed by Rihel at Strasburg, 1561 in folio, in one composite volume with Gesner's edition of Valerius Cordus' works (Annotations on 5 books of Dioscorides ; the posthumous '■^ Hi'toria stirphini'''' in 4 books; the " Sylva " containing notice of ce'tain German fossils, metals, stones and plants ; a book *' De artiftcionis extradioni- bus ; ' ' another on some ' ' Compositiones medicinal es' ' ) . Gesner' s part was entitled ' ' De hortis Germaniae liber recejts, una cum descriptione Tulipa Turcarum, Chamaeceras montani, Chamaemespili, Chamaenerii, et Conizoidis." It was written in the winter of 1560, containing a catalog of all known gardens, especially in Germany, together with notes of notable plants possessed by them, and very often with their nativity.
Aster Con yzo ides
361
to me ten or more species are known." Gesner was also an early example of that true scientific patience which waits for another season's growth in order to determine a Composite species ; for to one who sent him a fasciate Cichorium as a new species, he gave directions fiitiira aestate diligentius observabis,'' for said he, "if from its seed another plant like itself is produced, you may sup- pose it to be natural ; if not, it is not a natural species."
Gesner also held an attentive ear to the plant-names of the people, — though not always without error in identification, as appears the case in his Wagstroh, which he names as vernacular * for Aster Atticus, a name meaning way-straw, wayside-straw, (English bedstraiv), reported by Bock in 1531 for a Galium, which Galium was doubtless, like its relative Asperula, mistaken for Aster by some one who reported its name to Gesner as an Aster- name.
Gesner s Aster'' — By this term we may distinguish the plant long known as Aster conyzoides Gesneri,^ and which passed as a
* See his De stirpiuvi collectione Tabulae, which first appeared as an Appendix, pp. 467-548, to Gesner' s edition of Kyber's Lexicon rei herbariae, Strasburg, 1553 > reprinted under name of Caspar Wolf as editor, Zur., 1587 {^ex bibl. Colu. ).
f The known history of Aster conyzoides Gesneri may be briefly sketched as fol- lows : It was described as Conizoides by Gesner, 1561. It appeared, in Lobel's Plantar jini Historia'" or " Observatiojies,'" Plantin press, Antwerp, 1576 ; (p. 189, ex libris Bu.) with figure, p. 188, a figure of the whole plant, reduced to five or six inches, showing nine heads resembling those of Erigeron Philadelphiciivi L., the figure being entitled Aster conyzoides Gesneri,^'' and with the following description : " Aster conyzoides. conyzoides gesneri.
"In Anglia, Belgio et agro Louaniensi juxta academiae pomoeriafrequens hie oritur ; facie, foliis et surculis dodrantalibus, interdum et majoribus Conyzae minimae. Flores asteris obsoleto luteo in pappos deliiscentes."
It was the plant meant by Caesalpino in his De plantis libri A'F/, 1583, by his name Aster atticus tertitis, Jide C. Bauhin.
It was next printed as Asttr conyzoides Gesneri, by Molinaeus (Des Moulins) in his continuation of Dalechamp's i¥/j-/c;7<7 Plantaruin Generalis, Leyden, 1587, I : 822 [ex libr. Bu. ), with repetition of Lobel's figure, and appropriation of part of his text, but without adding anything new.
It is perhaps the "Fifth kind" of " Starrewort " mentioned by Gerarde in his Herball, 393 (1597), but without figure, and simply with the remarks "There is another sort [of Aster] that hath a broune stalke, with leaves like the small Coniza. The flowers are of a dark yellow which turne into downe that flieth away with the wind like Coniza. The roote is full of threds or strings."
In 1616 Fabio Colonna in his Ecphrasis, 2 : 25, referred to it as " palustri Amello, quem alii Asterem Conisoidetn appellarunt."
362
Aster History ; Gesner
species of Aster from 1576 to 1650, then as a species of Conyza, of Chrysanthemum in 1699, Asteroides in 1703, Asteriscus 1720 ; finally finding rest in Linnaeus' Buphthalmum of 1737 and 1753, being still known as Buphthalmum grandiflorum L. Gesner pub- lished his Conizoides as one of a number of brief independent descriptions appended to his De liortis Ger maniac of 1561 — in which work appeared his Aster Atticus ^= Buphthalmum L., now Pallenis spinosa Cassini).
That Gesner entitled it simply Conizoides in his brief work of 1 561, where this formed one of a series of fragments hastily printed, gives in itself no mature and deliberate expression of his classifica- tion for it, and perhaps in his too short and crowded life he never decided that subject. What it does indicate is simply that he recognized in it a plant intermediate between typical Aster and typical Conyza, a range of plants of multifarious diversity, for the next century alternately vibrating between Aster and Conyza in classification.
It appeared in Caspar Bauhin's Pinax, Basle, 1623, as his 8th species of yellow Aster, by name of 8 Aster luteus angustifolius, without description, but with reference to its occurrence in Lobel, Dalechamp and Caesalpino.
At least ten years before this, Caspar Bauhin had thought that he recognized Ges- ner's plant while collecting in the Alps about Basle, and had sent it to his brother Jean (who died in 1613) under the name of Aster conyzoides Gesneri. The specimen sent seems to have been one of Inula spiraeifolia L. , and after being duly mentioned in Jean Bauhin's writings before his death, 1613, finally reached publication in 1650. See supra, under Bock.
It was described by Parkinson, 1640, in his Theatrum Botaniccn, p. 130, as Aster conyzoides, Fleabane-like Starrewort," being his eleventh species, with a repe- tition of Lobel's figure, enlarged ; and with the remark :
" Wee have had from Virginia another sort of this kind, very like unto it^ but with smaller flowers "; perhaps referring to some Erigeron.
In 1650, at the final publication of Jean Bauhin's Historia plantarum, it was given a new but mischievous and confused treatment under the name Conyza marina, being united with a Conyza marina of Dalechamp. The description by Jean Bauhin was meant in the main for the plant later known as Erigeron titberosuui L. , and after- ward as Jasonia tuberosa Cassini, 1 822. With this, a new and excellent figure was now given (J. Bauhin, Hist. //., 2 : 1055). New localities were cited about Narbonne ;
Gener Cherlerus Narbonensi copiose observavit et collegit in campestribus illis juxta Montem Lupa." New but fallacious synonyms were added, as of Rauwolf, Chon- drilla Dioscoridis altera (so mentioned in Rauwolf s Raiss or Travels in the East, 1583, as from Syria; reprinted under the same name by Molinaeus, 1587; and by Clusius, 1 601, as Chondril 'a altera Dioscoridis putata ; probably it was the Chondrilla ii. hulbosa angustifolia major oi Q. Bauh'm'' s P/iytopinax, 1 596-, cited by J. Bauhin,
Gesner's Five Aster Species
363
Other Asters of Gesner Gesner's collections and printed works recognized perhaps five species of Aster, as then regarded ; as follows :
1. Aster Atticus veriis of Gesner's De Jiortis Germaniae, 1561 ; = C. Bauhin's Aster Atticus hiteus foliolis ad florem rigidis (Pinax^ 266) = Pallenis spinosa Cassini.
2. Aster Atticus of Gesner's De Jiortis, cited by C. Bauhin, Pinax, 267, as synonym of his own Aster Atticus caertdeus vulgaris, which is Aster Aniellus L.
3. Aster conyzoides Gesneri of Lobel, 1576, first printed as Conizoides in Gesner's De hortis ; = BupJithalinum grandiflorum L. ; already treated, p. 361-363.
4. ''Aster Atticus tertius, e sicca Thomae Pennei, Wolph." With these words Schmiedel,* editing Gesner's works in 175 1, entitles a figure of a plant somewhat resembling Aster concolor, being fig. 46 in tabula 6. That is, this was one among the col- lection of figures which Gesner was making ready for his pro- jected universal history of plants, f and which passed into the
1650, as a second synonym for this Conyza tiiarina ; in 1623 it was the IX. Chon- drilla bulbosa Cyriaca foliis angustifolius of C. Bauhin's Pinax).
Jean Bauhin's confusion of the Jasonia with the original Conizoides {^Btiphthalmum grandiflorum L. ) seems to have led Bobart when completing, in 1699, Morison's His- toria plant arum, to publish (2 : 118) as Aster conyzoides Gesneri a plant, a relative of the Jasonia, with a new figure different from that of Jean Bauhin. Linnaeus, 1753, classed the plant of Morison as a variety 7 of his Erigeron tuberosuvi, now Jasonia tube- rosa Cassini.
The true Aster conyzoides Gesneri of Lobel and C. Bauhin was meanwhile pub- lished in Bobart' s completion of Morison (3 : 21) as Chrysantheviufn perenne mi^ius, etc. By Tournefort, i'jot, \ Corollarium, p. 50), it was called Asteroides alpina, salicis folio, repeated by Micheli in 1748 (in his posthumous Catal. pi. horti Florentini, edited by Targioni-Tozzetti : 12, t. 5). By Linnaeus, 1737 ( Hortus Clififort., 414) and by Royen, 1740 (Florae Leydensis, 170), it was placed in Buphthalmum, with a phrase- name, reduced to binomial form as Buphthalmiwi grandiflorum by Linnaeus in 1 753, a name still retained for it by Nyman and others, though De Candolle, 1835, because of intermediate variations, merged it in his Buphthahnum salicifolium L.
Tournefort listed also in 1700 i lnstitutiones) , an Aster conyzoides odoratus luteus as a quotation from Besler in his Hortus Eystettensis of 1613 : considered by Linnaeus to be his Inula squarrosa.
* Gesneri Opera Botanica, Nuremberg, 1 75 1 [ex libr. Bu.).
f For the projected Geschichte der Pflanzen " into which these latter Asters were presumably to pass, Gesner had prepared over 1,500 plant-figures, chiefly original and some from Bock. Gesner's sudden death came while he was engaged on a final revi- sion. The figures passed to Camerarius, who mingled them with his own and so pub-
364
Aster History ; Gesner
hands of Gesner's executors, Caspar Wolff* and Joachim Camer- arius the younger, the Nuremberg physician [see vi/rd). Gesner's figure, as the inscription indicates, was made from a dried speci- men collected by Gesner's friend and correspondent, the London naturalist, Thomas Penny. f Dr. Penny, one of the first English plant collectors, collected plants for Gesner and for his executor Wolff, for many years. Numerous figures which were left un- named at Gesner's untimely death were afterward given their names by Wolff, by Penny and by the young Jean Bauhin. This present Aster Atticus tcrtiiis was apparently one of Gesner's figures named by Wolff; perhaps as early as 1566, within a few months after Gesner's death, for he had already begun to carry out Gesner's literary projects. It is quite possible, however, that the figure represents a plant sent in to Wolff after Gesner's death. Its equivalence among present species, in lack of any description ac- companying the figures, is quite uncertain.
5. ''Asieris species Rmnvoljii % Ivng," § so its figure, " LXXII," appears labelled in the Schmiedel edition of Gesnerian figures. The plant shown is a low branched composite with peculiarly star-like blossoms, having about 13 narrow taper-acuminate rays, their effect almost like rigid spines.
Rauwolf had supplied Gesner with many rare plants before
lished them. A century later they came to Trew, who enlisted the services of Schmie- del ; the latter found over 1,000 of the figures, and published 274 of them, 1 75 1 and 1 77 1, figures without text, mostly of good quality, and often including small drawings of seed or fruit, in accordance with Gesner's own remark " From the seeds I am accustomed chiefly to judge the relationships of plants." Meyer, 4 : 333, gives Gesner credit, from these figures, of being the first to perceive the need of drawing the seed and fruit of plants (but Fuchs had demanded it in 1 542). An example is his Aster AtticuS tertius, where a small pappose achene is figured by itself, etc.
* Physician of Zurich, Gesner's pupil, friend, colleague and editor.
f Of Dr. Thomas Penny the Schmiedel edition of Gesner remarks, Historia operis p. xliii, that Penny's notes "show abundantly how zealously, long before his distin- guished fellow-countryman Ray, Penny was engaged in searching the mountains and other places throughout Switzerland and France for plants." Penny devoted himself later to entomology and was writing from London to Camerarius about insects as late as June 18, 1585. Penny "died in 1589, having aided Wolff by sending plants and paintings of plants to the end" (Schmiedel, xlvi). See also vol. i of Pulteney's Sketch of English Prelinnean botany.
J Leonhard Rauwolf, German botanist, who died 1596; his " Raiss " or Travels was published 1583.
\ Joachim Jungermann of Leipsic.
Asters of Penny and Rauwolf
365
1565, from his travels in Syria, &tc., fide Schmiedei, i : xxxiii. This figure probably originated with Camerarius, the Nuremberg phy- sician, and may have been from a painting by Jungermann, who was engaged in that work upon Gesner's plants at Nuremberg from 1584 to 1588.
Gesncr s Chief Contributions to Aster Knoivledge. — Either through his direct efforts or as their result soon after his death, Gesner became authority for the 5 different "Asters " just men- tioned.
The idea of plurality of species in the genus seems to have been directly and clearly brought forward first by him.
He was first to have small details drawn separately^ as the seed and disk-flower.
He was, i 561, one of the first to adopt Pallenis spinosa Cassini as the true Aster Atticus ; some who anticipated him in this being Anguillara in Greece and Italy, Rondelet, Pena, and the young Clusius in southern France.
He was, fn his plant Conizoides, the first to describe and pub- lish, 1 56 1, the plant known for much of the next two centuries as Aster conizoides Gesneri ] i. e., BiipJitJialinnm grandifloriwi L.
LXXIV. Anguillara Aloysius Anguillara, coupled with Cesalpino by Pulteney as ''two of the soundest critics in the knowledge of plants that the age produced," was born it is supposed, at the village of the same name, in the Papal States, about 1 500. His first name also appears under its equivalents Aluigi, Luigi, Louis, Aloysio, Ludovic, etc. He is not to be confused with Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara, the contemporary poet, 15 17-1565, who is better known to the biographers.
Anguillard s Search for the Plants of Dioscorides. — Anguillara, says Haller, was "first of his race to make researches * upon the
* Anguillara' s botanical travels extended through all Italy from the Abruzzi to Venice ; through Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica ; southern parts of Switzerland and France ; Dalmatia, Illyria, Slavonia, Macedonia ; through Greece into the Morea ; in Cyprus, Corfu, and many other Greek islands ; making, as Meyer remarks, genuine botanical observations, though during exactly how many years we know not ; if covering about 15 years, they may have begun in 1 5 25. He remained longer in Crete, where the worthy apothecary Costantino Rodioto from Rhodes took him into his house as his friend. With him Anguillara studied the medicinal plants of Crete, calling him in after years ' ' // mio carissimo t?iaestro. ' '
366
Aster History; Anguillara
plants of the ancients in the land of the ancients "; which Meyer amends by adding after the revival of learning," remembering how Simon Januensis was making the same researches 300 years before.
Anguillara' s botajiical work under Ghini commenced in 1539, on his return to Italy, where he remained * at Ghini's private botan- ical garden f at Bologna, till 1 544 when he removed with him to Pisa X and so remained in 1545, forming for him a deep venera- tion ; § Luca Ghini being the only other besides the Cretan Rodioto whom Anguillara always calls maestro ^
Anguillara the Director of the Botanical Garden of Padua. — This next period of Anguillara's life, 1 545-1 561, was that associ- ated with the botanical garden at Padua, for which the Venetian government made definite provision first in 1545, but which seems to have been already developing for some years under Buonafede, professor in the University of Padua, i 533-1 549.
Buonafede or Buonafidius says Gaetano Monti {^Indices botan- ici et materiae inedicae, Bologna, 1755) ''established in 1545 a botanical garden ainplum et splendidum, for the use of the University of Padua, Aloysius Anguillara Romanus, a disciple of Luca Ghini, being called to undertake its charge." The date of Anguillara's assuming charge as Gustos " of the garden is given as 1546 by Marsili, who says his directorship extended from 1546 to 1 55 I. Three or four distinct positions in connection then with this botanical garden seem to have coexisted at times ; first, that of professor of medicine, including materia medica, held by Buonafede 1 533-1549, who was succeeded by the celebrated anatomist Gabriele Fallopius, discover of the Fallopian tubes. Their professorship included the chair styled Lectitra siinplicium. Second, that of Ostensior sinipliciufn ; its occupant styled Ostensor siinplicium, being a demonstrator or docent in medical botany.
* Anguillara's Semplici, 36 and 120.
f Ghini seems to have maintained this from T 534 to 1 544.
X Luca Ghini (see p. 328) accepting the call in 1544 to the University of Pisa, a garden was at once begun there also and was formally established in 1547, with Ghini as director and also as the University professor of materia medica or '^Lector sim- plichitn.''''
\ Wm. Turner, first English botanist, then a religious exile, was also a listener of fide Pulteney, who links together Anguillara, Cesalpino and Turner as Ghini's chief pupils.
Anguillara's Botanical Garden
367
Meyer remarks (4 : 262) " the position of Privatdocent among us seems to have had its beginning in this of Ostensor simpliciunir The three first at Padua to be recorded as Ostensor were Aloysius Mundella Brixianus (of the generation older than Anguillara apparently, his only printed works appearing in 1538, at Basle, by Isengrin, — being corrections of Galen and of Brasavola) ; Aloysius Anguillara, i 549-1 5 5 i , Pierantonio Michiel, i 551-1555 (so dated by Marsili, 1771, saying that he greatly enriched the garden ; a <:ontemporary letter of Aldrovandi also speaks of Michiel as in •charge of it) ; Anguillara again, 155 5-1 561 ; Melchior Guilandini I 561, who was made Lector simpliciuin in 156 1 through the exer- tions of Fallopius, and held it till his death in 1589; under him in I 563 a definite Collegmm botanictim of Padua was first recog- nized; after him came Prosper Alpinus, 6th prefect," the cele- brated investigator of the plants of Egypt.
Third of these simultaneous positions was that of Qistos horti, or Director of the Garden ; usually united with the preceding, but which Anguillara is said (by Marsili) to have held earlier, from 1 546 onward, or three years before he is mentioned as Ostensor,
Marsili ("A^^?to> del publico giardino de semplici di Padova," written \yyi,fide Meyer, though first printed by Visiani, at Padua in 1840) names Anguillara as first director of the garden, and Monti mentions him as the means by which the garden became built up on Buonafede's magnificent plan, the plan adopted by Venice in 1545. Anguillara is said to have been Buonafede's choice to execute this plan, so the date i 546 seems none too early for his beginning. He had doubtless been practically engaged on similar work during the period i 539-1 544, which he had spent in botanical work with Ghini at his private garden at Bologna, and it was doubtless partly on that account that Anguillara was spoken of by a contemporary as a director of great experience. Now he anticipated Ghini in working out the establishment at Padua of this garden, of all botanical gardens the first, it has been said, to be maintained at public expense. The next year, however, 1547, Ghini himself secured a similar formal establishment for his garden at Pisa, founded by the government of Florence, which was induced, it is believed, says Monti, " by the recent example of the most
368
Aster History ; Anguillara
sagacious senate of Venice." But for a year the pupil had out- run the master.
Of Anguillara's life and work at Padua, we know little in detail, but the results would make him illustrious had he done nothing else. The garden speedily assumed the highest rank among bo- tanical gardens. Belon,* visiting it in 1549, and afterward com- paring it with those of the Turks, writes in 1553, that he found none more remarkable or elegant. f Belon is supposed by Meyer to have meant to name Anguillara though momentarily confusing him with the older Ostensor, Aloysius Mundella, when he wrote after his visit to Padua in 1549, that "To the botanical garden of Padua had been called a man, vir diligens et rnagnae experientiae. Dominus Aloysius Mundella % (a slip for Aloysius Anguillara) herbarius Romanus, who had devoted himself to the learning and culture of his period, and who is now able to exhibit Giiajacani arbores there grown § by his (Mundella's ?) own diligence."
Anguillara is further styled by Marinello, 1561, as Scmplicist to the Venetian government, which may have involved other duty than that of being director of the garden. Anguillara's friend Quadramio was similarly styled " Simplicista " to Ferrara, in the Latin of C. Bauhin.
Anguillara's personal duties certainly must have been very many; uniting the functions of director and docent, "he had" says Meyer, " not only the charge of the living plants of the garden, but it was his duty to arrange and demonstrate all the simples or medical remedies living and dead, vegetable or non- vegetable."
Anguillara! s persecution by Matthioli (see infra, p. 386) had its
* Pierre Belon or Bellonius, French botanical traveller, who repeated in his own journeys the endeavors of Anguillara to see and know the plants of Dioscorides in their native soil. Born in 1517, he made his oriental journeys 1546-1549, and in Paris in 1553) lie finished writing an account of his travels, which had been through Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt and Arabia. This was printed in three volumes in French, 1554, at Paris, and was later translated into Latin by Clusius, whose version of the Observationes appeared at Antwerp at different times, first in 1 589, separately, and in 1605, bound in with Clusius' '■'■Exotics.''''
"j" " Nullum vidimus magis singularem et elegantiorem " as Clusius rendered it.
X Aloysius Anguillara was properly called Romanus, but Aloysius Mundella should have been Brixianus.
\ Perhaps this last statement about the trees really belonged to Mundella as the elder man.
Anguillara's Exile
369
innocent cause in Anguillara's correcting errors of Matthioli re- specting Lycium and Aconitum, an offense which was unpardon- able, although the corrections were respectfully offered and only two in number. It was equally offensive that Anguillara had in- terpreted a number of other classical plant references in a different way from Matthioli. Matthioli had already driven the learned Amatus from place to place in Italy ; and now he stirred up such a storm against Anguillara as drove him in 1561 from Padua. The one * botanist of eminence who joined Matthioli in this per- secution was Aldrovandi,t successor of Luca Ghini at Bologna, to whom Matthioli wrote saying, " I am charmed that you have found out Anguillara for what he is, that he is prima per igno- rantissimo, malignissimo, ed invidiosissima."
However, Ferrara gave welcome to Anguillara, and he is thought to have held a professorship in its university, though his reputation remained under a cloud for two hundred years till Haller reestablished him in the esteem of botanists, 1771. Since then, Gaertner dedicated to his memory a genus Anguillara, and when this was renamed Badula by Jussieu, Robert Brown be- stowed his name anew upon a genus of the Melanthaceae. He received much appreciation at the hands of Sprengel, Du Petit Thouars, Hoefer and Meyer. All this posthumous fame had be- gun 200 years too late. His death was at Ferrara in 1570, due to the plague, or " pestilential fever " says Mazzuchelli, and fol- lowed close on his return from a voyage to Apulia with the friar Evangelista Quadramio " J (so Hoefer) § where he had been making researches among plants. Taken ill, he prepared for him-
* Perhaps Anguillara's beloved master, the famed lecturer, Luca Ghini, might, if living, have been of help to his former pupil in this extremity. The fact that Ghini had given over the manuscript of his projected work on medicinal powers of plants to Matthioli for incorporation in his commentary, is no evidence that Ghini, who had re- ceived the Puritan Turner, would now have joined in the persecution of Anguillara.
t Ulysses Aldrovandus, " more zoologist than botanist," first director of the Bologna Botanical Garden, 1567-8; lector simplicium therein 1561 ; followed there by An- drea Cesalpino, "the greatest botanist of the century"; [and soon followed, in I577> by Boerhaave with his botanical garden at Leyden].
J" Evangelista Quadramius Eremita, Theol. Doctor " and Semplicist to the Duke of Ferrara, as Caspar Bauhin terms him ; author, 1597, at Ferrara, of a quarto tract, " De Theriaca et Mithridatio.''^
\ In Biographie Generale.
370
Aster History; Anguillara
self a Theriaca, or compound medicine, as among the ancient Greek physicians ; an evidence at that time, remarks Meyer, of unusual knowledge of plant remedies : but it availed nothing, and he died soon after its operation, Oct.. 1570, seven years before the death of his antagonist, Matthioli, from the same dread disease.
Anguillara' s Semplici. — The only work by Anguillara which has come down to us is his Semplici,'^ ''his rare libellus," as Sprengel calls it, " in which he seeks to correct the text and illus- trate the plants of Dioscorides by his own observations." f In his Semplici, Anguillara, says Hoefer, ''recounts a great number of plants which he had compared with the descriptions of Greeks and Romans, endeavoring to establish an agreement between ancient and modern names, especially with those of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, and for which he consulted the manuscripts still existing of some ancient rhizotomists. From all his painstaking researches he was able to discriminate with great exactitude 500 plants, but did not class them systematically, and he names them sometimes by their ancient names, sometimes by their common names current in his own time. Anguillara was the first to make known to us the Salicornia fruticosa, Jasmimiin grandifioruin, Salvia pomifera, Camphorosina vionspeliaca, Riippia maritima, Anchusa tijtctoiia, Solanum ly coper siciini, Quercus Aegilops, etc., etc."
Meyer says of Anguillara's Semplici, " He shows in it rare
* " Semplici, liquali in piu Pareri a diversi nobili huomini scritti apaiono. Nuova- mente da M. Giovanni Marinello mandati in luce. Vinegia, typ. Valgrisi, 1561, 8^ 304
I This work consists of Opinions on plants of Dioscorides," published not by Anguillara himself who was in distress, but by his friend Marinello. An abstract of these opinions going about from hand to hand, Marinello persuaded Anguillara, after much reluctance, to give his permission to print. As printed they are arranged in the form of 14 Pareri or Opinions, addressed as epistles to eminent men, and written from Padua at different times between 1549 and 1560. They are not arranged chrono- logically, but are dated as follows]: no. 7, 1549, lo, 1555, I and 6, 1558, II, 3, 8, 13 1559, the others, 1560. They are in Italian, and were printed in quarto, octavo and duodecimo, the octavo edition {^ex libris Meyer^ having two woodcuts added, entitled Chamaeleon and Sempervivum tnajur. A Latin translation by Caspar Bauhin with notes was published at Basle, 1593 ; no copy of which perhaps now exists. Copies of the Italian editions of 1561 are extremely rare ; Sprengel had one, obtained from Ciro Pollini ; Meyer also obtained his from Italy, from his friend Visiani. The Library of the New York Botanical Garden has recently (June, 1902) secured a copy. Haller and Seguier had seen copies, but Pritzel seems never to have seen one.
Anguillara's Extracts from Cratevas
371
reading of the ancients, from Aristotle to the Geoponica, and of the Arabs and the modern Latins. Not even a word of an obscure poet escapes him, if it but throw Hght on any plant. He was not contented with the printed text but went direct to the MSS. for doubtful cases, of which he was a sagacious critic. He was equally great as philologist and as plant-identifier. He was obliged often to antagonize his predecessors in his identification of the plants of the ancients ; but from the courteous and unassum- ing way in which he did this, we know him to have been of unprejudiced mind. Haller rightly calls him facile princeps among Italian botanists, and ^naximus auctor''
Anguillara as a Source for Cratevas. — In his Sentplici Anguil- lara publishes "a great many extracts from Cratevas* which are not otherwise known," remarks Meyer, 1:252. The extracts made number 37 : but their most recent investigator, Wellmann, thinks they add little to what had been already familiar as incor- porated in the text of Dioscorides.f
Anguillara says little of the MS. of a fragment of Cratevas which was his source ; simply under Asarum, that there had come into his hands a fragment of Greek MS. of an ancient writer, out of which he took what Cratevas had written regarding Asarum " ; and in the following extract, ''What one can see, out of some fragments of Cratevas, that I have set down." % This is all he says about the MS.
Anguillara' s Identification of Aster Atticus with Pallenis. — The Aster Atticus verus of Anguillara's Semplici is, fide C. Bauhin, the plant now known as Pallenis spinosa Cassini ; the principal rival §
* See page 120.
I Where they do not agree with Dioscorides, they often agree with Pliny ; show- ing, as Meyer remarks, that Cratevas was known independently to both.
X Sprengel asserts, on what authority is not evident, that Anguillara's MS. of Cratevas came from the Marcus Bibliothek at Venice, and further, that Sprengel re- ceived transcriptions from it containing the bare names of plants and their properties, made by his friend Weigel. Meyer, some thirty or forty years later, induced his friend Visiani of Padua to go to Venice to make inquiries about this codex, without positive result, Visiani being told there that the only MS. of Cratevas known to them is the small 4-sheet fragment in the Imperial library at Vienna.
\ The relations of Pallenis with Aster may be briefly summarized as follows :
1525. Perhaps it was about this time that Anguillara, doubtless already familiar with Pallenis vcs. Italy, now saw it in the Morea and at Zante and other parts of Greece. Sibthorp in 1796 heard it called Knp<p6xopTov in Zante ; a popular name used for it in
372
Aster History ; Anguillara
in that century to the Aster Amellus of Linnaeus for the honor of identification with the Aster of the Greeks ; yet to be considered in connection with its description by Lobel, and its early selection as Aster by Rondelet and by Clusius.
Anguillara' s article on Aster is as follows, translated from the Italian of his Semplici p. 284, where it occurs in the latest of his letters, **Parere Quarto-decimo," dated 1560.
the sense of nutgrass ? i. e., plant bearing bur-like heads. (Compare ayfjiOGKapcprj, name of Inula ocuhii Christi, fide Sibthorp. ) The magnificent illustrated edition of the Flora Graeca (AstoV Libr. ) figures it under name of Buphihalmum spinosutn, showing six large heads with short yellow rays and with long star-like stift involucral leaves, radiately projecting and recurving a little. — But it was not till 1560 that Anguillara wrote of Pallenis in his Pareri as the same with Aster Atticus of Dioscorides.
1550. Clusius comes to sojourn with Rondelet at Montpellier and finds Pallenis abundant there, which Rondelet (and others there before him ?) identify with the clas- sic Bubonium, i. e., Aster Amellus L.
1561. Clusius finds the properties oi Buboniu7n and the name Bobas are cur- rently applied in Spain to Pallenis.
1560-1. Gesner, writing this winter his De hortis Germaniae, printed 156 1, names Aster Atticus as the plant we now know as Pallenis ; probably Gesner had not seen it in its native habitat, his slight travels seeming not to have ever extended so far. His knowledge of Pallenis was probably due to his extensive correspondence, and may have come to him through one of Anguillara's privately circulated epistles or Pareri ; or may perhaps have come through Rondelet or Pena.
1 561. Anguillara's Semplici and Gesner' s De hortis, both published this year, name the Pallenis as Aster Atticus verus.''^
1563. Matthioli introduces a figure of this Pallenis into the margin of his Aster- chapter as Aster Atticus alter, without text or other comment; evidently an after- thought and doubtless an unacknowledged debt to Anguillara, Perhaps Matthioli had already inserted the figure in his (unseen) 1562 edition ; but not earlier, as it is lacking in the next previous edition of 1560. This figure was occasionally copied, and repre- sented Aster Atticus in Lobel's Observationes, 1576, and in Bodaeus a Stapel's Theo- pkrastus, 1644. — Dalechamp, 1587, also retained Matthioli's name of Aster Atticus alter for Pallenis.
1566-9. Lobel, sojourning with Rondelet at Montpellier, and afterward with Pena at Narbonne, derived from the first or from both of these his identification of Pallenis with Aster Atticus, and it so appears published without figure, in Lobel and Pena's Adversaria, 1570 ; and with figure, 1576, as just mentioned.
1576. Clusius publishes in his Hispania, Pallenis as Aster Atticus primus Jlore luteo.
1583. Cesalpino publishes Pallenis as Aster Atticus. So Gerarde, I597> Taber- naemontanus, 1588.
1 601. Clusius publishes Pallenis as Aster Atticus legitimus, and figures it as " A," i. e. Aster.
1640. Parkinson in his Theatrum Botanicum was still figuring Pallenis as Aster Atticus.
Anguillara's Aster-chapter
373
" I have marvelled much, how it can be that learned men, and men who have made profession of interpreting Dioscorides, have oftentimes made error in interpreting, and still do so, in the chapter concerning Aster Atticus. Some think that the words TTUpifupouu Yj fi-qXtvov (i. e., Aster, that has blossoms either purple or yellow), ought not to be taken disjunctively, but that instead Dios- corides meant to include two distinct things [plants] in one. But how much they deceive themselves can be made clear in every particular. For the true Aster Atticus grows in many parts of Italy, with five little sharp-pointed leaves, placed in order in the manner of a star, and in the middle of which it makes its flower. The flower has a yellow color, Hke the flower- head of the chamomile, or else has a purple color. It makes its stalks higher one than another, woody and hairy, with leaves similar to the olive, but roughish, and somewhat pilose. It is called in many places in Italy, Filius- a7ite-patrem, among the herbalists, and in Greece in the Pelopon- nesus and in Zante they call it dwdzxafuvLTc^.''
