Plant Cuttings

Botanical icons: Critical practices of illustration in the premodern Mediterranean by Andrew Griebeler, 2024. The University of Chicago Press.

No doubt, like many who have taught classes about the history of medicine, I have made reference to De materia medica by Pedanius Dioscorides (Tel Asiado)*. Usually, it was in slightly disparaging terms that, despite it being one of the main sources of plant-based medicinal practice for hundreds of years after its production, it was copied many times over and full of accumulated errors in text and illustrations. Well, Botanical icons by Andrew Griebeler [which book is here appraised] puts the record – and me! – straight on many points about Dioscorides’ influential text.

But, and right at the start of this post, it is necessary to stress that it’s not Dioscorides’ words that are an important focus of Botanical icons, but the illustrations. Indeed, and Griebeler’s first revelation to me was the fact that Dioscorides’ original ‘book’ – a five-volume collection of writings on botanico-medical matters produced in the 1^st century CE, essentially a pharmacopoeia – was not actually illustrated [To date, the earliest surviving illustrated copy of the original De materia medica is a parchment dated towards the end of the 8^th/beginning of the 9^th century CE.]. Since Dioscorides’ own work wasn’t illustrated until long after it was first ‘published’, Griebeler begins his analysis of Critical practices of illustration in the premodern Mediterranean (the book’s sub-title) by considering the first illustrated herbals [which probably appeared in the 2^nd century BCE], and the profession of root-cutting carried out by the rhizotomoi (Orestes Davias).

Once the scene has been set for illustrated plant-based books, Griebeler presents a fascinating, phytoforensic analysis of, in particular, the illustrations in various versions of Dioscorides De materia medica that appeared throughout the Mediterranean area. Why Dioscorides? Because his “pharmacological treatise … would eventually come to serve as the authoritative text on medical botany in the medieval Greek and Arabic Mediterranean” (p. 4), and “became the most central pharmacological work in Europe and the Middle East for the next sixteen centuries”. In that account – which occupies approx. two-thirds of the book’s 329 pages – Griebeler meticulously covers such matters as: the importance of illustrations to transmission of botanical knowledge; the esteem with which illustrated pharmacological texts were held (e.g. “an illustrated Greek manuscript of Dioscorides serving as a diplomatic gift between Byzantium and Umayyad Iberia” (p. 113) in the 10^th century CE); the users of the manuscripts themselves; the techniques involved in manuscript production and creation of the illustrations; and the philosophy behind the manner in which the plants were represented on a two-dimensional page.

But, and above all, Griebeler goes to considerable pains to point out that copying out versions of book such as De materia medica** was not done uncritically, In fact, often there is evidence that the copyists went to considerable lengths to ensure that their illustrations were as accurate as could be, even taking trouble to correct errors in the images that they were being copied into the new version(!). This was not the careless – and therefore error-prone – copying of what was there before, It was carried out in a far more careful, considered, and critical way than other commentators on the subject would have us believe***. Indeed, refuting those assertions is one of the main goals of Botanical icons, whose “claims counter prevailing views of premodern botanical art and science as stagnant traditions based on the uncritical copying of earlier manuscripts” (p. 2).

Furthermore, having critically analysed the care taken in selection, and often improvement of, images to incorporate into illustrated herbals and pharmacopoeia fully supports Griebeler’s thesis that “an entire body of knowledge about the natural, visible world can be conveyed and transmitted primarily through visual, depictive means, in ways that are complementary and sometimes even contradictory to other, primarily verbal, means of creating botanical knowledge” (pp. 2/3). As a consequence Griebeler has succeeded in demonstrating “the unique role of illustrations in the production and transmission of botanical knowledge in the premodern Mediterranean, making evident the claim that a picture does not merely document an object in the world, but also actively forms knowledge of it” (p. 6). So important has been the visual contribution to illustrated herbal manuscripts that it has continued into the modern era, and therefore “represents one of the longest continuous traditions of secular and scientific image-making in Western Eurasia” (p. 2).

What about the sources?

As a fact-based book, Botanical icons is also one of the best statement-sourced publications it has been my pleasure to review. Its Notes section occupies approx. 70 pages and contains more than 860 numbered Notes (which are indicated in-text by super-scripted numbers). Because of the large number of Notes, each page of this section very helpfully states the text pages to which they relate. A good example of the sufficiency of in-text source-stating is the 2^nd paragraph of p. 164, which has exemplary referencing. Readers will know how important it is to state one’s sources as evidence for statements made because it’s something I comment upon in every book I’ve appraised. And almost all of those tomes have fallen a little short – some massively so! – when it comes to providing the necessary completeness of evidence to satisfy a sceptical reader that what is stated in the book can be backed-up and defended. So, to come across a book that appears practically perfect from that point of view is a rare thing (sadly, a very rare thing) and something to be celebrated. The author is to be congratulated on producing such a fine example of an evidence-based, factual book!

