7. Sixteenth-century Botanists

1Messieurs,

2During our last session I tried to give you a presentation of how the science of zoology developed and what progress was made during the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. We saw that, as it was customary at that time, zoology started with explanatory research, critiques, and studies of the writings of the Ancients; then it focused on observation and on the study of natural productions that were geographically the closest; then it expanded with the study of natural productions specific to foreign countries. Finally, writers looked at zoology as a general science and created systems and summaries. This progress, which takes us all the way up to Jonston,1 is in a way the summary of everything that was published so far up to the seventeenth century. It was similar with botany; however, botany evolved faster than zoology because its usefulness seemed to be more direct and immediate either for agriculture or for medicine. Furthermore, botany was easier to study —since it is easier to gather live plants, nourish them, maintain them, and then, once they die, keep them in a herbarium— than to find and preserve animals. It is expensive to feed animals and they require a larger space than plants; in addition, their preservation after they die is more difficult. Thus, books on botany are more numerous and more significant than those on zoology.

3First, as we just said, there were editors of the writings of the Ancients, whose work was made easier by the earlier efforts of several Greek scholars who at the end of the fifteenth century had reached either Constantinople or provinces occupied by the Turks, before its capital was taken over. One of these scholars who was the most beneficial to the West was Theodorus Gaza,2 a Greek from Thessaloniki3 who brought with him the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus4 and made them accessible to a much larger audience by translating them, because Greek at that time was hardly ever studied. Soon after him, several physicians started to comment on the writings of the Ancients related to botany; Giorgio Valla5 was one of them. He was born in Piacenza and was a professor in Venice. He died in 1499, thus he was from the fifteenth century. He wrote an encyclopedia on fifteenth-century scholarship called De expetendis et fugiendis rebus (About things that we need to look for or stay away from).6 It includes an alphabetical list of the different medicinal plants that Greek authors had talked about. It was not printed until after his death in Venice in 1501 by his son. This book has no interest today.

4Pliny,7 second only to the Greek authors, was the one who offered the most resources to botany since part of his books was devoted to this branch of natural history. Thus, he became the object of study for botanists of that time. Hermolaus Barbarus,8 a Venetian noble, was the one who handled most of its interpretation. I have already had the opportunity to talk about the Barbaro family who produced a large number of scholars in different branches of natural history. I already told you about Daniel Barbaro,9 one of Belon’s protectors who provided him with figures of fishes for his book.10 Hermolaus was his great uncle. Like him, he was appointed by the Patriarch Pope of Aquileia.11 Because the Republic of Venice did not acknowledge his nomination, he never enjoyed his archbishopric and had to stay in Rome. He was born in 1454 and died in 1493 at the age of thirty-nine; thus, he is from the fifteenth century, which is the century that we are studying. A year before he died, in 1492, Hermolaus Barbarus published his book on Pliny; it is called Castigationes Plinianae12 and was dedicated to Pope Alexander VI.13 It is a critical study of Pliny’s manuscripts and editions that existed at that time. He tried to correct the narrative and claimed to make more than five-thousand corrections. He also made some remarks on the core content of Pliny’s work. His work helped make Pliny’s editions more accurate but they are no longer used today. Furthermore, it is printed in gothic characters, making it quite difficult to read. Barbarus also wrote a commentary on Dioscorides14 who, as I told you in the history of the ancient naturalists, was the one who contributed the most to botany.

5Marcellus Vergilio,15 who was from Florence, also produced a translation of this author in which he incorporated Barbarus’s notes. It was printed in 1518. Vergilio died not long afterwards, in 1521, right at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

6Leonicenus’s work on Pliny is also dated around the same time. All these names, Leonicenus,16 Vergilio, etc., are almost forgotten today; however, we must agree that these men contributed greatly to the science of botany. Nicolaus Leonicenus was the first translator of Galen.17 Leonicenus is not his family name; at that time, names were not only given in Latin or in Greek, but sometimes authors bore the name of their birth place or a name that stemmed from it. Thus, Leonicenus takes his name from Lonigo in the Province of Veneto where he was born in 1428. He died in 1524 at the age of ninety-six. Thus, he is already part of the sixteenth century. He was a professor in Padua and Ferrara for more than sixty years. His translation of Galen is a huge work that contributed greatly to science of his time. We also owe him a critique of Pliny called De Plinii aliorumque medicorum erroribus.18 This author is the same as the one who wrote a small book on snakes that I told you about when we studied zoology.19

7The critics who came after him were also Italian. Italy was indeed where the first research studies were undertaken for the progress of the sciences, be it in anatomy, zoology, or botany.