Angtiillara! s Filius-afite-patreni. — Anguillara, who left many of his plant-names in vernacular form, may have intended Pallenis by his Filius-ante-patrem. Such was the conclusion of Caspar Bauhin, but not that of Sprengel, who remarks " What plant Anguillara means I cannot conceive."
That Anguillara intended the Pallenis spmosa of Cassini may be claimed on the following grounds :
I. Pallenis is common in Italy and Greece, and the Mediter- ranean region in general ; 2. It has often occasioned remark for its star-like flower-heads ; see Lobel ; 3. It has stems and leaves hir- sute; 4. Pallenis, although currently described as with golden- yellow rays, and so figured by Sibthorp, was said by Lobel and Pena in i 570 to have *' leaflets of the flowers which grow purplish underneath, in certain localities ; though not purplish within as in Aster Tripolium."
5. Pallenis spinosa Cassini, though^known as Oculus Christi at Montpellier (name current there in i^^o, fide Clusius, Lobel, etc.) in Anguillara's time, may have been also then known as Filius- ante-patrem in Italy. This name. So n-b ef or e-the -father, would be appropriate to Pallenis, which is remarkable for its frequent length- ening of lateral flower-stalks far above the older more central
374
Aster History ; Anguillara
head, as remarked by De Candolle, Prod. 5 : 487. It may be that Matteo Silvatico intended Pallenis when he wrote about 1 3 1 3 in his Pandects that there is a plant resembling the Buphthalmums which is called Fdius-ante-patrem by some, and Ocidiis-CJiristi by others. It may be that Da Manlio, when repeating this remark (with Silvatico in mind) about 1450, also intended to speak of Pallenis, in saying "There is an herb which is called Filius-ante- patrem or Oculus Christi, or Oculus Consulis, as herbalists please."
The chief objection to Pallenis as representing Anguillara's Filius-ante-patrem is that its occasional purple under the floral leaves may seem too feeble a character to have drawn out from Anguillara the expression " it bears flowers either yellow or purple."
Among Compositae common in both Italy and Greece there remains, however, such a group of plants, which might be called yellow or purple in different stages of flower ; it is typified by Tragopogon.* ; Curiously enough the names Anguillara used also point to this same group. The Zante dialectic name ocoovrnfitvlTcq, f if interpreted " quick-closing flower," is very appropriate, and if interpreted " noon-closing flower," it expresses the Tragopogon character still more closely ; expressed similarly by the English
* Tragopogon pratensis L., the Tragopogon of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny, Fuchs, Anguillara, Matthioli, Gesner, Lobel and most other writers, came as more species were distinguished, to acquire a name which itself indicated this color- change, becoming the Tragopogon Jiore htteo, purpureo ac ptiniceo of later pre-Linnaean botany, including Dodoens, Cesalpino, J. and C. Bauhin, Pontedera, Tournefort, Boerhaave, Morison and Vaillant.
Of the kindred Tragopogon porrifolius L., called "rose-purplish or yellow- purplish " by De Candolle, Albertus Magnus wrote regarding this change of color as far back as 1 260, saying :
" Oculus porci is a plant bearing a flower which reddens greatly with age and when dry still retains that color ;" " in cujus supremo est flos rutilans ipse multum, et exsic- catus retinet eundem colorem." Albert of Lauingen's De Vegetabilibus , bk. 6, c. 547 ; edn. Meyer and Jessen, Berlin, 1867.
I AwfJe/ca^ivZri^' ; apparently for " twelve-little-parts blossom " ; i. e., "twelve- hours flower" (flower closed by noon); or if rigorously applied "twelve-moments flower (flower that soon perishes); from juiv£TTij or fiivovra, now current Greek (says a Greek recently from Athens) to mean " a moment, as when one says I will be gone but duSeKafiiveTTu, but twelve minutes, but a moment ; and some say so everywhere nowadays; fiivovra some call the word; it was a Latin word once [L. 7ninutus\y Attica. — I find no very similar word to ScodeKajutvlng in modern Greek vocabularies, the nearest suggestions being dudeKa/ut^vov, a twelve month (Lowndes), and Cretan dia- lectic (hjxrjvr/Trjq, " a kind of brown wheat which remains for two months in the ground, two months in mod. Gr. being dvu /u-iimg " [Spratt, Travels in Crete, London, 1865).
Ang ui llara's Fili us- ante-Pa trem
375
name JoJin-go-to-bcd-at- noon'' as far back as about 1650 (Morison).
The Latin name Filins-ante-patrem leads to the same goal. About 13 1 3, Silvatico wrote that Garyophyllon is called Filius- anie-patrein diwdi Filins-ante-patrem is called 0 cuius CJiristi."^' Da Manlio,t citing this about 1450, added another synonym, Oculus Consulis. This latter name is as rare as it is remarkable, but an ancient gloss on a Wolfenbiittel MS. of Hildegardis occurs % which makes it a synonym of Oculus porci. Now Oculus porci in Ger- many throughout the Middle Ages was a common name for Tra- gopogon porrifolius L.
We cannot therefore deny that Anguillara's Filius-ante-patrem may have meant to him Tvagopogon porrifolius, including with it
* Pandects of Matteo Silvatico saying,
" Filius-ante-patrem latine. Arabice Tariff, graece Garyophyllon. Plinius. Est herba faciens florem sicut buphtalmos ; sed ramos post natus, excedit longitudine ante natum, et ob hoc Filius ante patrem vocatur. Et vocatur similitur oculus Christi. Avicenna in secundo dicit, quod est planta quae nascitur in vere ; et flos ejus similis est Croco hortulano." The interpretation of this seems to be as follows :
"Filius-ante-patrem is a plant name in [mediaeval] Latin. It is used for the plants called Tariff by the Arabs and Garyophyllon [or leaf smelling like spice- nuts] by the Greeks [i. e., the clove-pink, carnation, etc.]. Pliny mentions the Garyophyllon, top [but only as name of the clove tree]. Garyophyllon is [also the name of] an herb [Tragopogon ? Pallenis?] which produces flowers like the buphthalmums or oxeye- daisies ; but ditTers in having its later-developed branches exceed in length those before - developed ; and on this account it is called Filius-ante-patrem. And it is called, sim- ilarly, Oculus Christi.
" Avicenna in his second book mentions Filius-ante-patrem as a flower which is produced in spring ; and its blossom is similar to a garden crocus [meaning doubtless the same Colchicum which is called Filius ante patrem by Parkinson] . ' '
I Da Manlio, in Brunfels' De vera, 170, "Oculus Christi vel Oculus Consulis, secundum Matthaeurn, est Filius-ante-patrem."
Da Manlio, 167, in his chapter De Garyophylleis, speaks more at length, first dis- cussing the clove-pink and carnation, then passing to Tragopogon or Pallenis, saying :
" Reperitur etiam herba, quae dicitur Filius ante patrem, sive Oculus Christi vel oculus Consulis, ut volunt herbarii. Forma vero ipsius reperitur apud Mathaeum sylva- ticum. Et haec herba apud nos nascitur in pratis. Verba Pandectarii nunc citati." [The citation from Pandectarius now follows which I have quoted above], i. e., "There is also [besides the clove-pink] another herb [Tragopogon pratensis? or Pal- lenis?] found [in Italy; which is called also Garyophyllon], and which is called also Filius ante patrem or Oculus Christi or Oculus Consults, as the herbalists please. Its form and character are found given by Matthaeus Sylvaticae. And this plant with us grows in meadows."
X Fide Jessen, notes to Albert of Lauingen, De Vegetahilibus, bk. 6, ch. 547.
376
Aster History; Anguillara
many kindred species of Tragopogon and Scorzonera which he must have seen but does not otherwise mention. That he should view them as one * was wholly natural ; Linnaeus himself quotes Vaillant, Tournefort, Pontedera, and Boerhaave as agreeing that the whole genus Tragopogon is one and the same species, but of variations infinite."
Sibthorp found in Grecian lands 2 1 species which seem to have passed in Anguillara' s time f for Tragopogon, at least so far as then observed ; against which Anguillara makes perhaps three refer- ences, the present one of dcods/ajuiv7T((;, and his Tragopogon^ i. e., T. pratensis % L., and his Acorus Theophrasti^ i. e., Scorzonera lacin- iata L. § (if Caspar Bauhin rightly interpreted this). But among ten other Scorzoneras found by Sibthorp, two buphthalmum-like species were so common in Zante as to have received the vernacu- lar name Scorsonera || from the inhabitants. Doubtless Anguillara saw them \ in Zante ; and among them were plants with much- branched stems, others with villous hair on axils or leaves or stems, others with flowers yellow, red, purple or violet, among which he would find all the characters of his diodemfjLcv^rc^.
We may therefore suppose that when Anguillara was writing in 1560 about Aster, he blended two plants which were known to him by the name Filius-ante-patrem ; writing his article down to the last clause with Pallenis in his mind ; but then adding as a Greek synonym one which in reality belonged to Tragopogon. That may have come about in this way : Anguillara had probably recorded owosxafuv'tTc:: in notes of perhaps so far back as i 525, as a name he then heard used as equivalent for Filius-ante-patrem, i. c, Tragopogon ; and now in i 560 he copies from these notes into his Parere, neglecting to observe that his present Filius-ante-patrem was not Tragopogon but Pallenis.
^Hortus Cliffort, 382. {ex libr. Bu.). 1737.
f Including 2 of Geropogon and 3 of Urospernnim (the Arnopogon of Willdenow and Sibthorp).
X Constantinople ; and pastures about Mt. Haemus, Sibthorp. \ Constantinople ; and in the Southern Morea, Sibthorp.
II Scorzonera, a name originally Spanish, alluding to the reputation of the plant like ancient Aster Atticus, and many related Compositae, as efficacious against snake bites ; from Spanish scorzo, a viper ; Jide C. Bauhin.
^Species which Sibthorp or others found in Zante and which may therefore have
Anguillara's dcodexafxcviTc::
377
Angiiillara' s chief contributions to knozvledge of Aster were these :
He had made search between 1520 and 1539 in Grecian lands for a plant to accord with Dioscorides' description of Aster ; al- though he does not seem to have happened upon the true plant, i, e., Aster Amellns L., which indeed he may never have seen at all anywhere. Search in Greece for Dioscorides' plants in general had been made before by Simon de Gordo (Simon Januensis) about 1 2 50- 1 290; and afterward by Pierre Belon (Bellonius) 1549- 155 1, and later by Tournefort and by Sibthorp.
He held to the correctness of the Greek MSS. as representing Dioscorides' color-character for Aster, retaining the reading i. e., purple or yellow.
He held Pallenis spinosa to be the true Aster, his Aster Atticiis verus ; perhaps swerving (unintentionally?) at the end of his Aster article to include also a group of quick-closing Tragopogon species which change from yellow to reddish-purple during blos- soming, which may have constituted his dcodexatJLii^ai:; or twelve- minute flower."
His may have been the first identification of Aster Atticus with
been included as part of an original multiform basis of Anguillara's duchKa/itivir/^ of Zante, include the following :
Tragopogon Cupani Gussone in DC, a handsome smooth purplish species reported from Zante by Margot (Margot and Renter s Flore de I'lle de Zante, Geneva, 1841).
Tragopogon majus Jacq. , found by Sibthorp only in Zante, where he heard the people calling it rov ?Myov rd yevsia, i. e., rabbit' s-beard (literally, "the bearded chin of the hare " ) ; a yellow-flowered smooth species, like the two next.
Scorzonera graminifolia L. ; the I>Kopaovepa of Zante, Sibthorp ; perhaps meaning Scorzonera buphthalmoides DC., which Aucher collected later about Aleppo under name of S. graminifolia L.
Scorzonera crocifolia, Sibthorp ; also called I,Kopani'tpa at Zante ; also found at Zante by Margot.
Add to these as probably seen by Anguillara and blended with the foregoing,
Scorzonera purpurea L., a rose, purple or blue species, found producing bluish flowers in Crete by Tournefort and by Sibthorp.
Scorzonera Cretica Willd., a ciliate-leaved branching species found in Crete by Tournefort and Sibthorp.
Scorzonera imdtdata Vahl, a violet species which Tournefort found in Greece.
Scorzonera araneosa Sibthorp, a purple-flowered villous-leaved species of Cyprus.
Scorzonej-a hirsuta L., a yellow-flowered species with stem and leaves often pilose, which seems to be the Geropogon hirsutus of Smith's publication of Sibthorp, found by Sibthorp in Cyprus, and identified by Smith with a reddish-flowered Tragopogon found by Tournefort in Greece, these plants often reddening with age.
378
Aster History ; Anguillara
Pallenis to gain currency ; it was adopted thereafter by many botanists for the hundred years following.*
* The following is a resume of the application of these mediaeval plant-names : Films-imte-patrem, Oculus Christie Oculus Constclis, and Garyophyllon. For Oculus porci and Rostrum porcinum and Buphthalmum, see p. lo8, etc., under Hippocrates.
Playtts called Filius-ante-patrem include the following :
1. Colchicum, i. e, a crocus, fide Avicenna, and fide Parkinson, Theatrum Botani- cum, Index Lat.
2. " Herba St. Christophori,''^ fide De Manliis, 171 ; writing about 1 450, and stating of it simply '•'■Herba St. Christophori est Filius-ante-patrem;'''' '■^ Mergenblumlin^ Mergen- rdsslin'''' are added as synonyms by Brunfels, when printing the preceding, 1531. The name Herb St. Christopher was long applied in Europe to GeufJi, also to Actaea spicata L., figured together with the American counterpart by Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum, 547-9, under the ancient name.
3. Fragopogon [pratensis, porrifolius, etc.) =zthe GaryopJiyllon, Oculus Christi or Oculus Consulis of Pandectarius, c. 1313, and of De Manliis, about 1450, the Flos Camps of De Cantiprato, 1240, of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, c. 1256, the Flos Campi or Ocului porci oi Albertus Magnus about 1 260; the F os Campi ox Veltpluom or Oculus porci of Conrad de Megenberg, 1349 ; the Vredels-oghe and Fridels-auga of Hildegardist interpreted by a mediaeval gloss as Oculus Consulis.
4. Dianthus sp., the Garyophyllon of Da Manlio, etc.
5. Inula sp., as /. dysenterica, I. salicina, I. Britannica ; one or all of these were deemed by Sprengel to be the Filius-ante-patrem of Da Manlio ; on what grounds is not evident except as the name Oculus Christi occurs in Inula. Anguillara could not have meant Inula, for leaf- characters and purple flowers would then be wanting ; the Inula which he mentions [Inula Helenium), he calls Hc/enium Dioscoridis.
6. Antipater, Hermolaus Barbarus, 1492, as cited by Brunfels, 3: 9 (1536), of which both write that some think the plant may be the Herba impia of Pliny, 24, 19 : but it differs from his description, for, says Barbarus, Antipater is not hoary, does not heat when rubbed, does not bear capitula nec thyrsos.''' Brunfels makes this plan, Antipater (named in the same sense as Filius-ante-patrem^ to be '■^ quasi Cunilaginis mitiore'''' [L. Cunilago has been explained as an Origanum'\ and to be called by some Christophoriana and Oculus Consutis ; meaning Geum ? or Pallenis?
7. Satyrion, Satyria, an orchid [identified as an Ophrys or Serapias], called Filius- ante-patrem by some, says Brunfels, 3: lo (1536), " Satyriam sunt qui vocent, quod antea floreat, quam folia producat. ' '
8. Names later than Anguillara. — Epilobium sp., in 1570, the Lysimachia siliquosa of Pena and Lobel, Adversaria, I45, and of Parkinson, Theatrum Bot. (explained as because of the lengthening pods). ■
9. Tussilago in 16^0, fide Bodaeus' Theophrastus, 821, with explanation that it is so called because it produces its flowers before the leaves come up : this is not the Filius- ante-patrem of Anguillara, who knew these plants as Tussilago aud Petasites.
10. Herba Impia or Filago Germanica of modern botany, of which Gerarde says, page 518, "for the most part those flowers which appear first are the lowest and basest ; and those that come after growe higher, as children seeking to overgrowe or overtop their parents (as many wicked children do) for which cause it hath beene called Herba Impia, that is, the Wicked Herbe, or Herbe Impious." Pliny, 24: 19.
11. Inula salicina L. perhaps was meant by Clusius, who says, in Gerarde's quaint
OcuLUs Christi and Oculus Consulis
379
version, " Aster lo..., another sort, that hath leaves, stalkes, flow^ers and rootes like the ninth, but never groweth to the height of one cubite. And the mother stalke and flower doth never growe so high as hir children, [but are] much lesse ; [like] Herba Inipia so called, for that the children do overgrowe their parents."
Plants called by the name Oculus Christi included a number of yellow-flowered Compositae, as the following :
1. Tragopogon? or Pallenis? by Matteo Silvatico ; (as cited p. 375, n. ) ; probably the same plant was meant by his predecessor Salernus, about 1 167, who recommended (see supra, p. 224) the Oculus Christi iox apostevia stovmci and for morsus canis, as the Greeks had recommended Aster.
2. Pallenis spinosa Cass. Clusius found the name used for this plant by people of Montpellier in southern France when he was living there in 1553- {Pariorum plantarum ,\)k. IV, 1601.) Dalechamp's Histoi'ia plantarum, 1587, still so uses it.
3. Inula Oculus Christi L. , a Grecian and Austrian yellow-flowered species of which J. Bauhin, 1650, said "Oculo Christi similis si non idem" (Hist, pi., 2 : 1047) and on which Linnaeus conferred the name specifically ; known as aypcooKap^?/ in Greece, Sibthorp.
4. Aster montamts /lore luteo, etc., of J. Bauhin, 1650, who says it is the Oculus Christi of many and is the Oculus Christi minor of Dalechamp, 1 587. Perhaps it represented several species of Inula. «
5. Salvia pratensis L., the '■^ Horminum sylvestre, Wilde Clarie or Oculus Christi'''' of Gerarde (Herball, 628. 1597) owed its name he says to its efficacy in clearing the eyes. Parkinson was still describing it under the same names in 1640 [Theatrtijfi Botanicuju, 59). Culpepper in 1653, after speaking of his "Clary or more properly Clear-eye," adds, " Wild Clary is most blasphemously called Christ's Eye, because it cures diseases of the eye." Salmon, in his New Dispensatory, 168?, had dropped the latter name, retaining Clary and Horminum, and introducing Sclarea.
6. Da Manlio, about 1450? gives the name as a synonym for the second kind of his Saxifragia : " Minor vero dicitur, quod est Oculus Christi.''''
7. Agrostemma Coronaria L. , Lychnis Coronaria of Lonitzer, Dodoens, Cesal- pino ; and of Pena and Lobel, in 1570, is quoted by the latter, Adv. 142, as called not only Rose Campion, in England, as to-day, but also Christies Ooghen in Flemish, and Oeillets Dieu or more commonly simply Oeillets, in French.
8. Aster Atticus is cited as once called Oeil de Christ, by Foster's Encycl. Med. Diet., N. Y., 1890 ; perhaps an entry which should have been credited to Pallenis.
Plants called Oculus Consulis 1st, = Tragopogon, fide its interpretation by Jes- sen as occurring in a MS. of Hildegardis stating that the name Oculus Consulis is found there written, in the codex Guelpherbytianus of Hildegardis Liber suhtilitatum, written about 1180, as a mediaeval marginal synonym for the plant named in her text as Fridelsouge or Fridelsauga (perhaps pig's- eye, or literally little beast's eye, and allied to Mid. H. G. vihe, beast ; or bold-eye, from Mid. H. G. vrevel, bold- ness? ). The plant also appears under the name Vredels tunghe or Vredels oghe in the Vocab. shnpliciuvi, and as Oculus porci and Flos campi in Albert us Magnus' De vegetabilibusy bk. VI, c. 404, written before 1 256 (see edn. Meyer and Jessen, 547, Berlin, 1867), Albert there remarking "a porcis in pastum efifoditur ; et habet stipitem parum altum, in cujus supremo est flos rutilans ipso multum, et exsiccatus retinet eundem colorem," see p. 276. See p. 316 for Conrad von Megenberg's eulogy of it as Oculus porci ox Veltpluom.
Oculus Consulis occurs, 2d, in Matthaeus Sylvaticus, before 1^17 ; and 3d, in De Manliis, about 1450 ; all three occurrences apparently meaning Tragopogon.
380
Aster History; Anguillara
Oadus Considis also occurs, Brunfels, 3 : 9, as a name " used by some for Anti- pater or Christophoriana, with yellow flowers" ; the Herb Christopher? for Geum ?
Plants named from Garyophyllon. — Garyophyllon was primarily flower bud of the clove tree ; the Gariofilus of Macer Floridus, no. 72 ; so perhaps only, until after Pliny. Early in the Middle Ages it was applied to the clove pink and then to carnations and pinks in general, either in the same form Garyophyllon (Pandectarius, de Manliis, etc.) or softened to Caryophyllus (Lobel, C. Bauhin, Clusius, etc.) or modified to Cary- ophyllaea (Bock, Matthioli, Dalechamp, Thai ) or distinguished by Flos, as Flos Gari- ofilus (Cesalpino) ; other unlike names for various pinks of that period including Viola barbaia ( Dalechamp) , ( Gesner). Viola Damascena {^Q,^?>2X-^\x\.o),
Superba (Bock, Lonitzer, Camerarius, T\i2\)^ Betonica (Fuchs), Veronica (Dodoens), Tunica (Dalechamp, Bauhin, Haller ; and before these, by Manfredus ; see below), and Diosanthus (Anguillara). C. Bauhin notes that the name Caryophyllus or Cary- ophyllaea was bestowed from the resemblance of the odor of the flower to the odor of cloves. A similar odor in its root led to the formation of the name Gariofilata for Geum urbanum L., perhaps this name first occurs in Circa instans, where Plateario remarks it is called so because it has the odor of Gariofili or cloves. Gariofilata was the form used by Plateario, the Sinonimia d'Estense, Crescenzi, and Cesalpino; Gary- ophyllata by Da Manlio (and a predecessor, one Leonardus), Hieronymus Brunsvicensis, Brunfels, Bock, Anguillara, Dodoens, and Lonicer ; Caryop/iyllata by MatthioM, Clusius, C. Bauhin, etc. Its names of later use had already occurred, Geum in Gesner ; Herba Benedicta ( whence Herb Bennet) in both Brunfels and Gesner, and Benedicta in Hilde- gardis, about 1160, and in Albertus Magnus, At first it seems to have sometimes in- cluded Dianthus 'L.fide the Gariofilata of about 1 200 A. D. in the Sinominia d' Estense.
Garifoli (Sansovino) and Garofano (Matthioli) were common Italian forms used for the carnation in the sixteenth century, also Gelofre, whence Gilliflower, old English for the carnation.
Garyophyllon was likely occasionally to cover Aster also, Matthioli remarking the resemblance of the odor of Aster roots to " Garofano" blossoms. Similar medical uses also united them ; the ancient use of Aster for goitre, quinsy or other throat diffi- culties seems almost repeated in England regarding the Gelofre by Dame Juliana Berners in her celebrated Boke of St. Albans " (on hawking, hunting, and heraldry ; printed i486), when she directs "for the gowte in the throte " of hawks, "take... Gelofre."
Garyophyllon, if intended to cover Tragopogon in the citation, p. 375, from Silvatico and Da Manlio, may have been applied from the form of the flower head, the obconic swelling beneath that of Tragopogon suggesting that of Dianthus.
Garyophyllon, in the sense of Dianthus, was in old German the N'egel-bliimen ( Brun- fels, 1 531), or nail-head flower, from negel, a clove. See Plateario for other refer- ences. Da Manlio, about 1450, writes of the carnations, "There are certain flowers [pinks] in some parts of Italy which are called Garyophylli, because they exhale the odor of those garyophylli or cloves that are found in the shops. Some are white, some red. They are found among the Lombards in great quantity. I do not find their name among authors ; but I have seen the plant pictured in a book which is written by Man- fredus de Monte Imperiali." {^^^ Librutn de siniplicibus, qui in bibl. Parisina latet," said Sprengel of Manfred's work, in 1797 ; Fabricius knew of a copy in Paris about 1750; Meyer, Pritzel, Seguier and Bumaldus omit Manfred. Da Manlio's reference seems alone to have saved the plant pictures of Manfred from oblivion. )
Manfredus himself called the pinks he pictures by the name of Tunici. An echo of
Matthioli's Commentary on Dioscorides
381
LXXV. Matthioli
All Italian botanists before Cesalpino, 1583, devoted them- selves chiefly to the explanation of the classics ; and among these botanical commentators the preeminent name was that of Matthioli. * Matthioli's great work, the labor of his whole life,t was his com- mentary on Dioscorides, of more than 60 editions, most of the Italian and Latin editions appearing in Venice at the press of Valgrisi, 1548 and onward. J
Of the wide acceptance of this commentary we may judge from the 32,000 copies of an early edition which Valgrisi stated he had printed, and by the translations made into Syrian, Persian, Arabic,
this name Tunica is heard in Molinaeus' completion of Dalechamp's Hist, pi., 1587, which uses the name Tunica minima for a certain small species of pink ; and is heard in Tunica angustifolia, etc., name given by Haller, to another, Dianthus Caryophyllus inodorus L. ; and in Herba tunica, common name cited for Dianthus caryophyllus by C. Bauhin, 1623 ; the Herba Tunica of Gordon the physician (see p. 226), cited 1570 by Pena of Lobel, 143, was a Lychnis.
* Of his pleasure in it he himself says : Semper me admodum delectaverit medica materia" ; Apologia adversus Amathtwi, 6.
f Known as Pierandrea Matthioli, or in Latin as Petrus Andreas Matthiolus, he was born at Siena in 1501, lived with his father, a practising physician in Venice, was educated at Padua, engaged in medical practice at Siena, and in other cities ; had been six years or more at Rome in 1527 ; was fourteen years at Valle Anania in the bishopric of Trent, and twelve years at Gorz, whence Ferdinand I. called him to Prague to be court-physician to his son, 1555 \ afterward he was court-physician at Vienna to the Emperor Maximilian IL Returning to Trent he died there of the plague, in the be- ginnmg of 1577.
J The first edition of Matthioli's Commentary (with translation of Dioscorides) was in Italian, printed by Bascarini, at Venice, in 1544, in folio, ex libris Hoffmann ; the first Latin edition was in 1554, ex libris Meyer, also a folio, in which figures for the first time appeared, 562 small woodcuts, each about 4j^ X 2/^ inches ; representing 504 plants. In the Latin edition of 1 560 {^ex libris Bu. ), the small figures of this size are still retained. Matthioli remarks in this, that he had been encouraged by the reception of his Italian commentary "to put forth an enlarged edition, to add to it figures, and to put it in Latin."
Large figures began to appear with the rare folio Bohemian translation, Prague, 1562, and in the rare German translation by Handsch, ex libris Meyer, 1563, contain- ing 804 plant-figures. Then followed the first l>atin edition to show large figures, 1565 ^ex libris E. L. Greene), the figures numbering 912 and being the same as in the Ger- man translation of 1563 { fide Meyer), and probably the same as those in the Bohemian translation of 1 562.
But the small figures were introduced again in the 1570 edition (<f.r libr. Meyer) though increased to 1023 ; diminution in size and value followed, till in a French trans- lation issued at Lyons by Prost in folio in 1655 {ex libr. Meyer), the size of the figures went down to 2^ X inches, and many were almost unrecognizable.
382
Aster History : Matthioli
Hebrew, etc. The work is really a Natural History of all plants which Matthioli knew.
Matthioli' s treatment of Aster, as of other plants, expanded greatly during successive editions. He, like Fuchs, identified Aster Atticus with the plant now known as Aster Amelhis L. He also established its identification with Vergil's Amellus. Later he ad- mitted a second Aster, his Aster Atticus alter, our Pallenis.* His Aster chapter as it appears in the Latin edition of i 560 {ex libr. Bu.), the earliest accessible, begins, p. 572-573, with the caption "Aster Atticus, Cap. cxv," and follows with a Latin translation of Dioscorides, omitting the parts not confirmed by occurrence in Pliny. Matthioli renders the color-character Purpureum biteinnve,'' and continues again, ** Tradu7it piirpiireum floreni, si ex aqua bibatur, anginis...opitulari." f
After his death a whole century, the Konig edn. of Basle, 1674 {ex. libr. IS. Y. Bot. Garden) contained 4 Aster figures, pp. 817-819, instead of Matthioli's two.
I The remainder forms a commentary, with marginal headings. I translate the more original parts, introducing the marginal headings in italics.
" Asteris Atiici consideratio. It is called Atticus becauses it occurred more fre- quently than elsewhere in the Atheniensian field. The plant is to-day known to not a few persons. It grows in rough places, wild lands and valleys. Serapionis erratum. Serapio confused it with eryngium, deceived by the likeness of the flowers which in either plant present the figure of a star. In some codices of Dioscorides many state- ments are found in the chapter on Aster which are believed by learned men to have been subsequent accretions ; therefore we have omitted them, especially because Galen, Oribasius, Paulus and Serapio do not quote them. But in the little book concerning plants, of a certain Apuleius, things are said of Aster Atticus which seem almost the same [in impossibility]."
" Stellarum radii noctibus collucent : quare qui naturam stirpis ignorant, inane simulacrum ["una fantasma " in his Italian, 1568] se videre putant. Reperitur a pastoribus pecudum." Ainelliis Virgilii. Aster Atticus is celebrated in huulentissimis car?nmibus by Vergil as the Amellus, which he says is the name for the flower among husbandmen. [Vergil's lines are then quoted but with no citation of evidence on which Matthioli had based this identification of Amellus, which he introduces as if familiarized by some previous identifier to us unknown.]
" Aster Atticus, the fresh plant, says Cratevas, pounded up with old axle grease, is of use when placed on the bites of a mad dog. Swellings of the throat it reduces, and when burned it drives serpents away."
^'■Asteris Atiici vires ex GaleJio. It is believed to heal buboes, rubbed on or even merely suspended. It is of mixed faculty like the rose. So far Galen.
" But since my Attica Stella recalls to mind the plant commonly called Stellaria by more recent speech, and since that plant also is possessed of no ordinary properties, we will not pass it over in silence. Stellariae historia, et vires. Stellaria, which some call Pes-leonis, and others Alchimilla, is a plant which occurs mostly in mountains, especially in meadows, with leaves very like those of Malva, but firmer and crisper.
Matthioli's Aster Description
383
Matthioli, after often reissuing his Aster chapter in this form of the 1560 Latin edition, enlarged it greatly in his Italian edition of 1568,* where it forms chapter 122, instead of 115. This new description in Italian is much more diffusely written than the Latin, t
with eight distinct angles, more conspicuous and toothed throughout all around, so that they bear the form of a broadly open star. The stem is slender, half a cubit high, from which go out many branchlets ; at their summit are slender pallid flowers in form of stars. It is remarkable for its root, which equals a finger in thickness, and exceeds the palm in length. It springs up in May and flowers in June. It is efficacious in drink, not alone for healing internal ulcers of the viscera, but sinuous ulcers ; and it also heals wounds. It is sought by German surgeons, and celebrated with wondrous praises ; since they mix it with happy success in vulnerary potions. Its dry powder or its decoction heals enterocele. This same powder is given with wine or by rule of cochlear measure for fifteen or twenty days to women to secure seminal retention and promote conception. Its liquor is given to drink, or is rubbed on externally, to check leucorrhoea. Its daily injection wonderfully constricts these parts, changing them to the virgin state. Taken in drink it is still better. It contracts lax and falling breasts, making them hard and solid, if its tincture is often rubbed on. It is of especial value when mixed with Hypocistis, Equisetum, Stypteria, and dried roses. [In the Italian edition these are " I'Hipocistido, le Rose secche, la Coda di Cavallo herba, and I'Al- lume."] [An excellent figure of Alchemilla, the lady's mantle, accompanies the de- tailed description of which the preceding abstract is a summary.] " Nomina^ Aster Atticus among Greeks and Latins, Astaraticon among the Arabs, Aster attico among Italians, Sternkrant among Germans, Aspergout e 77iineur among the French." ^Matthioli's preface is dated Innspruck, April i, 1568.
f I add an abstract of the particulars in which it differs, entering the headings in italics as before.
