The Tractatus de herbis (Treatise on Herbs), sometimes called Secreta Salernitana (Secrets of Salerno), is a textual and figural tradition of herbals handed down through several illuminated manuscripts of the Late Middle Ages. These treatises present pure plant, mineral, or animal substances with therapeutic properties. Depending on the version, there are between 500 and over 900 entries, grouped in alphabetical order. Originating in Italy, they were distributed throughout Europe and contributed to the transmission and popularity of the pharmacopeia of the Salerno School of Medicine. For example, there is a Tractatus de Herbis, an illustrated treatise of medicinal plants painted in 1440, housed under shelfmark Sloane MS 4016 in the British Library, in London.
The illustrations in these manuscripts attracted the attention of art historians from the 1950s onwards, due to their descriptive value, which was interpreted as a revival of Greek botanical illustration. Some of these plant images represent the first studies based on nature since Antiquity. The original Latin text, whose author remains unknown, comes from Circa instans, a work from the second half of the 12th century attributed to Matthaeus Platearius, and written in the Salernitan milieu. It is augmented by extracts from other late antique and early medieval sources, such as Pseudo-Apuleius, Arabic medicine handed down by Constantine the African, medieval Latin versions of Dioscorides' work, Isaac Israeli's dietary principles, and perhaps includes pharmaco-botanical knowledge from oral tradition.
The two earliest versions of the Tractatus de herbis, whose relationship is debated, are preserved in Egerton Manuscript 747 at the British Library in London and in Latin Manuscript 6823 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. The manuscripts derived from them are mainly divided between a group originating in northern Italy, some copies of which are devoid of text, and a French translation containing almost thirty testimonies and known collectively as the Livre des simples médecines. The latter was responsible for the publication of the first herbarium printed in French, Le Grant Herbier en françoys, which underwent several reissues between the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and was in turn translated into English as the Grete Herball.
The origins of the tradition and the exact function of herbariums remain obscure and debated. While the earliest manuscripts were probably compiled as true scientific treatises, some derivative versions are more like prestige creations intended for a wealthy elite. Despite competition in the early 15th century from more naturalistic works, such as the Herbarium Carrarense, the schematic, flattened images of the Tractatus de herbis enjoyed over two centuries of popularity, before being definitively sidelined by the shimmering exoticism of New World plants.
Background
The Medieval medicine of Western Europe was much influenced by the many groups who contributed to the make-up of society. The contributions of Byzantine, Arabic and Mozarabic physicians were introduced into the Greek foundational texts of medicine, as was also the knowledge of people from further afield across the borders of the western world. Among the many results of this multiplicity of ethnic groups and cultures, medicinal plants had many different names coming from the several groups who were using them to prepare remedies. Such diversity was a source of confusions. To avoid the danger possibly generated by confusion between plants, apothecaries and physicians compiled dictionaries of plant names and commissioned albums with representations of the plants and other materia medica (animal and mineral) they used in their daily medical practice.
The Tractatus de Herbis is one such work linking the different plant names to the plants themselves through the mediation of the image. This made it possible to avoid confusion and, consequently, the risk of administering to a patient a plant different from the one prescribed by the physician. The Tractatus was produced to enable physicians, apothecaries and others identify the plants they used regardless of their nationality and language. the earliest surviving version, from the early 14th century (before 1330) and now known as Egerton 747, and in the British Library was relatively unknown till 1950, following which it was realised that there was a whole family of herbals with a common ancestor, which became collectively known as the Tractatus de herbis. These fall into two main groups, The North Italian Group (including British Library Sloane MS 4016) and the French group (including British Library Egerton MS 747).
In some manuscripts, such illustrative albums do not contain any text, but only the names of the plants in the language of the several groups present in medieval society. These albums with multilingual lists of plant names were visual aids which allowed for easy identification of the plants to be used in the practice of remedial therapy. Their representations of materia medica were much more efficient than words to make transcultural exchanges possible.
These illustrated works transformed the whole field of botanical literature. From translators/interpreters aimed to make it possible to associate one plant with its names in different languages and populations, they became reference works which made unnecessary to include plant representations in botanical and medical treatises. They became reference works of a new type which could be consulted and used by readers of any language.
Historiography
The title Tractatus de herbis appears for the first time in a late 18th-century catalog of the Estense Library in Modena, to designate, within a collection of larger medical texts, a specific treatise on medical matters in Latin attributed to Dioscorides. It is derived from the explicit text that begins with the phrase Explicit tractatus herbarum ("Ends the treatise on herbs"). The treatise attracted the attention of the self-taught botanist Jules Camus, who recognized it as an amplified and illustrated version of Circa instans, a twelfth-century Latin text attributed to Matthieu Platearius and known since the second half of the eighteenth century through the works of Albrecht von Haller and, above all, Kurt Sprengel. In his study published in 1886, Camus also analyzed a second manuscript from the Estense library, which he identified as the French translation of the Tractatus de herbis and as the primitive version of a work printed at the end of the 15th century under the title Le Grant Herbier en françoys.