8Giovanni Manardi or Manardus,20 one of these Italian critics, was born in Ferrara in 1462. He was physician to the kings of Hungary and died in 1536. He wrote a book called Epistolae medicinales in which he commented not only on the Ancients, but also the Arabs, in particular Mesue.21 In several instances he corrected the translation of Dioscorides that Vergilio had just done.22 He compared the works of the Arabs with those of the Ancients, with the purpose of giving more value and credential to the Ancients and of undermining the Arab authors who had been predominant during almost all of the Middle Ages, asserting that they should be abandoned in favor of the only good sources, which were the writings of the Ancients.

9One of his students, Antonio Brassavola,23 who was also a student of Leonicenus, worked with the same mindset and became one of the most famous botanists of his time. He was born in 1500 into a noble family of Venice. He practiced medicine and was at the service of King Francis I of France24 who nicknamed him Musa,25 which explains the name of Antonius Musa in his books. He was anointed with the Order of Saint Michael and was physician to Emperor Charles V,26 Henry VIII, king of England,27 and of Leon X.28 He was held in high esteem throughout Europe. He became physician to the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole IV,29 to whom he gave the taste of botany and with whom he went on several excursions in the mountains of Italy. He convinced him to establish a botanical garden on the peninsula formed by the River Po, where he gathered all the remarkable plants he had discovered during his excursions. Brassavola was thus the founder and owner of the first garden of its kind that had ever existed among the moderns. It was not yet a public garden, but rather the Duke of Ferrara’s private property; however, it was very beneficial to botany. Brassavola died in 1555. He wrote a book that was printed in Rome in 1536 called Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum.30 Though Brassavola studied plants from nature, this book still looks like a critique of the Ancients. It is written in dialogs, like several other scientific books of that time. I showed you how the Platonic Academy, which was established in Florence, had been so fervent in the study of Plato;31 it was in admiration for this great writer that this kind of dialog had been adopted. It was constantly used until Galileo,32 not only by the Italian authors, but also by the German and French authors of the time we are studying. However, this format is not the most practical one for didactic works; but it was enjoyable as well as fashionable, which is already a great asset for a book. Brassavola was very useful to science with his detailed Index of the Latin translation of Galen’s work by Leonicenus.33 His Index was printed in Venice by Juntes, in five folio volumes, with a very small font. Before this Index, it was very difficult to find one’s way in this huge work. Finally, we owe Brassavola an analysis that covers almost all of Galen’s work.

10We are now done with the review of the first Italians whose research in botany was focused on the works of the Ancients, spreading their works, interpreting them, correcting the mistakes that appeared in copies, and even correcting positive errors based on the few observations they had made by themselves. We will see that similar work took place in France as well.

11Jean Ruel, in Latin Ruellius,34 was the first one to start working on it. He was born in Soissons in 1479; thus, from the end of the fifteenth century. He first became a physician and then got married. After he became a widower he joined an ecclesiastical order35 and became canon of Notre Dame of Paris where he died in 1539. We owe him the second Latin translation of Dioscorides.36 This work was edited in 1516 by Henry Estienne,37 a very erudite man, very well educated in science, who belonged to the Estienne family that became famous for its skill in printing and by the large number of scholars it produced.38 You remember that we already talked about one of them, Charles Estienne, who wrote a treatise on anatomy.39

12Ruel wrote a book called De natura stirpium.40 It is one of the first primary works in botany to be published in France. It appeared in 1536 and was immediately reprinted in Basel in 1537 and in Venice in 1538, which proves that he rapidly gained esteem throughout Europe. It is a compilation of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny,41 with a few excerpts from Galen, that offers, in an abridged form, the wealth of their doctrine. It is, in a way, a summary of the research done on the Ancients, similar to the research done on the modern authors. This work includes approximately three hundred names of plants, with their common names in French. But it contains the kind of mistake that is not surprising: Ruel, who only traveled around Paris and Picardie, mixed up the plants from Greece and Italy. Described by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, these plants, while similar, are not exactly the same. It is a flaw we find in all authors of that time; they did not pay attention to the differences in climate and thus made mistakes that were only acknowledged much later.