'■^ Aster Attico, or Ingtnnale (translation of Dioscorides follows, changing *' purple or yellow" of 1560 to "purple and yellow"; instead of anthemidis modo'' of 1560 he now reads simile alia cat?ia/nilla.''^ ) Aster Attico and sua essaminatione. Aster Attico is known in our common speech as Stella d^ Athene. ... It has acquired the name of Stella, a star, because when the flowers are expanded, all that which is around it is purple and that within may be seen to be yellow, and the little leaves { ^^frondi- celle''^) of the circumference are similar to the rays which surround a star. Notwith- standing the blame that others cast upon me, contradicting my opinion, the belief still possesses me that the Aster Atticus is the same with that plant which produces flowers yellow in the middle, and throughout the circumference purple, and which identical flower I certainly believe is the same with the Amello of Vergil. Not for their opposi- tion will I so readily recede from my opinion, having, to support it, two examples of antiquity {due exe?nplari antichi, i. e., the two codices of Dioscorides; see page 149), which reads ro 7rop(()vpll^<)v or rov civtovq (sic), namely, in the purple part of the Jloiver. From which phrase one may argue evidently, that the flowers of the Aster Atticus were of two colors. It makes me believe that in the beginning of this chapter (of Diosco- rides) , where one reads in the description of the flowers, or yellow, one ought to read /cat, and, namely, flowers purple and yellow, for which emendation I have the approval of a good herbalist {buoni se7nplicisti ; i, e., Valerius Cordus ? who had died
384
Aster History : Matthioli
in 1541 ; it is possible that Cordus' emendation ku'i, published by Egenolph, 1549, did not come to Matthioli' s knowledge till after its republication by Rihel in 1561 ; but it seems more probable that Matthioli now refers to some unprinted contemporary approval, rather than to Cordus' lecture of 30 years before. )
But I am not so much bound to any purpose as 10 hold, as by the teeth, to my own opinion in this difficulty. 1 am not so set as that I am unwilling to mention another plant which is pointed out as the true Aster Attico by a certain learned herbalist. This plant was first sent to me by that most learned and most excellent physician Dr. Johann Crato of Breslau — Dottor Giouvanni Cratone da Vratislavia — who was first physician to the Emperor Ferdinand I., and now to Maximilian II. This plant \_Pallenis spinosa i a figure of which Matthioli introduced as an after thought, by name of Aster Atticus alter ; but as that plant seems not to grow in Austria, where Crato lived, much less in Silesia, whence he came, Crato must have obtained that species from Clusius or some other source ; perhaps, instead, Crato' s plant was an Austrian Inula or Ptilicaria'\ makes its rays in manner of a star (very much so but they are only yellow) and the name of Aster is not inappropriate to it.
Errore di Serapione. — Serapion is in manifest error in his third book in his chapter on Iringo, in confusing Eryngium with Aster, deceived by the resemblance that their stellated flowers present.
"Others make question about the Aggiunta, the added spurious part of Dioscorides' chapter. I hold, with the more learned of our time, that this Aggiunta is the addition of some threadbare credulous writer. I the more believe so, because neither Serapion, Galen, Paolo Egineta, nor Oribasio, all imitators of Dioscorides, write any such addi- tional statements ; although I have found a part of it in Apuleius in his treatise on herbs, whence it may easily have been transferred [translation of which fellows']. Of that Amello, which I have claimed is Aster Atticus, Vergil writes [translation fol- lows]—
" But it is impossible not to marvel at the little discernment of those who make profession of reproving others, and who claim that the Amello of Vergil is none other than the common Chelidonia niinore \_Ficaria ranunculoides, the lesser celandine]. Errore di alcuni arroganci. Yet Vergil had described Amello as a plant with leaflets which in the manner of a star surround the yellow center. And well he speaks of it ' Siibhicet purpura,' because the purple color of these little leaflets is not equally shining and conspicuous as in the violets, but much more subdued and more clear. But nobody can claim that Chelidonia niinore is purple. Besides, Chelidonia minore is almost always prone upon the earth, nor does it direct itself upward ; while the Amello grows directly straight up, as Vergil says.
" Namque uno ingentem tollit de cespite sylvam, that is, it raises itself up from the sod and grows into a little forest. And this is to be added : that Chelidonia minore blooms at the wrong season, for no one sees it but in early spring {la prifnavera); but Amello at the last of summer or beginning of autumn ; as Vergil indicates, saying Tonsis in vallibzis, etc.
" For there is need to expose the poltroonery [poltrone?'ia), not to say the malig- nity {malignite^^ of the critics.
" In short, the Amello is an herb which makes its stalks straight up from the root, growing in the folds of the hills, and woody, of a color which is dark and purplish ; then it gives birth to branches almost at its summit. The flowers resemble a star, like our Camamilla, and like Bell is the daisy with the middle yellow and the out- side clear purple. The leaves are longish, like an olive-leaf, but much smaller, hairy.
Matthioli's Aster Figures
385
Matthioli's figures of Asters were two, one representing Aster Amellns, and later, an additional one of Pallenis spinosa ; besides that of his Stcllaria or Alchemilla, introduced into the Aster chap- ter for comparison, both in the Latin and the Italian editions.
His Aster Amellus figure represents a slightly different type from that of Fuchs, destitute of the cauline rosette of leaves borne by P'uchs' plant, and having the leaves more numerous and more often spatulate. Its earlier form about 4^ by 2^ inches, showed about II heads, chiefly with 17 rays, and a root-cluster of very many long fibers, giving rise to about 7 erect stems, the largest bearing 18 or 20 ascending leaves. After issuing the Aster chap- ter with this one figure of Aster and one of Alchemilla, i 5 54-1 560, in 1563 or probably in 1562 (see page 381), he changed the fig- ures to three, substituting an entirely new though similar figure for his Aster Atticus, adding a figure of Pallenis spinosa Cassini for his Aster Atticns alter (see page 373), and for the third figure retaining that of Alchemilla. The new figure of Aster Amellus is labelled ''Aster Atticus sive Aniellusy and fills nearly the whole folio page, bearing as Vergil said a forest of stalks, i 5 or 20 be- ing represented from a tufted tangle of fibers, similar to those previously figured by him but much more extensive. The rays are still chiefly 17, the heads are about 5,3 inch broad.
Matthioli as a controversialist had not only made himself un- pleasantly conspicuous in his Italian edition of i 568 (as indicated by quotations on Aster, pp. 383-4, in which he had turned common scold), but had first begun to dip his pen in gall some ten years before, especially against Amatus and against Gesner in 1558. His edition of 1565 shows him a very spitfire in disposition, de- inclining to be dark, and bitterish ; those on the branches are much smaller. Its root is divided into many parts, of, a not unpleasant odor, an odor like that of a Garofano, a clove-gilliflower [clove-pink]. It flowers at the beginning of autumn or at the end of summer, and after flowering it becomes woolly, making its seed just like that of an Endive.
" Dioscorides, from Cratevas Herbarius, says, * pestle it green with hog's-grease,
against the bite of a mad dog, and equally for tumors of the goitre. When its fumes
arise they drive away serpents.'
''^ Aster e AUico scritte da Galeno. Galen says... [translation of Galen follows] : *' Stellaria," etc. Others find the Stella di Athene recall to mind the common
Stellaria, which some call Piede de Leone, and others Alchimidilla. [The remainder
is the same as in the Latin editions, summarized p. 382.]
386
Aster History ; Matthioli
voting his prolix preface ''contra obtrectatores " to calling his critics opprobioLis names, " asiiws, blatcroncs, impostorcs^' * and a whole catalog of terms deemed by him appropriate for men of what he calls "that diabolic faction." He remarks that his commentary had now for about twenty years met with great praise throughout all Europe and in other parts of the globe except chiefly in Italy. He then proceeds to inveigh against all who had ever differed from him, as against Amatus, Maranta, Gesner,t and Guilandini,^ and especially against Anguillara, finally resulting in driving that noble and true student of nature out of his seat in the University of Padua, merely on account, it appears, of two brief remarks in Anguillara' s Pareri, respectfully correcting errors of Matthioli regarding Lyciuin and Aconiiinn. Furthermore, An- guillara had, without consulting Matthioli, independently interpreted many plants of the ancients in different manner from Matthioli, and that Matthioli could not brook.
In fact, Matthioli assumed to be, as Meyer remarks, dictator of the knowledge of the ancients." It became positively danger- ous to suggest that he was not infallible. A sad example was that of Amatus Lusitanus,§ another acute commentator on Dioscorides.
* Many more are quoted by Meyer, 4 : 376.
t Matthioli, a man tontradictionis impatientissiimis, had attacked Gesner with contumely" in his second (Latin, 1558) edition, one result o'f which was Gesner's prompt rejoinder, 1558, in his " Liber de Aconito. " See J^ita Gesneri,^'' m Schmie- del's Gesner, xxiii.
% Melchior Guilandinus or Wieland, born in Prussia, it is said in Konigsberg ; early betook himself to Italy, and especially Sicily; by aid of " a Venetian patron, the esteemed professor of anatomy and surgery at Padua, Gabriele Falloppio," he journeyed 1558-1560 through Greece, Syria and Egypt; while returning was made captive by the Moors ; was redeemed by Fallopius who secured his establishment I561 at Padua as overseer of the botanical garden and as Lector siniplichun. He died there. 1589, aged 70. An Epistola Melchioris Guilandini Boruss? (of Melchior Wieland the Prussian) was published at Basle, 1557, together with one by Gesner, both containing description of new plants. Like Anguillara, he roused the bitter hatred of Matthioli, publishing at Padua, in 1558, his The m, a pamphlet directed against certain of Mat- thioli's identifications, and among others, that of Amellus, of which Guilandini asserted "Aster Atticiis Amellus non est,'''' see p. 383. Matthioli followed in rebuttal, 1562, with a thirty-page attack entitled " Adverstis viginti problemata Melchioris Guilandini disputatio," printed at Pavia by Ulmus, 1562, and again at Venice by Valgrisi. 1563.
Amatus Lusitanus or Joam R. Amato, who wrote at first under his name of Juan Rodriques de Castelblanc6, a Portuguese philologist and botanist, believed to have been born at Lisbon, of Jewish parents, exiled from Spain in 1492, and later adopting Chris-
Amatus Lusitanus
387
As long before as 1553, Amatus had been scented by Matthioli as a dangerous rival. At that time, when Amatus' Enarrationes'' on Dioscorides first appeared, letters kept coming to Matthioli, as Matthioli claims,* complaining of the "incredible intemperance of one Amathus t of Portugal." And now that edition after edi- tion of Amatus had come out in successive years, and finally one, in 1558, which was larger even than Matthioli's own, the rage of Matthioli burst out in fury, and he charged Amatus as heretic and a semihebraeus," so increasing the activity of the Inquisition against Amatus that he was hunted from place to place," says Meyer, "like a wild beast." J
This enlarged edition of Amatus, published at Leyden, in 1558, an octavo of 807 pages, was supplemented by notes by Robertus Constantinus, and by figures from Fuchs, Dalechamps and others. Matthioli quickly issued, in 1558 fide Trew, from the house of his usual publisher Valgrisi at Venice, an attack upon Amatus which he entitled ''Apologia adversus Amathum Lusi- tanum," following it with his " Censtira in Amathi Lusitani enar- rationes."§
Among the Compositae treated is " Helenium," i. e., elecam- pane, concerning which, page 10, Matthioli quotes with scorn Amatus' s very apt discrimination between Pliny's bitter Helenium and his sweet lentisk-leaved spreading Helenium. Because Mat-
tianity. He travelled through France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy ; published comments on Dioscorides at Antwerp, 1536 (very rare) ; was court physician in Poland; and published his full commentary on Dioscorides at Venice in 1553, one Walter Scott being printer (*' apud Gualterum Scotum") ; again at Strasburg at Rihel's famous house, 1554, and at Venice at that of Zilettus, 1557. The new edition of 1558 was greatly improved, more than a half larger, and with the addition of figures. ^ Apologia adversus Amathiun, 6.
I Matthioli pertinaciously calls Amatus Aniathits "the simpleton," instead of Amatus, '* the beloved."
% Amatus fled to Ancona, losing in his flight the MS. of his Latin translation he had well in hand from a Hebrew version of Avicenna. To his translation he was adding a commentary. He had also made a translation of Eutropius into Spanish. Morejon says that his flight was first to Ferrara, then Venice, then Ancona, then Pesaro ; finding no rest in Christendom he finally found security under the Moslems in Salonica among a Jewish colony with which he identified himself, and where he wrote his " Curationum medicinaluvi centuriae septem.''''
\ My copy of these counterblasts, Valgrisi, Venice, 1559, the two printed together in one uniform pagination, 46 pages, considers 121 different plants over which Matthioli would do battle.
388
Aster History : Matthioli
thioli had confused the two, Amatus had said of him, Matthiolus ... duplici errore hallucineretur." Matthioli answering ascribed his apparent error as ** per Typographum." Other grounds of difference were the identification of Artemisia, Matricaria and Cotula ; and, page 43, of Chrysanthemum, which Amatus had deemed to be the Calendula or marigold, the Caltha of Greece and Rome, some manuscripts of Dioscorides reading Caltha in place of Chrysanthemum. Matthioli observes that if Amatus had like Matthioli " varia Dioscoridis exemplaria habuisset ad manus," and especially those " learnedly restored," he would have found Y^aXxaQ written, not xaXda.
LXXVI. Joachim Camerarius
In Germany the heir to Matthioli — by use of his text — and the heir to Gesner, by use of his figures, was Joachim Camerarius * the younger, author of the celebrated Camerarius' Kreuterlnich, of 1590 and many subsequent editions.
Joachim Camerarius the elder, was a philologist, born in Bam- berg, Bavaria, 1500; was educated at Leipsic ; and died there in 1574 ; is known as the biographer and editor of Melancthon ; but not as a botanist.
Joachim Camerarius the younger, 1 534-1 598, the herbalist, and the esteemed physician of Nuremberg," had usually Feyera- bend of Frankfort as his publisher, and demands our present thought chiefly in connection with three f works as follows :
I. Camerarius' De plantis Epitome,'' YrdinMort, i^S6 {ex bibl. Columbia), based on Matthioli ; contained 4 figures of Asters (as interpreted in Schmiedel's index of plant figures of Gesner and Camerarius i) ; one of which was an early figure of Aster
* Camerarius was several times an honored name in early German botany. Besides the elder and younger Joachim Camerarius, there was the Tubingen family a century later, of which was the famed Rudolf Jakob Camerarius, 1 665-1 721, born and died in Tubingen, Wurtemberg ; physician and botanist, the author, 1 694, of the famed " De sexti plant arum epistola " ; followed by Alexander, Elias and Eiias Rudolf, Camerarius, of Tubingen, all of whom published botanical dissertations 1690-1727.
t Besides which he was author of " Opuscula...de re rustica,'^ Nuremberg, I577> 53 foil., enlarged 1596 to 239 p.; and of Symbolorum ...Centiiria,''^ Nuremberg, 1590, no foil, with 100 elegant wood cuts, and in new editions as late as 1 697.
:j: Schmiedel's Index Figurarum Conr. Gesneri et Joach. Camerarii," 64 (in Gesner' s Opera Botanica, Pars I, Nuremberg, 1751 ; ex lib r. Bu.).
Camerarius' Asters
389
Alpinus L., then under the name Aster Atticiis cacnileus alphms^ showmg leaf, floret and fruit separately, and showing a globular villous swelling just above the root, developing clustered leaves; " Jiirsiita vesicula quae adnasci solet,'' says Camerarius of this swell- ing and fascicle ; it is a strong example of that suppression of internodes which is so very common in asters, with or without bulbous enlargement. Fuchs' figure of Aster Amelhis L., 1542, had shown the beginning of rosette formation of this kind.
Camerarius' three other Aster figures include two of Aster Atticus, retained from Matthioli (see p. 385) and one of some congener labelled by Camerarius Aster Atticus luteus,'' fide Schmiedel, or in copy ex bibl. Columbia, " Aster flore luteo, Stern- kraut rnit gelden Bluuten, Alpe'' This was deemed by C. Bauhin to be his Aster luteus radice odora ; which is hmla odora L.
2. Camerarius' Hortus inedicus et pJiilosopJdcus^ the title adding " with many new figures, and remarks on habitats, cultivation and plant philology" — Frankfort, 1588 {ex libr. Greene). An appendix of 56 new figures " is usually added. Three Asters are described, p. 23, under these names ; Aster Atticus flore coeruleo ;
Aster Atticus luteus, latifolius et angustifolius (= Pallenis spinosa Cass.) ;
Aster Atticus repens Clusii (= BupJitJialmuni maritimuin L.).
Of the first mentioned, ^.y/^r Amellus L., Camerarius remarks : "in Franconia ad Rhenum copiose proveniens. Ejus duas habemus differentias ; qui maturius floret minus alte assurgit quam qui serius."
3. Camerarius' KreuterbucJi, a translation of Matthioli into German, with many additions; Frankfort, 1590, folio, 465 foil.; reprinted 1598, 1600, 161 1. Seven Aster figures * are given, one
* These seven Aster figures of Camerarius continued to reappear, all or all but one, in works based on Camerarius for the next 150 years; as the following:
Becher's Paradisus Medidnalis, Ulm, 1662 ; being the second part " Phytologia," or " Kraeuterbuch " of the German natural history in four books of this name Para- disus, which claims to treat of ''all the animals, plants and minerals known to the Salernitan school," and to contain over 1200 figures; by Jn. Joachim Becher of Speyer.
Verzascha's ^^Kraeuterbuch,'''' Basle, 1678; a German translation of Matthioli's Compendium, by Bernard Verzascha ; with figures of Camerarius throughout.
Zwinger's Theatrtwi Botanictwi ; Basle, 1696; 995 p. ; ex bibl. N. Y. Bot. Gar- den. It is an enlarged edition of Verzascha, in German, by Theodor Zwinger.
Zwinger's Theatrtwi Botanicufu ; new edition, in German, by Friedrich Zwinger, son of the preceding ; enlarged to 1 216 p. ; Basle, 1744, folio.
390
Aster History : Camerarius
of ''Aster Atticiis, Buboniiun, higuinalis'' {= Aster Amelhis L.). Aster Atticus seeimeius, Aster alius fiore ItUeo, Aster Atticus luteus, Aster Atticus peregriniis, Aster Atticus caeinileiis alpiniis and Aster Atticus minor.
Of these, all after the first (= Aster Anielhis L.) were yellow- flowered species, chiefly of Buphthalmum ; except the two last, which represent Aster alpiniis L.
LAST APPEARANCES OF MONOTYPIC ASTER Rivius TO Ehrhart, Morandi and Quincy, 1 543- 1 783
LXXVIL Rivius
In 1 543 began the series of editions of Dioscorides from the celebrated printing house of Egenolph * in Frankfort, the inception of which according to Meyer rested with Egenolph himself, who called to his aid Walter Hermann Ryff, a physician born in Stras- burg but living in Mainz." Ryff styles himself a disciple of Brun- fels, whom he calls ''mild olim praeceptor charissinnis!' Ryff made up his edition of Dioscorides by the use of Ruellius' Latin translation, to which Egenolph added small figures reduced from Fuchs' Historia of i 542, an act of literary piracy which was cause of bitter controversy f but without legal redress. Ryff added
* Christian Egenolph, the Frankfort publisher, had printed in 1533 the German Gart der Gesundheit, edited by the Frankfort city-physician, Eucharius Rhodion or Roslin, and with new figures mostly from nature and mostly very small ; publishing with it the Distillierbuch of Hieronymus Braunschwig with about 200 figures ; and issuing two other editions of this later ; see p. 322.
f Fuchs had already begun, in 1 542, a controversy with Egenolph, blaming him for what he called *' crass errors" in Eucharius Rhodion's work of 1533. Now the boldness of Ryff and Egenolph in appropriating his figures roused Fuchs to a pitch of fury, partly relieved by excoriations which he soon visited upon both ; upon Rivius now and in the year following upon Egenolph. JRivius' original dedication was written in Sept., 1543, at Frankfort, and on the 12th of Feb., 1544, Fuchs finished at Tubingen the preface to his answerer Apologia^ loading even the title with invective, calling Rivius malicious, axidveieraforis pessiinus, the Latin title (see Pritzel^ No. 3433) explaining that his object was " to show how in the false fabric woven round the text of Dioscorides and recently issued from the printing house of Egenolph, many, in fact nearly all, of the figures of plants had been meanly stolen from those figures cut for Fuchs' own commentary," the " De stirphim historia.''''
This Apologia is an octavo of li leaves, printed by Isengrin at Basle, 1544; a
Rivius' Aster Description
391
notes which were also only in part his own, large portions being taken verbatim from Fuchs. The figures number 595. The figure of Aster Atticus was itself such a reduction of Fuchs' large original, of 1 542, This reduction was quickly reproduced by Fuchs' own printers in the smaller editions of Fuchs' Historia, as of 1545 (ex bibl. Colu.) and 15 51 [ex libr. Bu.). Ryff's figure of Aster, 1543, was about 4^ X 2 inches, with about 5 heads ; in my own copy uncolored ; in that of Prof E. L. Greene, the figures had been all rudely hand-colored, the Aster rays being a purplish violet around a yellow disk.*
Comparing the text of Rivius' notes on Aster to observe his slight changes from Fuchs, we find that Rivius' first section, his '* Nomina^' is different ; it reads as follows :
" Graece dazTif) dzTcxd^, i^ooj^covco/ji. Latine, aster Atticus, in- guinalis. Ofificinis inusitata. Germanis Sternkraut, Klein meger- kraut. Gallis Aspergoutte menue dicitur."
Rivius' Explicatio which follows, seven lines, is almost word for word that of Fuchs, regarding the source of the names, from Asteris nomen " to "dicta est"; then Rivius adds " Germanis BnicJikrautt, qui ad herniam puerorum utuntur."
Fuchs' ''Forma'' is then almost entirely omitted, Rivius con- tinuing with :
" Flores fert, aut luteos aut purpureos."
copy is in the Dresden library. Fuchs' second attack, on Egenolph 1 545, was a similar brochure, " Responsio " of Fuchs against " the mendacious calumnies, unworthy of a Christian man, uttered by that Christianus Egenolphus," etc.; wHo buying up every copy of the pamphlet, Fuchs was out with another issue in Aug., 1545.
Cornarius, praised by Rivius, meanwhile took up the side of Rivius in this contro- versy with Fuchs and published in March, I545, at Egenolph' s house in Frankfort, a little pamphlet of 19 leaves attacking Fuchs by name, styling the pamphlet " Viilpeciila excoriatay Fuchs responded in a similar pamphlet " Cornarrius furens^^ (Basle, 1545) ; it is to be observed that the only copy known (in bibl. Vienna) breaks off at the word shiltitia. Cornarius quickly replied in another pamphlet, Aug., 1 545, " Altra ac Brabyla pro Vulpeaila,^^ etc., adding in the title itself that the nitre was to be administered by the Marburg professor, Cornarius, to the Tubingen professor, Fuchs. Once more Cornarius amused himself with a third squib, purporting to give the end of Fuchs, " Vulpecula Catastrophe'^ (Egenolph, 1 546) and issued his three diatribes together as " Fuchseides 111.'''' We regret that this acute commentator on Dioscorides (see p. 339) should have spent his last years in raising such unworthy monuments to his own memory,
* The 1543 edition of Ryff seems rare, at least Meyer complains that he could not obtain a copy, though he did of the rare editions of 1545 and 1549 : in which last Ryft's name appears changed to Rivius, and the figures increased to 786 {^ex bibl. Colu. ).
392
Aster History : The Lonitzers
Rivius then repeats what Fuchs stated under the heads Locus, Teinp7is and Tcmperamentum, nearly verbatim, and there ends ; omitting Fuchs' "Vires," as that would have repeated the proper- ties Rivius had already stated in Dioscorides' text on the same page.
LXXVIII. John Lonitzer
Johannes Lonicerus, the renowned philologist and theologian, professor in Marburg till about 1557, was, like his son Adam, a botanical writer as well as classicist.
His Latin translation of Nicander with Scholia, was printed by Soter at Cologne, 1531. Another work followed, his Scholia on Dioscorides, based on Marcellus Vergilius' translation. This work, printed by Egenolph, bears the imprint ''Marburg, Aug. 1543," with its own separate pagination, but bound in * with the Annota- tions of Ryff on Dioscorides printed by Egenolph at Frankfort, and prefaced in Sept. of the same year. — Lonicerus' notes, fol. 67, on Aster Atticus, Bk. IV., C. 115, are noteworthy only in their names. He heads them "De Astere Attico, sive inguinali herba." He, or Egenolph, uses two marginal headings, ''Asteris Attici vocabula," and " Stellae Atticae vires." His notes are as follows:
" Aster Atticus, id est, stella Attica, asteriscus, id est, stellula, asterion, id est, stellula, bubonion, id est, inguinahs. Hyophthal- mon, id est, suillus oculus. Rathibis barbarum est, a foliolis stellae similibus nomen huic herbae est inditum stellaria. Ger- manice Sternkraut, Galenus Astera Atticum, sunt qui bubonium, id est, inguinalem nominent, quod non solum emplastri modo ap- posita haec herba inguina sanet, verumetiam alligata iisdem mede- atur."
LXXIX. Adam Lonitzer Adam, son of John Lonitzer, born in Marburg 1528, studied medicine at Mentz 1551, obtaining his doctorate there 1553, and marrying on the same day the daughter of Egenolph. After holding a professorship of medicine at Mentz he returned to Frankfort to live with Egenolph, where he died 1586. His prin- cipal t work is his Kreuterbtich, 1557, in German, with 708 figures [ex libr. Bu.), which repeated on folio 177, the figured Aster
* So at least in my own copy and that of Prof. E. L. Greene. 1 Preceded 1551 and 1555 by his " Naturalis Historia.^''
Lonitzer's Schartenblumen
39:5
Atticus reduced from Fuchs. The chapter on Aster Atticus is his "cap. 83," headed ScJiartciibliimcn oder Sternkraut, Latine Aster Atticus," and adds nothing, but repeats the old story of its flowers shining in the night till " they frighten men who think they see the devil " ; and adds the uses connected with the name bubonioii.
A second edition, i 560 (cx libr. Meyer), increased the figures to 820; and in 1565 a Latin edition appeared. No similar work reached so many editions; five followed his death before 16 16. Its value, says Meyer, is as in all Egenolph's publications, very unequal ; some figures were from nature, some from Bock, Fuchs and others. He was no more a plant observer than was Ryff, but he had more learning. His work is derived from Rhodion, from the Distillierbuch, from Crescenzi, and with a large addition from himself.
LXXX. Uffenbach
Although belonging to a date beyond the limits set for this sketch of Aster history, in one sense Uffenbach, Durante, Ehrhart, Salmon, Quincy and Morandi belonged strictly to the subject, for they form a series which continued, 1585— 1783, — or really from Johann von Cuba, 1485, — to present essentially a monotypic Aster down to a time two centuries beyond Clusius. A few words, therefore, for their work ; considered at this place, because of the similarity of their series to that of Camerarius, Becher, Verzascha and Zwinger, 1 586-1 744.
Peter Uffenbach, a Frankfort physician from Wetzlar who had studied in Italy, of whose personality little is known, but who was called '* Chirurgus,'' and ein beruhmter Medicus," was the transla- tor into German in 1609 of the Italian herbal of Castor Durante, a work which had been very popular in Italy. Uffenbach's transla- tion appeared at Frankfort, in quarto, by name of Hortiihis Sajii- tatis,'' or " Gaertlcin der Gesiindheit, in which all plants are briefly described." It is generally supposed to be a translation of Durante's Erbario of 1 585, though Haller suggests that it may be from the earlier work of Durante of 1565. Uffenbach figures the one usual Aster in it, under the name ''Aster Atticus vulgaris^
Uffenbach, after the death of Adam Lonitzer, edited new editions of Lonitzer's Kreuterbuch, 16 16 and 1630. Trew says thatUffen-
394
Aster History : Uffenbach
bach's part consisted in the explanation and correction of certain inappropriate figures.
Uffenbach died in 1635,* but further editions under his name kept appearing, at Frankfort in 1650, 1679, 1713, at Ulm in 1703, 1713. 1737, ,1765, 1776, and at Augsburg 1783. These, beginning 1737, bore also a long title, adding the name of Balthazar Ehrhart as reviser, though Meyer claims that his work was not evident beyond the title. Ehrhart died July, 1756, pro- nounced by Meyer unskilful in botany as a science, but to be remembered as a plant collector, especially in the Alps, and notable because he was first to put up collections of plants for sale.
* Peter Uffenbach also edited, 2d, a revised edition, i6io, of the German Dioscorides ( " Dioscorides, Kreuterbuch durch lo. Dantzium verdeutschet v. n. Petro Uffenbachi aufs neu iiberschen, Frankfort, l6io" ; folio; ex. bibl. Z. C. Uffenbach).
He was author, 3d, of Comments de re rustica, included by J. M. Gesner in the Scriptores rei rusticae, 1735 ; being the last and 20th of Gesner's series of post- classical annotators beginning with Crescenzi.
4th, among his medical works, his Pantheum medicinae selectum, 1603 {Jide Z. C. Uffenbach' s Vita by Schelhorn, Ulm, 1 753).
5th, " Petri Uffenbachii Thesatirus Chirurgia, continens praestantissimorum Auctorum Opera Chirurgica," Frankfort, 1610 [ex. bibl. Z. C. Uffenbach).
To the same ancient family, ennobled by the Emperor Rudolf II., belonged the series of learned men of Frankfort, including Peter Uffenbach' s contemporary Achillez Uffenbach, the latter' s grandson John Christopher von Uffenbach ("counsellor, 1683, a learned man of the reformed faith " ) whose sons Zacharia and John, also counsellors" of Frankfort, became distinguished as litterateurs, musicians and collectors, of whom John Frederick ab Uffenbach, 1687-1769, a collector of art objects, was author of religious songs, Die Nachtfolge Christi, 1 726, etc.; the elder brother, Zacharia Conrad ab Uffenbach, 1683-1735, burgomaster 1 721, was collector of the magnificent Uffen- bach library, catalogued by him in the four volumes of his Bibliotheca Uffenbachiana universalis, Frankfort, 1 729-3 1, and in his Bibliotheca manuscripta, Halle, 1 720. This library was dispersed by auction at Frankfort, Mar. 7, 1735 [fide its catalogue ex bibl. Colu. enumerating perhaps 12,000 books). To the library belonged a copy of the Bartholomaeus Anglicus of Basle (now ex libr. Bu.); a copy of Vincent de Beau- vais' Speculum, listed as "perlo. Mentellin, primum...Artis Typographicae Inventorem. Circa medium saec, XV" ; and among dated books, some 187 before 1500, the Serapion of 1479 (and that of 1525), Averroes of 1482, Breydenbach's Peregrinatio of i486, both Latin and German editions, two copies of Koberger's Vergil of 1492, Schonsperger's Herbarius'''' of I488 and another of 1492, both with colored figures ; also another Bartholomaeus Anglicus, of Strasburg, 149 1 ; etc.
Z. C. Uffenbach carried on a vast correspondence, edited in part by his friend Schelhorn, Commercii epistolici Uffenbachiani " (Ulm, 1 753-6, 5 vols.); who also published Uffenbach' s "Journeys through Lower Saxony, Holland and England" ("Reisen," Ulm, 1753-4). Other MSS. of Uffenbach remained unprinted, as his " Glossarium germanicum Medii aevi."
Durante's Aster Hexameters 395
So from I 533 to 1783 we may trace the succession of Egenolph's botanical outflow, the text of the Gart der Gesundhcit as edited by Rhodion in 1533, receiving successive augmentation and revision through the many issues of the Kraitei'bucli. Meyer remarks that though neither the woodcuts nor the text actually promoted the advancement of knowledge, yet they added vastly to its diffusion and formed for a long time the most trusted and widely used handbook of botany.
