Books,plants,herbaria: Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and his circle in Italy (1539–1554)

Introduction

The month of June 1576 witnessed the arrival in the library of the Real Monasterio de El Escorial of the books that had belonged to the late Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (c. 1503–75), a humanist, poet, diplomat, historian, and much more.

After two decennia of meetings and fallings out that characterized the almost permanently strained relationship between the noble courtier and Philip II, an agreement had been made to bequeath the rich and coveted library that Hurtado had amassed, considerably augmented during the fifteen years he spent as an imperial envoy in various parts of Italy between 1539 and 1554, to the Spanish monarch. This precious collection of manuscripts and printed works came to form part of what was already emerging and was destined to become the major cultural achievement of Philip’s reign.

The inventory that accompanied the entry of the volumes into the Escorial lists the item Herbarium cum herbis ipsis adfixis quatuor tomis. ¹ This exceptional object is not properly speaking a manuscript, but consists of hundreds of pages of a herbarium, containing 950 dried plants pressed and affixed to the sheets of paper, which were subsequently bound in the four in-folio volumes mentioned in the inventory. Each volume has an index – most of them incomplete – of the plants it contains and bears the name of Diego Hurtado on one of the preliminary sheets. ² Of the 950 preserved plants, 837 are named; 83 of them are accompanied by further information, such as alternative names, details of their provenance, or comments on their identification. Various authors are cited in almost half of the cases; these are mainly classical and medieval sources, though there are a few contemporary ones. ³ There is no evident order and sometimes the same plant is repeated in one or more volumes.

The binding, which is identical to that of many other volumes belonging to Hurtado de Mendoza’s personal library, was clearly carried out at a later stage. A few pages have been inserted upside down; in some cases the annotation is partly obscured by the binding; and in other cases the lower part of the sheet has been folded to fit the proportions of the bound volume. This last detail is evidence that some of the plant names were written later, since they are found on the folded section of the sheet. The annotation is the work of at least three different hands: at least two wrote the names and comments prior to binding, while a third penned the names that were added later. While most of the sheets of the four volumes contain one plant per page, there are several quarto sheets at the end of the second volume containing as many as five different plants pressed and affixed to the same page. In the light of this detail, the repetitions and other features indicated above, we prefer to speak of the herbaria of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza in the plural.

As for the plants themselves, they belong almost exclusively to the flora dioscoridea, in other words, to the species present in the treatise De materia medica of Dioscorides. This is particularly significant if we bear in mind two things: that Dioscorides is by far the most cited author in the annotation of the herbaria; and that at the time of their compilation, a select number of humanist physicians were collating the available Greek manuscripts of Dioscorides to determine the original text, to comment on it, and to translate it into Latin or one of the vernacular languages for publication. ⁴

In spite of their importance, scant attention has been paid to these four volumes, ⁵ and only recently has a formal description been published with a somewhat more detailed account of their contents. ⁶ It is not our aim to conduct a geography of the flora contained in those volumes like the one recently conducted for the herbarium known as En Tibi, which is currently held in the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden. ⁷ In this case, where there is no annotation apart from the name of each plant and no further historical documentation, this method may lend support to the hypothesis of an Italian source for the plants.

The only firm evidence available at present regarding the date and provenance of the plants is thus the annotation, and in the case of the herbaria of Diego de Hurtado we are fortunate in having no less than eighty-three sheets that contain comments of varying lengths. These bear on the identification or use of a plant and include citations from and references to the works of classical authors (Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, Theophrastus) as well as medieval and contemporary authors (Mesue, Avicenna, Matthaeus Silvaticus, Pietro de’ Crescenzi, Ruel, Fuchs). They are cited from manuscript sources or printed editions, which are not always easy to identify. In more than a dozen cases the annotation mentions the provenance of the plant affixed to the page or the person consulted for its identification.