13While these works were taking place in France, diligent studies in botany were also starting in Germany, but with a better approach. The study was more focused on plants from nature; as a result the books that were published in Germany during the sixteenth century were enhanced with figures that could only be done from observation of actual live specimens.

14The first botanist of this country is Otto Brunfels or Brunsfeld42 from Mainz who was a teacher in Strasburg and later became a doctor in Bern; his book called Herbarum vivae eicones43 is dated 1530 and consists of two small folio volumes.44 The plants are not in order, but this work is remarkable for being the first to include figures of an acceptable quality. They are still in wood —since it is not until the end of the seventeenth century that we begin to see copper engravings, both in botany and in zoology— but they are done after nature and several of them are very well designed, which is not surprising since Germany, as you know, had many talented artists. Its school of painting was second only to that of Italy; or to be more specific, only two schools of painting existed. Cranach45 and Albert Dürer46 were artists of the highest quality. The art of engraving thrived in Germany almost at the same time as in Italy and the number of engravers and illustrators was huge; as a consequence, naturalists never lacked the means of representing the objects they were observing.

15The second German botanist is Hieronymus Bock or Tragus,47 born in Heidesbach in 1498. He was initially a teacher in Deux-Ponts,48 then he became a Lutheran minister. He died in 1554. His book, entitled New Herbarium,49 was printed in Strasburg in 1539, without illustrations; but he added some in his second edition, borrowed from Fuchs,50 whom I will talk about later. Tragus was one of the most fervent and persistent scholars in the study of plants; he spent almost all his life traveling in the Vosges Mountains,51 which are close to his birth place. He gathered almost every plant. In his book they are divided into several sections, wild plants, fodder, trees, and bushes. There is no real method yet. Aristotle52 had provided a very specific one for animals based on their organization; but no botanist did such a work for plants. We saw that Theophrastus53 classifies them according to their use for some, and to the countries they come from for others; he does not provide anything like what botanists call nowadays a legitimate method, founded on the structure of the plants. These classifications are based only on accidental circumstances that have nothing to do with the plants themselves. We will see later that it is not until nearly the end of the sixteenth century that botany finally had a scientific method, while zoology joined sciences with the method created by Aristotle that classifies animals according to characteristics directly found in them.

16During the same period there lived a third German botanist named Euricius Cordus;54 it is at least the name he gives to himself in Latin since most of the names in the sixteenth century are either translated into Latin or into Greek. The German names in particular sounded too barbarian to be included in a book that was written in Latin; but these names were not always the translation of the family name of the authors or of their country with a Greek or Latin ending. Sometimes their names came from pure fantasy such as Melanchthon,55 for example, which means black soil. Euricius Cordus was more educated than the first two men I talked about; he was very well educated and well versed in Latin, which he taught in Erfurt. He corresponded with the famous Erasmus56 about it. In 1512, he went to Italy where he studied with Leonicenus.57 Then he came back to Erfurt where he gave some classes in medicine and botany. He was the one who created the first botanical garden that ever existed in Germany, but it was also a private garden. He died in Bremen in 1538. We have a book by him called Botanologicon, sive colloguium de herbis,58 printed in Cologne, in 1534, in a dialog format. This format, which was often used at that time, was entertaining but not very instructive. Euricius’s nicest work is his translation into Latin verses of two poems by Nicander called Alexi-pharmaca and Theriaca.59 This translation is still considered to be the best one today.