LXXXI. Castor Durante
Castor Durante, compiler of the great Italian herbal, was born at Gualdo near Spoleto, and died at Viterbo in 1590 while court-physician to Pope Sixtus V. He was author of De Boiiitate ... aliinentoriint, Pisa, 1565, in Latin, a rare book (its Italian translation, // Tesoro delta sanita, Venice, 1586, was often reprinted) ; and was author of the better known Herbaria nuovo ; in Italian; Rome, 1585 and often afterwards, with translation in Spanish and German. It is alphabetically arranged ; each chapter is introduced by the Italian name of the plant, followed by a small woodcut copied from Fuchs or Matthioli and measuring about 3 by 2 in.;* then follow hexameters on the healing powers of the plant, written by Durante in the manner of Macer Floridus ; and then, under separate headings, the Nomi, Forma, Loco, Tempo, Qualita, Virtu."
The hexameters on Aster, p. 53, are as follows :
Atticus Aster habet turgentia discutiendi Guttura vim, pueris morbos pellitque caducos ; Morsibus atque canis rabiosi imponitur herba haec, Serpentesque, incensa fugat ; lachrimisque oculorum. Ardenti et stomacho prodest, sedique cadenti, Inguinibusque simul, coxendicis atque dolori.
Then follow the Nomi, among which are given Ital. Aster Attico, Amello ; Franc, petitte Espargoutte, Amelia de virgine [ Vergile intended] , inguinale. The description w hich follows, uses for it also the Italian name Stella d' Atene.
* Meyer, whose copy was of the folio edition of Venice in 1617, credits all the figures to Fuchs; but in the first edition of 1585 {H.de my own copy), and in that of Venice of .1636 [ex libr. E. L, Greene), the Aster Atticus figure was not that of Fuchs, but modified from Matthioh. Changes in editions are slight, this figure occurring on p. 53 in 1585, p. 57 in 1636.
396
Aster History : Durante
The description is derived from Matthioli chiefly ; states that the leaves are hke those of the oHve but smaller ; the taste sharp and bitterish ; the root capillary and of a not unpleasant odor : "and adds that another Aster has the flowers wholly yellow," re- ferring to Pallenis, the Aster Atticiis alter of Matthioli.
Durante follows with the virtues recounted by Dioscorides, not omitting those derived from Cratevas, and the uses as an amulet.
LXXXII. MORANDI
Giambattista Morandi, a later Italian writer on materia medica, was author of a Historia botanica practica, Milan, 1744, which treats {^fide copy ex libr. Greene) only two Asters ; and one of them is the elecampane ; the author still holding so primitive and crude a conception as to include Inula Helenmin in Aster. His other Aster is Aster Atticus," which he describes, p. 27, saying " its flowers are like a little Calendula, its petals are many and violet purple, it blooms in August, grows in a variety of places, and is called Ingiiinalis and Inguinariay He quotes the medical uses given by Dioscorides and Galen, but adds nothing new.
His edition of 1761 {ex bibl. Columbia) reprints the above, p. 27, but separates elecampane from Aster.
LXXXHI. Parkinson
Parkinson's celebrated Paradisus, London, 1629, mentions Aster Atticus as usual, p. 299 ; treats it as with yellow and purple flowers, as if of two species ; agrees with Matthioli that the purple is the true Aster Atticus and is the Amellus ; and cites its occa- sional name in England as the Purple Marigold, — " because it is so like unto one in form." Of its virtues Parkinson says, they are held to be good for the biting of a mad dogge, ... as also for swolne throats ; likewise for botches that happen in the groine."
On p. 5 16 the Jerusalem artichoke, potato and sunflower occur served up together under the name Aster Peruanus, Parkinson quoting from Fabio Colonna in the second part of his Phytoba- sanos 16 1 6, the Flos Solis Farnesianus * sive Aster Peruanus tuberosus." Parkinson's figure seems based on Jerusalem Arti-
^ No Asters appear in the Horius Farnesianus,'''' of Tobia Aldino Cesenate, Rome, 1725.
Parkinson, Salmon and Quincy
397
choke, but he adds that it is called " battatas de Canada, Potatoes of Canada or Artichokes of Jerusalem."
Parkinson's later TJieatrmn Botaniciim, 1640, belongs to a dif- ferent sphere; mentioning 20 Asters, pages 128-132, of which four are yellow-flowered American allies, and two others are Amer- ican but of doubtful identity. Parkinson in 1640 was now follow- ing Lobel in figuring Pallcnis as true Aster Atticus, although re- marking that some were latterly claiming "the purple marigold'' as the true original.
LXXXIV. Salmon
William Salmon, Professor of Physick," and London herbal- ist, dwelling at "the Blew Ball in Shoo-Lane," was author of the " Pharmacopoeia Londinensis ; or the New London Dispensatory in VI books. Translated into English for the Publick Good, and Fitted to the whole Art of Healing," * London, 1677 ; 2d edn,, 1682. One Aster, Aster Atticus, appears among the 737 plants treated, forming chapter 64, p. 34, as follows : t
64, Aster Atticus, Stellaria, 'Aazrjp 'Attixo::, Starwort ; it is called also Hypothalmon (sic) and Asterion ; temperate and dry in I®. It is good against the Quinsie and the Epilepsie in children, chiefly the flowers. Externally the leaves in a Cataplasm, matur- ates and suppurates botches, Imposthumes and venerious buboes." X
LXXXV. Quincy John Quincy, last English writer to present Aster in monotypic form, was a physician who died in London in 1723. He was the author of Medical Epistles, 17 19, and in 1721, of the ''Dispensa- tory § of the Royal College of Physicians," which still retained
* Dedicated to King Charles II, called by Salmon "the miraculous Wonder of this Age," whom he entreats "Become, Sir! the patron of our Lives!. ..In order to the performance of this, Your Majesties Countenance alone is enough : Your Benign Smile will add Life to these Undertakings."
f I quote from the 2d edn., 1682 {^cx libr. Bu. ). This is Salmon's translation, as he says, from the Latin of "the London Dispensatory, lately Reformed by the Fellows now living, of the College of Physicians."
\ Salmon was also author of an herbal, his " Botanologia ; the English Herbal," London, 1710-11, folio, 2 vols. His descriptions, being confined to English plants, include no Aster, though several species are so catalogued in the index.
\ From this Dispensatory developed the Pharmacopeia officinalis in four volumes, London, 1739, which after translation into German as the " Lexicon pliysico-niediciit/i 1787, served as basis of the Medical Dictionary of Hooper, etc.
398
Aster History : Dodoens
Aster Atticus among its medical plants, with the virtues ascribed to it by the ancients. So tenacious has been the hold of Dios- corides upon the race.
CLUSIUS AND HIS COUNTRYMEN LXXXVI. Dodoens
Rembert Dodoens or Dodonaeus Mechliniensis, — oldest of the three Antwerp botanists, friends and collaborators, Dodoens, Clusius and Lobel, — was born in i 5 17 at Malines (Mecheln or Mechlin) where his father Dodo Dodoens, a Frieslander born, was a merchant. Early a student of the University of Louvain, he was hcensed in medicine in his i8th year ; in i 535-1 546 he sought broader education in medicine in many German, French and Italian universities, and finally at Basle ; in 1548 was made city physician of Malines ; wrote this y^ar his " Isagoge cosmographica,'' and began to write in Flemish the History of Plants or Cruydeboeck which occupied most of the rest of his life. Later he was physi- cian to King Philip II at Madrid, in 1574 to Maximilian II at Vienna, 1576-9 to his successor at Vienna, Rudolf II; there meeting with his friend and fellow-countrymen, Clusius, who was in charge, about 1573, of the Royal Garden; and with his old colleague, the famed physician, Crato von Kraftheim, with whom he became unfortunately drawn into controversy.
Returningin 1582 to his native Malines, just then plundered a second time by Spanish troops, he accepted a medical profes- sorship at Leyden ; he published the following year at Ant- werp his botanical masterpiece, his Pemptades, and died in i 586, aged 68. Meyer remarks of him that in his works we find the first flora of the Netherlands ; and that he marks an advance toward a classification of plants, of which he himself says in his Pemptades, *'de ordine non exigua accessit solicitudo." But the conclusion of Dodoens was that Dioscorides' plan was still the most practicable, to class according to properties, and only secon- darily according to form.
Dodoens' Cruydeboeck,^, his famous Flemish herbal, begun in
* The 4th book of the Cruydeboeck was the first to be printed, 1552, by the name of De frugum histofia, with figures mostly from Fuchs. Figures for the first three books fol-
DoDOENs' Sterrecruvt
399
1548, partly printed -in 1552, completely in 1554, and in second, or properly third edition 1563, contained up to that last date {ex bibl. Colu.) but one Aster, page 54 ; with good figure, derived probably from Fuchs ; an abstract, in translation, is as follows :
Aster Atticus or Sterreeruyt
" Names. This plant is in Greek named Aster Atticus and Boubonion ; Latin, Aster Atticus, or Inguinalis ; in Vergil, Flos Amellus ; in high Dutch, Megerkraut, Bruchkraut, Scartenkraut, Sternkraut ; in French, Aspergoutte menue.
Description " following is much as in Fuchs, short and of about twice as much space as the preceding Nomina.
In the next Flemish edition of the Cruydt-boeck * which I have been able to compare, f the immense folio of i6o8,t 1,580 pages besides copious index. Aster is treated in 4 species, in the body of the work, and a supplement is added in which Clusius' and Lobel's Asters are inserted, and reference is made to Tripolium as properly an Aster.
Dodoens' Pemptades § pubHshed three Asters in the first edition of 1583 {ex libr. E. L. Greene), p. 265-6; Aster Atticus { = A.
lowed without text, in 1553, by name Triufji priorum... imagines. When in 1554 the whole Cruydeboeck appeared, printed by Vanderloe in Gothic letters, it formed a folio of 818 pages, with 707 woodcuts ; it is one of the rarest books in botanical litera- ture ; a copy is in the Royal Libr. of Brussels.
The 2d edn., so-called, 1563, contained 817 figures, 500 of which he remarks are from Fuchs. Other editions followed to 1644 ; all at Antwerp.
A Latin translation, by Dodoens himself, with 133 new figures, appeared 1565- 1576, printed by Plantin, Antwerp.
A French translation, by Clusius, properly a second edition of the original, having many additions from Dodoens' own hand, appeared at Antwerp, 1557, printed by Van- derloe, 584 pp., a rare work, entitled Histoire des plantes, its last 35 pages occupied by an original work by Clusius, his Petit recueil ; see p. 407.
An English translation from the French, by Henry Lyte, by name of "A niewe herball," appeared at Antwerp, 1578, and often afterward; and in England in an abridgement by Wm. Ram, London, 1 606, known as " Ram's little Dodeon."
* With the title in this and following editions spelled Cruydt-boeck.
f Sold in -N. Y., June 14, 1901.
J Not mentioned by Pritzel ; C. Bauhin, Finax, under " Nomina atithortim,'' re- fers to it as "prolix " and with thirty-six new figures.
§ Printed by Plantin, at Antwerp, 1583, a folio of 860 pages, with 1105 figures, mostly from the Cruydeboeck. The second edition, also from the Plantin press, 1616, added 12 pages and 19 figures, but was in substance a reprint ("paucis mutatis," C. Bauhiti).
400
Aster History : Dodoeks
Amellus L.) with Matthioli's figure ; Asier Atticus supinus ( = Buph- tJiahmnn inaritinnun L.), with Clusius' figure ; and a third, his *' bitci floris'' of doubtful identity, regarded by C. Bauhin as same as Bauhin's own Aster Atticus hiteus VII {Pinax, 266), perhaps only an expansion of the idea that there must be a yellow species to match the purple one just described ; and it may be from this fact, being not found in nature, that Dodoens fails to provide any figure for it. His description for it is rearranged from Pena and Lobel, i 570 (see p. 403), and seems first introduced by Dodoens in 1574 into his Latin translation, fide C. Bauhin.
Dodoens then follows with the synonyms for Aster Atticus, which he gives in the main as in the Cruydeboeck, adding two Spanish names, Bobas and Estrellada, and one French, Estoille ; omitting " in Vergil Flos Amellus," and saying instead " Putatur et is, qui purpurei est floris, a Virgilio Amellus nuncupati flos," concerning which he then quotes from the Georgics, concluding by adding the properties as given by Galen and then as given by Dioscorides.
The 1 61 6 edition of Dodoens' Peniptades {ex libr. Bu. and ex bibl. N. Y. Bot. Garden) differs in regard to Aster only in the occurrence of the chapter (24) on pages 266-7 one page forward.
LXXXVII. Lobel Matthias de L'Obel, Latinized as Lobelius and Anglicized as Lobel, youngest of the three great botanists of Flanders, was born in Lille (in French P'landers) 1538, studied before 1566 under Rondeletius at Montpellier, botanized thence through southern France, pursued botanical studies at Narbonne with Peter Pena, then journeyed in upper Italy, Switzerland, Germany and England. f Becoming a practising physician at Antwerp, and then at Delft, he was called by William, Prince of Orange, to be his court physician in 1584 ; and was later in London, as " Royal Botanographer " to King James I. % He died in 16 16, aged 78, at Highgate, London, where he had lived for some years with a married daughter.
* G. Rondelet, the French naturalist, 1507-1566; author of "Animadversiones " on drugs, printed by Lobel, 1576.
I According to Pulteney, he was in England in 1 570 and there dedicated the (rare) first edition of his Adversaria to Queen Elizabeth in that year, finding a sponsor in Lord Zouch, and making additions to Lord Zouch's garden at Hackney.
:j: As appears in his edition of his Adversaria in 1 605.
LOBEL AND PeNA's AsTERS
401
Lobel's botanical monuments are two, his Adversaria of 1570 and his Observationes of 1576, commonly printed together to form his ** Historia plantariim'' His first work was the Stirpium Adversaria nova ; Purfoot's London editions, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, 1570, 1571, 1572; edition at Antwerp, 1576; then reissued under the changed title Dilucidae simplicium at London, i6o5,t Leyden 161 6, and Frankfort, 165 1. Petrus Pena, his instructor at Narbonne, was joint author, according to the title page, his name preceding that of Lobel. There is no other indica- tion of their relative proportion of authorship, except that a pecu- Har and imperfect Latinity observable here, continues through all of Lobel's works, and seems to indicate that though Pena may have gathered in southern France a large part of the materials, the final elaboration was due to Lobel. J
The Aster descriptions of Lobel and of Pena are as follows :
I {Pallenis spinosa, Cassini), "Aster sive Stella Attica Monspeliensium, aureo flore," Adv., 147, Translating the Latin, " The name of Attic Star has arisen if not from the flower, at least from the leaflets surrounding that in the manner of a star, as Dioscorides seems to have expressed it ; no other plant of to-day can be more fitly so designated than that called Aster Monspelliensium in that place, in the Norbonensian region, a very familiar plant about the margins of meadows and brooks.
" It produces a golden flower in summer, rounded but compressed, nor with as much of swelling roundness as that of Buphthalmum \_Anthcmis tinctoria L.] and Chrysan-
* Lobel's works, written wholly by himself, include,
1. Plantarum... Historia'''' or " Stirpium Observationes," Antwerp, 1576, 671 p. and over 1,200 figures, mostly from Clusius or Dodoens, whose works were printed chiefly by the same publisher, Plantin.
2. Kruydtboeck,''' Plantin, Antwerp, 1581, 1306 p ; 562 figures, mostly from Clusius ; a Flemish translation of his preceding works, but on better paper and with some of the figures improved and larger.
3. " Plantarimi...icine5," Plantin, 1581, the figures of the Kruydtboeck, without text ; cited throughout by Linnaeus, in his Species plantartim.
4. " Stirpitan illustrationes,-' a small posthumous work (without figures) of 2ii pages (so Meyer; 170, Pritzel who did not include 41 unnumbered pages), edited by William How, and printed in Latin by Warren at London, 1655, from a rough and half-finished Latin MS., in which Lobel had begun, at instance of Lord Zouch, a com- prehensive botanical treatise, but which How charged Parkinson (who had died 1650) with having purloined and withheld. Meyer praises Lobel's preface as the first notice of the fact that " the plants which are found on mountain-tops are found in plains and depressed regions further north."
f The 1570 edn. had 457 p. and 268 figures; the 1576 edn. and 1605 were the same to p. 456, according to Dryander ; the 1576 edn. had but little addition, only 471 p. in all ; that of 1 605 grew to 549 p.
X So Meyer surmises, 4 : 158 4--
402
Aster History : Lobel
themum [probably C. se^etum L. particularly]. The flower is surrounded by five or six narrow mucronate rigid and rather long leaflets, somewhat resembling a stella marina [starfish]. The stems are a foot, or three or four feet, hard, hirsute, covered wholly with oblong leaves like those of Lychnis or Verbascum salvifolia tenidor, pilose, a little rigid, green, tinged with brown. The root is composed of scattered fibers. The juice is astringent, bitterish, not acrid, nor particularly unpleasant. The seed resem- bles that of Anthemis. It is mature in August, or in September in gardens of France, Belgium or Germany. For it does not occur in the country in those regions. The leaflets of the flowers grow purplish underneath in certain localities ; not purplish within as in Tripolium." *
2 [Inula salicina L. ) (Pena and Lobel's second Aster of 1570). " Aster Italorum luteum fruticosum oleae folio Conisae facie," Adv. 147 ; the name changed by Lobel Obs., 189, margin, to "Aster luteus fruticosus" (so correcting the syntax). Pena and Lobel, Adv. 147, say of it '* It is very frequent not only in stony and dry places in Italy, but in the province of Narbonne, especially near the ruins of the Roman aque- duct at Nismes, on the road to Avignon at the triple arch bridge called Garrus, and at Boutonnes (Bottonettus), and along the Monspelliac river Lanus at the bridge : [brief description follows] ; with leaves of Olea Conisa or of Myrthus major, or rather with habit and flower of Conisa ; yellow, and with pappus like Jacea \Senecio~\. It is of un- certain use. It is uncertain if it can be the Amelus of Virgil. It seems indeed im- possible to maintain the opinion that it is the true Amelus or the Aster of Dioscorides."
This plant actually appeared as an Aster as late as Scopoli, 1760, who called it Aster salicinus in his Flora Carniolica. Linnaeus had called it an Aster in his Flora Suecica, 1 745 ; and so many writers before ; J. Bauhin and editors, 1650, still referring to it as deemed a kind of Aster Atticus [" quibusdam asteris attici genus," Hist. pL, 2 : 1049], by some, though themselves classing it under Conyza; Tabernaemontanus in 1588, calling it Bubonium luteum, perpetuated in this other form the idea that it was the Aster Atticus or Bubonium of the ancients. A part of Tabernaemontanus' Bubonium luteum came latter to be separated from this Aster salicinus, appearing in Scopoli, 1760, as Aster Bubonium, and giving rise to the subgeneric name Bubonium used by De Candolle for this his largest section of Inula in his Prodromus, 1836. Scopoli' s Aster Bubonium is the Inula spiraeifolia L., non Lam., fide DC., but is Inula squar- rosa L., fide Fl. Deutschland, Hallier's revision, 29 : 133.
Lobel, Obs. 189, adds to his " Aster luteus fruticosus^ ^ a variety, without separate name but simply headed " varietas"; remarking that the variety is "in all things the same with the yellow form except that mixed with the yellow flowers purplish ones occur ; nor does it turn so to pappus within [m pappos dehiscentibus'\ ; in locality and growth it is like Aster Lunariaefolius N'arbonensis ( Aster acris L. ) but larger. It grows in Provence and about Narbonne and in Lombardy ; and in gardens in Belgium." The Bauhins, Tournefort and Linnaeus make no mention of this variety.
*The same plant appears figured, Lobel's Observationes, 188, the figure being sub- stantially that used by Matthioli, 1563, and labelled by him ''Aster Atticus alter," by Lobel here ''Aster Atticus,'' with addition, p. 189, of properties from Dioscorides and Paulus Aegineta, both in Latin translation ; and with the usual citation of synonyms, including Bobas in Spain, probably derived from Clusius who found it current there in 1564; and Oculus Christi at Montpellier, which may have been derived from Lobel's own residence there prior to 1566, or from Clusius who was there i5So-i553> or from Rondelet and Pena who had long resided in that region. To both of these instructors of Lobel may be traced his name for it of " Aster Monspelliensiutn ; Rondelet himself calls it Aster Atticus (Lobel, Obs., 664, publishing a posthumous fragment of Rondelet).
LOBEL AND PeNA'S AsTERS
403
Lobel's figure, Obs. l88, intended for this Aster luteus fruticonis and labelled Aster Ilaloruni, was a mistake, being Matthioli's figure for Aster Atticus, and represent- ing Aster Amellus L. Misled by this figure, C. Bauhin in 1623 in his Pinax enumer- ated an *' Aster Atticus luteus VII " which had no existence in nature, being a com- posite founded on Pena and Lobel's description of their yellow-flowered Aster Iiolo> utJi, plus Dodoens' imaginary second or (yellow-flowered) Aster Atticus, plus Clusius' Aster Atticus Italorum ; which latter proves to be the purple Aster Amellus L,
The first to give a correct interpretation of Pena and Lobel's " Aster Italorum " was Magnol (probably in his Botanicutn Monspeliense of 1676); fide Tournefort, who cleared up the subject in his Histoire des plantes...de Paris ^ 169S, showing how Pena and Lobel, and afterward C. Bauhin, had confused the two wholly different yellow and purple plants.
3. [Aster acris L. = Galatella punctata DC, and including the Galatella punctata of Cassini & Nees) Pena and Lobel's third species, " Aster minor Norbonensium tripolii flore, Lynariae folio medio purpureum," Adv. 147, "Aster Lunariaefolius Narbon- ensis " Lobel, Obs. 189, in reference made in another description ; figured y^^/z^. 147, with description, remarking " This Aster fully satisfies our notion of Dioscorides' Aster and of the Amelus Vergilianus ; except that it does not occur here in meadows, but in dry places and stony hills, as an oliretum near Montpellier and another * ad Castrum novum. The flowers certainly present the figure of little stars, with their many leaflets radiating, golden and purple, glistening with the mingled brilliance of Tripolium [mixto fulgore micantes Tripolii] . For by Dioscorides something purple mixed with yellow is depicted , as is seen when he says, ' florum partem purpuream bubonis presidio esse.' So indeed it is to be rendered, and so doctissimus Marcellus rendered it. In its slender virgate stems, a foot or a foot and a half high from one fibrous sod of root [it resembles Amellus]. Its little oblong leaves, narrower than in the preceding \^Inula salicina'\ resemble Lynaria \_Linaria vulgaris of modern botany and of Bock, Gesner and Ces- alpino]. It is similar on the whole but smaller and more slender than Tripolium, which expresses the Amelus Vergilianus still more clearly, both in locality, along streams and meadow borders and more open valleys, and in aspect of flower, leaves and stems, for sometimes it grows strong and purple and its cymes show a beautiful forest of purpled stars among the yellow."
4. [Inula mo7itana L. ) "Aster montanis [corrected to montanus, Obs. 189] duplex praegrandi Helenii flore," Adv. 148, figure 149, with the description, "These two plants merit the name of Aster, which, although rarely, in the lofty mountains of the Allobroges and Provence, show a single blossom of shining magnitude. It is almost of the magnitude, color and form of Helenium ( Inula Helenium L. ) on a single stem a cubit high, which is straight and slender, bearing brownish leaves in size like the Aster Italicus ( Inula salicina L. ) and so similar that they are evidently the same [genus of ] plants. Succisae, aut Britannicae, Lugdunensis. [Succisa was a name used for Scabiosa by many contemporaries, as Matthioli, Fuchs, and Dodoens ; and under the name Succisa this Inula niontana may have been cultivated in Leyden, and also under the name Britannica, later confined to Inula Britannica L. )
5. [Inula viontatia L. ) "Aster montanus hirsutus," Adv. I48, with name in margin misplaced above the description ; figured as " [Aster] Alter folio et caule hir- sutis," 148; and described : "Another, in height and in flower, is not unlike the pre- ceding, but with stem and leaves hirsute, longer, of the same size and shape as our small Cynoglossum ; but with the root less fibrous."
Tabernaemontanus, 1588, distinguished this from the preceding, calling that "Aster montanus luteus mas,'" and this " Aster montanus luteus femina." C. Bauhin
404
Aster History : Lobel
also retained them as distinct, but Linnaeus cited both of Bauhin's names as synonyms for his Inula montana. Linnaeus, 1 762, was still remarking that " in its calyx and its habit it is too close to the Asters."
6. {Buphthalniui7i grandijlonim I..) ''Aster conyzoides Gesneri " of Obs. 188, where it is figured, "Aster conyzoides. Conyzoides Gesneri" 189, with description, already quoted, p. 361.
7. {BuphthalmuJH maritimiim L., later known as Asterisctts ?naritifnuvi Moench. ) *' Aster atticus supinus clusii," figured by this name Obs. 188, and described by the same name, 189, as "A plant which produces numerous rough-bristly stems, spread on the ground, given off from one root ; it produces oblong hirsute leaves as of Lychnis or of Stella Attica, numerous and of a deeper green ; and a yellow flower as of Buph- thalmum or Chrysanthemum. Grows wild in certain places in Castile, according to Clusius."
8. {Itiula dysenterica L,, later known as Pulicaria dysenterica Gaertner) "Aster Atticus luteus Fuchsii et perperam calamintha tertia " is printed by Lobel, Obs. 187, over the figure of his Conyza media, " familiar plant " as he goes on to say, " in Bel- gium, France, Italy and Germany." Fuchs (as edn. 1551, p. 427) had by some mis- take coupled a figure of Inula dysenterica L. with the name and description of his
"" Calaminthae tertium genus Galliae Calament aquatic, Mentastro simile."
Lobel s Chief Contribution to Aster-Knozvledge
He (including Pena's work with his own) figured and described more species by the name of Aster than any one before him ; none of which, however, are now commonly classed under that genus.
His descriptions contain but little borrowed matter, and show close and fond observation of plants in their native habitats, — stii- diose observavimus, he says himself, Adv. 123. Throughout the Adversaria especially, written nearer to the time when Pena and Lobel were roaming the fields at Narbonne together, their Aster descriptions are redolent of the fresh fields, and are remarkable for their mention of exact localities, in which respect they stand as the pioneers in a new world, previous habitats, even in exact writers like Fuchs or Bock, being usually expressed in terms of national- ities. Valerius Cordus, Anguillara and Clusius had begun, how- ever, to do slightly what Pena and Lobel did very commonly in their Adversaria ; Lobel' s Observationes, being composed more of citations from the ancients, gave no such opportunity.
His descriptions of Aster inontanns liirsntns, etc., were the first for that plant, hiida montana L., that are known.
His description and figure of " Aster Attieus siipiniis " ap- peared in the same year with those of Clusius, but were borrowed from the latter, Clusius' figures being freely loaned to his friends.
A New Era Established by Clusius
405
His description and figure of Aster conyzoides Gesneri'' fur- nished the starting-point for the further treatment of the plant by botanists, the original by Gesner being to most an unseen rarity.
LXXXVIII. Clusius
Last of the three friends of Flanders we consider Clusius, post- poning him till after Dodoens and Lobel because his numerous original publications of Aster make him for that genus the end of one era and the beginning of a new. When he began botanic work in 1 5 50, he found Aster substantially a monotypic genus, and so he published it in 1557 ; in 1576 he put forth his first new Aster ; by 1583 he had altered the aspect of the genus from simple to com- plex, with his Pannonian species; and when he died in 1609, the genus had been already well tangled by his younger contempo- raries.
Cliisuis' Early Life. — By birth Charles de I'Escluse, he was usually known as Carolus Clusius Atrebatis ; i. e., of Arras, his birthplace, Arras in Artois, now in France but then in Flanders, where his Huguenot family were religious exiles from France. Meyer was eager to class him with German botanists, the greater part of his life being spent in the Netherlands or in Germany. In- deed it is a significant fact that since Ruellius at the century's beginning, or since the Huguenot wars had begun to devastate France, almost all botanical work which emanated from men of French descent for the rest of that century was published in the Netherlands, as comparison of the printers of Clusius, Lobel, Dalechamp, Des Moulins, Pena and Rondelet will attest.
Born in March, 1526, Clusius was nine years younger than Dodoens, twelve years older than Lobel ; his father was proprietor of an estate in good circumstances and vested with high official dignity. Educated at Ghent and Louvain, in 1548 Clusius was at Marburg, in i 549 he went to Wittenberg to be with Melancthon, in 1550 to Frankfort, Strasburg, Lyons and Montpellier.
Clusitis' Life as a Botanist. — At Montpellier he remained three years, 1550-1553, studying under the naturalist Rondelet, and living in his house. Under the influence of Rondelet, who was botanist, physician and ichthyologist, Clusius, who had been a
406
Aster History: Clusius
student of law, turned from jurisprudence and became a student of nature. There he made acquaintance with his Aster Atticus legitimiis " (Pallcnls spinosa Cassini) which he says the people about Montpellier were in the habit of calling Ocnhis CJiristi ;
Aster Atticus legitimiis was called Ocidiis Christi in the Monspel- lian land when I was living there," Clusius wrote a half century- later. We may fancy the elder and younger plant-lovers talking over its yellow stars and its healing powers as they walked there, Rondelet praising its traditional virtues.*
After three years in Montpellier, Clusius received his license in medicine in 1553 and at once began a botanical journey through the mountains, making observations on plants through a great part of southern France, Savoy and Piedmont. Here may have been his first sight of Aster Ainellus L. and of Aster alpinits L., which he did not describe however till 1583 after seeing them in the Austrian Alps.
At the wish of his father, Clusius returned, by way of Basle, to the Netherlands. Remaining there 155 5-1563, he translated into French, with numerous additions made by author and by trans- lator as collaborators, the great Flemish herbal, the Cruydeboeck of Dodoens, finishing it in 1557, under the wdiVaQ ^\ Histoire des plantesy \
* Rondelet himself had known the plant as Aster Atticus ; for in his fragment De Succerianeis^^ (edited by Lobel from a MS. of Rondelet and published 1576 at Ant- werp as an appendix to his Observationes, forming pages 657-671 of Lobel's volume Flantaruni historia), Rondelet remarks, p. 664, that in place of the plant " Bubonium sive Inguinaria sive Aster Atticus" some physicians use " y^w/^rr/^m^/;;/ " .• and vice versa. "Antirrhinum," still known by that name, had been said by Galen to have "the properties of Bubonium but milder" ; as Lobel remarks, Observationes, 221. Lobel, in editing this fragment, indicates by marginal insertion of "Rondel," opposite " Aster Atticus," that the text means noiih^ Aste?^ Attictis of anybody else, Matthioli for example, but the Aster Aiticus of Rondelet, i. e., the Aster Atticus alter of Matthioli. — It was natural that the Aster Atticus of Rondelet should not be the Aster Ante this L., the mountain-loving plant of Matthioli. Presumably there had been a long-current identification of Pallenis with Bubonion and Inguinaria widespread through both south- ern France and Spain, Rondelet, 1507-1566, knowing it as Bubonion and Clusius finding the Spaniards calling it Bobas when he was travelling in Spain in 1564-5.
I Issued by Jean Loe, Antwerp, 1557, in folio, according toC. Bauhin, Seguierand Haller, with the title, as given by Seguier, 1740, of " Histoire des plantes de Dodonee, contenant la description des herbes, leurs especes, forme, noms, temperaments, vertus, et operations, traduite du bas Allemand en Francois par Ch. de I'Ecluse." Of this rare work Seguier knew a copy in the library of the physician Falconet in Paris. Caspar Bauhin used a copy, 1623.
Clausius' Spanish Journey
407
Clusius' Histoire " contained two Aster descriptions, his Aster Amiens'' (= A. Amellus L.) and his " Tripolinm'' (= A. Tripoliuin L.) ; fide C. Bauhin.
With the Histoirc " Clusius printed a maiden work of his own, his ''Petit Rectieiiy both in foHo and quarto, according to Pritzel, and forming the last 35 pages of the quarto Histoire," contain- ing, as Clusius says, descriptions of certain gums, and liquors, woods, fruits, and aromatic products, collected in part from the Herbier aleman'' [Cruydeboeck] , in part from other authors, ancient and modern.