Analysis of the annotation contained in the herbaria and of contemporary documentation – especially the Italian correspondence of the Spanish humanist Juan Páez de Castro (1512–70) with the Aragonese historian Jerónimo Zurita (1512–80) – makes it likely that the production of the herbaria, or at least of a substantial portion of them, can be located in the milieu of Spanish subjects of Charles V who moved in the orbit of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza in the course of his periods as imperial envoy in Venice, Trent, and Rome between 1539 and 1554. ⁸ We believe that those fifteen years spent in Italy by the owner of the herbaria and his circle were crucial for their production.

On the basis of these clues to be found in the herbaria or in direct connection with them, and by way of a precise geography of lieux de savoir ⁹ that enables us to reconstruct the connections between diverse actors, our investigation aims to gain a better understanding of the uses and ends to which practices connected with natural history were directed among Spanish and Italian diplomatic and aristocratic circles in the first half of the sixteenth century. ¹⁰ In this sense, we set out to add new elements to the knowledge of the practices of observing and studying nature in a precise chronological setting, on the basis of a geographical, social, and intellectual context that has been relatively neglected by the historians of early modern science. At the same time, we aim to contribute to the definition of the scientific horizons and forms of intellectual sociability of a group of individuals that, as various recent studies have been highlighting, played a fundamental role in the political relations between the Iberian monarchy and the various Italian territories. However, the ultimate objective of this study is not confined to any of these aspects considered by themselves. On the contrary, it is precisely by confronting these different perspectives that we hope to shed light on the close connection between materia medica and diplomacy, natural history, and imperial geopolitics that is reflected in those uses and practices. ¹¹ In dialogue with some recent studies, we consider it important to highlight the uses of the natural world in various projects of cultural politics within the framework of the redefinition of a religious paradigm, a concern that was implicit in every form of the practice of natural history in the course of the sixteenth century. ¹²

Diego Hurtado de Mendoza’s Italian years, 1539–1554

Diego Hurtado de Mendoza was the son of Francisca Pacheco and Iñigo López de Mendoza (1444–1515), second count of Tendilla and first marquis of Mondéjar. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella appointed Iñigo mayor of the Alhambra, where his son Diego was born. A few years earlier, Iñigo had served as ambassador in Rome. He returned from there with the humanist Peter Martyr d’Anghiera (1457–1526), who was to become the tutor of his sons. They included Antonio de Mendoza (1490–1552), the first Viceroy of New Spain. Diego studied humanitates in Granada and Salamanca before continuing his education in Italy, probably in Padua. ¹³ After entering the service of Charles V, he took part in the recapture of Tunis in 1535 and followed the emperor during his triumphal entry to Rome. ¹⁴

In July 1539 Charles appointed him ambassador in Venice, a position that he was to occupy until 1546, although during the final two years he also spent time in Trent with the imperial delegation to the Council of Trent. During those almost eight years in Italy, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza built up a network of contacts with important figures in the political and cultural world of Venice. They included Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) and Pietro Aretino (1492–1556), who called him “a young man of all-round experience, keen learning, quick wits, intense foresight, rapid execution, prompt action, ready counsel and pleasing manner.” ¹⁵

While in Venice, Diego also indulged in his considerable passion for collecting, particularly Greek manuscripts that could be acquired on the rich Venetian market and in its colonies in the eastern Mediterranean. ¹⁶ He consulted physicians of the caliber of Jacob Mantinus and Amatus Lusitanus. ¹⁷ Furthermore, he established contact with Central European naturalists who traveled to Italy during those years in search of manuscripts or images for their works as well as engaging in excursions into the natural world, such as Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) and Valerius Cordus (1515–1544). ¹⁸ In this context, his interest in the world of nature was the main intellectual spur for Hurtado de Mendoza. His fascination with natural history is evident in the kinds of books and manuscripts that he came to possess and in the numerous objects of his rich collections. ¹⁹ That interest did not necessarily arise in Italy, because ultimately it goes back to his own family tradition and to the setting in Granada where he spent his infancy and youth. There the young Diego could count on close contact with such figures as Peter Martyr and Hernán Núñez (1475–1553), known as the Comendador Griego, who had both been called to Granada by his father Iñigo, while the Sicilian Hellenist Lucio Marineo (1460–1530) taught for years in Salamanca.