17But the man who is above all those I just talked about, the greatest botanist of the sixteenth century, and the first one to present plants in an acceptable manner, with figures designed well enough to enable their immediate identification, is Leonhard Fuchs,60 born in 1501 in Wemding in Bavaria. He was a professor in Ingolstadt in 1526, then physician to the Margrave of Ansbach.61 In 1528, he became professor at the University of Tübingen,62 and there, from 1531 until his death in 1566, he taught botany and anatomy. I already told you about him as a distinguished anatomist, but he deserves even more praise as a botanist. His work called De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, etc.,63 was printed in Basel in 1542, the same year the printing of the great anatomy of Vesalius began.64 Basel was at that time one of the German towns where printing was of the most exquisite quality. Basel, Venice, Paris, Florence, Antwerp, and Lyon were the towns where printing had reached near perfection. A large number of books were printed in a very refined manner in Basel during the sixteenth century. Fuchs’s book is outstanding especially for its illustrations, which amount to more than five hundred. The plates are in wood and drawn with a single line, but they are very accurate and of an acceptable size. They make up a small folio, the drawings of which almost fill the whole page, which is rare, even in the books that have been done since then. They still do not provide any detail on fructification, but the details that are represented are sufficient enough to identify the plants the author meant to illustrate. The text includes excerpts from all the Ancients, matched to the plants to which they seem to belong. It is therefore a kind of compilation; however, the author added his own description. Fuchs was a great enemy of the Arabs; he tried to discredit them as much as he could. These attacks were necessary at a time when the Arabs were leaders in all branches of medicine. He wrote several books on medicine that are very well regarded but outside the scope of our study. I had to mention him because he was the one to give the first groundwork on all the illustrations that successively came to enhance the study of botany in the works that were published after his book. A small edition of his history was published in Lyon in 1555.65 It is in duodecimo, without illustrations, but most of what made this book valuable is gone because the text is little more than a compilation, only worthy for its research in ancient synonymy, in which Fuchs is known to have excelled.

18One of his fellow countrymen and contemporaries, who would have become a great botanist if he had not died so young, is Valerius Cordus,66 son of Euricius Cordus.67 He was born in Simshausen in Hesse, in 1515, and died in Rome, in 1544, at the age of twenty-nine. He had already written a critique of Dioscorides as his father had done before him, and he wrote a book called Historiae stirpium libri quatuor68 that he was unable to publish because of his early death. Conrad Gessner69 had it printed in 1562 in Strasburg. It includes many new and beautiful plants. Fuchs had already presented many, but Valerius Cordus had gathered a large number of plants in Italy that were still unknown to this famous botanist. The fifth part of his work, which features the plants of Italy, was published in 1563.70 A sixth part remained in manuscript.

19After these authors, who wrote the first essays in the sixteenth century on the history of plants, came a man who became more famous than them and whose books were much more numerous, although he was far from being as worthy as the prior authors we talked about. This man is Pietro Andrea Mattioli, known as Matthiolus.71 He was born in Sienna in 1500, right at the beginning of the century we are studying. He received his medical degree in Padua where the most famous school of medicine in Europe of that time was located. Only the school of medicine in Montpellier could compete. Matthiolus practiced the profession of physician in Sienna and in Rome, but with little success. He ended up settling down in the Valley of Anania near Trent in 1527 and remained there until 1540. Then he went to Gorica, an Austrian town in Italy, and to Prague in 1552 where he had been called by Ferdinand I72 to become physician to his son, Archduke Ferdinand.73 Then he became first physician to Maximilian II,74 until he retired in Trent where he died of the plague in 1577.

20His book was published in 1544; it is an Italian translation of Dioscorides75 done with new resources that were not available to his predecessors. Contacts were already established with Turkey at that time; the King of France and the Emperor of Germany sent ambassadors to these countries. One of them named Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq,76 illegitimate son of Lord de Busbecq,77 was very well educated. During his stay in Turkey, which lasted quite a long time, he sent to Matthiolus a large number of plants from Greece and Asia Minor78 that he had gathered himself as he was quite well versed in botany. For each plant he wrote the country where he had found it. This information was very useful to Matthiolus for his work on Dioscorides with regard to nomenclature. Furthermore, he was in contact with all the botanists from Italy, those who owned those beautiful gardens that received foreign plants from everywhere. He was in contact in particular with Cortusi79 and Luca Ghini.80 His comments were first published in Italian,81 but he also published more than thirty editions in Latin. One of his great contributions was that he provided excellent illustrations; however, we must acknowledge that he benefited from the Italian and German painters and engravers, thus having more means than any other authors to enhance his work. The best edition, which is a masterpiece, was published in Venice in 1565.82 It is the edition by Valgrisi,83 approved by Pius IV,84 Ferdinand I,85 Charles IX,86 and Cosimo de’Medici.87 It includes about one thousand illustrations. Although engraved in wood, the drawing brought corrections and refinement to the illustrations. They are no longer single-line drawings like the ones published by Fuchs, but perfectly shaded, and aside from the botanical details that did not exist at that time, it is difficult to imagine any better rendition based on wood engravings. Basically these illustrations are very elegant and relatively perfect. Thus, this edition is still valuable today, although we do have nowadays books of a higher quality in all regards. Botanical details, for example, are missing, as I said earlier, because nobody thought about it at that time. Plants were observed as a group; even flowers were not studied as they are today. Scholars did not think about counting the number of stamens or observing the inside of the capsules, let alone the seeds; but again, the plants, as a whole are very well represented.