In 1563-4 Clusius made two journeys to Augsburg; return- ing, he traveled through Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal, from the Pyrenees to Gibraltar, Valencia to Lisbon ; in 1 564 he was in Lisbon observing the Dragon's-blood tree in bloom ; in April, i 565, he was making observations in Valencia ; and his immense activity in this journey arouses the more wonder, as Meyer remarks, when we remember that in the neighborhood of Gibraltar through a fall from his horse he had broken his right arm. The results of the journey included his Aster Atticus siipimts (= Asterisciis inari- timiis, Moench) which he found in Castile — sponte in quibtisdavi Castelle locis^ These results were published in his Rarioruvi... per Hispanias \\\^ Plantin press at Antwerp in 1576, ii years later ; there was too much new for immediate determination or publication, and Clusius always took time for mature digestion of his novelties before he published. Exigencies of the printing house and the absence of Clusius from Antwerp to Vienna for the three
It was also issued with fuller title in quarto the same year by the same house, if Pritzel is correct, who gives the title as " Histoire des plantes, en laquelle est contenue la description entiere des plantes, c'est a dire leurs especes, forme, noms, temperament, vertus et operations : non seulement de celles qui croissont en ce pays, mais aussi des autres etrangeres, qui viennent en usage de medicine. Nouvellement traduite de bas aleman en frangois par Charles de I'Ecluse," 584 p.
Dodoens furnished a dedicatory epistle, in Latin, calling it his second edition, though translated from the first ( 1554), because, as he says, We [the translator and I] have revised everything, changed many, transferred some ; we have increased the whole work by no small addition, and we add figures of many plants never yet pictured so far as I know." Evidently, changing as he does from plural to singular, his use of the plural was intentional, to include Clusius in the authorship of the additions.
A third issue, the figures only without text, followed at Antwerp in 1560 in octavo, fide C. Bauhin and also J. Ray ; though questioned by Seguier.
408
Aster History: Clusius
years previous to publication, added to the delay. About 300 new or remarkable plants were observed by him during that Spanish journey of 1564-5, over two-thirds as many as the entire flora recorded by Theophrastus or bequeathed to the Renaissance by the fifteenth century herbals ; and 299 figures of new or rare plants were counted by Treviranus in this volume on Spain.*
Again returning to Belgium and remaining chiefly at Antwerp, Clusius was doubtless busily engaged for some time in working up the details of his Spanish journey; in 1571 he was in Paris again, and went to London; in 1572 he was in Belgium once more, probably making then his translation of Garcia ab Horta from the Portuguese,! in 1573 he went to Vienna under invitation of Maximilan II to take charge of the Imperial Botanical Gar- den, which he enriched with many rare plants ; was for a time in Prague, was raised to the nobility by his emperor, and was re- tained for some time in the same place by his successor Rudolf II, being in all for 14 years in charge of the Vienna Garden, 1573- 1587.
His friends at Vienna included the esteemed royal historiog- rapher Sambricius, the royal physicians Crato and Julius Alexan- drinus, and also Dodoens, his Flemish master, with whom he had elaborated the Histoire des Plantes " in 1557, and who now came to Vienna as court physician for 1576-79.
While at Vienna Clusius continued with unwearied zeal his search for new plants, travelling over all Austria and Hungary, and going twice to England, a fruit of his last journey being his acquaintance with Sir Francis Drake, the " Franc. Drake Esq. Anglus " of Clusius' references, through whose means he afterwards secured many rare exotics. A result of the journey through Austria-Hungary was his volume on the Rare Plants of
* Of this rare volume, which Meyer endeavered in vain to secure, Pritzel notes the sale of a copy at 8 francs in 1845 by A. Meilhac. Its full title was ^'^ Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum historia, libris duobus expressa, ad Maximilian II, Imperatorem," 1576, octavo, 529 pp.
■f *' Aromatum Simplicium atque Medicamentorum apud Indos nascentium His- toria, Lusitanica lingua scripta per Garciam ab Horta, Latine in epitomen contracta a Car- Clusio, cum iconibus," Antwerp, 1574, Oct.; 30 figures; reissued 1579, 1593, 1605; with separate issue of Clusius' Notes 1582, together with descriptions of exotics sent him by Sir Francis Drake.
Clusius at Vienna and Leyden
409
Austria,* published at the Plantin press, like his preceding and succeeding works, Antwerp, 1583, with 364 figures, a work alike honorable to the author in arrangement, treatment and drawing, but miserably mutilated in the printing which went on at Antwerp while the author was in Vienna. Clusius was so ashamed of the appearance of his book that he bemoaned it bitterly (in a letter printed by Treviranus f in 1830) and formed the plan to put forth a new and rectified edition, combining his two works on the Spanish and Pannonian plants, a plan which was realized 18 years later in his Rariorum plantarurn historia of 1601. J
After retirement for five or six years, or since 1587, in Frank- fort, Clusius' next and last removal was to Leyden, wherein 1593 when 67 he was professor at the university and lived and worked in ceaseless activity till the end, at the age of 84, Apr. 1609; accomplishing the publication, during his life at Leyden, of the two great and comprehensive works, his ''Rariorum ... his-
* Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Pannoniam, Austriam et vicinas quandani pro- vincias observatarum historia, quatuor libris expresse." 766 p. Again next year, 1584, with addition of Beithius " Stirpium nomenclator Pannonicus. " Of this, Rariorum, Trew, Trevianus and Meyer had copies; the sale of a copy at 7 fr. by A. Meilhac, 1845, is noticed by Pritzel.
t Christian Ludolf Treviranus, who edited at Leipsic in 1830, the Unpublished Letters of Clusius, and of Gesner, with his own notes and preface, an octavo of 62 p. bearing title Caroli Clusii et Conradi Gesneri Epistolae ineditae."
J He had long been suffering from bitter adversity at V'ienna, of which we learn from the late publication of his letters by Treviranus. He and his family were devoted to Protestantism, in following which faith his uncle came to the scaffold, and his father had his whole estate confiscated. The botanist struggled to put his father again in his earlier circumstances, " to give all back to him which had been taken from him," lived long in such poverty himself that while at Vienna he was not once able to pay his house rent when due, and finally was reduced, in the straitest circumstances of his life, to appeal to his friend Thomas Rhedinger for the loan of 50 thalers. Here in 1581 he also had the misfortune to get his foot out of joint and to break an ankle bone. Then followed religious persecution, for Rudolf II. as he grew older began, says Meyer, to drive out all the Protestants, — whom his father had employed without questioning their belief. Weary of the court, Clusius left Vienna forever in 1587, and lived at Frankfort, where he obtained a life-annuity from William IV., Landgrave of Hesse, but even here his fatalities continued ; he had the misfortune to dislocate his hip, and unskillful handling of his hurt made a cripple thereafter, so that as Meyer remarks, " he who was accustomed to go up mountains and climb the rocks now from this time had to go upon two crutches ; so that he came into a sedentary life and his health declined in Germany ; only his thoughts' activities and his Geist preserved him into highest age with un- troubled freshness."
410
Aster History : Clusius
toria;'-^ and his ''Exotics'' \ both foHos produced at the Plantin press at Antwerp, and of which Meyer remarks : These two works give Clusius his reputation.
* " Rariorum plantarum historia," Antwerp, at the Plantin press by Joannes More- tus, l6oi, folio ; 712 p., 1146 figures, including all those of his Spanish and Pannonian plants. Copies; ex libr. Bu.; another is just secured, June I902, by Libr. N. Y. Bot. Garden. This work includes the following :
(a) Republication of the plants of his Rariorum... Hispanias,^^ 1576, and his Rariorum... Pa7tnonias,^^ 1583, the species redistributed, often redescribed and re- named, with new arrangement expressing affinities, and many new species added ; in 6 books ; these 3 first books with 364 pp.
{b) Continuation of the same, being the 3 remaining books with pages lettered, not numbered ; Pannonian plants especially but so treated as to bring in their Spanish allies here ; beginning, book IV, with " Sed nec Scabiosarum et Asterum, aliarumque quarundam illis similium, inelegantes sunt flores," — "on account of which book IV shall be devoted to them and others ; " " Aster, Cap. VII," following on p. xii.
(<r) Fung07'u??i in Pannoniis observatarum historia," or " Commentariolum de fungis," " a wholly new work, and the first printed which treats of fungi," Meyer, 4 : 357. Some good figures are from Lobel. It forms pages cclxi — ccxcv.
((/ ) p. ccxcvi, " Epistolae Honorii Belli," to Clusius, on various plants, — to i597-
(^') cccxv, Epistolaa Thobiae Roelsii," another physician, to Clusius, on plants.
(/") cccxxi, Descriptio Montis Baldi," 26 pages, translated into Latin by Clusius ; from the Italian of Joannes Pona which had been printed at Verona 1595 in quarto.
Supplements to this book occur in Clusius' Exotics, 1605, and Curae, 1611.
f '■^Exoticorum libri decem," 1605, folio, about 800 p., including
( a ) Six books of Exotics wholly by Clusius, which include besides plants, fruits and barks, birds also and beasts, fishes, corals, etc.
{b) Books 7 and 8, a reprint of Clusius' abridged translation of Garcia ab Horta's Spices of India, from the Portuguese : with figures and notes by Clusius and also "those of an unknown orientalist." Meyer.
(<r) Book 9, a reprint of Clusius' translation from the Spanish of Christophorus a Costa, this being its 3d edn., the others separate, 1582 and 1593, both from the Plantin press, and octavo.
{d^ Book 10, a reprint of Clusius' translation from the Spanish of Nicolaus Mon- ardes' great work on West Indian and South American drugs; entitled " Simplicium medicamentorum ex novo orbe delatorum historia, ... IV editio, auctior." The orig- inal work was first published at Seville, 1569, as " Historia medicinal de...Indias occi- dentales," with posthumous third part, 1580. Clusius translated the original two parts into Latin in 1 5 73, printing them the next year ; and the third part 158 1, printing it 1582 ; reprinting the three, 1593, 1597, and now as this Book 10 of his Exotica : with figures.
( e ) Three other books of Monardes on < * secret medicine " translated from the Span- ish into Latin by Clusius ; bk. I, on lapis Bezoar and herba Scorzonera, bk. 2 on iron, bk. 3 on snow. Added, are translations by Clusius from Monardes on Rosa and on Citrus. Also, an appendix to Clusius' Rariorum ... historia.
{/) Clusius' translation from the French of Bellonius' (Belon) Observations in Greece and the East, in three books, again with notes by the anonymous orientalist ; with addition of Clusius' translation of Bellonius' tract De neglecta plantarum cultura," which Clusius had first printed in 1 589.
Meyer's Estimate of Clusius
411
One posthumous work followed in 1611, his " Curae poste- riores," * folio and quarto, from the Plantin press, chiefly an appendix to the two preceding works of 1601 and 1605, with a biography and funeral oration by Everardus Vorstius ; with 27 new figures {Seguier).
Another posthumous publication may be considered that of Clusius' and Gesner's Epistles, by Treviranus, in 1830 ; seep. 409.
Another also, 1843, by H. W. de Vriese, in Dutch, at Leyden, an octavo tract of 14 pages, on a collection of Clusius' MS. in his own hand, preserved in the library of the Leyden High School.
Clusius' Attainments. — Of Clusius, Meyer gives the following discriminating and appreciative summary (which I condense in translating) : He was a man of undoubted talent, extraordinary memory, and all-embracing culture. He had a foundation knowledge of the old as well as the newest languages. He had studied law and medicine. He had made very earnest theological studies at Wittenberg, and his historical and geographical knowl- edge was remarkable. Culture and ability as an artist is exhibited in his plants of Spain, etc., and a mind for poesie in his continued friendship with one of the greatest modern Latin poets, Peter Lotichius, with whom he was brought close in Montpellier and among whose works there lie sheltered many an epistle and poem addressed to Clusius.
" No predecessor or contemporary has enriched the knowledge of plants more with new discoveries, or had set forth and described his discoveries with such ability.
He carried his true researches in natural history to a higher point than that of the older synonyms with which others filled their books. Yet he lacked not in the botany of the ancients, and added many identifications.
All that Clusius added to botany is in his two volumes of 1 60 1 and 1605 ; but very few botanists have filled so few works with so much."
Full title translated, " Last Labors ; or New Descriptions of many plants before unknown or undescribed, and of some foreign animals, by which also all of his own works and the others translated by him are augmented and illustrated. To which is added separately the biography and funeral oration by Everard Vorst," Antwerp, i6ii,fol. 71 + 24 p., with wood cuts ; and reissued by the same house the same year in quarto, 134 4- 39 P-> with the figures. Copy ex. libr. Meyer.
412
Aster History : Clusius
Summary of Clusius' Works
Translation into French, from Flemish, of Dodoens' Cruydeboeck, its 2i edn. ; 1557. Translations into Latin ;
of Garcia ab Horta on Spices of India ; from Portuguese ; 1574. Christopher a Costa on Spices of India ; from Spanish ; 1 582. Monardes on Refiiedies from the West Indies ; from Spanish ; 1 5 74, parts I and 11 ; 1582, part III ; often reprinted.
Monardes, Briefer writings^ 1 605 .
Belon, Observations in Greece and the East; 1589 ; from the French of 1554. Belon, " De neglecta, stirpium cultura ; " 1589 ; from the French of 1558. Original works (or chiefly original ) ; Latin, and from the Plantin press, except the Petit Recueil, 35 pages of descriptions of remarkable plant-products, 1557. Rariorum stirpium per Hispanias, 1576, 529 p. Rariorum stirpium per Pannoniam, 1583, 766 p.
Rariorum plantarum historia (combination and rearrangement of the pre- ceding), 160I, 712 p.
ExoticorumYCQxi d^zcQm,&\.c., 1605. Curae posteriores, 1611. Epistolae, 1 830,
Clusius' Chief Contributions to the Knowledge of Aster. — He pub- lished 16 different species which went for a time under the name Aster, half of which he described as Asters himself Only two of them remain in Aster now, Aster Amellus L., and A. alpimis L.
He was the first to give a clear and recognizable description for Aster alpinus L., and he gave it that name which it still bears, calling it in 1583 Amellus alpinus, and in 1601 Aster alpijtus coeruleo fore vel 7.
He was the first to publish clear and definite descriptions for a number of plants, new Asters so-called then and long afterward, which made a considerable part of the Linnean genus Inula.
His figures of his Asters, freely used by his publisher in works of others, and often copied, show great skill in catching and repro- ducing the essential in the habit of the plants.
He was fully alive to the complexity of the Aster group ; perhaps none but Gesner before him had really felt it, until Lobel, who perceived it probably chiefly as a result of his older friend Clusius' activities. Clusius begins his Asters in the resume of 1 60 1,* with ''Asteris non parva est varietas ; nam in meis perigrinationibus observatae mihi sunt elegantes quaedam plantae, quae ad illius genera referri posse videntur."
* Rariorum historia, book IV, c. vii, p. xii.
Clusius' Aster Names
413
He was the most pronounced example that botany had yet known, of the method of alternate exploration, personal field-work alternating with periods occupied by working up and publishing his discoveries.
He tried to collect the vernacular names for his Asters ; with the following results : * " My first species, Aster Atticus legitimtis, [= Pallenis], was called Ociilus Christi in the Monspellian land when I was living there ( 1 5 50); and in Spain ( 1 564), Bobas, which I suppose derived from Bubonium, because they heal inguinal tumors with it, there called bobas ; whence also the Latin name Inguinalis. For the rest of the kinds I have never known any common name in the places where they grow, among the inhabi- tants.
Rariorum historia, book IV, c. vii, p. xvi.
414
Aster History : Clusius
Correlation of the Eight Asters of Clusius
Abbreviations : A. = Aster. Att. = Atticus. Pann. = Pannonicus.
Sp. or Pan. for original source in Clusius' Rare Plants of Spain or of Pannonia. The order adopted is the sequence of species in l6oi'.
^, . , ^ . . Clusius' Form for - . , t- •
. , TT- . TT Clusius Form m Descrip- CorresDondinB- JLmnaeus tquiv-
Clusius First Form. ^^^^ .goi. FEr?)^i6oi ^1*°*.
A. Att. primus flore luteo A. Att. 1 e g i t i m u s, Aster I. Buphthalmumspi-
Sp. sive I. nosum.
A. Att. supinus ^^i*. A. supinus sive II. A. Aster II. Buphthalmum
supinus. maritimum.
A. Pann. major /'^zw. A. Pann. major, sive A. iii, Austria- Buphthalmum
vel A. primus Pan. III. cus i. salicifolium.
A. Att. secundus /'<2«. A. Pann.saligneo foliis, A. iiii, Austria- Inula salicina.
sive A. III. cus ii.
A. Pann. tertius Pan. A. lanuginoso folio, Aster v. Inula hirta. sive V. A. Pann. subhirsuto salicis folio.
A. Att. quartus, Pan.
A. angustifolius, sive vi. A. Pann. angustiore folio.
A. vi, Austria- cus iv.
Inula ensifolia.
A. quintus,
sive Amellus alpinus, qui virgiliano, respon- dere videtur Pan.
A. Alpinus caeruleo flore, sive vii. Amel- lus alpinus, Amel- lus Virgilii.
A. vii, Austria- Aster alpinus.
A. Att. sive A. Att. Ital- orum, Pan.
A. caeruleus Italorum, sive viii. duorum generum (of broad and narrow leaves).
viii, Italo- rum e t Fuchsii. Oc- ulus Christi.
A. Amellus.
Clusius' Aster Names
415
Correlation of the Eight Other Aster Names of Clusius. Plants Some Contemporaries Deemed Asters
Clusius' First Form. Conyza 3 vulgaris Pan.
Clusius' Form in 1601.
Aster-names, etc., Among Other Writers.
Linnaeus' Equiv- alent.
Conyza 3 Pannonica Pan,
Conyza media Asteri, etc., of Cesal- Inula dysenterica. vulgaris. pino, 1 5^3 ; Conyza
palustris I, C. Bauhin, Aster pratensis, etc., Tourn. Aster dys- entericus Scopoli.
Conyza tertia Conyza VII, [near of
Austrica, 1 egi tima forte Dios- coridis.
Planta Bantanica Exoti- corum, 1605.
Conyza minor Boetica Curae Posteriores, 1611.
Conyza minor Sp. Conyza major Sp.
Conyza minor.
kin to the preced- ing] C. Bauhin, 1623.
Aster montanus, etc., J. Battkiit, 1650.
Conyza V., C. Bauhin.
Conyza IV, C. Bauhin, Aster palustris, etc., Ba rreliei- ( 1 606 - 1673; publ. 1714).
Conyza III, C. Bauhin, 1623.
Conyza I, C. Bauhin, Aster fol. serratis, etc., Linnaeus, 1737.
Inula Oculus Christi.
Inula Pulicaria.
Erigeron graveo- lens.
Erigeron visco- sum.
(In 1601)
Conyza major Conyza II, C. Bauhin, Baccharis Dios-
Dioscoridis Rauwolfii.
Conyza Dioscoridis Rauwolf, 1583.
coridis.
Buphthalmum vulgare Buphthalmum Aster Atticus, Cordus' Anthemis tine
Pan.
vulgare.
figure as supplied by Gesner, 1 56 1.
toria.
416
Aster History: Cesalpino
ASTER AMONG CLUSIUS' CONTEMPORARIES PRIOR
TO 1600
LXXXIX. Cesalpino
Cesalpino, Andrea, whose De plantis, libr. XVI (Florence, 1 5^3 J P-) ushered in a new era in botany * — due to the philo- sophical conceptions formulated in the 50 pages of its preface ; after which the XVI books of descriptions of known plants follows. Cesalpino Hved 15 19- 1603; was of Arezzo, professor at Pisa, and physician to Pope Clement VIII. He mentions by the fol- lowing names, fide Bauhin, 7 Asters or plants then so called :
Aster acticus (= Pallenis spinosa Cass.).
Aster acticus alpinus foliolis luteis (= Inula montaita L.).
Aster acticus tertius (= BiipJithalimini grandifloriim L.).
Aster actico similis altera quae Cunilago (^Imda dysenterica L.).
Incensaria (= biiila odora L.).
Anthyllis altera (= Aster acris L., prob.).
Anthyllidi secunda similis (= Aster alpinus L., prob.).
XC. Wolff
Wolff, Caspar, literary heir to Gesner ; his " De Stirpium Col- lectionej' Zurich, 1587, pages 61 and 141, has one aster only.
"Aster Atticus Fuchsii, floret Angusto et Septembri " (= As- ter A me I his L.).
XCI. Thalius
Thai, — Johannes Thalius, author of one of the first of local floras, his Syha Hercynia, Frankfort, 1588, 133 p., printed with Camerarius' Hortits medicus (ex libr. E. L. Greene) ; has.
Aster Atticus caeruleus, paucis tamen in locis " (= Aster Amellus L.).
" Amellus Virgilii putatus " (= Caltha Virgilii of Bock, Popu- lago of Tabernaemontanus, Chamaeleuce of Anguillara, Chelidonia palustris of Cordus, etc.) (= Caltha palustris L. and before of Ges- ner, Dodoens, Pena and Lobel, Clusius, Gerarde, C. Bauhin, etc.).
*The same year, 1583, that Clusius, publishing his six Pannonian Asters, inaugur- ated the new era of Aster history.
Clusius' Contemporaries
417
XCII. Tabernaemontanus
Tabernaemontanus, Jacobus Theodorus, 1 520-1 590; physi- cian at Neuwhausen, Pfalz ; whose Neuiv Kreuterbuch printed at Frankfort by Basseus, 1588, with 2,087 figures, included the fol- lowing names for plants then commonly esteemed Asters :
Bubonium luteum (= Inula salicina L.).
Aster flore luteo (= Inula hirta L.).
Aster atticus Massilioticus (= Pallenis spinosa L.).
Aster montanus luteus mas (= Inula montana L.).
Aster montanus luteus femina (= Inula montana L.).
XCIII. COLONNA
Colonna, — Fabius Columna — in his Ecphrasis, Rome, 16 16, and perhaps in part in his Phytobasanos, Naples, 1592, had : " Aster cernuus " (= Carpesium cernuum L.).
Asteris altera species Apula, an Baccharis (= Inula odora L,).
Aster Peruanus " (= Helianthus tuber osus L.). **Amellus" [Aster Amelhis L.). " Amellus montanus " (= Erigeron acre L.).
Amellus palustris " (= Aster Tripolmm L.).
XCIV. Dalechamp
Dalechamp, Jacques, 1 5 1 2-1 588, whose Historia generalis plantarum libris 18 per Joannem Molinaeum collecta," Leyden, 1587 {ex libr. Bu.) figures over 2,200 plants, including 9 or 12 by name of Aster :
" Aster Atticus caeruleus vulgaris " A. Amellus L.).
" Aster Atticus alter, Oculus Christi " [—Pallenis spinosa Cass.). Aster luteus alter, Oculus Christi minor" (=?).
**Aster luteus sive Oculus Christi minor" (= Inula montana L.).
"Aster montanus hirsutus " (= Inula montana L.). Aster conyzoides " (= Buphthabnum grandiflorum L.).
''Aster atticus supinus " (= Asteriscus maritirnus Moench.).
" Aster purpureus montanus (= Aster alpinus L.).
" Tripolium " (= Aster Tripolium L.).
*' Tripolium minus " (= Aster Tripolium L.).
" Bellis lutea " [Inula salicina L.).
418
Aster History : Dalechamp
" Aster montanus luteus " (=?).
" Asterias sive Stellaria Dalechampii " (= Spergula?).
XCV. Alpinus
Alpinus (Prosper Alpino), 1 553-161 7, in his De plantis Aegyptis liber, cum Medicina Aegyptorum," Venice, 1592, has one plant which was commonly called an Aster in that century, his Baccharis vel Carpesium " (= Carpesiiim cernumn L.).
XCVI. Gerarde
Gerarde — John Gerarde, i 545-1607 ; well-known author of the " Herball or Generall Historic of Plantes. Gathered by John Ger- arde of London, Master in Chirurgerie. Imprinted at London by John Norton, 1597." He mentions, chapter 125, pp. 391-93, Of Starreworty ii kinds of Aster, by number, not byname; with four figures, which bear the following botanical names :
" Aster^Atticus " (= Pallenis spinosa Cass.). Aster Italorum " (= Aster Amellus L.).
" Aster montanus " (= htula montana L.). Aster hirsutus " (= Inula hh'ta L.).
Turner, author of the first great English Herball, i 551-1558, many years before Gerarde, had omitted Aster, for some reason not apparent. With Gerarde, English publications of Asters began, though but feebly ; the following century was to witness, in Mori- son and Ray, a principal localization of Aster studies in England, and the next, the i8th, was to see it transferred to France and Germany.
Polytypic Aster
After the establishment of Aster as a polytypic genus by Clu- sius, 1 576-1601, etc., a rapid increase in new species followed, species then placed in Aster, but since assigned to Conyza, Inula, Pulicaria, etc. The two centuries following have already been summarized, pages 16-18, as the Clusian and Linnaean periods of Aster history ; the former including, and the latter excluding, all yellow-rayed relatives. Into these periods it is not at present our purpose to enter ; the details of Aster history, as already remarked, are better pursued, after Clusius, species by species.
ADDENDA
It happens that many works or editions treated in the preced- ing pages have just become accessible at New York by shipments of recent date (November 7, 1902). They occasion the following addenda ;
Add ex bibl. N. Y. Bot. Garden in relation to the following : P. 186. Ibn Alawwam De Agricultura, Mullet's Fr. tr., Paris, 1864-7.
P. 199. M2iCGY, Devirtutibns, a valuable paper MS. vol- ume of the I 5th century ; without figures.
P. 200. Macer, De viriutibus, Pictorius' Lat. edn. of 1559, as reprinted at Basle, 1581.
P. 310. Herbolmdo, Venice, 1540.
P. 317. Ortus Sanitatis, early edn., perhaps of Strasburg and in 1498.
P. 398. Dodoens, De Fruguin, 1552.
P. 339. Dodoens, Trijini prioruni imagines^ 1553-
P. 399. Dodoens, Florum et coronariorum ■■■ historia, 1568.
P. 399, 406. Clusius, Histoire des Plafites (being Fr. tr. of Dodoens' Cruydeboeck), 1557.
P. 407. Clusius, Petit Recti eil, 1557. Add ex libr. Bit. as follows :
P. 344. Bock, De Stirpium, ist edn. of Kyber's Lat. tr.,
1552.
P. 398. Dodoens, De Frugwn, 1552.
P. 399. Dodoens, Trhun priorum imagines, 1553.
P. 399. T>odoQns, PosteiHoru7n triuin imagines, 1554.
P. 410. Clusius, Exoticorum, 1605. Other notable recent arrivals, although not the first in N. Y., include the following additions to the Libr. of the N. Y. Bot. Gar- den : the Magistri Salernitani, 1901 ; Sansovino's Ital. tr. of Cres- cenzi's Ruralium, i 561 ; the Aggregator Practices of Venice, i 509 ; and Clusius' Rariorum plantariim historia, 1601. The last is es- pecially noteworthy as being the copy given by Clusius himself to his son Jacobus, fide MS. note by the latter on the title page.
419
ERRATA
Page 13, line 22, read " Inula dysenterica L." Page 14, line 23, read Antheniis tinctoria L." Page 15, line 9 from end, read flore luteo.""
Page 71, lines 6 and 5 from end, read ''Estoille" and Estrellada."
Page 115, line 5 read ^'Urbinus."
Page 126, line 3 from end, read '^Theocritus'."
Page 132, last line should read 1492, fol. 318; also in his edn. 15 1 7, with notes on the Hortulus by Badius Ascensius, which notes again appear, folio 371, in the reprint of 1586."
Page 172, line 11, read baccas eis dabas."
Page 183, line 31, read Tortuosiensis."
Page 189, line 13, read Asferisats,'' not Asterion.'"
Page 197, line 7 from end, read ''enclosed," not "endorsed."
Page 228, line 3 from end, read " Preposito "
Page 266, lines 9 and 5 from end, read " Ortus Sanitatis " and ' ' sabar. ' '
Page 267, line 10, read " Domiani," not " Damiani "; line 17, read "Alphita," not "Alphite."
Page 269, end, read "hare," not " hair."
Page 275, line 3 from end, read " Geranium,''^ not " Geiimy
Page 283, line 19, read " Sacro Bosco," not " Sancto Bosco."
Page 287, line 5 from end, read " Ranzovius."
Page 291, note '|, read " Excoecaria Agalocha L."
Page 322, line 13, read " Ynguirialis," not " Unguirialis. "
Page 324, line i, instead of "only," read "only (except as re- printed in the Lunmiare Majus^.''
Page 329, line 3 from end, read " in Dioscoridem. "
Page 332, line 8 from end, read " Distillierbuch. "
Page 373, line 5, read " 7top(pop()T)v.'"
Page 375, line 3 from end, read " Sylvaticus."
Page 381, line 17, read " Pena and Lobel."
Page 407, heading, read " Clusius," not " Clausius. "
Page 414, middle, from " A Aster 11, supinus," omit " A " ; and in name " A. Pann-saligneo foliis," read "folio."
420
INDEX OF SUBJECTS, AUTHORS AND SPECIES
Explanations
With a view to promote the instant serviceableness of this index, species-equiva- lents connecting the ancient with the modern botany are very commonly inserted ; analytic entries are provided for such authors as have been treated in special detail ; and all classes of entries, whether of person, place, plant, book or subject-matter, are ranked in one alphabetical series, instead of separate indices — but are distinguished by type, as follows :
Subjects treated and miscellaneous entries are in Roman type.
Species and other plant-names are in italics.
Names of authors are in small capitals.
Titles of works of uncertain or less familiar authorship are entered in small capitals italicized. For other titles of books see the body of the work under the respective authors.
Page-numbers which refer to the more detailed treatment, are set in black-faced type, or simply precede the other numbers, if the details given are few.
The abbreviation A. Att. is used for the Aster Atticus of Dioscorides and of Renais- sance botany, the Aster Amellus of Linnaeus.
Plants indexed which have had a special relation to Aster Atticus are thus indicated : = A. Att.," after plant-names which have been used as equivalents or partial equivalents for Aster Atticus.
Not A. Att.," after plant-names which have been by some writer confused in synonymy with Aster Atticus.
"Used as A. Att.," after plants which replace Aster in certain authors, not from any tangle of synonymy but from similarity of reputed properties.
The index is intended to cover all such plant-names as seem likely to be sought for, including all members of the Compositae which are mentioned in the text ; also all little-known authors which are so mentioned ; but no attempt is made to include all references to authors like Dioscorides, Pliny, or Meyer, which have occurred con- stantly throughout the volume.
Aaron [=z Artmi, q. v.) used as A. Att. 225
Albano, Petrus de, 305 Abd-Allatif, 112 Abul Fadli, 187 Abul Qasim, 300
Achi/Iaea, 43, 51, 82, 89, II9, 218, 228 232, 278
ACKERMAN, 236
Aconituffi, 345, 369
ACOSTA, lOI, 102, 410
Actaea, 378
AcTUARius, 189, 98, 114 Adams, Dr. Francis, 180, 181 Adanson, 129
Addison, 127
Adelard Anglicus, 293, 197 Adonis, 156, 348
Aegidius Corboliensis, 97, 224, 225,
250, 285 Aegidius Romanus, 227, 284 Aemilius Macer, 133 Aetios, 179, 41, 85, 86; Actios' Aster- remedies, 91, 92, 96, 225 Afflacius, 220, 249 Affodillus, not A. Att., 70, 208, 2S1, 325 Agave, 255
Aggregator Paduanus, 305, 57, 98 Aggregator Practicus, 305, 57, 98, 274, 332 ; form and character, 305 ; dis- 421
422
Index
tinction from other works called Ag- gregato}', or called Herbarius, 305. Its figures, 307 ; their source, 307, 309 ; its ' * Irmgtis ' ' figure blended with Aster, 310. Its authorship, 307; its author not Brunsvicensis nor Dondi,
307, not Arnald, 308. Its citations,
308. Bibliography, 308-310, 419. Translations, 309, 310. Its printers, Achates, 308, Simon Papiensis, 309. Its Iringus chapter a blending of Aster and Eryngium, 309-31 1. Its violet, 3II- 312 ; other plants, 312.