Be that as it may, during his Italian period Diego was also surrounded by a group of Spaniards who were there on various political missions of both a formal and an informal nature. Together with this small and select group of military men, lawyers, and clerics, Diego played a very active part in the collective construction of a rich cultural capital. It consisted of methods, techniques, texts, and objects that would later be reused in various contexts, sometimes closely connected with their places of origin in Spain or with the itinerant imperial court. Events in Trent are illuminating in this respect. During the last two years of his position as envoy in Venice, Diego was to spend long periods in the city where the Council of Trent was meeting in his capacity as imperial observer. He transferred his library there and put it at the disposal of the cardinals and their retinue, took on Fray Alonso Zorrillo (1508–71) as a secretary, and got to know a varied group of Spaniards and Italians stationed there as members of the Council or diplomats. As we shall see, these contacts proved to be crucial for the subject of the current investigation.

In 1547 Diego was appointed ambassador in Rome, where he remained for the next five years before returning to Spain in 1554. He spent the rest of his life between the court – from which he was expelled in 1568 during the crisis around the illness and death of Prince Charles, the heir of Philip II – and Granada, where his activities included combating the rebellion of the Moors and writing the chronicle of those wars. He returned to the court in Madrid for the last two years of his life before expiring in 1575.

Readings, botanizing excursions, dissections: An Aristotelian academy between Trent and Venice

During the Italian years of Diego de Hurtado, his scientific studies and activities were concentrated mainly on Greek natural philosophy. That this interest went beyond a purely textual or philological interest is clearly demonstrated by the existence of the herbaria and by the documentary evidence of the correspondence of Juan Páez de Castro. Thanks to Gonzalo Pérez (1500–66), the powerful Secretary of the Council of War of Charles V, Páez formed part of the retinue of the imperial envoy to the Council of Trent, Francisco de Vargas (1500–66). They arrived in Trent on 4 July 1545. Páez remained there until September 1547, after the Council had transferred to Bologna. ²⁰

Páez de Castro was born in 1512 in Quer (Guadalajara). He studied liberal arts in Alcalá, where one of his teachers was Alfonso de Zamora (1476–1544), who had participated shortly before in the edition of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible (1514–1517), the major intellectual achievement of Cardinal Cisneros, the founder of the University of Alcalá. ²¹ Páez continued as a law student in Salamanca, but his interest was still mainly in the languages of the Bible, those “four principal languages in which is written what is worth reading,” in “knowledge of the natural world – animals, plants, minerals,” and in mathematics. ²² During these years of study, Páez came into contact with Hernán Núñez and with Jerónimo Zurita, the recipient of most of the letters that Páez dispatched from Italy. ²³

Páez entertained great expectations regarding the stay in Italy, as he saw it as an ideal opportunity to learn all that was unavailable in Spain. The atmosphere in Trent disappointed him at first, but everything changed with the arrival of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and his library, which became not only a means of consulting texts on doctrinal issues, but above all a space of intellectual sociability. ²⁴ The Spanish ambassador’s library became a relevant lieu de savoir of the endeavor by the Council of Trent to reformulate the rules of Christianity using philology as one of its main instruments. It was precisely philological expertise and methods that were the common denominator of the various activities taking place in Trent, both within and outside the chambers of the Council. ²⁵

We can gain some idea of the importance of the exchanges that took place in that library from the following passage from one of the letters of Páez:

I come to the subject of Sr Diego, which is a large field. I kissed his hands when he arrived from Venice […] He treated me very cordially and with great generosity. Since then I am with him every day and he bestows on me such favours. My house is as full of books as I like, his printed books, manuscripts and folders. Now we are studying the Mechanics of Aristotle, demonstrating important things, because he has translated it into the vernacular and has provided glosses on it. I believe that I will be of some assistance to him, he never says anything except “let us study, Sr Juan Páez” […] His erudition is very diverse and remarkable. He is a great Aristotelian and mathematician and has no peer in Latin and Greek. In short, he is a very universal man. The books he has brought here are many and are of three sorts: some are big copies of Greek manuscripts, others are printed on all kinds of subjects, others are by Lutherans and all are openly available to anyone who requests them, except the Lutheran ones, which are only given to those who need to consult them for the Council […]. Besides these [sc. the Greek manuscripts] there are an infinite number on the Holy Scripture, medicine, music, philosophy and astrology. ²⁶