21One of Matthiolus’s contemporaries, who followed approximately the same methodology that Matthiolus used, did not only produce a commentary of Dioscorides; he wrote a book with a very original approach. This botanist is called Rembert Dodoens.88 He was born in the Walloon region89 in 1517 and settled in Antwerp. He then became a professor in Leiden where he died in 1585. In several instances, he published sections of books that included many illustrations engraved on wood. Since he had them printed in Antwerp where Clusius’s illustrations were also printed, some of their respective illustrations appeared in each other’s books. Dodoens’s book is called Stirpium historiae pemptades sex, sive libri XXX.90 It is a single folio volume, printed in Antwerp in 1563. The author presents more than thirteen hundred plants, but the illustrations are far from being as beautiful as those published by Matthiolus; they are also neither as large nor as well designed as the ones by Fuchs. In spite of these two negative aspects, this book introduces some novelty; indeed, between the time of prior publications and his book, travels to faraway countries brought new knowledge of botany and zoology. We already talked about the travels to the Levant by Belon,91 Rauwolf,92 and Prosper Alpinus.93 We can add Melchior Guilandinus94 to the list; he was born in Prussia and visited Egypt and Syria, but on his way back he was held captive by Algerian pirates95 who held him in harsh slavery until the famous Falloppio,96 whom we talked about after Vesalius,97 freed him by paying his ransom. Deeply indebted, he went to Padua to be with his liberator who added even more to his deeds by naming him, in 1561, director of the botanical garden instead of Anguillara.98 He did such a great job that when Falloppio died he was entrusted with his chair in botany, after it had been held for a very short time by Bernard Trevisan.99 He wrote a very famous treatise on papyrus. It contains for the first time the description of how this paper, used by the Ancients, was made, and the history of the plant that produces its raw material. This book was published in Venice in 1572; it is called Papyrus, hoc est commentarius in tria Caii Plinii majoris de papyro capita.100

22Human curiosity fortunately has no limit, and further explorations to faraway countries beyond those that had already been explored were anticipated. Thus, as soon as the Portuguese were established in India, their physicians started researching local plants. Since medicinal plants and spices from India had already been used for several centuries, initial studies naturally focused on these plants and spices, or at least on the vegetal products from which they were made. Garcias ab Horto or Garcia of the Garden,101 born in 1500 and professor in Lisbon, was the one who initiated these studies. He went to India with the vice-king as physician to the Portuguese settlements. On the island where Bombay is currently located,102 the capital of the English settlements that belonged at that time to the Portuguese, he created a botanical garden in which he gathered all the plants from India that were useful to medicine. He wrote a book on them that was printed in Goa in 1563 called Dialogues103 on the medicine and drugs of India. Clusius included a Latin translation of this book in his Exotica in a different format.104 Since then, it has been printed many times. This book enabled physicians to learn about the plants that provide the medicines they had been using for a very long time without knowing where they came from. It contains the description of aloe, asafoetida,105 benzoin,106 lacquer, camphor, betel, mace, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg, basically a wealth of precious substances that until now had not been studied at their source.