Agricola Johannes, 100, 329
Agriculture, writers de re rustica^ Mago, 122, 138 ; Cato, 123 ; Varro, 123, 205, Columella, 134; Palladius, 173; Ibn Alawwam, 186 ; Crescenzi, 294
Agrimonia, not A. Att., 62, 170, 191, 195, 214, 228, 259, 325
Agrostemma, 379
AiTON, 18
Ala, Alant, Alantidiiim r= Inula Helen- turn L., 61, 276
Albert de Aulica, 200
Albert de Saxonia, 280, 308
Albertus Magnus, 276, 98, 106, 274, 279, 296, 374, 378
Albicius, 218
Alrucasis or Abulcasis, 227, 229, 264 Albutiu7H, 258
Alchemilla, not ^. Att., 335, 15, 21, 43, 78, 258, 333, 349, 355, 382 +
ALCMAN, III
Aldrovandi, 102, 330, 367, 369 Alexander Trallianus, 167, 315 Alfanus, 216, 217 Alfred Cridiensis, 97, 285 Alfred de Sarchel, 112, 285 Alibium= A. Alt., 304, 61, 92, 345, 355 Alipta as a medicament in place of Aster, 304
Alisma Plantago L. , 46 Alkekengi, 256, 260 Alleluia herba, not A. Alt., 263, 325 Allioni, 33, 61
Allium, used as A. All., 43, 53, 133, 191,
222, 224, 241, 267, 290 Almansor, 228
Almond, 260, 292 Aloe, 266, 267, 294 Alphabeta herbarum, 232, 216 Alphita, 226, 97, 304 Alpinus, 418, 102, 367 Alterana, used as A. Alt., 315 Alyssum, not A. All., 343 Amaraais,— Matricaria, 115, 189 Amarantus, 261
Amarella, Amarisca, = Anthemis arvensis
L,, 208, 226, 257 Amatus Lusitanus, 386, 99, 329 Amber, Ambra, 252
Ambrosia ■= Artemisia campestris L., 195 Amelia, Amelia de virgine, Amilla, 23, 61,
129, 336, 395 Amellus — Aster Amellus L., = A. Atti- cuSf 23, 62 ; its description by Vergil, 123-125 ; its various renderings, 125- 128; later use of the name Amellus, 129; its source as a folk-name, 129; a survival from an earlier race, 13 1 ; asso- ciation with the river-name Mella, 130; with other similar names, 130, 177, 336. Hermolaus suggests that Amellus is the Chamomile, 336 ; Wedel deems it Meli- lotus, 336; Thalius deems it Caltha, 416; Matthioli Aster Atticus and not Ficaria, 382 -|- ; Lobel's doubts, 401-403 ; his Amellus Vergilianus, 403 ; the Amellus Virgilii of Thai and Clusius, 414, 416 Amellus as a genus name, 346, 417 Amellus alpinus of Clusius = Aster alpinus L., 412
Amellus 7nantanus of Colonna = Erigeran
acre L., 417 Amellus palustj'isloi Colonna = Aster Tri-
polium L. , 417 Ammonius, 100, 183, 227 Amulets ; Aster so used, 51, 55, 84, 87,
181, 382 Anacyclus, 13, 14, 257, 358 Anchusa, 370
Andreas, 118, 96, 144, 306 Andromachus, 60, 89, 139 Anemone, not A. Att., 156 Anglo-Saxon Herbals, 171, 179, 285 Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms, 171, 285 Angelica, 324
Index
423
Anguii.lara, 365, 13, 14, 99, 107, 119, 121, 233, 328, 339, 345 + , 416. His identity, 365 ; botanical travels, 365 ; student and assistant under Ghini, 366 ; director of the botanical garden at Padua, 366. He gives offence to Matthioli, 368 ; is driven by him from Padua, 369, 386 ; his life at Ferrara, 369 ; his Sem- plici, 370 ; his extracts from Cratevas, 371 ; his Aster-article, 372-3 ; History of Pallenis, his Aster Atticus verus, 371-2 ; of his synonym DodecaminitiSy 374 ; Filiiis-ante-patrein, 373-8 ; of its partial synonyms Oculus Christi 379, Oculus Consulis 379, RoslrwH porcimim 108, Gary op hy lion 380
Anonumos 178, 96
Anonym/ CARMEN, 178
Anthemis^ often partly = A. Att., 35, 62, 82, 141, 157, 178, 188, 207, 328, 336
Anthejnis artiensis L., 257 Anihetnis Chia, 209
Anthemis Cotida L., 208, 224, 256, 275, 325
Anthemis nobilis L., 33, 1 10, 176, 209, 346, 348
Anthemis Pyrethriim, see Pyrethrum Anthemis rosea DC., 57, 62, 208 Anthemis tinctoria L., 14, 49, 62, 109,
no, 209, 347, 357, 405 Anthyllis = Aster acris L.? 416 Antidotarium ; that of the Seven Masters, the " Antrorarium,^'' 219, 97 ; the An- tidotarium universale of Simon Januensis, 219; of Turin, 219; the lost Antidota- rium majus^ 223 ; the Antidotarium of Preposito, 223 ; of Myrepsos, 189 ; of Tettapharmacus, 227 ; of Baptista, 228 ; of Cauliaco, 327, 98 ; that of Parma, 220.
Antipater= A. Att., etc., -62, 378, 380 Antirrhinum, used as A. Att., 406 Antonius Gazius, 98, 327 ~ Antonius Guainerius, 98, 324 Antrorarium, 2ig
AODERICOS, 218
Aparine, not A. Att., 342 Aphrodisiacs, 179, 251, 280, 297
Aphrodite and Peristereon, 179
Apiastrum, not A. Att., 45, 174
Apicius Coelius, 166, 96
Apium, Appium risus, 272, 251
Apone, Petrus EE, 305
Apostema, Aster and other remedies for,
182, 224, 277, 299, 311, 312, 315, 320,
379
Apuleius Platonicus, 171, 38, 73, 114,
23 ^ 300, 322, 382 Arbolyare, 272, 98 Archangelica, 324 Arctium, used as A. Att., 150, 156 Ardern, John, 98 Aretaeus, 86, 96, 138 Aretinus, 353 Akeus Asclepiadeus, 139 Argemon, an ulcer of the eye, 62, 40,
224
Argemon = A. Att. ?, 155, 40, 43, 48, 54, 288
Argemone-= A. Att., etc., 156, 54, 233, 258, 328
Argenionia, used as A. Att., 156, 50, 52,
54, 170, 191, 195, 214 Aristereon, not A. Att., 55, 161, 179 Aristolochia, used as A. Att., 267, 272,
290, 332 Aristolochia Plistolochia L., 47 Aristomachus, 136 Aristotle, hi, 96, 284 Armoise, used as A. Att., 228 Armoniacum, 286
Arnald de Villanova, 242, 79, 98, 133, 145, 182, 236, 239, 241, 307, 308
Arnoglossa, used as A. Att., 281, 288, see Plantago
Arrazi, 97
Arte??iisia, used as A. Att., 81, 169, 222,
224, 226, 232, 267, 278, 287, 293, 388 Artemisia Abrotanum L., 46, 191, 195,
204, 218, 224, 225, 228, 236, 278, 293 Artemisia Absinthium L. , 1 1 2, 123, 167,
195, 204, 225, 228, 278, 287, 293, 305,
314
Artemisia canipestris L. , 195 Artemisia Dracuncuhts L. , 167, 191 Artemisia leptophyllos, of Dioscorides, 256, 66
424
Index
Artemisia Santonica of Sprengel, 275 | Arte77iisia tenuifolium of Dioscorides, 66 Artemisia vttlgaris L., 196, 204, 257 Arthritica, used as A. Att., 296 Arum, used as A. Att., 207, 218, 267, 275,
299. 310, 312, 314, 335 Arviell, Henry and Gilbert, 302, 98 Asarum, used as A. Att., 40, 191, 213,
272, 277, 328, 335 Ascaracon=A. Att., 63, 184, 325
ASCHAM, 100
AS.CLEPIADES, 89, 91, 92, 208
Asclepias, 87
ASCLEPIUS, 208
Asparagus, 269, 290
Aspej'goutte me7iue or mineur—A. Ait.,
63, 383, 391, 399 Ashmolean Herbals, 98 Aspergula odorata of Dodoens, Aspei^ula
odorata L., = A. Att., etc., 21, 79, 224,
258, 333> 325, 338, 339, 342, 343 Asphodel, Asfodilla = A. Att., etc., 224,
258 Asplenon, 52
Asprolouloudon = A. Att., etc., 63, 22, 25 AsT, Dantzen von Ast., 326 Astaraticon, Astaruticon = A. Att., 65, 320, 383
Aster, in primary sense of star, 57 -|- ; in transferred sense, as appellative of a per- son, 59 ; as name of the plant Aster Amellus L. , 57 ; of the plant Plantago major L., 173, 60 ; as an animal name, of a bird, 60, the starfish, 60, III ; as a, place-name, 61 ; as a personal name, 60, III ; as name of a white earth, 61, 153, 256 ; of a medicament, 61 ; a stomachic 61 ; as source by terminal modifers of star names for persons, 60 ; places, 61, plants, etc.
Aster, monotype conception of, 12, 20; polytype conception, 12, 13, 418; locali- zation of Aster studies on the continent, 12 -f- ; in England toward the end of the 17th century, 418; again on the conti- nent, 17, 18, 418 ; in America since 1835, 19
Aster acticus of Cesalpino, 416 ; see Aster Atticus, etc.
I Aster acris L., 403, 15, 124, 416 Aster alius flare luteo of Camerarius, 390 Aster alpirius L. , 16, 79, 388, 389, 390,
406, 412, 414 Aster alpiniis coeruleo jlore of Clusius, =
A. alpinus L., 412 Aster Af/iellzcs L. , 10, 20; modern locali- ties, 33, 34 ; visited by flies, 1 32 ; figures, 310 -j- ; see Aster Atticus Aster angustifolius of Clusius = Inula en- si folia L., 414 Aster anodynes, 89 ^ Aster Atticus, of Dioscorides, = Aster Amellus L., 65, the historic type of the genus, 10, 20 ; digest of ancient descrip- tion and belief regarding it, 25 -|-, 12 ; its identification with Aster Amellus L., 21, 13, 349, 382 ; its folklore, 39-57, 120 ; its habitats, 124, its properties, 39 -f- ; its temperament, 40 ; time of po- tency, 55 ; regard for its beauty, 35, 116 ; for Gods and Goddesses presiding over it, see that heading. Aster Atticus, ancient MS. figures intended for it, 122, II ; of Cratevas, II, 122, 149 ; Dioscorides, II, 149-152 ; Apul- eius, 171 ; Anglo-Saxon Herbals, 171. — Woodcuts intended for it ; in the Aggre- gator practicus, 310 ; Ortus, 321 ; Gart, 323 ; Fuchs, 350 ; Matthioli, 381, 385 ; Ryfif, 391 ; Lonitzer, 392, 393 ; Uffen- bach, 393 ; Durante, 395 ; Dodoens, 400 ; Lobel, 403 ; Clusius, 412 ; Dale- champ, 417 ; Tabernaemontanus, 417 ; Gerade, 418 Aster Atticus, Descriptions or references, by Hippocrates, under polyopthabnon^ 107 ; Theophrastus, as asteriscus, II2 ; Nicander, aster, 116 ; Cratevas, a^/^r ? 120 ; Vergil, a??iellus, 125 ; Columella, amellus, 1 34, 136 ; Dioscorides, Aster Atticus, and as asterion, aste?'iscus, and ion porphuroun, 140, 143; YYxny, aster, boubonion, itiguinaria, argemon, 153- 155 ; Pausanias, asterion, 159 ; Later Dioscoridean synonymy, boubonion, in- guinalis,rathibida, 140 Galen, A. Att. bubonion, 163 ; Oribasius, A. Att. and bubonion, 164; Apuleius, asterion, 172 ;
Index
425
Anonumos, an^Aewts, 178 ; Actios as A. AiL and hoiibonion, 180 ; Paulus Aegi- neta, A. Ait. and boubonion, 18 1 ; Sera- pion, w^taraticon and ascaracon, 184 ;
Avicenna, atralisus, 1 82 ; Rhases,
182 ; Macer, under anthenns zxv^ barro- cus, 208-213 ; Simon Januensis as aster - ion, 300; Matteo Silvatico as yringus and under alibium, 304 ; Actuarius, aster, astej'iscus, 189; Aggregator pr., iringus, 300; Oxiws, ynguinalis, 318; Gart, ynguii'ialis, sternkrut oder krot- tenkriit, 323 ; DaManlio, ascaracon and centumcapita, 325 ; Hieronymus Brun- schwyk, himmelschlussel^ 333 ; Her- molaus, A. Att., stella and chamemilla, 335 ; Ruellius, A. Att. and aspergula, 338 ; Marcellus Vergilius, A. Att., 337 ; Cornarius, A. Att. and aspergula, 339 ; Goupyl, ^. Att., 329 ; Bock, inguinalis, stellar ia, uva lupina and Tinctorius Flos J 343; Fuchs, ^. 352; Brun-
fels, A. Att. and under antipater and garyophyllon, 341 ; Euricius Cordus, ^. Att. and stellaria [Alchemtlla) 355 ; Valerius Cordus, y^. 356; Dor-
stenius, inguinalis, bubonion, bacca as- terii, 354; Gesner, A. Att. verus (i. e., Fnllenis), 363; Anguillara, A. Att. verus, Filius-ante-patrem , dodecaniinitis, and under Tragopogon, 373 ; Matthioli, as A. Att., ox Amellus non Chelidonia i^Ficaria) , ; similar to Alchemilla, 383 ; Camerarius, Becher, Verzascha, Zwinger, A. Att., etc., 389; Ryff, ^. Att., 391 ; John Lonitzer, Aster and Stella Attica, 392 ; Adam Lonitzer, schar- tenblumen, 393 ; Uffenbach and Ehrhart, A. Att. vulgaris, 393 ; Durante, Aster attico and Stella d' Atene, 395 ; Morandi, A. Att., 396; Parkinson, A. Att., Amellus and Purple -Marigold, 396 ; Salmon, A. Att. or stellaria, 397 ; Quincy, A. Att., 397; Dodoens, 340 ; A. Att. or sterrecruyt, 397 ; Lobel, A. A. Att. Italorum, A. luteus fruticosus, etc., 400 ; Clusius, A. Att. and A. caeru- leus Italorum, 414 ; Cesalpinoy^. acticus, 416 ; Wolff, A. Att. Fuchsii, 416 ; Thai,
A. Att. coeruleus, 416 ; Tabemamon- tanus,/^. Att.Massilioticus ( — Pallenis ), 417 ; Colonna, Amellus, 417 ; Dale- champ, //. Att. caei'uleus vulgaris, 417 ; Gerarde, A. Att. ox starrewort, 418
Aster Atticus, Uses of, 39-49 ; modes of use, 50 -I- ; and see the writers treated, Hippocrates to Gerarde. For comparisons of Aster uses ascribed to other plants, see also Albertus Magnus, 277 ; Arnald de Villanova, 243-5 ; Bar- tholomaeus Anglicus, 289, 290 ; Bar- tolomeo, 222; Conrad de Megenberg, 315 ; Crescenzi, 399; Ferrario, 225 ; Gio- vanni son of Gregorio, 224 ; Hieronymus Brunsvicensis, 322, 332 ; John of Milan, 241 ; Marcellus Empiricus, 170; Otho Cremonensis, 225 ; Plateario, 256 ; Palla- dius, 174; Raimundus Lullus, 278; Salernus, 224 ; Sammonicus, 166 ; Simeon Seth, 188; Strabus, 195; Vin- cent de Beauvais, 293
Aster Atticus alpinus foliolis of Cesalpino — Inula montana L. , 416
A. Att. alter of Matthioli, == Pallenis spi- nosa (L. ) Cassini, 13, 15, 348, 372, 382, 385, 417
A. Att. caeruleusoi Camerarius = ^. api-
nus L., 389, 390 A. Att. caeruleus vulgaris of C. Bauhin,
Dalechamp and Linnaeus = y^. Amellus
l..=A. Att., 20, 363, 417 A. Att. Jlore caeruleo of Camerarius = A.
Att., 389
A. Att. Jlore medio luteo of Bock = Anacy-
clus aureus L., 13, 347, 348 A. Att. Fuchsii of Wolffs ^. Att., 353,
416
A. Att. Fuchsii florepuniceooi Ax^\xcv\x% —
A.Att.,2,S2> A. Att. lutei flo'is of Dodoens ::=0, 400 A. Att. legitimus of Clusius = Pallenis,
372, 413, 414 A. Att. luteus of Camerarius =
odora L., 389, 390 A. Att. luteus angustifolius of C. Bauhin
and Camerarius = Pallenis, 389 A. Att. luteus Fuchsii of, Lobel =
dysenterica L., 13, 353, 404
426
Index
A. Att. luteus foliolis ad Jloreni rigidis of
C Bauhin = Pallenis, 363 A. Att. luteus latif alius of Camerarius =
Pallenis y 389 A. Att. luiens VII of C. Bauhin = o,
403
A. Att. minor of Camerarius, 390 A. Att. peregrinus of Camerarius, 390 A. Att. pri77itis Jlore luteo of Clusius —
Pallenis^ 372, 414 A. Att. purpureus of Fuchs = y^. Att., 13,
353
A. Att. quartus of Clusius = ensi-
folia L., 414 A. Att. repens Clusii of Camerarius ==
Asteriscus maritivms (L. ) Moench, 390 A. Att. secundus of Camerarius and Clusius
= Inula salicina L. , 414, 390 A. Att. similis altera quae Ctmilago, of
C&sa\T^mo= Pulicaria dy sent erica (L. )
Gaertn., 416 A. Att. supinus of Clusius = Asteriscus
i7iaritimus (L. ) Moench, 15, 389, 400,
404, 407, 414, 417 A. Att. tertius of Cesalpino = Buphthal-
rnum grandijloruffi L. A. Att. tertius of Penny and Wolff in Ges-
ner = ?, 363 A. Att. verus of Anguillara and Gesner =
Pallenis, 14, 362, 363, 371, 372, 373,
377
Aster aurantitis of Ammann, 17 Aster Austriacus, etc., of Clusius =
thalmum salicifolium L., and Inula
salicina L., 414 Aster Bubonium Scopoli = Inula squar-
rosa L. ? 402 Aster caeruleus Ilaloruni of Clusius — A.
Att., 414
Aster cernuus of Colonna = Carpesiuin
cernuum L., 418 Aster chillos = Achillea ? 82 Aster conycoides Gesneri of Lobel = Buph-
thalmuni grandijlonwi L., 361, 15,
346, 347, 360, 404, 407 Aster cordifolius I/., 17 Aster dumosus L. , 17
Aster dysentejicus Scopoli = Pulicaria dysenterica (L. ) Gaertn., 415
Aster flore luteo of Tabernaemontanus =
Inula hirta L., 417 Aster foliis serratis, etc., of Linnaeus =
Erigeron viscoswn L. = Pulicaria vis-
cosa (L. ) Cassini, 415 Aster fruticosus oi Commelyn, 17 Aster hirsutiis of Gerarde = htula hirta
L., 418
Aster incomparabilis of Asclepiades, 91,
221 J Aster inexsuperabilis of Galen, 88 ; of
Asclepiades, 91 Aster Indicus of Plukenet, 17 Aster Italorum of Gerarde = Att., 418 Aster Italorum et Fuchsii, of Clusius =
A. Att., 414 Aster lanuginoso -folio of Clusius = Inula
hirta L., 414 Aster leucas, 86, 256
Aster lunat'iaefolius Narbonensis of
Lobel = acr'is L., 402 Aster luteus, etc. of Dalechamp = Inula
montana L., 76, 416 Aster luteus fruticosus of Lobel = Inula
salicina, 402-3 Aster luteus radice odora of C. Bauhin =
Inula odora, 389 Aster Magni of Actios, 91 Aster medicaments, 88 ; replaced by Yera
or Hiera remedies, 219, 220, 225, 226 Aster minor N'orbonensium, etc., of Lobel
= A. acris L. — Galatella punctata
DC, 24, 403 Ater Monspelliensium of Lobel = Pallenis,
401
Aster montaiiiis, etc., of Lobel, etc. =
Inula rnoittana L., 347, 379, 402, 404,
415, 417, 418 Aster pahistris etc., of Barrelier = /«z</<7
Pulicaria L. — Pulicaria vulgaris
Gaertn., 415 Aster Pannonicus angustiore folio of
(Z\\x%\\x% = Inula ensifolia L., 414 Aster P. major of Clusius, = Buphthal-
mum salicifolium L. , 414 Aster [/*.] primus of Clusius, = ^?^///-
thalmum salicifolium L., 414 Aster P. saligneo folio of Clusius = Inula
salicina L. , 414
Index
427
Aster P. tertius, or Aster P. subhirsuto salicis folio, of Clusius — Inula hirta L., 414
Aster Peruanus tuberosus of Colonna = Helianthus tuberosus L. , 396, 417
Aster pharmacon of Asclepiades and Galen, 89
Aster pratensis, etc., of Tournefort = Pulicaria dysenterica ( L. ) Gaertn., 415
Aster pw'pureus montanus of Dalechamp = A. alpinus L., 417
Aster salicinus Scopoli — hiula sa 'icina L. , 402
Aster Samius, or Samian earth, 83, 67, 289
Aster sed non Attictis of Bock, = Paris
quadrifolia L. , 13, 348 Aster stomachicus of Galen, 89 Aster supinus of Clusius, see A. Att. supi-
nus
Aster tinctorius Wall roth, 49, 346
Aster Tripolium L., 70, 20, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 244, 327, 357, 373, 399, 401, 407, 417
Aster undulatus L. , 17
"Aster unsurpassed, the drug Sleep-pro- ducer," of Galen, 90
Asterchillos = Achillea ? 82
Astei-cufn, see Astericum — Parietaria, 80
Asterenk = Mandragora, 82
Asteriace = ? 80, 133
Asterias, not A. Att. = Spergula ? 80, 418 ; as an animal-name, 80, III
Astericum, Astercum — Parietaria, 80, 67, 153, 341
Asterion = A. Att., 67, 81, 158, 172, 300, 338, 359
Asterion = Cannabis, 67, 81, 348, 359
Asterion = Heracleuni Sphondyliufu L. , 67, 81, 359
Aste7'ion = Marrubium ? 348
Asterion = Aristerion, Peristereon or Ver- bena, 161
Asterion as name for the starfish, 81 ; a Phalangium, 67, 81 ; a lizard, 67, 81, 118, 153; a personal name, 60, 158; river-name, 158 ; place-name, 62
Asteris altera species Apula, of Colonna ~ Inula odor a L., 417
Asteris species Rauwolfi of Jungermann and
Camerarius in Gesner = ?, 364 Asteriscus = A. Alt., 67, 10, ii, 113, 189
(in place of asterion), 359 Asteriscus = poppy capsule, 336 Asteriscus in sense asterisk, etc. , 67 Asteriscus as a genus, 362 Asteriscus aquaticus (L. ) Moench, 67, 70 Asteriscus latifolius autumnalis of Cornut
= Aster cordifolius L., 17 Asteriscus maritinius (L. ) Moench, 15,
404, 407, 414 Asteroides, not A. Att., 362, 363 Astero/Hoea, 17
Asterope = Marrubium, 8 1, 359 Astertiphe, Asteriphon, = Chamaemelum,
81, 82, 359 Astir coc = Poiamogeton, 83 Astresmunim = Strychnos, 82, 359 A stria = Helxine, 8 1
Astrion = Plantago Coronopus L. , 81, 339, 359
Astro = A. Att., 22 Astron = A. Att., 68, 22, 25 Astula regia, not ^. 258 Atkamante, 81, 156, 303 Athanasia = tan^y, 226 Athenaeus, 115, 118 Atieirkon = a Plantago, 83 Atierberzia = Marrubium, 83 Atirsipte = Plantago Coronopus L. , 83 Atirtopuris = Sedum Telephium L., 83 Atraciylis, 87
Atratisus = A. Att., 68, 65, 182, 349 Atropa, 276, see Sulanum niortale Attica Stella = A. Att., 68, 382 Atticus sil, 86
Aurca Alexandrina, 219, 228
AURELIANUS, 108 AURELIUS, 215
Avanciana, Avens, 260
AvERROES, 186, 97, 183, 280, 308, 394
AvicENNA, 182, 97, 106, 176, 239, 242,
264, 273, 274, 276, 280, 296, 308, 309,
315, 320, 324, 349, 378, 387
Baccharis, 415, 417, 418 Bacon, Roger, 98, 282, 284 Balsamita, 191, 225, 263
428
Index
Baltocraies = A. Att., 68, 22 Bantanica, 415 Banckes' Herbal, 99 Baptista de Ravizone, 228, 229 Baptista Ferrar,, 328 Baptista Fiera, 328, 99 Baptista Pius, 328, 99 Baptista Theodosius, 328 Barba Aaron = A}'u??t, 267 Barba Jovis = Helichrysum Stoechas DC, 261
Barbarus, 334, see Hermolaus Bar-
BARUS
Barheng = Bellis perennis L. , 334 Barrelier, 415
Barrocus = Melissa, and A. Alt.?, 211, 259, 278
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 284, 98, 203, 247, 274, 282, 308, 319, 378. His identity, 284 ; date, 284 ; translations, 285, 286; editions, 285, 286, 394; little-known authors cited by him, 285 ; his chief sources, 284, 2S6, 291 ; in- debtedness to Salerno, 291 ; to Macer, 291 -4- ; Bartholomaeus a type of the mediaeval attitude toward nature, in- quisitive, childish, and afifrighted, 286 -}- ; traces of his fondness for nature, 291 ; as seen in his Flosculus, 291 ; Flos cainpi, 287 ; lilies and roses, 292 ; almonds, 292 ; the violet, 288 ; the violet as also mov- ing Matthioli to enthusiasm, 289. Bar- tholomaeus' treatment of Aster relatives, 287 ; of plants confused with Aster, 288 ; of Aster Samius, 289 ; his remedies used in place of Aster, 289, 290.
Bartholomaeus, other mediaeval writers sometimes confused with the preceding, 284
Bartolomeo, Maestro, 222, 249 Bartolomeo, Mino da Siena, 268, 98, 227
Basilicon = Arum, 314
Baucia = Pastinaca, 260
Bauhin, Caspar, 20, 102, 300, 330, 332,
343, 345 -f Bauhin, Jean, 16, 17, 26, 102, 330, 343,
347 +
Beauvais, 292, see Vincent de Beauvais
Becher, 389
Bees, Aster a remedy for, 48 ; a source of honey for, 48; see Atnellus, Barrocus, Apiastrum, etc.
Bejthe, ioi, 102
Belladonna, see Solanum mortale
Belleval, 102
Bellis, 70, 258, 333, 335 ; and see Marga- rita
Belon, Bellonius, 100, 329, 368, 410 Bejiedicta, Bennet= Geutn, 277 Benedictus 0?nniniorbia or Carduus bene-
dictus, 319 Benedictus Textor Segusinus, 99, 328 Berners, dame Juliana, 380 Bertharius, 215, 97 Bertoloni, 23, 33 Besler, 363
Betonica, not A. Att., 47, 224, 263, 334, 335, 380
Binomials of Dioscorides and Plateario,
65, 255 Blituin, 146
BoBART, 16, 20, 363 ; see MoRisoN Bobas = Pallenis, and thought to = A. Att., 68, 372, 400, 406, 413
BC»CHART, 82
Bock, 342, 12, 13, 99, 100, 328, 333, 363,. 380, 419
BoDAEUS, 23, 113, 114, 132, 372, 378 Boerhaave, 369, 374, 376 Boldensele, Wm. of, 302 BoLLAR, Nicholas, 98 Bolus Mendesius, 138 Boos OPHTHALMOX = Biiphthabuon, 68 Boraeho, Melissa officinalis L. , 21 1, 278 Borago, 257, 259, 269, 278 Botanic A, De, 302
Botanical Garden, at Salerno, 218, 229, 260, 303 ; at Pisa, 328, 367 ; at Padua, 366, 367, 368 ; at Bologna, 367, 369 ; at I.eyden, 369 ; at Vienna, 408 ; those o.f the Turks, 368; Gesner's Catalog of (jardens of Germany, 360
Botanicum, the Marcelline, 217, 206
Boubos, 68
Bovis ocuhwi = Bnphthalmon , 68, 336- Braitenbach, 102 ! Brasavola, 79, 99, 328, 367
Index
429
Brasca, Brassica, 205, 191, 196, 203, 259 Bray, John, 98 Breydenbach, 321, 394 Brionia, 224
Britanica, used as A. Att., = Inula Bri-
tanica L., 69, 403 Britton and Brown, 19 Brohon, 100
Bruchkraut= A. Alt., 69, 44, 331, 339 Bruculus, 303 Brunella, 258, 261
Brunfels, 340, 70, 81, 99, 328, 331-334,
337, 343, 378 Brunschwyz, Braunschweig, see Hier-
onymus Brunsvicensis, 330 Bruyerinus, ioi Bryonia, 232
Bubo; remedies, 40, l8i, 188, 224, 382 Bubon, 69
Bubonion = A. Alt., 69, 39, 40, 41, 154,
163, 180, 372, 402, 406, 413 Bubonium of Tabernaemontanus, not A.
Att., 69, 335 BucH DER Natur, 3 12, See Megenburg
BUCHKRAUT — ^. Att., 69
Bulleyne, ioi
Bumastus virens of Vergil = Antke?nis
tinctoria L., iio Buonafede, 366
Buphthalmon, = A. Att., Anthemis sp.
and Chrysanthemum sp., 107-111, 69,
170, 188, 218, 293 Buphthabnum = Buphthalmum L. , and
the preceding in part, 15, 42, 69, 70,
no, 328, 332, 335, 347, 357, 362, 374,
390
Buphthalmum grandiJloru7)i L. = Aster conyzoides Gesneri, 15, 362, 363, 404, 417
Buphthahnum maritimum L. = Aster su- pinus of Clusius = Asteriscus maritimus Cassini, 404, 414
Buphthalmuvi salicifoluwi L., 363, 414
Buphthal77ium spinoswn L. =: A. Att., verus of Gesner, etc. , = Pallenis spinosa Cassini, 190, 372, 414
Buphthalmtim vulgar e of Clusius = An- themis tinctoria L., 415
BuRGUNDius, 297
BUSBECQ, 149, 269
Butalmon, 293, see Buphthalmon.
