About PhytEikon
In ancient Greek medicine, remedies were composed of a wide variety of natural substances that were cataloged, described, and examined in such works as De materia medica (Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς) by Dioscorides (1st century A.D.) and De simplicibus (Περὶ ἁπλῶν φαρμάκων κράσεως καὶ δυνάμεως as per the standard title of scholarship) by Galen (129-after [?] 216 A.D.). A considerable part of these substances consisted of plants, with over 700 items according to the Greek names among approximately 1,000 items in each of the two treatises. Numerous manuscripts contain depictions of these plants, ranging from magnificent full-page, multicolored illustrations to small, marginal sketches drawn in pen. Some of these manuscripts have been reproduced in facsimile editions from the early 20th century to the present, with both deluxe expensive volumes for bibliophiles and affordable scholarly editions, all of which have raised awareness about these manuscripts previously known only to specialized researchers. Digitization has further enhanced the dissemination of these beautifully illustrated codices, which are now accessible in open access and can be rightfully appreciated by a wider audience. PhytEikon investigates ancient plant representations as scientific devices resulting from empirical observation of the world translated into graphic visualizations, which reflect a taxonomy that not only introduces meaning in nature but also allows for precise identification and safe use of natural resources for human purposes, dietary, therapeutic, cosmetic and other.
The plant representations in the ancient Greek manuscripts have been known for a long time in scholarly studies with an oscillating fortuna between high and low interest and, in all cases, different approaches. As early as the Renaissance, Italian physician and scholar, Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501-1578), mostly known in contemporary literature for his translation of Dioscorides’ treatise first published in 1544, soon enhanced his work with woodblocks that reproduce in some cases the representations in the manuscripts of Dioscorides’ treatise. The fascination with De materia medica, so characteristic of the Renaissance, swiftly evolved, leading at the turn of the 16th / 17th centuries to first forms of botany independent from the classical legacy that made ancient literature soon obsolete. Its study became rare—there was no new edition of Dioscorides’ work between 1598 and 1829—and took the form of antiquarian study and catalogs of manuscripts (especially those with plant illustrations) such as the Bibliothecae compiled by the bibliographers Johannes Albert Fabricius (1668-1736) and Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777). Antiquarian interest culminated with a program commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (1717-1780) in the 1770s. The Dutch physician and personal doctor of the Empress, Gerard van Swieten (1700-1772), along with Dutch botanist and professor at the University of Vienna, Nicolas Joseph Jacquin (1727-1817), and Slovak scholar and curator of the Vienna Imperial Library, Adam František Kollár (1718-1783) collaborated to the Plantarum Dioscoridis Icones program that consisted in reproducing the plant illustrations from the two manuscripts of Dioscorides preserved at that time in the Library and now identified as the Codex Vindobonensis and Codex Neapolitanus. Despite the engraving of copper plates and the printing of sets of proofs, the project was ultimately abandoned. Nevertheless, it had a second, unexpected, life through Oxonian botanist Sibthorp. At that time, John Sibthorp (1758-1796) had initiated a program to identify the flora of Greece using the taxonomical system recently developed by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). In preparation of his field trip in Greece, Sibthorp stayed in Vienna not only to meet Jacquin, but also to examine the Greek manuscripts of Dioscorides. From Jacquin he received one of the sets of proofs of the Plantarum Dioscoridis Icones, whereas another (or the other) was offered to Linnaeus. In his expedition in Greece in the 1780s, Sibthorp had with him this set of proofs, however bulky and heavy it was with its 412 plates, as he saw them as a potentially useful heuristic instrument. While in Greece, he also visited the library of the Athonite Monastery of the Great Lavra, where he was able to examine the 11th century illustrated version of Dioscorides’ treatise preserved in the monastery library. Sibthorp died prematurely without having achieved his Flora graeca, which was published in 10 magnificently illustrated volumes between 1806 and 1840. References to Dioscorides appear in the description of almost all the 1,000 taxa included in the work. Flora graeca might have been a swan song. At the turn of the 18th / 19th century, appreciation of ancient botanical illustrations was changing. In post-revolutionary France, Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison (1759-1818), who examined the Paris manuscript now identified as graecus 2179, studied the plants depicted in the codex. Although he thought to have successfully identified several taxa, he reached nuanced conclusions regarding the feasibility of achieving precise Linnean identifications that included both a genus and a species on the basis of the plant representations of ancient manuscripts. With the adoption of the Linnean taxonomical system, the ancient botanical texts that had played a crucial role in identifying the flora of Greece became outdated once more, and illustrated botanical manuscripts were mostly studied as artistic works. The publication of the first modern photographic reproduction of an ancient botanical manuscript in the early 20th century (the Vienna codex) was a milestone in this regard. Thanks to it, indeed, a rare and valuable manuscript that had not been easily accessible for consultation until then, became available for personal examination. Illustrated Greek botanico-pharmaceutical manuscripts have been increasingly analyzed since then, primarily from an art history viewpoint. Whereas facsimile editions reproduced a limited number of such codices—apparently no more than four, though with different editions for some of them—digital reproductions online dramatically increased the corpus available for study.