23One of Garcia’s students named Cristóvão da Costa,107 a Spanish surgeon from Burgos, later published a book on the same topic called Treatise on drugs and medicine from the East Indies and their plants.108 He introduced the sensitive plant called Mimosa pudica109 whose leaves fall inward when touched.110

24Another Spaniard called Nicolas Monardes,111 a physician in Seville, studied medicinal plants from America. In his book, he talks about copal,112 ricin,113 tolu,114 balsam,115 and tobacco, relating the history of the latter for the first time.116 He also relates how Indian jugglers used this plant, and through inhaling its smoke were able to reach some kind of inebriation before they would make predictions and perform other quack acts. He also talks about tobacco as something very much used in Europe. It was used indeed for fumigations as well as to smoke, but I do not think it was used yet in powdered form. Several other plants that are common today, such as gaiac117 and Smilax aspera,118 are also mentioned by Monardes, but the Ancients did not know about the ordinary bean that he mentions as a new vegetable. Finally, he talks about a few medicinal drugs extracted from animals, but I did not see that he talked about the potato. We will see that this tuber plant, which is the nicest gift from America to Europe, was not introduced until the end of the sixteenth century. We hear about it for the first time from Clusius.119 Clusius, as you know, was born in 1526 and died in 1609. I told you how educated this man was when we studied zoology; he is even more outstanding as a botanist. He traveled a lot in France, Italy, and Germany and ended up as director of the botanical garden of Vienna under Emperors Maximilian II120 and Rudolph II.121 Then he traveled to Hungary; thus, he had every opportunity to learn about plants from Europe, even foreign plants that had already been introduced. First, he published several small books: one on rare plants from Spain; another on those from Hungary and Austria; then he published a more general book that included all his prior work; it is called Rariorum plantarum historia and was printed in Antwerp by Plantin in 1601.122 It belongs to the seventeenth century by its date, but in reality it is a production of the sixteenth century since it is only a compilation of the works that Clusius had published in 1576.

25This work made Clusius one of the greatest botanists of his century. He was actually a very erudite man; he knew languages well and he had a perfect knowledge of authors. His style is very clear and elegant, and he is the one who gives the best descriptions on both aspects. His illustrations are in wood and the engraving is mediocre; however, they are sufficient to enable identification of the species. I cannot go into detail of those that have not yet been published; they are too numerous since there are more than six hundred. I will only mention the potato because it is erroneously believed that this plant comes from Virginia and that it was imported in Europe by the famous and unfortunate Walter Raleigh,123 the English admiral I told you about in my previous lesson. This belief is not correct. We can see in Clusius’s book that in 1586 the potato could already be found all over Italy and was so common that not only was it a staple food, but it was also used to feed animals. Such a large availability shows that it had probably been cultivated for several years; since Raleigh came back from his expedition in 1585, one year before the potato was profusely used in Italy, it is obvious that the potato was not imported to Europe by this admiral. Clusius gives us another proof that the potato does not come from Virginia. One of his books features an article with a very clear description of it and Gómara124 also mentions it as a staple food for people from Quito, and the neighboring areas of the mountains from southern Peru, who called it papas. All of its properties are so well defined that it is impossible to doubt its Peruvian origin and that its introduction in Europe is owed to the Spanish who brought it first to Italy. Thus, it is important to rectify this wrong belief about the origin of the potato and its introduction in Europe.125

26It is not surprising that Clusius includes the documentation we just mentioned; this famous botanist not only gathered plants from Europe, he also gathered several writings on plants from more distant countries. He even created a botanical garden; we can see that it had become necessary to study plants from nature. The same applied as well for animals, but their study was more difficult, and the usefulness of that study did not seem so obvious either. Small zoos and collections of remains of animals were thus created, but not as promptly as botanical gardens. The first gardens of this kind belonged to private people, princes, or professors. The Este family owned one near Ferrara;126 there was another one near Leipzig. Conrad Gessner,127 who I talked about earlier as a scholar in zoology, owned a botanical garden in Zurich. The Belgians and Dutch especially were at that time particularly focused on the culture of beautiful flowers; as soon as beautiful ones were introduced from foreign countries they immediately added them to their gardens and bred them.

27Fashion, which in the sixteenth century consisted mainly in wearing very beautiful embroideries, was on the lookout for new flowers. The numerous embroiders of that time resorted to all kinds of ways to obtain new patterns and they had thus created an impetus for the establishment of gardens exclusively aimed at meeting their needs.