BUTANICUS, 223, 97, 218, 301, 324
By Oman = A. Att., 320 Byzantine writers, 178, 187
Caesali'INO, 416, see Cesalpino Calamaris — Aster Tripolium L., 70 Calamint, 226, 258, 290, 404 Calceolarius, Calzolaris, 23, 33, 129 Calcitrapa, not A. Att., 21, 78, 258, 276,
298, 325, 335 Calcoensis, 321, 98
Calendula, not^. Att., 222, 224, 228, 261,
277, 388, 396 Caltha palustris L., not A. Att., 23, 416 Camerarius, Joachim L., 388 Camerarius, Joachim II., 388, 102, 330,
351, 363
Camerarius, Rudolf Jacob, 388 Cafuotnilla, see Chamomilla Campegianus, 328 Campegius, 99 Camus, 226-272 Canapa, 257-28 Canaria, 155
Canesson = Anthemis Cotula L., 257 Cannabis sativa \-,. = Asterion, 67, 81,
159, 348 Cantalidis, 303
Cantiprato, 282, 98, 274, 312, 319 Canuca, 278
Capillus Veneris, 333, 337 Capnon, 328
Caprifolium, 261, 258, 290, 325, 333, 342, 343
Capuccio ■= Cabbage, 299
Cardanus, 100, 329
Cardopanis, 325
Carduus, 224, 278, 319
Cardutis Theuphrasti, not A. Att., 78, 335
Caricamon — Aster Tripolium L., 70
Caristellum — Artemisia vulgaris L. , 258
Carnation, Caryophyllum, Caryophyllaea ,
260, see Garophyllon, 380, etc. Carpesium cernuum L., 417, 418 Carpini, 302 Carrichter, ioi Carrichtera, 233
430
Index
Carthaginian plant-names, assimilated to
Aster, 82 Carthanms, III, 167, 278, 333 Casma, 330 Cassianus Bassus, 97 Cassilago, 225
Cassinese medicine and MSS,, 215 Cassini, 19 Cassiodorus, 137, 152 Cassius Felix, 207 Castanea, 277, 287 Cato, 123, 96, 202, 205 Cauda porcina, 106 Cauliaco, Guido de, 98, 326 Caulis, Cavolo = Brassica, 191, 205, 259, 290, 299
Cavallo, la Coda di = Equisettim, 383
Caxton's Bartholomaeus ?, 285 Celsus, 133, 85, 56
Cennerui^io, Cienerognola = Glaucium, 261, 262
Centaurea, not A. Att., 112, 228, 258,
276, 278, 281, 287, 298, 325 Centu7ncapita = A. Att., Eryngium, 70,
63, 179, 184, 258, 279, 320, 325 Cerinthe Elinor L. , 263 Cesalpino, 416, 2, loi, 119, 347, 361,
372, 380 Ceterach, 262
Chalcas, Calche= Chrysantkejuum corona-
rium L., Ill, 388 Chainaedrys, 328 Chamaeleon, 370 Chamaeletice , not A. Att., 416 ChamaejJielum, Chamomilla, Camomile,
70, 40, 81, 82, 108, 125, 131, 176, 178,
207, 222, 225, 278, 293, 299, 312, 315,
328, 336, 346, 348, 358 Chamaepitys, 90
Charlemagne's Breviaries and Capitularies,
97, 190 Cheiranlhus, 'ji
Chelidonia herba, Chelidonium, Celen- donia, 72, 41, 147, 165, 222, 224, 228, 245, 276, 277, 281, 299, 315, 333 ; used as A. Att., 166
Chelidonia palustris, not A. Att. , = Caltha^ 416
Chelidonium minor, not A. Att. = Fic-
aria, 384, 23, 72, 165, 213 Cherlerus, 362 Chondrilla, 363
Choulant, 198, 199, 225, 254, 266 Christiana = Helleborus, 275 Christophoriana = Geurn, 378, 380 Christophorus de HoNESTis, 324 Chrysanthemum, IIO, ill, 116, 179, 208,
267, 328, 347, 362, 363, 388, 401 Chrysanthemtim coronariu77i \^.=iPinardia
coronaria Lessing, 71, 49, 70, 109, no,
III, 188
Chrysanthes, Chrysanthus, Chrysiosan-
themos, — the preceding, III Chrysanthemum segetwn L., 49, 70, 71,
109, no, III, 347 Cicer, 233
Cichorium, Cicorea, 135, 191, 218, 222, 261, 269, 277, 287, 300, 311, 315, 324, 333 » 342, 369 ; and see its synonyms
Endivia, Eliotropia, Solsequium, Sponsa So lis
Circa instans of Plateario, as focal point of the Middle Ages for botany, 253 ; its present form, 253 ; original form, 254 ; importance, 254 ; neglect and rehabilitation, 255 ; its codices, 265; printed editions, 265-6. — References to Aster-earths, 256 ; to relatives of Aster, 256 ; to other plants confused with Aster, 258 ; comparisons with Macer, 259 ; other special plant-names, 259 ; its church names for plants, 263 ; Arabic names, 266 ; Greek names, 266 ; Cala- brian localities, Apulian and Sicilian, 267 ; plant-names first mentioned in it, 254 ; supposed American plants men- tioned in it, 255. — Its traces of the Botanical Garden of Salerno, 260 ; of flower- culture among the ladies, 261 ; of fruit-culture, 260 ; culture of medical plants, 260 ; of use of wild-flowers for ornament, 261. — Indications of its au- thor's personality, 262, 264, 265 ; of preceding works of his school, 262, 264 ; of changes in Italian attitude toward certain plants since pagan times, 262 ; of Plateario' s personal regard for certain
Index
431
plants, 261 ; of his attention to plant- habitats and ecology, 262. — Recensions of Circa instans, the Giovannian, 264 ; Ferrarese, 265 ; Domian, 266 ; Chou- lant's synopsis of it, 266 ; Camus' re- print of its names, 254. — Works derived from Circa instans ; the Covipendiuni Salej-nitanum^ 263 ; Tractatus her- baruvi, 267 ; Secres de Sal erne, 270 ; Arbolayre^ 2']2 ; Le Grant Herbier, 271 ; The Crete Herball, 273. — Works largely based on Circa instans, from 1244 to 1783, listed, 274-275
Cirshim, 1 19, 141
Citrago, Citraria, 174, 278, 325
Clary, 379
Classification or empirical arrangement of plants, by Theophrastus, Nicolaos Da- mascenos, Dioscorides, 30, 323 ; by Isi- dorus, 177; Dodoens continues Diosco- rides' mode of classing by properties, 398 ; Clusius and Lobel pay more at- tention to natural affinity. Alphabetic arrangements of plants, in the alphabetic Dioscorides, 301 ; the Alphabeta Her- barum, 216, 232; CxescQxvzV s Rura Hum, 295; Aggregator Fracti CMS, 305; Btich der Natur, 312; Ortus, 317; Cart, 322; in Fuchs, 348.
Clayton, 18
Clematis Flammula L., 254 Cleon, 92
Clusius, Charles de I'Ecluse, 405; his importance and value, 2, 41 1 ; friend of Lobel and Dodoens, 408, 398, 399 ; he contributes material to them, 400, 404, 406, 407, 408. Clusius' family and per- secutions, 405, 409 ; Rondelet leads him to nature, 405 ; he studies botany and medicine at Montpellier, 406, becomes a botanical traveler and collector, 406, translator, 406, original .author, 407, director of the botanical garden at Vienna, 408, professor at the Univ. of Leyden, 409; Clusius' writings, 410-412, 419 ; his attainments, 41 1 ; he begins a ncM^ era in plant-description, 9, lo, 15; contemporary with Cesalpino's new im- petus to botanical philosophy, 9, 416 ; he
transforms Aster into a polytype genus, 405-412 ; he is first to describe Aster alpinus L., 412, 406; table correlating the eight Asters of Clusius, 414, and eight other Aster-names of Clusius, 415
Cockayne, 171, 172
CoELius, 108
CoGAN, 239, 243, 319
Colckicum, not A. Att., 233, 378
COLLENUCCIO, 79, 98, 327
Collyria, 86, 88-92
Colocasia, 270, 303
Colocynth, 147
Colombaria, Colubrina — Arum, used as A. Att., 299, 314
COLONNA, FABIO, Or COLUMNA, 4I7, I02, 129, 346, 361
Columella, 134 ; celebrates Aster by name A?nellus as source of honey, 134, 135 ; as remedy for bees, 136; rank as- signed to Amellus among other flowers, 135 ; Columella's life and works, 137 ; his reputation and value, I37, 138
Compositor, 324
Conciliator Paduanus, 305
Conrad von Megenberg, 312
Consolida, 258, 260, 348
Constantinus Africanus, 233, 216, 220, 240, 285, 290, 296, 315 ; his person- ality, 233 -|- ; his works, 235 ; plant- names, 235-236.
Contant, 330
Convolvulus, 270
Conyza, blended with Aster, 71, 17, 42, 43, 167, 218, 245, 293, 325, 335, 346, 362, 404, 415
Conyzites, 33, 46
Conyzoides, Aster Conizoides, 361
Copeland, 100
CoPHO, elder and younger, 97, 220, 223 CORBICHON, 286
CoRDUS, EuRicius, 355, 99, 323, 328 CoRDUs, Valerius, 355, 14, 22, 25, 100,
loi, 327, 329, 343, 345, 347 384,
416
Cornarius, 339, 99, 180, 326, 391 Cornaro, Vincenzo, 58 Cornut, 17
Cornelius Petrus Leydensis, 99, 328
432
Index
Coronopus, see Plantago Coronopus
CORTUSI, I02
Costus^ 46, 191
Cotula, Costilla, 224, 257, 348, 388 ; see
Anthemis Cotula Crassula, 324
Cratevas, 118, II, 43, 84, 96, 156-7, 306,338, 391 ; names the Mithridation, 119; ascribes fabulous virtues to Asier, 120 ; figures it, 122 ; his fragments, 121,^ 142-3, 371
Crato, 335, 398
Crescenzi, De Crescentiis, 294, 98, 173, 274, 282, 380, 393. Crescenzi' s name, 294 ; life, 294 ; editions of his Latin Rii- ralium, 295; translations, 295-6, 419 ; his plant- descriptions, 296 ; his sources, 296-7; his Iringio, 297-9; his Aster uses, 299 ; plants confused with Aster, 299-300
CrescioneSj Cress, 220, 257
Cridrium = ?, 233
Crithmum, 267
Criso?fiiles, 270
Crispiila = Biiphthalmon, 325 Crocus, 26g, 278, 280, 333, 378 Cuba, or C'aub, Johann von, 322, 98, 275
Culpepper, 379
Cunilago = Inula dysenterica L., 378,
416 Cyclamen, 171 Cytisus lanigcrus DC, 40
Dacian plant names, 145, 82 Dalechamp, 417, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 100,
loi, 361, 372, 380 Damocrates, 65, 118 Daniel, Henry, 98 DeCandolle, 19, 24 Democrates, 45 Democritus, 38, 55 Demosthenes, 92 Dentelaria = Erigeron acre L., 346 Desiderius, 216, 234 De vera herbarum cognitione Appendix,
341
Dianthus Caryophyllus L. , 260, 380
DiERBACH, 103, 167
DlNAMIDII, 230 -[- DiOCLES, 107-9, 96
Dionysia= Cichorium blossom, 315 DiONYSius Itykaos, 96, 122
DiOPHANES, 122
Diosanthus — Dianthus, 380
DioscoRiDES, 138, II, 12, 26, 30, 96, 43, 45, 53, 185 ; his binomials, 65 ; his de- scription of Aster, 141 ; his mixture with his purple violet, 143 ; his syno- nyms, 145 ; his Dacian name for Aster, 145 ; his date, 139 ; editions, 140 ; codices, 149, 269, figures, 149 — Translations into Latin ; used by Cassio- dorus, 152, 308 ; by the Goths, 233, by Simon Januensis, 233, 301 ; by the Lombards and by Marcellus Vergilius, 151 ; the Marcelline abridgment, 217-8; the Paternian, 232 ; translation by Pe- trus Paduanensis, 326 ; by Hermolaus Barbarus, 326 ; six others, 15 16-1598, 326. Translations into Syriac, 152, Arabic, 151, 152, 185; Ital., Ger., Fr., Sp., 326; Annotators on Dioscorides, 1 480-1 628, 326-331 ; Saracenus and Sprengel, 330.
Dioscorides Phaca, 96, 140
Dioscorides the Younger, the Glosso- graph, Alexandrinus, 46, 140 ; citations as to Aster Samius, 83, 87
Diplopappus, 17
Dipsacus, 218
DiSPENSARIUM, 223
Dodecaminitis, thought = A. Att. , 374, 71, 373
Dodoens, Dodonaeus, 398, 22, 26, 100, 333 -r > 406-7 ; Dodoens reproduces ten figures from Codex C of Dioscorides, 150; his life and works, 398-9, 419 ; his Aster figure and description in the Cruydeboeck, 398 ; those in his Pemp- tades, 399
Domiani, DoMiANUS, 266, 228
Dondi, Jacobus de Dondi, 57, 98, 286,
305, 307 Dorstenia, 1 19
Dorstenius, 69, 74, 75, 100, 119, 353 Doubling in flowers early recognized, ap- plied to central transformation, 243 ; to
Index
433
development of a second (gamopetalous) corolla, 243. Term applied to radiate flower-heads, 243 ; to proliferous flowers, 244.
Dracontium, Draguncia, Dragontea, Tra- gontea=r y^mw, not A. Alt., 287, 289, 312, 335
Dryden, 127
Dulcamara, 333
Durante, 395, loi, 102, 347, 393 Dyeing, Aster used in, 48
Dynames Herbarum, Dynamidiis, 230
Eadgifu's Salernitan, 217 Ecology, traces in Plateario, 262 Elder, 39
Eleborus, 314, 315, see Helleboj-us Eliotropia = Cichoriuin, 218, 261, 281, 287
Ella, Elna, Eniila, for Inula, q. v., 196,
205, 206, 299 Ellend = Eryngium ; not A. Alt., 61,
71
Embryology, human, 227, 280
Encyclopaedists, the ; Thomas de Canti- prato, 282, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 281 ; Vincent de Beauvais, 292 ; cf. Simon Januensis, 300 ; Matteo Silvatico,
303 Endivia, 324
Enula campana, see Inula
Epilepsy, Aster as a remedy for, 44, 143,
224, 320 Epilobium, 378 Equisetiim, 66, 383 Eratosthenes, 119
Eryngium, said to be A. Alt., 22, 46, 70, 147, 184, 256, 277, 279, 280, 293, 297, 298, 301, 304, 306, 309, 320, 333
Erythronium, 1 19
Espargouttc — A. Alt., 71, 395
Esteve, 100
Estoille = A. Alt., 71, 400 Estrellada = A. Alt., 71, 400 Eupatorhmi, 119, 186, 224, 233, 257, 278,
325, 328 euporista, 96, 139 Euripides, 59 Eustathius, 58, 160
Eviscum, 176
Eye, plant-names formed from it, 76, 379 +
Eyes, Aster as a remedy for, 40, 181 ; others as given by Bartolomeo, 222 ; Salernus, 224 ; Otho Cremonensis, 225
Fallopius, 366, 367, 386 Fee, 24 Fegatella, 300 Feragium, 182 Ferns, 262
Ferraria = Eupatoriu?7i ? 325 Ferrario, Giovanni II, 225, 249;
others, 213, 215 Ficaria ranunculoides Rth., 23, 384 Filago, 378
Filius-ante-patrem, said to be A. Att., 7 1,
373, 375, 378 Fistula, remedies for, 209, 239 Flora of France, etc., see Local Floras Flos Campi= Tragopogon, 287, 316 Flos Jlormn as the rose, 194, 204, 242, 292 Flos Gariofilus, 380 Flos MEDiciNAE, 236 Flosculus (the poppy?), 291 Folk-lore regarding Aster, 36, 37,38, 39-57
Folk-medicine of Cratevas, 120; of Macer 207 -f- ; of Hildegardis, 275
Fragoso, 1 01
Frampton, ioi
Fridelsauga, 276, 378, 379
FUCHS, 348, 12, 13, 22, 25, 39, 100, 329 ; his remarks on Alibium = Aster, 2,04^ ', on Coronopus or Astrion, 339 ; his life and works, 348 ; his figure of Aster Atticus, 350; his description, 351 ; his Aster Atticus luteus, 353
Fumaria, 328, 331, 335
Fungi, 314, 410
Fuscus ; Remaclus Fusch, 100, 329
Gaddesden, John, 98
Galatella, 124, 403
Gulbanum, 290, 124, 186
Galen, 163, 46, 83, 85, 88, 96, 122, 180, 240, 268, 280, 315, 318, 320, 367, 406 ; GaXtvCsbupht/iahnofi, 107-111; Deriva- tive works, 230, 235
434
Index
Galeopsis Tefrahitl.., 254, 267 Galhtfn, not A. Att., 258, 342, 343, 346, 361
Garcia ab Horta, ioi, 408, 410 Gargilius Martialis, 96, 137, 232 Garifoli, Gariofilum, GaryophyUu77i,
Garofalli, Gai'ofano, Gelofre, Gilli- Jlower = Dia nth us Ca ryophyUi07i L, ,
39, 380
Gariq/ilata, Garyophyllata, Caryophyllata = Geuni urbammi L., 380, 277, 258, 260, 293, 299, 312
Gariopontus, 229, 97, 225 ; his person- ality, 229 ; works, 230 ; works once as- cribed to him, 231-233
Garon = clove, l66
GaRT DER GeSUNDHEIT, 275, 322
Garyophylloriy Caryopkyllon, Caryophyl- laea = Dianthus Caryophyllum L., and Garifoli, etc., above ; 380, 30, 31, 72, 224, 278, 288, 341, 375
Gaza, Theodore, 98, 113
Gazius, Antonius, 98, 327
Gelesia = Amarantus tricolor L., 261
Genesia Cleopatra, 220
Genista, 347
Gentiana, 87, 90, 91, 224, 289, 299, 316, 331
Geoffrey de Vinsauf, 97 Geoponica, 39, 46, 97, 166 Georgics of Nicander, I15 ; of Vergil, 123 138
Geranium (not Geuvi) Robertianutn, 275, 337
Gerarde, John, 418, 26, 29, 32, 41, 102, 126, 150, 319, 351, 361, 372, 378,
Gerardo da Cremona, 227, 264, 279, 296
Gerardo Nocito, 327, 98
Gesner, Conrad, 358, 14, 100, 327, 330, 339, 351, 372, 374, 385, 386. Gesner's works, 353 ; his belief in the plurality of Aster species, 360 ; his vernacular plant- names, 361 ; his '''■Aster conyzoides,'''' 361-3 ; two other Asters, 360 ; his posthumous Asters, from Penny, 362 ; from Rauwolf, 364
Geum urbanufji L., 260, 277, 378, 380
Ghini, 328, 366, 367, 369, 99
GlACOSA, 218, 215, 217 -|-
GlLBERTUS AnGLICUS, 97
GiLLES DE CORBEIL, 225 ; see AeGIDIUS
Giovanni da Parma, 227 Giovanni de Lignino, 228 Giovanni Ferrario, I, II, and III, 223 225
Giovanni of Baptista, 228
Giovanni Plateario, I, II, and III, 246, 249, 252
Giovanni son of Gregorio, 224
Gladiolus, 1 15, 134, 194
Giovanni's Cure, 224
Glanvilla, 284
Glaucim?i, 262
Gnaphalita7t, 278
Gnaphaliiim Stoechas L., 40, 56
Gods and Goddesses presiding over Aster or plants confused with it ; Minerva pre- siding over Aste7-icu77i and ArgeTnon, 80, 155-6; Hera over Asterion, 158-161 ; Zeus and Ilithyia over Buphthalf7ion, 178; Aphrodite over Eryngium and Peristereon, 179 ; Proserpina over An- the77iis, 176; the gods in general over Aster 2ind At7iellus, 1 16, 125
Goitre, Aster as a remedy for, 45
Gordon, Bernard, 98, 226, 331
Gorraeus, 65, 116
GoTius, Theophilus, 21
GouPYL, 100, 326, 329
Gratiola, 263, 324
Gray, Asa, 2, 19
Greek survivals in Calabria, I96, 197, 227,
232, 234 Greene, E. L., 10, 19 Gregorius Barhebraeus, 152 Groin, see Inguinal Remedies Groi7tplant, =A. Att., 49, 69, 72 Gronovius, 18 guainerius, 324, 98 guilandini, 386, 23, ioi, 330, 360, 367,
386
guillermus guerualdus, 189
Haller, 171, 180, 365, 369, 371, 380,
381, 393 Haly, 97, 274, 286 Harpestreng, 203, 98
Index
435
Harpocration, 96, 278 Heart' s- ease, 319
Health, Havhn of, etc., 319; see Sani- tatis
Hecataeus Abderita, 42
Hedera, 267, 339, 347
Helenium, Helena, not A. Att., 46, 87,
116, 119, 167, 232, 387 Helianthus, not A. Att., 417 Helichrysum, 46, 56, 261, 267 Helleborus, 275, 313 Helxine 81, 114
Hemorrhoids, Aster as a remedy for, 43 ;
cf. 224 Henley, 98
Henricus de Saxonia, 280
Henry of Huntingdon, 97
Henschel, discovers the Compendiutn Sale f nit anum, 255, 263 ; prints a syn- opsis, 263 ; reviews its plant-names, 254
Hepatica stellata of Tabernaemontanus = Asperula ; not A. Att.y 21, 343
Hepatica triloba L., 259, 333
Hepatic ae, 259, 300
Herb Paris, not A. Att., 344
Herba Aaron = Amm; not A. Att., 275
Herba amorsu serpentis, 228
Herba Apollinaris— Mandragora, 267
Herba benedicta. Herb ben net, = Geum urbanum L., 260, 277, 380
Herba canicularis = Mandragora, 1 77
Herba Cassillago, 225
Herba Chelidonia, used as y^. y^//., 72, 166
Herba Cimbalaria = Cotyledon, 228
Herba foleis, 228
Herba gualia, 228
Herba illocharia, 228
Herba itnpia, 373
Herba inguinalis= A . Att., 74
Herba insana = HyoscyafHUs, 177
Herba Jovis = Helichrysum, '261
Herba Judeyca, Judaica —Galeopsis Tetra-
hit L., 267 Herba lucea and Herba lunaria, 22 S Herba 0 cuius Domini, 228 Herba Paralysis, 72, see Paralysis and
Primula
Herba Sancti Christophori = Geutii, 378
! Herba salutaris = Strychjios, 171, 177 Herba Proserpinalis ^ Arum, 177 He'ba Sanctae Mariae Balsamita, 263,
I 324
Herba Sancti Joannis — Hypericum , 263 Herba Sancti Petri = Primula , 263, 324 Herba Sancti Philippi — Saponaria, 263 Herba Stella, Herba Stellaria, see Stellaria Herba urceolaris = Paronychia, 80, 1 14 Herba Vella = Carrichtera, 233 Herba vermicularis = Sedum acre L., 224, 262
Herbal, the Crete, 273, 99 Herbarium DioscoR/D/s, 152 Herbarius, works of this name, 305, 97,
171, 207, 228 ; \he Erbario of Padua,
207, 228; of Pavia, 228, 307 ; of Castor
Durante, 306 Herbarum o{ Brunfels, 340 Herbarum Alphabeta, 216, 232 Herbe d'ancens, 270 Herbier Le Grant, 2^2, 98 Herbolario of Venice, 310, 419 Herbolarium, of Vicenza, 308 ; of Venice,
309
Hermann, 17
Hermes Trismegistus, 281
Hermolaus Barbarus, 334, 98, 112,
129, 326, 327, 378 Hernia, Aster a remedy for, 44, 338, 391 ;
replaced by Inula Heleniiwi L., 341 Herniaria, not A. Att., 44, 78, 156 H err ERA, 98 Hesychius, 205 Hibiscus, Eviscum, 176 HiERONYMUS Bock, 342, 99, 306 ; see
BOCH
HiERONYMUS BrUNSVICENSIS, 33O, 70, 98,
306, 307, 346 +, 393- His identity, 330> 332, 333 ; lie is confused with Bock, 333; Bock's own references to him, 342, 343 ; his plant- collecting, 331 ; his plant-distilling, 331 ; his mistakes among the plants of the ancients, 331 ; his Distillerung Buch, 331 ; his Apodixis, 332 ; his Himmelschlilssel, perhaps in- cluded Aster, 333, 334 ; his Aster remedies, 332 ; his plants confused with Aster, 333 ; his Primula, 333-4
436
Index
HiLDEGARDIS DE PiNGUIA, 275, 37, 378, 379
Hill, ioi
Himmehchlussely said to include A. Ait., 73, 25, 27, 28, 316, 323, 334
Hippocrates, 103, 91, 96, 202, 283, 231, 235, 280, 349 ; his date, reputed works, and alleged letter to Cratevas, 103 ; his treatment of inguinal tumors, 104 ; his remedy polyophthalmon may have in- cluded Aster as well as Buphthabnuni, 104-111
Histories of botany, 10
HOBAISCH, 185
HOEFER, 119, 121, 322, 369, 370
Holland, Philemon, 213, 243
HoLZACHius, 100, 330
HoNAiN Ben Ish'aq, Ysaac or Isaac, 185
HORMAN, 98
Horminntn, 379
HoRSTius, 100, 329
HoRTUs Sanititis, 317, see Ortus
Hrabanus, 190, see Rhabanus
Humelberg, 99
Hunesdar?n = Stellaria media L., 276 Huofladtheda major and minor = Tussi- lago, 275
Hydrophobia : Cratevas uses Aster as a remedy, 45 j Dioscorides' remedies, 45, 46 ; of Pliny, 46 ; of others, 46 ; Apuleius, 173; Salernus, 224, 379; Otho Cremonensis, 226 ; the Regimen Salerni, 241 ; Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 289 ; Crescenzi, 299
Hyginus, 96, 135, 136
Hyophthalmum — A. Att., 105, 73, 315, 356, 397
Hyoseris = Centaurea nigra L.? 105 Hyoscyamtis, Jusquiamus, 109, 176, 177,
207, 281 Hypericum, 263 Hypocistis, 383
laccea, Jacea = pansy, 289 larus = Arum, 267 Iberis, 45
Ibn Alabbasz, 186, 97
Ibn Alawwam, 186, 97, 419
Ibn Alkotbi, 187, 98
Ibn Baithar, 186, 97 Ibn Dscholdschol, 185, 97 Ibn Golgol, 186, 97 Ibn Roschid, 186, see Averroes Ibn Sina, 182, see Avicenna Ibn Walid, 185, 97 Ilithyia and Buphthalmon, 178 Iffiperatoria = Asterion, 81, 206, 213, 250, 341
Incensaria, not A. Att., 257, 263, 271, 416 Inguinal remedies, 40 ; Aster so used,
404- ; other plants, 40, 52, 332 Inguijialis = A. Ait.,']/^, 155, 343, 345,
355, 396
Ingninaria — A. Att., 74, 40-}-, I54, 304, 345, 397, 406
Inguirialis = A . Att., 319
Inula^ Inula Helenium L., Enula cam- pana, Elna, Elne, Ella, Helena or Hel- enium, 17, 39, 42, 170, 206, 213, 224, 228, 232, 241, 246, 256, 276, 287, 293, 304, 312, 348, 378, 384, 396, 418
Inula Britannica L., 69, 79, 378, 403
Inula Bubonium Jacq. , not A. Att., 69,
78, 335, 385, 417 Inula dysenterica L. = Pulicaria dysen-
terica, 378, 404, 415, 416 Inula ensifolia L., 414 Inula hirta L., 414, 417, 418 Inula montana L., 79, 403, 416, 417, 418 Inula Oculus Christi L., not A. Att., 372,
379, 415 Inula odora L. , 389, 416 Inula Pulicaria L. = Pulicaria vulgaris
Gaertn., 415 hiula salicina L. , 69, 378, 401, 402, 404,
417
Inula spiraeifolia L. , 69, 346, 362, 402 Inula squarrosa L., 363 Ion, 74, see Viola, and Violet, Purple Iringio, Iringus, Irincii ; held = y^. Att.;
74, 184, 277, 297, 309, 325, 333; see
Eryngium
Iron ; antipathy of Argemon ( Aster ? ) to
iron, 54; oi Seneci9, 211 Isaac Ben Honain, or Ish'aq; mediaev-
ally Ysaac, q. v., 185 ; translator of
Nicolaos Damascenes, 112 Isatis, 196, 207, 304
Index
43T
TsiDORUS HisPALENSis, Ysyder, 96, 131,
138, 177, 276, 283, 286, 315 Isopyron, 143
Jacea, Vacea, laccea = pansy ^ 289 Jasminum, 261, 370 Jasonia, 362, 363 Jessen, 276 Joannes, 280
Joannes Filtus Serapionis, 96 Joannes Mediolanus, 236, 216, 220, 223 josan medicus, 217
JoSEPHUS MEDICUS, 2 1 6, 220 JUHASZ, lOI
Juncus odoratus^ 90
JUNGERMANN, 364
Jusquiamus ( = Hyoscyanncs), 1 7 6, 281
JUSSIEU, 24
Justus, 211
Kele, Richard, 99
KiRANIDES, 278, 98, 179
Klein Meger kraut = A. Alt., 75 Klein Sternkraut = Aster alpinus L., 75 Kreuterbuch of Pruss, 322 ; Renatus Beck, 322 ; Balthasar Beck, 322 ; Rho- dion, 322, 275 ; Lonitzer, 392, 275, 351 ; Uffenbach, 393, 275, 351 ; Ehrhart, 394, 275, 351- Kreuterbuch of Bock, 342. Kreuterbuch of Fuchs, 350. Kreuter- buch of Tabernaemontanus, 417. Cruy- deboeck of Dodoens, 398. Kreuterbuch of Camerarius, 388 ; Becher, 389, V er- zascha, 389 Krottenkrtit = A. Alt., 75, 322 Kyber, 327, 344, 361 Ki RANIS 2ind. Kyranos, 36, 179, 278, see
KiRANIDES
Labor-pains, Aster as a remedy in, 44 Lacroix, 196, 272, 302, 304, 313 Lactuca, 31, 167, 177, 191, 213, 225, 228,
232, 262, 278, 288, 342 Lacuna, or Lacuna, 326, 100 Lamarck, 18 Lang HAM, loi Lappa, 158, 278, 288 Left-hand plants ; Aster as such, 54 ;
others, 55, 161 Lelamar, 98, 199
Lemna, 262
Lemnia, Aster Lemnius, Lemnian earth,
86, 91, 320 Lemnius, ioi Leo Ostiensis, 215 Leon, Jean, 321 Leonardus Legius, 99 Leonicenus, 79, 88, 326 Leonlodon, 106, 232, 267 Leontopodium, 42, 46, 78, 119 Lery, ioi
LESSIN(i, 19
Leucanthetnum, 42, 64, 70, 335, 346
Liber aggregationis, 280, 98
Liber de simplici medicina, 97, 223
Liber graduum, 235
Liber medicinalis, 97
Lignamine, 172
Ligusticum, 200
LJlium, 66, 194, 204, 224, 281
Linacre, Lynacro, 199
Linaria, 403
Linnaeus, 18, 20, 129, 323, 363, 376 Linocier, 102 Linschotten, 102 Lithospermuni, 106
LoBEL, 400, 15, 23, ioi, 343 ; his botani- cal studies and travels, 400 ; in court service at Delft and London, 400 ; joint author vi^ith Pena of the Adversaria, 401 ; works v^^ritten wholly by Lobel, 401 ; Lobel' s eight Aster descriptions, 401-404 ; his value, 404.
Local floras, first rudiments of, for France, 169, Spain, 408, 177 ; Rhineland, 275 ; Strasburg, 341 ; Germany at large, 342 ; Netherlands, 398 ; Austria, 409 ; of Her- cynia, 416 ; also of Monte Baldi, 410 ; Mts. Stockhorn and Ness, 353.
Loliian, Loglio, 196, 205, 206, 259
Longiano, Fausto da, 326
Lonicera, 261, 343
Lonitzer, Lonicerus, Adam, 391, 100, 329, 343> 351 ; his father John, 391, 99, 329
"XovkaKiov, 65 'kov'kov6ov, 64 Lovicz, 99, 199 LucA Ghini, see Ghini
438
Index
Lupai'ia (= Aconitum), Lupulus, Lupi-
nus, 345 Lybianum, aster-medicament, 92 Lychnis, 66, 379, 380, 400 Lycium, 369 Lycomedes, 90 Ly coper sicuni, 370 Lynacro, 99, 199 Lysimachia, 378 Lyte, 25, 34, loi, 399
Macer, Aemilius Macer Veronensis,
99. 133, 199
Macer Floridus, 196, 97, 176, 305, 380, 395; Macer' s nationality, 196, 268; name, 197, 227, 228, 268, 277, 396 ; date, I 197 ; vocation, 198 ; Macer's poem, 198 ; its MSS., 199, 419; its editions, 198, 287 ; its translations, 199, 227, 228 ; its redactors, 200 ; its sources, 300 ; its rarer citations, 200 ; its reputation, 203 ; its development at Salerno and Paris and in Denmark, 203. — Macer's knowledge of Strabus, 200; Macer's Magna-Graecian names, 205, 196 ; his Latin folk-names, 207 ; Macer's peculiar plant-names as compared with the Regimen, 241 ; the Dynamidiorum, 231 ; with Ferrario, 225 ; with Plateario, 259 ; with Bartholo- maeus Anglicus, 291. — Aster as influ- encing Macer's description oi Anthemis, 207-210; his treatment of Compositae, 210-213 ; of plants confused with Aster, 211 ; of allied or contrasted plants, 213. — Traces of Macer's personal feeling for the ancients, 202; for plants, 204. — Traces of his Calabri an origin, 196, 197 ; of resi- dence at Salerno, 196, 198 ; of sojourn in Liguria and in Lorraine, 201. — Macer probably not the Salernitan court-physi- cian of Charles the Simple, 217. — Ma- cer not the direct source of the Ortus or Gart, 306. — Quotations from Macer by the Regi??ien Salerni, 243 ; by Plat- eario, 262 ; by Bartolomeo Mino, 268 ; by Joannes, 280 ; by Bartholomaeus An- glicus, 287 ; Macer's use of Diapeganon, 226
Magistri Salernitan/, 218, 419
Magnol, 403 Mago, 96, 12. , 138 Mahaffy, 16 I Malajesa, 187, 98 Malva, 261
Manardi, 338, 79, 82, 99, 321, 328 Mandeville, the Travels of, 302 Mandragora, 82, 91, 222, 251, 267, 292, 299, 315
Manfred de Monte Imperiali, 380, 98, 324
Manlio, da, Jacobus de Manliis, 323,
98, 184, 374, 375, 378, 380 Mannes-trew Eryngittm, 75 Manuscripts of Cratevas, 371 ; Dioscorides,
149-152; Pliny, 123; Vergil, 129;
Columella's copy, 138 ; Probus' copy,
125. MSS. of Apuleius Platonicus,
171 ; of Serapion, 183 ; Rhabanus, 191 ;
Strabus, 200, 202 ; Macer, 199, 419 ;
Plateario, 265 ; Simon Januensis, 300.