In 1950, the Austrian art historian Otto Pächt noted that the Modena Tractatus was merely a copy of a manuscript in London's British Library, ms. Egerton 747, and that the latter had been compiled 150 years earlier. He also established that two other versions, preserved in Florence and Rome respectively, were directly derived from the London manuscript and belonged to the same figurative tradition, which he called Secreta Salernitana. In 1974, the Swiss Felix Baumann studied the development of this tradition, alongside his work on the Carrara herbarium, and popularized the use of the term Tractatus de herbis to describe the texts contained in numerous codexes from the 13th and 14th centuries, and to distinguish them from the Circa instans from which they derive. He confirms the centrality of ms. Egerton 747 and identifies a more or less contemporary derivative version transmitted by a codex from the Bibliothèque nationale de France - Latin manuscript 6823. Baumann also proposes a division of the various Tractatus into two categories: the "Northern Italian Group" (Oberitalienische Gruppe) and the "French Manuscripts" (Französische Handschriften). The latter include the numerous Livre des simples médecines from the 15th century, including the Modenese manuscript studied by Jules Camus, and are in turn divided by Baumann into three groups according to the order of the sentences in their incipit.
This classification was called into question by François Avril when he published a critical edition of the French text contained in ms. 12322 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Instead, the French art historian proposed two main geographical groupings: manuscripts from Northern France and the Burgundian states, and those from Western France. These conclusions are partially contradicted by the work of Belgian historian Carmélia Opsomer, author of a two-volume edition of a Brussels manuscript likely to have originated in southern France. These works demonstrate that Livre des simples médecines are more numerous than those taken into account by previous researchers, and that they deserve to be classified not only according to their iconography but also in relation to the redaction of the text they contain.
In the 21st century, the figurative cycle of the Tractatus de herbis was the subject of a detailed chapter in Minta Collins' book on the illustrative traditions of medieval herbariums. The American researcher does not question the classifications proposed by Baumann and Avril, but argues for a Campanian origin for the two oldest manuscripts. Her work is complemented by Vera Segre Rutz's analysis of the illustrative corpus of ms. 459 from the Casanatense library, which identifies the influence of North Italian manuscripts on the artistic production of the Visconti court. In 2006, Jean Givens analyzed the evolution of the transmission of medical and botanical knowledge through the study of three versions of the Tractatus de herbis: ms. Egerton 747 from London, a Livre des simples médecines from the Royal Library in Copenhagen and a printed edition by Grete Herball. While most research has focused on iconography alone, in 2009 Iolanda Ventura published the first critical edition of the Latin text contained in ms. Egerton 747. Her analysis highlights the relationship between the Tractatus de herbis and other redactions of the Circa instans, as well as with the main pharmacological sources of Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Transmission The Tractatus de herbis exists in two distinct versions, transmitted by the two oldest manuscripts in the tradition: the version by "Pseudo-Barthélémy Mini de Sienne", contained in ms. Egerton 747 in the British Library, and the version by Manfred de Monte Imperiale, present in ms. Latin 6823 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Each of these has given rise to copies, derived versions, and vernacular translations.
LONDON Egerton 747 (1280-1350) FLORENCE Pal. 586 (1350) Livre des simples médecines (28 manuscripts) (1425-1540) MODENA Lat.993=alfa.L.9.28 (1458) Petroneller Kräuterbuch Mid-15th century BASEL K II 11 (Mid-15th century) PARIS Latin 6823 (1301-1350) PARIS Masson 116 (1365-1375) ROME Casan. 459 (1395-1400) VATICAN Chigi F.VII.158 (Early 15th century) LONDON Sloane 4016 (1440) MUNICH Cim. 79 (1440) VATICAN Chigi F.VIII.188 (Mid-15th century) VATICAN Ross. 1067 (fifteenth century) SIENNE L. VIII. 18 (Late 15th century) COPENHAGEN Thott 191 2 (Late 15th century)
Egerton Manuscript 747 and derivatives
The Tractatus de herbis contained in manuscript Egerton 747The Egerton collection was originally created by a donation from Earl Francis Egerton in 1829. in London's British Library is the earliest evidence of the treatise, and may be the original version from which all the others derive. It occupies the first 109 folios of the codex, which also contains other texts, including a Nicolas Antidotary. The treaty is signed by a man named Barthélémy Mini from Siena.