28The most remarkable of these gardens was the one that belonged to Jean Robin128 who lived under Henry IV.129 Robinia acacia130 is named after him because he was the first one to introduce this plant into Europe, or at least to breed it. But all these gardens were not useful to science; science required public institutions where students could be introduced by their professors and allowed to study. The first institution of this kind was established in 1543 under the orders of Grand Duke Cosimo I.131 The direction of this establishment was first entrusted to Luca Ghini,132 a very erudite botanist, and then to Césalpin,133 the creator of the first system in botany. The second public garden was established in Padua in 1545 on the orders of the Republic of Venice, which at that time was a very fervent protector of this university as I already mentioned when we studied anatomy. Its first director was Anguillara.134 Guilandinus,135 the man from Prussia I just told you about, succeeded him and held that position for quite a long time. Finally, the third director was Cortusus.136 The next botanical garden was in Florence, created in 1556. Luca Ghini founded it after he founded the one in Pisa; he was succeeded by Benincasa.137 The fourth garden in chronological order was at the University of Bologna. This university did not want to leave this kind of ornamental gardens only to the universities of Padua and Pisa; thus, in 1568, it created its own botanical garden. Its first director was the famous Aldrovandi138 who we know already from the analysis I made of his research in zoology. Rome had the fifth botanical garden, within the Vatican; it was founded as well in 1568. Since these two cities are located within the state of the church, it is possible that their gardens were established on the orders of the same Pope, under the influence of Aldrovandi. Whether this is the case or not, Mercatus139 was the first director of the garden of the Vatican.

29In 1568, Europe did not have any other garden than the ones I just listed. Leiden was the first town in the north to follow the example of Italy. Its university had been founded two years before by the new republic of the Netherlands, in the name of Philip II;140 while insurrection was already blatant against this king, he had not yet been removed from power. The establishment of this university was to acknowledge the courage of the town of Leiden during the siege it held against Philip II. The town of Leiden had to face and manage the most terrible famine of all time under the orders of Van der Does141 who later became one of the first curators of this university. His botanical garden was established in 1577; its first director was Cluyt, in Latin Clutius,142 who we should not mistake for Clusius.143 A little bit later, in 1580, the garden of Leipzig was created. It was not until 1597 that France got a botanical garden. It was established at the University of Montpellier on the orders of Henry IV.144 Its first director was Richer de Beleval145 who was at that time professor of botany, and who personally contributed financially to maintain it. But after the death of Henry IV, while Louis XIII146 was still a minor, he lost the resources he had been granted and the garden of Montpellier was reduced to almost nothing; to such a point actually that when it was suggested to open a garden in Paris in 1626, it was based on the grounds that the one at Montpellier had been destroyed. Several gardens were established in Germany, in Giessen, in the Hesse region under Jungermann,147 and in Aichstaedt, by the archbishop of that time, Konrad von Gemmingen,148 who was a protector of the sciences, to be credited for the first luxury edition on botany. The town of Nuremberg, which was at that time a Republic and had founded the University of Alfort, created a botanical garden in 1625. These three gardens were established by the same director, Basilius Besler,149 an apothecary. Since he did not know Latin, he had to hire the services of a writer to prepare his book,150 which is a magnificent work.

30In 1626, it was ordered again to create a botanical garden in Paris. The project was presented by a physician of Louis XIII nicknamed Guy de la Brosse151 who spurred the interest of the first doctor of this prince called Herouard.152 Herouard was the one who obtained from the king an edict that ordered the establishment of a botanical garden in one of the neighborhoods of Paris, but more than eight years went by between the order and the execution of that order. During these eight years, Guy de la Brosse was very active in securing all that was needed for this garden; he wrote several times to the king, the Cardinal Richelieu,153 the superintendent, and the chancellor. He asked a Paris neighborhood for fifty acres of land and 200,000 francs; he did not receive even half of what he had asked for. This is how today’s Museum of Natural History came to be. Guy de la Brosse started giving classes there in 1634. Prior to that, the only botanical garden in Paris was the one that belonged to Jean Robin,154 which contained merely two hundred plants.155 That is all the University had available to teach botany. Thus, the university had to make up for it with field trips in the countryside where plants were shown to students in situ.156

31A botanical garden had also been set up in Jena in 1629. Messina also owned a similar garden in 1638. England came later and Oxford’s garden was not created until 1640. Copenhagen also had one that same year and Groningen the year after. The University of Groningen was founded only after the insurrection of the provinces of the Netherlands, like the one in Leiden, and it belonged only to the province of Groningen, as the one of Leiden belonged to the provinces of Holland and Zeeland.