The one thing that would have helped me…

… is a timeline of the various manuscripts mentioned, so I could get my head around the chronology and (inter-)relationship between them, and so better appreciate the temporal development of the pictorial tradition in botanical texts.

Overall appreciation

Botanical Icons is an exceptional book****. As an academic assessment of “Critical practices of illustration in the premodern Mediterranean” – the book’s sub-title – it delivers a thorough and thoughtful appreciation of the role and development of botanical illustrations in herbals and medical texts in the Mediterranean region from ancient to Mediaeval times. As you should expect from its subject matter, Botanical icons is very well-illustrated throughout. It’s also very well-written. Although the text can be challenging in places, I always impressed with its scholarship and rigour, and its style*****. Additionally, each chapter has a good introduction and an indication of its contents, with a useful conclusion at its end.

Summary

Andrew Griebeler’s Botanical icons is a thoroughly-researched – and evidence-based – academic appreciation of the art – and science – of illustrations in botanical-medical texts from antiquity until the Middle Ages. It’s a fascinating account that will be appreciated by botanists specifically, and by all who are interested in the transmission of botanical knowledge. It should certainly be read by anybody thinking of citing Dioscorides’ De materia medica in a lecture on ancient medical texts!

* And, In case you’re wondering why Dioscorides, a Greek physician, should be writing in Latin, he wasn’t. Although his text was originally written in Greek – Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς (On Medicinal Matter) (Peri hulēs iatrikēs) – it’s probably best known in its translated Latin version as De materia medica, hence use of that title in Griebeler’s book, and this post. A Latin version is also in keeping with the fact that Dioscorides served in the Roman army (Judy Duchan), and was therefore a citizen of the wider Romano-Mediterranean world for whom Latin was probably the lingua franca. It’s also a recognition that Latin became the language of the elite and learned peoples of Europe and the Mediterranean so it was natural that Dioscorides’ words should be more widely-publicised in the Latin version. However, and as Griebeler reminds us, versions of Dioscorides’ text were circulated widely throughout the Mediterranean region during that period in several languages – Greek, Arabic, Syriac, and Latin, often with annotations in languages other than that of the text.

** Although Dioscorides’ book is not the only botanical text that Griebeler considers and discusses in Botanical Icons, no fewer than 11 versions of De materia medica are analysed. Referred to by names such as the Morgan Dioscorides., Naples Dioscorides, Old Paris Dioscorides, Parchment Arabic Dioscorides, the Topkapi Dioscorides, and the Vienna Dioscorides, they offer a fascinating insight into how Dioscorides’ original text and post-publication accompanying illustrations changed over the centuries.

*** Griebeler isn’t afraid to name names, and cites works by Charles Singer, and Otto Pächt as two studies that have “played a central role in establishing the main narratives in the early history of botanical illustration” (p. 3). For example, in his 1927 article, The Herbal in Antiquity and Its Transmission to Later Ages (The Journal of Hellenic Studies 47(1): 1-52, 1927; https://www.jstor.org/stable/62525), Singer “described medieval herbals in degenerative terms. They are, in his words, “feeble works for feeble minds,” products of the “wilting mind of the Dark Ages,” a reflection of “the Decay of the Western Intellect”” (p. 3). And Pächt, in his 1950 publication, Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13(1/2): 13-47, 1950; https://www.jstor.org/stable/750141), stated that “botanical illustration first emerged in the Hellenistic world with a high degree of naturalism, but that it degenerated over the course of the Middle Ages as a result of stylization as well as the successive, uncritical copying of pictures” (p. 3). In my opening remarks to this post it seems I was unwittingly guilty of perpetuating the views of Singer and Pächt. Having now been appropriately enlightened by Griebeler’s illuminating comments regarding the true quality of mediaeval illustrated botanical texts, that is a mistake I will not be repeating(!).

**** Botanical icons‘ historical overview ends at about the time where Stephen Harris’ The beauty of the flower‘s begins. By way of handing-over the baton and setting the scene for this, Botanical Icons anticipates Harris’ starting point with reference to – and discussion of – the 16^th century illustrated plant-based books, Otto Brunfels’ Lively icons of herbs, and Leonhart Fuchs’ On the history of plants (Julie Gardham). Together, Griebeler’s and Harris’ two tomes provide a masterful account of the development of botanical illustration over the last two thousand years or so.

***** A good example of Griebeler’s style is found in connection with comments about the medical practice of bloodletting (Maria Cohut; Sanat Pai Raikar), which “found staunch [(Linda Hepler)] support in Galen’s writings” (p. 105).