Text-fig. 7. “Acorus” = Iris [Herbarius zu Teutsch, Mainz, 1485].
The German Herbarius was much copied and translated into other languages, the original set of figures being, as a rule, reproduced on a smaller scale. According to Dr Payne, the earliest French edition called ‘Arbolayre’ (derived from the Latin, herbolarium) is now an exceedingly rare book. It is said to differ little from the original except in the fact that the French translator declined to believe the myth that the Mandrake root has human form.
Another early French herbal, very similar to the Arbolayre, was published under the name of ‘Le Grant Herbier.’ The origin of the text of this book has been the subject of some discussion. Choulant regarded it as derived from the Ortus Sanitatis, but an Italian authority, Signor Giulio Camus, has discovered two fifteenth-century manuscripts in the Biblioteca Estense at Modena, which have thrown a different light on the subject. One of these is the work commonly called ‘Circa instans,’ while the other is a version of the Grant Herbier; on comparing the two, Signor Camus concluded that the French manuscript was obviously derived from Circa instans. A version of the latter, differing somewhat from the Modena manuscript, was printed at Ferrara in 1488, and other editions appeared later.
The figures which illustrate the Grant Herbier seem to have been derived from those of the Ortus Sanitatis rather than those of the Herbarius. The work is of special interest to British botanists, since it was translated into English and published, in 1526, as the ‘Grete Herball,’ a book which will be discussed at length in the following chapter.
Another work, which appeared with reduced copies of the familiar illustrations from the German Herbarius, was the ‘Liber de arte distillandi de Simplicibus’ of Hieronymus Braunschweig (1500). In this book, the method of distilling herbs, in order to make use of their virtues, was described in considerable detail, with drawings of the apparatus employed.
Text-fig. 8. “Leopardus” [Ortus Sanitatis, Mainz, 1491].