32The garden of Uppsala, which became so famous and was one of the main hubs of progress in botany during Linnaeus’s157 time was founded in 1657; the garden in Amsterdam, which gathered probably the largest number of foreign plants, was founded in 1684. Several others were founded during the eighteenth century. As of today, we have as many gardens as science requires since every school, no matter how small, has its own.

33The last ones to have botanical gardens were the Spanish and the Portuguese, although they could have created them before anybody else, since they were the ones to make the first discoveries. The garden of Madrid was not established until 1753, and the one of Coimbra, which is the main botanical garden of Portugal, in 1773. Thus, it is only recently that botanical gardens have been used as an instructional resource in both countries. Before all these gardens were established, we only had comments from the writings of the Ancients, and illustrations and descriptions of indigenous and exotic plants. But these descriptions were done without any methodology, with only vague elements, and without a terminology that would have resulted from the specific study of the organs of fructification—there was neither classification nor a system per se. Thanks to the resources that botanical gardens provided during the second half of the sixteenth century, science started to progress. The first problem to solve was to know which part of the plant to examine for its characteristics of classification to establish the basis of methodology. Conrad Gessner158 was the one to discover it. I already told you about the life of this famous man, with enough details, and I won’t go back to it. I told you about his erudition, the trips he undertook, and the numerous correspondences he maintained to increase his knowledge in all the natural sciences. Indeed, you will see him again in the study of minerals. I showed you how he was the greatest zoologist of his century. He was also the greatest botanist. He traveled through Switzerland, Piedmont, Alsace, Lombardy, and southern France, with the purpose of gathering plants. He managed to identify more than eight hundred new species. In several small books, he focused primarily on proving that plants should not be classified according to all their parts without any distinction, but that their generic characters are to be found in the organs of fructification, which are the fruit and the flower. Thus, the characters of superiority are also to be found there as well, since it is obvious that the more important a plant part is, the more it belongs to a higher level of classification, to a more general division. He also showed that all plants with similar flowers and fruits are also similar in their other shapes, and also their properties, and that when we put these plants together we obtain a natural classification. This principle has been the basis of methodological botany. If Gessner had had time to finish his work, he would have probably become a classic author in botany, as he was in zoology. His plan was to publish a history of plants that would have been a sequel to his history of animals. It would have contained fifteen hundred illustrations and excerpts from one hundred and sixty authors. This book existed as a manuscript when he died. It was entrusted to his student Gaspard Wolf159 who was supposed to publish it, but since he did not have the time to do it, he sold it to a doctor from Nuremberg named Joachim Camerarius.160 The Camerarius family was one of the most erudite families of this town, like the Barbaro family161 in Venice and later the Bernouilli family162 in Basel, and several other families in various countries. The first of the Camerarius was born in Bamberg in 1500; he was almost a universal scholar. He was one of those who organized the most schools in Germany and spread the taste for ancient Roman literature the most. Joachim Camerarius163 was a physician and a great botanist. He directed the botanical garden of Altorf that was established by the Republic of Nuremberg. He used the plates that Gessner had engraved for an abbreviated version of Matthiolus that he published in 1586.164 Although engraved on wood, these plates are designed with such elegance and accuracy that Haller,165 who was an expert, not only in terms of science but also in other areas, said that because of these illustrations only Matthiolus’s book,166 which does not have much merit other than for its illustrations, was a book that allowed us to learn about botany, thus about a large number of plants, in the most pleasurable way. In addition to the talent with which these plates were designed, they also offer the advantage of presenting the flower and the fruit carefully engraved next to each plant. Gessner focused particularly on these parts; he put a lot of emphasis on them since he founded scientific botany based on these characteristics. Gessner’s writings went through several outside editors and its publication, which ended up being very incomplete, did not occur until two hundred years after his death under the title of Gessneri opera botanica.167 By then, botany had progressed so much that Gessner no longer offered any interest for the history of science. But it is a good thing to know about this book today and appreciate how far Gessner had gone in his botanical discoveries.

34I will stop here for today, with this step forward in the history of science and following how it progressed, not as fast as we could have wished, but in a steady manner as we will see it in our next lesson.