Despite recent advancements in information technology that facilitate the compilation of extensive collections of primary materials, as well as scientific methodology that currently promotes interdisciplinary approach in research, the study of plant representations in Greek manuscripts has not yet fully leveraged these new opportunities. Regardless of how well-documented they may be, existing studies frequently rely on a restricted number of primary sources and focus on a limited number of images considered to be significant, typically treating plant representations merely as illustrations rather than as botanical tables. When analyses extend beyond individual case studies, they can be defined as history of botany whereas they should be about botanical interpretation of plant representations. Due to the limitation or even absence of an epistemologically sound approach, research has not yet established a method using specific botanical keys for the reading and understanding of ancient plant representations.
Both vast reservoirs of images and specific botanical reading-keys can be expected to renew the analysis of plant representations, be they in ancient manuscripts or in early printed books. This is what PhytEikon aims to do. It is built on a set of axioms that are not a priori methodological, but rather conclusions of decade-long empirical observations of plant representations in manuscripts searching to account for the construction, transmission and possible transformations of plant representations. All such conclusions have been further formulated as axiomatic analytical devices possibly susceptible to general application.
Plant representations should be approached as scientific devices not introduced into scientific books as ornaments, but as instruments gradually formed over time through repeated observations and practical applications, with a twofold aim: generating knowledge of the world in accordance with a taxonomical system that introduces order in the immense variety in nature, allowing for efficacious practices and serving humans, from nutrition to pharmacotherapeutics. Approached in that way, plant representations should be analyzed as botanical tables, serving a specific scientific function, instead of being regarded as an esthetic enhancement of books. They are not mere illustrations as often stated but a component of a scientific discourse in which they are related to a text that they embody, whether this text is present or not as in the case of botanical albums. They should not be supposed to be an exact duplicate of a vision of reality, but rather as translations in visual terms of botanical characteristics allowing for correct identification and naming of different plant species according to a taxonomical system. These plant representations can and must be deciphered according to what has been aptly termed a philology of images. Just like words in a phrase and phrases in a discourse built on an argumentative and expositive strategy, their components are not separate, discrete entities, as they are selected, defined and articulated in a meaningful way. Transformations in either the elements or their assemblage should be analyzed in a dynamic way as results of adaptive processes, not only—if at all—artistic in nature. They are functional and reflect either the transfer of a corpus of representations to a different environment that requires adaptation for correct recognition or, more deeply, a transformation in the methods for the analysis and conceptualization of plants. This does not exclude that sets of representations were transmitted in a persistent way through the centuries without undergoing other variations than imprecise or inaccurate rendering of details resulting from graphic inability or any other factor hindering exact duplication. Continued repetition, though apparently contradicting the above, might have had a function in se and per se as it resulted in providing an instrument for the study of a classical taxonomic system to be learned as a propaedeutic instrument for further investigations. Books for learning and books in practice do not offer the same data, and books for learning are usually far more traditional than books in practice. In all cases, for any conclusion to have some validity, interpretation should not be based solely on cases deemed significant—even though such cases might serve as heuristic device for full investigations—but on the whole set of representations in any manuscript under consideration.
The cornerstone of any analytical proposal for the study of ancient plant representations probably is its capacity to identify pairs of manuscripts, distinguish a model and a copy, and account for the differences that justify identifying one of the manuscripts as a copy of the other. Philology of images is more than ever an appropriate designation as it proceeds in the same way as the textual analysis practiced in the preparation of critical editions of ancient texts. All manuscripts are systematically compared, assembled in coherent groups on the basis of similarities, and then analyzed by pairs to identify differences that can be genetically explained through positive or negative processes of interventions, active aimed at improving, updating or correcting the text, or passive, resulting in a transformation or loss of information.
PhytEikon makes analysis as the above possible particularly thanks to its integration in the MediManus platform. Taking from the comprehensive resources of MediManus it allows for a systematic screening of most if not all illustrated manuscripts, annotating their plant representations and connecting them to the works they are related to, which are available in the library of fully searchable digital texts of PharmAntica. PhytEikon also makes it possible to extract plant representations from manuscripts thanks to the iiif format, to juxtapose or superimpose similar representations and precisely identify and measure their differences, leading to identifying models and copies. Through these and other possible research programs, PhytEikon is an instrument for a laboratory aimed to study and better understand the Greek scientific legacy in an unprecedented way.