So besides the respective philological works, the two men shared a great interest in the work of Aristotle, and especially in his corpus of natural philosophy:

My principal study is Aristotle and to manage to emend my book with the exemplars of Sr Diego, in which I find marvellous things which are so many defeated monsters, so many additions and omissions that it is incredible, principally in the books De animalibus and those that go by this name. I do it stealthily to avoid Diego knowing, because I don’t know whether he would be amused. So keep it to yourself and know that for Aristotle alone I regard my arrival as well employed. ²⁷

In spite of their reciprocal interest and respective activities, it was evidently an intellectual relation in which the gentleman in possession of some bibliographical treasures permitted access to them that was to some extent controlled or limited. The following passage, written six months later, clearly shows the limits of this collaboration and the lengths to which Páez would go to try to bypass them:

I have concluded the Aristotle as far as the text is concerned, without Sr Diego knowing, so I beg you not to give it away, and to declare to those whom you have told, that it was I that read it and examined it in the exemplars of Sr Diego, but not that I had translated it, and tell this to Sr Honorato, ²⁸ because I don’t know whether it would please Sr Diego. ²⁹

It was by no means a question of a relation that was confined to the two of them. It was surely with the support and direct participation of Hurtado de Mendoza that Páez and others projected the setting up of an ephemeral ‘academy’ – the term that they themselves used to define the space where they exchanged ideas – that would permit them, for the duration of the meetings of the Council of Trent, to study the work of Aristotle. The project seems to have been already taking shape in August 1545:

For this winter we have set up a sizeable academy of very erudite members, all dedicated to understanding Aristotle, dum sub nivibus stupet alma tellus [while mother Earth rests under the snows], and they have received me: in part I believe that we will achieve something big; I append everything for when we will see one another. ³⁰

In fact, that “sizeable academy” carried out various activities in the winter of 1545–6, which were not limited to the mere consultation or collation of ancient texts. In order to prepare the sittings of the academy, using his patron Hurtado de Mendoza’s account Páez acquired various volumes in Venice not only of Aristotle but also of Galen, because there was also a place for investigation of the human body in this line of the study of nature (plants, animals, and minerals). The evidence contained in Páez’s letters to Zurita remains fundamental for information about other details, including anatomical practice and the circulation of the work of Vesalius only two years after its publication in Basel:

As for the books that you say I neglect, I shall make amends. Know that I did not buy Galen without mystery. The fact is, this winter we have had the best anatomy in the world, with a very select number of very learned members. I have carried out everything necessary for this purpose diligently, dedicating to Galen and Vesalius, whom I appreciate, more study than I realised. ³¹

As the university tradition followed the dictates of the seasons, the winter season of the academy dedicated to anatomy was followed by a summer academy dedicated to the direct study of plants and minerals, always checked against the ancient and modern texts: “This summer we have an academy of plants and minerals, as there are here very large mines, mainly of silver and iron, and I will go through another piece of Galen.” ³² Besides Páez, there were others who took part in the activities of the academy’s program, such as Giulio Alessandrini, who was already mentioned as a member of the academy in a letter of March 1546 and who joined in the research on minerals in the summer; Girolamo Fracastoro, physician of the Council at the time; and an unidentified physician who seems to have been an expert on local botany. ³³ Thus during the years of the Council, a program to study natural philosophy and natural history got under way in parallel to the evolution of the sessions and by virtue of the type of human and bibliographical resources that the Council had mobilized and brought to Trent. This program linked philological study and empirical observation inextricably with one another and found expression in the forms of intellectual sociability that were deliberately presented as harking back to the Peripatetic Academy of classical antiquity.