Unprinted MSS., 206, 227, 371 Maplet, 1 01 Maranta, 330, 386 Marcelline Botanicum, the, 218 Marcellinus, 89, 218 Marcellus Empiricus, 168, 96, 231 Marcellus Sjdetes, 96, 118, 168 Marcellus Vkrgilius, 337, 28, 38, 99,
326, 334 Marchantia, 259, 262 Marco Polo, 302 Margarita, 329, 334 M argot, 377
Marigold, Purple — A. Att., 75, 336 Marinello, 370 Marogna, 330
Marrubium = Astci'ion, 81, 83, 91, 348 Marsili, 366, 367 Martigniano, 328 Martyn, 33, 125, 127, 135 Martyr, Peter, 321 Mascall, ioi
Matersylva, Alatrisilva — Asperula, said to be A. Att., 171, 222, 258, 325, 333,
342, 343 Mathee, 326
Matricaria, 80, 108, 189, 209, 226, 257 278, 388
Index
439
Matteo Plateario, 250, see Plateario,
and Cinca instans Matteo Silvatico, 303, 22, 98, 184, 227,
301, 305, 308, 319, 320, 323, 374, 375.
379, 380
Mattioli, Matthioli, 381, 15, 16, 22, 25, 100, 125, 143, 326, 328, 329, 343 +, 374 -\-. His life and works, 381 ; his success, 381 ; his Aster-description, 382- 5; his figures, 385 ; references to the vio- let, 283 ; his persecution of Anguillara, 368, 386; of Amatus, etc., 385-388
Mauj-ella, Moi'ela, = Solanum nigrum L., 207, 241, 259, 299, 325
MaXIMUS PlANUDES, 112
Megenberg, Conrad von, 312, 98, 274,
283, 378 Megerkratit = A . Att., 75, 399 Megtenberger, 98 Melanthium, 241
Melilotus officinalis Willd., said to =
Amellus, 23, 175, 224, 258, 262 Melissa officinalis L., used as A. Att.,
174, 188, 211, 258, 278, 312, 325 Melissophyllon, said to = Amellus, 23, 45,
46, 75, 174, 211, 281 Melittis melissophyllon L., 23 Mella, the lotus, 177 ; the mistletoe, 336 ;
the river Mella, 130 Menge, 306 Mentha, 177, 222, 260 Mentz, in association with botanical and
other early printing, 1 91 Mergenblumlin, 378 Merida = Aster Tripolium L., 75 Merula, 260 Mesue, 186, 44, 97, 143 Mesue filius, 186, 97, 228, 274, 308, 320
324, 339
MeTRODORUS, 122
Meu, 81, 341
Meyer's Geschichte der Botanik, 10 ; Meyer establishes the true authorship of Aristotle's De plantis, and edits it, 112 ; his edition of Albertus Magnus, 276
MiCHELi, 363
Millengen ; his "Medical experience,"
42, 46, 57, 85 Miller, Philip, 27, 30, 32, 35
Millifuindrum — Hyoscyamus, 1 77 Minerva and Argemon, 155, 156 ; and As-
tericum, 80 Mirfield, 98 Mithridates, 46, 119 Mith rid a tion, 113 Mizauld, ioi moiban, ioi, 330
Molines, Molinaeus, or Des Moulins,
102, 362, 381 ; see Dalechamp Moly, 360
Monardes, ioi, 410
Monte Cassino, 215
Monti, 366, 367
Morandi, 396
Morella, see Maurella
Morison, 16, 363, 374, 375, 418
Moses Maimonides, 186, 274, 320
Mountaine, ioi
Mziguet petit ■= A . Att., 75
Mundella, 367
Myddleton ; his " Properties of Herbes," 100
Myrtle, 52, 54
Nees, 18, 19 Nelumbium, 260, 262 Neuenar, 328, 99, 167 Newton, 102
Nicander, 115, II, 81, 96, III, [355, 356, 392
NiCCOLO DA ReGGIO, 227, 98
NicOLAOS of Constantinople, 185 NicoLAOs Damascenos, 112, 30, 42, 96, 100, 236
NicoLAOs Myrepsos, 189, 81, 98, 227 Nicolaus Praepositus, 223, 97, 225,
228, 266
Night-shining plants, 37, 38 Notker, 193 Niiphar, 260, 315 Nyinphaea, 1 69, 262
Oblaodia = Matricaria, 257 OCSKO, IOI
Octilcea — ?, 235
Oculus bovis = BiiphthalmwH, 75, 325 Octilus Christie A. Att., and Fallenis, 379, 76, 224, 373, 378, 379, 406, 413
440
Index
Oculus Christi minor — Inula montana
L., 76, 379
Oculus Consults = Tragopogon, 379, 378 Oculus porci= Tragopogon, 106, 277, 315, 374, 375
Oculus vaccae = Buphthalnium, 325 Ocyffium, 133
Oeil de Christ, Oeillets Dieu, 76, 379 Odo ; redactors of Macer, 200 Odortc of Pordenone, 202 Ointment of Aster, 50 Olympias on Malva, 203, 268 Onopordon, 65 Onosma, 263
Ophthalmics, 40, see Eyes Oppian, 60 Orchis, 262
Oribasius, 163, 91, 92, 96, 231, 382
Origanu7n, 261
Oriola = Lonicera ? 261
Orpinum, 314
Ortolfi, 98
Ortus San/tatis, 317, 268, 269, 273, 274, 305, 419 ; comparison with the Ag- gregator Practicus, 305-307
Ostrutium, Struciuyn, 213, 250
Otho Cremonensis, 225, 97
Ovid, 133
OVIEDO, 99
Oxalis, 255, 263
Ox-names for plants, 70, 146, 170, 207 OxYOTUS, 100
Paaw, 102
Paduan Erbario, 228 Paeurle, 100
Palacium leporis or Sparagi, 269 Palladius, 173, 96, 125, 137, 202, 283, 296
Pallenis spinosa ( L. ) Cassini, held to = A. Att., 371-374, 70, 362, 363, 365, 384, 385, 401, 406, 413, 415, 416, 418
Pamphilius, 245
Pandecta, Pandectarius, 303, see Mat- teg SiLVATICO Pandoria = celandine, 276 Papaver, used as A. Att., 156, 214, 258,
299, 315 Pappus, 32
Paracelsus, 100
Paradel, Paradella, Paradelos, 299, 335 Paralysis, Herba= Primula ; and A. Att. ?,
72, 70, 224, 246, 258, 324, 332, 335 Paratella, 207, 228, 259, 262 Parietaria, used as A. Att., 80, 114, 153,
224, 259, 299 Paris quadrifolia L. , held = y^j^ifr," 21,
79, 343
Parkinson, 396, 26, 30, 41, 150, 351,
362, 373, 378, 379, 401 Paronychia, used as A. Att., 345 Parthenium, 80, 276 Pasini, 102, 330 Passionarius, 230, 262 Pastinaca, 277
Paternian Treatise, 232, 216 Paulus Aegineta, 180, 41, 86, 96, 225,
318, 320, 382 Pausanias, 157, 96 Pavian Erbario, 228 Pelous, 271, 98, 226 Pena, 401, 15, loi, 365, 372, 401 Penny, Thomas, ioi, 364 Peonia, 315
Perdicium, 78, 80, 90, 1 14, 335 Perez, 102
Pericles and Astericum, 80 Peristereon, 161, 179, 279 Persicaria, 262, 275
Pervinca, Provinca, Periwinkle, 261, 269, 281
Pes pulli = Portulaca, 207 Petasites, 275, 378 Petit Espargoutte = A. Att., 76 Petit Muguet = A. Att., 76 Petricello's powder, 262 Petroncello, Petronio, 222, 230, 249, 262
Petrus Aponensts or Paduanus, 305,
304, 326 Petyt, icq Peucedanufn^ 106 Pfeiffer, 312 -)- , 283 Philagrius, 92 Philargyrus, 125 Philumenos, 92 Photius, 187 Phyllon, 120
Index
441
Physical Plants, 98
Physiology of Plants, Nicolaos Damascenos
on, 112; Albertus Magnus, 276 PiETRO Spano, 226, 98
PiGMENTIS, DE, 233
Pilosella, 262 Pmguicula, 267
Plant-names from persons, 119; ancient binomials, 65, 255 ; names from niella, 130, 131; from viola, 144 ; Dacian names, 146; Magna-Graecian, 205, 231 ; Roman folk-names, 207, 231.
Plantago Coronopus L., said \.o = A. Att., 21, 72, 78, 81, 83, 150, 327, 335, 339
Plantago lanceolata L. , 83
Platttago majo''- L., used as A. Att., 43, 45> 52, 53. 88, 213, 224, 254, 288, 299, 300
Plantago maritimum L., 83
Plasters from Aster leaves, 50
Plateario, Platearius, Plataire, Matteo Plateario, ii, 246-275, see Circa instans. — Plateario as younger than Preposito and Constantinus, 250; as instructor and inspirer of Aegidius of Corbeil, 250, 251 ; he is cured of dysuria, 250 ; his experience with poisons, 251, 221, with antidotes, 222. — Plateario independent of current de- lusions, 251 ; his regard for certain wild flowers, 261 ; his cultivation of fruits, 260, of medical plants, 260 ; of water- lilies, 260; flowers cultivated, 261. — Plateario' s binomials, 255 ; his ecological references, 262 ; his church-names, 263 ; other plant-names, 259, 380. — Platea- rio's works, his Glossae, 251, Circa instans, 253 ; Compendium salernita- nuJ7i, 263. — References by Plateario to himself or family, 262, 264, 265, 269 ; reasons for his long obscurity, 255, 283 ; indebtedness to him, 284-291, 297-298,
305, 315, 324 Plateario, Giovanni I, 246, 97 ; his
Practica, 247 Plateario, Giovanni II, 249 Plateario, Giovanni III, 252, 97, 264 Plateario, matrona, 247 Plateario, Matteo I, 249
Plateario, Matteo II, 250, 97
Plateario, Matteo, Pisanus, 253
Plateario, medica, 252, 264
Plateario, socius, 252, 265
Plateario, Trotula, 249, 97
Plato, the poet, 59
Plutarch, 60, 80
Plinius Valerianus, 176, 96, 203
Pliny, 152, 45, 55, 60, 96, 206, 283, 285, 338, 343 ; citations, 80, 81, 83, 86, 119, 136, 176. — Pliny's relation to Dioscori- des, 139 ; his Aster or Bubonion, 153 ; his Inguinaria ox Inguinalis, 154; his Argemon, 155 ; his Argemone, 156. — Pliny criticised by Hermolaus, 334 ; by Leonicenus, 327 ; defended by Collen- uccio, 327
Poisonous bites, Aster as a remedy for, 45
POLEMOS, 59
Polion, Poly, 76, 256
Polo, Maffeo, Marco, and Nicolo, their
travels, 302 Polygontitn, 66, 262, 275 Polygonatum, 263
Polyophthalmon = A. Alt., etc., 75, 104 Polypodium, 262, 387 Pona, 102, 410
Pontedera, 134, 136, 174, 374, 376
Populago\=\Caltha ; not A. Att., 416
Porcellana = purslane, 299
Porru7n, 43, 46
Portulaca, 147, 207, 299, 314
Potamogeton = Aster Tripolium L. , 77; also, 82, 222, 262
Potentilla, 262
Preposito, Nicolo, 223
Prifnula, 23, 72, 239, 246, 256, 258, 262, 263, 276, 316, 324, 332, 333, 334; con- fusion with Aster, 332
Probus, 125
Promptuarium Medici, 305, 98 Proserpine's Anthemis, Arum, and Polyg-
07tum, 176 Pi'ovinca, 261, see Pervinca and Vinca Pseudo-Demosthenes, 301 ijufiidvia, 340
Psyche— Aster Tripolium L., 77 Pulegium, 280
442
Index
PULICARIA ; used as A. Att., 17, 42, 71, 167, 222, 225, 245, 257, 263, 277, 325, 353, 384, 404, 418
PULTENEY, 150, 200, 273, 328
Punic plant-names, 81 Plirsh, 19
Pyrethrum, 2IO, 224, 257, 276, 278
QOSTHUS, 183, 97 QUADRAMIO, 368, 369
Qiiercus Aegilops L., 370; vallonea, 37
Quinquefolhtm , 28 1
QuiNCY, John, 397, 39
Quinsy, Aster as a remedy for, 45, 181,
320; other remedies, 224, 299, 311,
320, 380 Quisquilia, 286
Rafinesque, 19 Raimundus Lullus, 278, 98 Rathihida = A. Att., 145, 77, 345 Rauwolf, 1 01, 362, 364, 415 Ray, 17, 418 Razela^ 275 Redman, 99
Regimen sanita tis Salerni, 236, 97, 1 96 Renzi, 246 ; of. Salernitan Masters Rhabanus, 97, 190, 191, 285 Rhaponticum, Rheum Ponticum, 90, 146 Rhazes, 182, 97, 183, 240, 264, 272, 273
Rhodion, 99, 322, 342, 354, 390, 393 Rinius, 98, 228, 269 RiviNUS, 279
Rivius, Ryff, 390, 100, 329, 351 Robhia = Rubia, 299 Robe Ilia, 270
Robert Curthose, 223, 238 Robert Guiscard, 221
ROBERTUS BrITTANUS, lOO
Robertus Constantinus, 114, 74, 81,
100, 329, 387
Robertus Stephanus, 99 Rodd's Folk-lore of Modern Greece, 37, 55, 147
RODIOTO, 363, 365
Rodolf Malcorona at Salerno, 247-248 Roemisch Negelin = A. AttJ 78, 341
RONDELET, 406, 15, 74, 365, 372, 400, 402, 405
Rosemary, 39, 267
Rose, 194, 204, 224, 281, 292, 383, 410 Rostrum porcinum = Taraxacum, 105,
277, 324 Rota, 99, 328 ROYEN, 363
Rubia, not A. Att., 21, 78, 79, 191, 224, 258, 276, 299, 304, 324, 325, 333, 335, 342, 343, 346
Rubus, 65
j RuELLius, 337, 13, 14, 40, 54, 99, 114, 326, 334, 405 RuFus Ephesius, 90 Ruppia, 370
Ruta, Rue, 91, 224, 241, 297 Ryff, 390, see Rivius Sachs' History of Botany, 2 Sacro Bosco, 283, 309, 313 Saint Gall in association with plants, 193 Salerne, Secres de, 270 Salernitan botanical garden, 218, 229, 260, 303
Salernitan flower-culture, 260, 261
Salernitan masters and physicians, chrono- logical list of them and their writings, 216-229 ; lists of uncertain date, 227, 228 end. Their cure of Bohemond, 221 ; of Robert of Normandy, 238, 223. Their poisons, 221, 224
Salernitan masters, writers regarding them ; the Chronicle, 219, 226 ; Leo Ostiensis, 215; Petrus Diaconus, 215, 220, 234, 235, 237; Orderic, 220, 221, 247, 248; Rabbi Helinus, 218, 219 ; Aegidius, 225 ; Mazza, 218, 227 ; Henschel, 2l8; Mai, 231 ; Renzi, 215, 224, 225, 230, 241, 246; Meyer, 215 -f, 272; Daren- berg, 226 ; Camus, 226, 228, 235, 247- 272 ; Giacosa, 218, 215-246
Salernitan women as physicians ; Amma- randa, 218 ; Genesia Cleopatra, 220, 248 ; Trotula, 243, 222, 247 ; the " sapient matron," 247, 248, 220 ; " Licinia," 252, 224; Constantia, 227; their face-recipes, 224 ; they are cited by Trotula, 249 ; Sichelgaita learns from them, 221
Salernitana, Z' Opera, 254
Salernitana, Secreta, 229
Index
443
Salhrnit ANr, Magistri nondum hditi, 218
Salernitanum compendium, 263, 262 Salernitanus practicvs, 247 Salerno, 214
Salernus, 224, 264, 379 Salicornia, 370, 193
Saliunca, Salvinca, Salvida, 74, 75, 270, 298
Salmasius, 132, 326 Salmon, 397, 379 Salsijica, 229 Salvia, 146
Salvicitla for Valeriana celtica, 233
Sambucus, 146
Sammonicus, 165, 96
Samos, the Aster-earth from, 83, see Aster
Samius Samphire, 193
Sanamunda ~ Geum urbanum L. , 260 Sanationis, Clavis, 300 Sandyx, 92 Sanguinaria, 91, 171 Sanicula, 298
Sanitatis, Ortus, 317; works of similar name, Hortulus Sanitatis, 393 ; Gart der Gesundheit, 322 ; Gaertlein der Gesund- heie, 322, 393 ; Gaerde der Suntheit, 318 ; Garde der Suntheyt, 275, 318 ; Le Jardin de Sante, 318 ; II Tesoro della Sanita, 395 ; Regimen sanitatis Salerni, 236 ; De conservatione Sanitatis, 327 ; Eliot's Castle of Health, 319; Cogan's Haven of Health, 319
Sansovino, 295, 299
Sanutus, 302
Saponaria, 259, 263, 270
Sappho, 59, iii, 304
Saracenus, J. A., 39, 83, 87, 140 -f-, 326
Saracenus, Thomasius, 225
Sarcocolla, not A. All., 169, 195, 224, 278, 293
Salyrion, used as A. All., 177, 297, 328,
332, 378 Saw-worl, 49 Saxifraga, 379 Scabiosa, 262, 324, 403 Scaliger, 112 Scandix, 313
Scarleitkraul = A. Alt., 78, 399 Scharlenblumen = A. All., 78 Scharlenkraut = A. Atl., 48, 346 SCHENCKIUS, 102, 236
SCHMIKDEL, 363-5, 388 -\-
Schoenus nigricans L., 1 13
SCHOLA SaLERN/TANA, 236
Sciatica, Aster as a remedy for, 45 ; Inula,
etc., in its place, 213, 241, 290 Scirpus Holoschoenus L., 113 Sclarea, 379 SCOLAPIO, 208, 216 Scolymus, 69, 167, 307, 323 Scordion, 119 Scorzonera, 376, 377, 410 SCOTUS, 226, 285, 315
SCRIBONIUS LaRGUS, 96, 168
Secacul, said to =A. All., 258, 277, 311, 320
Secres de Salerne^ 229, 269, 270 ; the
Konigsberg MS., 272 Secres des Erbes, 272 Secret A Petri Hispani, 226 Secreta Secretorum and similar titles,
229
Secret IS Mulierum, 280 Secretorum, Liber, 302 Sedum, 83, 262 Sempervivum, 370
Senecio, 1 18, 177, 210, 257, 270, 277, 300 Serapias, used as A. All., 57, 121, 226, 378, 297
Serapion, 183, 96, 228, 264, 265, 266,
297, 298, 299, 301, 305, 320, 324, 325
382, 384, 394 Serpenlaria, Serpenlina ■= Arum, 281,
299, 3Io> 314 Serpylliivi, 262 Serres, 102 Servius, 128, 130 Seseli Massiliensis, 91 Seven Masters, the, 97 Share2vorl= A. All., 78, 346 Shepherds, their knowledge of Aster, 36
the survival of their life, 37 Shrubs, ancient conception of, 30, 134 SiBTHORP, 24, 371 Siennik, ioi
SiGEHERT GeMBLACENSIS, I97, 202, 203
444
Index
Simeon Seth, 187, 97, 176
SiMLER, lOI
Simon Januensis, 300, 98, 106, 183, 229, 235, 236, 279, 297, 298, 320, 323, 328, 377. Simon Januensis as an ecclesiastic and physician, 300 ; translator of Ser- apion and of Abul Qasim, 300, 301 ; botanical traveller, 302 ; investigator of the plants of the ancients, 302 ; author of the Clavis sanationis^ 300 ; its value, 300 ; its editions, 300 ; Campanus' MS., 300. Lost writings used by Simon Januensis, 300, 301. Comparison with Matteo Silvatico, 304
Sinonimia Estense, 226, 98, 380
Siseleos, 270
Sisymbrium , 258
Sisyrinchium, 105
Sleeping-anodynes, 90
Sleeping-herbs, 55, 222, 225, 251, 318
Smith, 100
Smyrnium^ 219
Snake-bites, Aster as a remedy for, 46, 209 ; other plants, 209, 241, 272, 290, 299
Snakes driven of by fumes of Aster, 47 ;
of galbanuui, 290; of arum, 290, 312;
by other plants, 47, 228 Solanum, Solanum nigrum L. , used as A.
Att., 170, 177, 206, 207, 218, 233, 241,
299, 304, 335, 345. 370 Solanum Dulcamara L. , 333 Solanum mortale, 222, 276, 299 Solanum quadrijolium = Herb Paris,
345
Solatrum, often = Solamim nigrum L.,
224, 259, 299, 312, 325, 333 Soldanella, 270
Solsequium= Cichoriu?n, 261, 315, 333
SOTHEBY, 125
Spanish flora, first rudiments, 177
Spergula, 79, 418
Sphondyliimi = Asterion, 159
Sphragis as an aster medicament, 86, 90
Spiczynski, icq
Spiraea, 27 1
Spiraea Filipendula L., 254, 267 Sponsa Solis= Cichorium, 261, 277, 300, 315, 333
Sprengel, historian of botany, 10 ; student of Punic plant-names, 82 ; editor of Dioscorides, 140, 326 ; judgments pro- nounced by Sprengel, 303, 304, 323, 324, 332, 369, 37], 373, 378
Sprenger, 102
Squinancia, 224, 31 1, see Qu.nsy Stachyites = Aster Tripolium L. , 78 Staphisagria, 270
Stars, their relation to Greek thought and
nomenclature, 57 -f- Starwort = A. Ati., 78, 361 Stella and herba Stella = A. Att., etc., 78,
335, 338, 339 Stella, Attica = A. Att., 78, 382, 404 Stella Attica Monspeliensium of Lobel,
401, 24, 78 Stella di Athene = A. Att., 78, 383, 395 Stella maris, 72, 339, Maris Stella, 193 Stella marina, the starfish, 81 Stella plana, 224
Stellaria = A. Att., 78, 318, 339, 355 Stellaria, plants so called, 335, 21, 78,
228, 323, 342, 343, 349, 382, 418 Stellaria herba = A. Att., 73 Stellaria media L. , 91, 276 Stelle, Terra, 256 Stellula = A. Att., Sternblume = A. Att., 79 Sternkraut =z A. Att., 79, 399, 322, 349
= Aspergula, 339, = Paris, 345 Sterretruyt — A. Att., 79, 399 Stephanos Alexandrinos, 188, 96 Stephanos Antiochenos, 186 Stephanos Athenaos, 188, 96 Stephanos Basilides, 185, 97 Stephanos Magnetes, 188, 65 Stephanus Robertus, 99 Stignus, 276
Stomachics, 39, 222 ; Aster as a stomachic, 39, 40, 181, 241, 320; others of Salernus, 224 ; Otho Crem(^nensis, 225 ; Crescenzi, 293
Strabus, 192, 97
Strignum, 206, 225, 259, 276, 299
Struthion, 206, 250
Strumus herba, 170
Sti'uciunt, 250, 259, 264
Strychnus, 66, 82, 170, 177, 206, 312
Index
445
■Stupanus, ioi, 330
Succisa, 403
Sumach, 188, 256, 259
Superba = Dianthus Caryophyllus L., 380
Swallow plant, 72
Swallow- songs, 72
Swine, Argemon (= Aster?), a remedy for, 48
Swine names, for plants, 105, 73, 74, 376 Syche, 236
Sylvius, Zacharius, 133, 236, 239, 242 Symphorianus Campegianus, 329 Symphytum, 65, 170, 224, 260 Synonyma, 98
Tabernaemontanus, 417, 102, 339, 343,
345» 373» 402, 403, 416 Tacuin, 190, 271 Tagautius, 99
Tanacetum, 191, 226, 277, 324 Taraxacum, 324, see Rostrum porcinum- Terentius Euelpistius, 231 Terra Asteris or Terra Samia, 83, 91, 256 Terra sigillata, 86, 256, 278, 289, 320 ;
called Terra stelle, 256 Tetrahit, Tetrahiscus = Galeopsis, 267,
293, 300 Tettapharmacus, 227 Tetulus Graecus, 220 Teucrium Chamaedrys, 207 Teucrium Scordium L., 1 19 Thalius, 416, 23, 102, 343, 380 Thapsia gargattica L., 79, 267, 329 Thaspiujn atireum Nuttall, 219 Theocritus, 42, 126 Theodorus Gaza, 113, 98 Theodorus Priscianus, 167, 96, 328 Theophrastus, 113, II, 30, 42, 84, 85,
96, 266, 343, 384, 408 ; his treatment
of Asteriscus, II3 ; of Schoeiius, 1 13 ;
his double flowers, 243, 244, 245 ; Aster-
iscus as interpreted /'^z7'/<f/<7rz«, 1 14; as
Aster, 114 Thevet, ioi
Tinctorius flos = A . Att., 345, 79 Tiriaca = Allium, used as A. Att., 222, 267, 290
Toads said to use Aster as a remedy, 47, 69 Toadwort = A. Att., 75
TOURNEFORT, 16, 121, 343, 363, 374,
376, 377, 403 Tragopogon; not A. Att., 106, 276, 287,
316, 374 4- Traguntea, Draguncea = Arum, 314 Tragus, 342, see Bock Trapp, 127
TrATTATO DEI.LA CoNFEZIONE, 222
Travellers ; botanical or those making references to plants, 293, 301, 323 ; botanical journeys of Anguillara, 365, Belon, 368 ; Penny, 364 ; Rauwolf, 364; Lobel, 400; Clusius, 405-409; Tournefort, 377 ; Sibthorp, 376 -|-
Tremblay, 199
Treviranus, 409
Treveris, 273, 99
Trevisa, 285
Triaulion , 40
Trimtas — pansy , 2.%^); — Hepatic a, 259 Tripolium, see Aster Tripohum L. Trixago, 66 Trotula, 97, 222 Tulipa, 360
Tumors, Aster a remedy for, 320 ; cf. 40, 57, 225
Tunica — Dianthus, etc., 380
Turbith = Aster Tripolium L, 79, 23$
Turbith — Iponioea Turpethum L. , etc.,
226, 235, 256, 293, 327, 329, 339 Turego == Melissa, 2^8 Turpethum, 79
Turner, 99, 100, 273, 328, 360, 366, 418 Tusser, ioi
Tussilago, 90, 222, 275, 378 TZEIZFS, 60
Uffenbach, John, 394
Uffenbach, Peter, 392, 330, 332
Uffenbach, Zachariah, 394
Ulcers ; Aster, etc. , as remedy for, 40 4- ,
209, 246, 290 Unguents as aster-medicaments, 226 Un^uinalis = A. Att., 74, 79 Unguinaria = Paronychia, 79, 345 Ungula caballina— Tussilago, 222, 228,
277, 288 Unone = Agj'imonia, 228 Uranium, an aster-medicament, 92
446
Index
URZEDOW, I02
Usnea, 305, 310
Uva lupina^ Paris qtiadrifolia L., held
to be Aster, 177, 344 Uva taminea = Bryonia, 232
Vatllant, 17, 374, 376 Valeriana, 233 Valerius Probus, 125 Valla, Giorgio, 328, 99 Varro, 123, 96, 205 Vella herba = Carrichtera, 233 Veltpluom= Tras^opo^^on, 316, 378 Vena tindorum = Chelidonium ? 277 Ventosius — Hyoscyamus ? 281 Veratrum, 66 Verbascum, 401
Verbena, 55, 1 61, 224, 263, 279, 281
Verb kraut = Y exhena. ? 263
Vergil, 123, 23, 96, 11 1 ; Vergil's inter- est in Amellus, 123; in bees, 124; in galbanum, 1 24 ; the Vergilian Hortulus, 132, 420 ; the Aster of Vergil's Georgics as compared with the prototype of Nicander, 36, 128 ; its revival in Colu- mella, 134 4-; Columella's MS. of the Georgics, 138
Vergilius, 337 , see M arcellus Vergilius
Verminaca = Verbena, 263
Veronica, 380
Verzascha, 41, 389
Vetrivola = Parietaria, 299
Viaticum, 234, 235
ViGONlUS, 99, 327
Vinca, 261, see Pervinca
Vincent de Beauvais, 292, 98, 203, 283, 302, 319, 394
ViNDICIANUS, 215
Viola, 66, 126, 134, 143, 2n, 269, 277, 278, 288, 299, 300, 311, 315
Viola or Violet, plants so called, 245, 380, 144, 167, 170
Violetsh€[ove.d by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 288; by Matthioli, 289; by Grecian women, 15 1
Violet, the Purple Violet of Dioscorides con- fused with Aster, 74, 79, 143, 242; used for tumors, 312; for hemorrhoids, 73; for vulvae procidentias, 40 ; for vulvae
suppurationes, 41 ; for epilepsy, 44, 143, 241, 312, 319; called the epileptic's violet, 312; for labor pains, 57, 288. The Purple Violet with these properties distinguished from Viola odorata L. , by ArnalJ, 242 -f- . Violet as a cancer- cure, 312
Virga pas tor is, 281
Virgtilta caballina — Lappa, 288
Virolorosa — Alatricaria, 257
Viscjis, 281
Vitreola = Parietaria, 259 VlTRiACO, Jacobus de, 283, 297, 301 Vlachs, 37, 148
VORCHEMBERG, 327
Vredels oghe, Vredels tunghe, 378, 379 Vulgago, Vulgigina — Asarufn, 207 Vulnerary, Aster so used, 42 Vulva, Aster and Purple Violet as remedy
for, 40, 41 ; Anthemis so used, 42 ;
Aster Samius, 87 ; Apiastrum, 176 ;
Aristolochia, 332 ; Alchemilla, 338,
383; Primula, 332; Kubia, etc., 224
Wdgstrow = A. Att., 79, 343, 361 Walafrid Strabus, 192, 200, 201, 285 Waldtmeister = Asperula thought =. A^
Alt., 333, 343 Waterlilies, 260 Wedel, 23, 131, 132, 336 I lVegwart= Cichorium, 333 Wegenkraut= A. Att., 79 Wehdystel = Calcitrapa, 276 Wellmann, 121, 123, 150 WiELAND, 386, see Guilandini
WiGANDUS, 102
Willdenow, 18 Winter, Robert, icq Wolf names, 345
Wolff, Caspar, 416, loi, 330, 361, 364^ Worde, Wynkyn de, 98, 285 Wyer's Herbal, 99
Xanthium strumarimn L., 253, 255 Xenocrates, 90
Yacea, Jacea, laccea, = pansy, 323, 289 Ynguirialis = A. Att., 318, 322, '323, 74- Ypoquistidos , 323, 383 Yppia — tansy, 277
Index
447
Yringi, Yringus, said to -=A, Att., 2g^,
320 ; see Eryngitun YSAAC, Ish'aq, 185, 264, 272, 273, 285,
see Isaac Ysopo = hyssop, 287 YsYDER, 486, see Isidore Yvo — Taxus, 297
Zacintha, 146
Zaluziansky, 102 Zeiiiossen, {Primula), 334 Zinziber, 224
Zizania = Lolium , etc., 299, 314, 264 Zuccarum = Saccharum, 265, 267, 273
294, 3H ZwiNGER, 389, 393 Zyngiber = Artemisia, 232 Zytvel — Santonica, 275
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