On the other hand, the correspondence of Páez shows to what extent the activities connected with herbs and plants in Trent that we consider to be closely connected with the production of the herbaria were linked to the intellectual circles of Venice, Padua, and Verona. In the first place, this was because, as we have seen, Venice was the preferred place for the acquisition of the works that Páez and Hurtado de Mendoza wanted for the work of the academy. In the second place, it was because, in the course of their peregrinations between Trent and Venice, both men had the opportunity to come across scholars who were important for their intellectual and scientific interest in the study of nature in Verona and Padua. For example, in Padua Páez met the old university professor of Greek Lazzaro Bonamico (1479–1552):

On the way back from Venice I passed through Padua and saw Lazzaro Bonamico. He is old and learned in what they call letras humanas [classical philology]. As I was only passing through, we did not have time together, but we have postponed our conversation until my return to attend an anatomy this winter. I shall inform you about it later. ³⁴

We learn from the mention of this brief meeting that Páez intended to attend one of the already famous anatomical dissections that were conducted in the winter. We do not know whether his expectations were met, but it is important to note that at that time the anatomical dissections in the University of Padua were conducted by Realdo Colombo (1516–1559). The two men could have met again later in Rome, where the anatomist became a member of the teaching staff of La Sapienza in 1548. ³⁵

In Verona, Páez visited Girolamo Fracastoro on at least one occasion, ³⁶ and after Fracastoro had been appointed physician to the Council of Trent he accompanied them on their botanizing expeditions in the spring of 1546. For years Fracastoro had belonged to the circle of scholars that gravitated around the Secretary of the Council of Ten of the Venetian Republic, Giambattista Ramusio (1485–1557), to which Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) also belonged. Páez offers an extensive description of the contents of Bembo’s house in Padua, highlighting precisely those items that attracted his attention as a student of nature: the library, the collection of paintings of animals, the antiquities, including the famous Mensa Isiaca, ³⁷ and the garden:

He [Bembo] has a very fine house in Padua which contains his very well-stocked library and many antique statues and tablets, in particular a bronze tablet with certain paintings of animals, which are said to be hieroglyphics. He also has a garden with many herbs and exquisite trees, which the Serenissima of Venice is now imitating in Padua for the university, which they say will be the best thing in the world. He has among his books some of Aristotle and a manuscript of Xenophon, which I wanted him to lend to Sr Diego, but he was not prepared to give him them: he pays him back in speaking badly of his study and the antiquities and garden, I know not how justly. ³⁸

It was precisely in Padua in these very years that the fundamental decisions were being made to launch a major politico-cultural project of the Serenissima of great botanical interest: the foundation of the garden of simples connected with the renewed teaching of materia medica in the University of Padua, but also to promote the study of oriental spices at a time when the Venetian merchants saw the trade in spices beginning to adopt new routes that were out of their control, especially in the hands of the Portuguese. When the garden was founded in the summer of 1545, its first superintendent – installed in August 1546 – was Luigi Squalerno (1512–70), known as Anguillara. ³⁹ Although there is no evidence that Anguillara ever created his own herbarium, his correspondence bears incontestable signs that he knew of the technique and of the existence of other herbaria. ⁴⁰ On the other hand, Anguillara was reputed to be a pupil of Luca Ghini (1490–1556), who is traditionally credited with the invention of herbaria for educational purposes. Much the same can be said about the Venetian nobleman Pier Antonio Michiel (1510–76): although there is no evidence that this meticulous observer and cultivator of plants in the private garden of his house in San Trovaso, Venice ever pressed and dried plants and affixed them to paper, he played a fundamental role in the foundation and financing of the botanical garden of Padua and was appointed as its provveditore by the Venetian authorities. ⁴¹ It does not appear that Michiel’s close contact with Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), the Italian author who began to create the largest known herbarium of dried plants in 1552, prompted him to imitate this technique, perhaps because he was already too busy creating his own rich and beautiful collection of painted drawings. ⁴²

At all events, it seems reasonable to suppose a connection between some of the pages of the herbaria of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and the botanical studies and practical experience of Páez, his associates, and the final owner of the volumes in Trent and in other places of such importance for the circulation of natural historical knowledge as Padua, Verona, and Venice. Although it does not explicitly mention herborizing expeditions in the field, in a letter of May 1547, when Páez was still in Trent, he offered Zurita his opinion about a specific plant: the glastum or pastel. ⁴³ Páez refers to his direct knowledge of the plant from the previous summer, the one in which the sessions of the “academy of herbs and minerals” mentioned in the previous letter had taken place, and announces the continuation of his botanical and mineral studies in the summer of 1547:

As for the glastum, I found your identification convincing and when I was working on herbs and plants for some time last year, I had Ruelio’s book on plants as my vademecum and I was delighted to see that in his chapter on the glastum he refers to your opinion. I am spending this summer observing some silver and copper and thousands of other metals that we have around here in the company of the most excellent physician Giulio Alessandrini. I shall save it all for when we see one another, God willing, for in this place there are the conditions for studying two things, plants and minerals, as well as in any part of the world. I have taken it up as a pastime and am wearing out my hands on it. ⁴⁴

As we can see, Páez and his associates were employing a research method based on the study of the classical texts, the modern ones that emended them (the French naturalist Jean Ruel (1474–1537) in this case), and, above all else, their own empirical observations. On the other hand, the collecting of botanical specimens in the hills of Trent, far from being exceptional, is a virtual leitmotiv of such important works in the formation of Renaissance knowledge about the plant world as those of Andrés Laguna (c. 1501–59) ⁴⁵ and Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–77). ⁴⁶ The connection of these two translators of and commentators on the work of Dioscorides with an empirical tradition based in Trent and its surroundings is evident from the comments that they included in their editions.

Finally, the letters of Páez de Castro throw light on the connection that he maintained with his native Spain. The exchange of materials, especially with Zurita, his principal Spanish correspondent during the Italian years, was reciprocal, as the following passage shows:

Please let me know that you have paid for them and when the opportunity arises, send me only the table of Aristotle and the Comendador Griego’s annotations to Pliny and a Greek Art of Vergara’s, and a Hebrew Art by Master Zamora. Because they are unattainable here and are required. ⁴⁷

Páez kept Zurita informed of all his activities in the field and in the library: his excursions to observe, identify, and collect plants, the manuscripts he obtained, the work he carried out on the texts, and so on. In return, Páez wanted to be kept constantly up to date on the activities that were being planned or implemented in the Iberian peninsula that might contribute to increase the knowledge in philosophy and natural history, such as Zurita’s own work and that of his former teacher Núñez, the Comendador Griego of the previous citation, on Pliny. Seen in this light, the Spanish projects formed part of a joint operation with those activities that Páez and his companions were carrying out in Italy. That joint operation could be defined as a work of both expurgation and enrichment of the existing natural histories – histories in the plural because the New World and its natural resources were also included; witness Páez de Castro on the return from Peru in 1545 of the accountant and future chronicler Agustín de Zárate:

I am delighted with the success of Sr Zárate and believe that besides the money he will bring back very curious things and a great account of those parts. You will believe that I would like to see that world and that I do not give up hope of seeing it. Certainly, it was the task of an Aristotle, if there were an Alexander, to illustrate that land – its skies and its position, the parts of the country, the herbs, plants, minerals and insects that are nothing like what is in our world. ⁴⁸

The encounter with the world of naturalists in Rome: Libraries, gardens and herbaria

Between the spring and fall of 1547, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Juan Páez de Castro left Trent. The former had been officially appointed imperial ambassador to the Holy See to replace Juan de Vega in May of the previous year, but postponed his triumphal and challenging entry to Rome to April 1547. ⁴⁹ Páez arrived definitively in Rome in October after long and difficult negotiations with the group of Spaniards resident in Rome in the circle of the powerful Cardinal Francisco de Mendoza y Bobadilla (1508–66), a cousin of Diego. ⁵⁰ Once in the city, Páez joined the familia of the cardinal, becoming his secretary and literary agent. However, his new position by no means prevented him from maintaining close contact with Diego Hurtado de Mendoza or from gaining access to his library, which had once again followed its owner to his new home. ⁵¹ Both men, although each according to the position and functions of their respective ranks, came into contact with the various cultural circles of Rome in the middle of the sixteenth century. ⁵²

Two important Spanish physicians formed part of the circle of Cardinal Mendoza at that time: Juan Aguilera (?–1560), who both before and after serving the cardinal as his personal physician taught astronomy in Salamanca and played a key role in the introduction of the work of Copernicus to the curriculum of that university; and Andrés Laguna, who had arrived in Rome in 1545 on the express invitation of the cardinal. Besides working as a physician in various social circles of the city and becoming physician to Paul III and later Julius III, Laguna worked intensely on his edition of Dioscorides. ⁵³ Those commentaries contain the evidence of his relation with Cardinal Mendoza, while the clearest proof of his link with Diego Hurtado de Mendoza lies in the fact that he dedicated his Annotationes in Galeni interpretes to him in 1548. ⁵⁴ As for his direct relation with Páez de Castro, this is demonstrated by the dedicatory epistle of his Dioscorides, in which he explicitly recognizes the role of Páez in the success of his attempts to establish the Greek text of Dioscorides, since it was Juan Páez de Castro who provided Laguna with the Greek codex that proved decisive in this respect:

Dr Juan Páez de Castro, an unusually learned man and most worthy imperial historian, assisted me in this task with a very old Greek codex and manuscript of Dioscorides, by means of which I made more than 700 restorations at points where all the interpreters of that author, both in Latin and in the vernacular, have erred in the past; for which the whole of Spain may justifiably give thanks that the text has now been translated most faithfully into Spanish as it has never been seen in Latin, as those who wish to compare my translation with all the others will readily admit. ⁵⁵

The circle of Cardinal Mendoza also included the jurist and theologian Antonio Agustín (1517–1586), a major collector of books, manuscripts, coins, and antiquities, whose name crops up frequently in the correspondence of Páez. Agustín was also a leading figure in the Accademia Vitruviana, a group of individuals led by Claudio Tolomei who held meetings in Rome that were also attended by Páez de Castro and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. ⁵⁶ Besides personalities of the caliber of Cardinal Marcello Cervini (1501–1555), guardian of the Vatican library who in 1555 became Pope Marcellus II for three weeks before expiring, it included Andrea Alciati, Daniele Barbaro, Annibal Caro, Jacopo Barozzi (Vignola), Sebastiano Serlio, Guglielmo Sirleto, and Paolo Manuzio, as well as various physicians who were interested in philology and natural history. The latter included Agostino Ricchi (1512–1564), publisher of the Opera of Galen in Greek and Latin, Giovan Battista Modio (?–1560), author of a treatise on the River Tiber, Ippolito Salviani (1514–1572), to whom we shall return, and Giuseppe Cenci, about whom the little that is known is enough to show that he was a crucial figure for natural history in Rome in the middle of the sixteenth century. Between 1539 and 1549 he held the chair of the Studium Urbis instituted by Pope Leo X to teach medicinal simples. ⁵⁷ Cenci was also physician to Margaret of Austria (1522–86) and responsible for the garden of simples created by this princess, a natural daughter of Charles V, in a vigna outside the city walls where he cultivated rare species and frequently received other scholars, including Andrés Laguna. The evidence for this lies in two of Laguna’s annotations in his Dioscorides and two plants that can also be found on two pages of the herbaria of Hurtado de Mendoza. The first occurs in the chapter on the colutea: “You can observe the Colutea in Rome in the vigna of Madam Margaret of Austria, and in the grove of S. Pedro in Vincoli.” ⁵⁸ The second is in the chapter on the cassia, in which Laguna notes that “a large quantity of this species [called coronaria by Pliny] of Cassia can be found in Rome in the vigna of Madam Margaret of Austria.” ⁵⁹

Laguna’s work on Dioscorides was clearly situated at the intersection of ancient descriptions and direct observation, resulting in updated knowledge about the natural world. This is demonstrated by his many allusions to direct observations of plants – their morphology, appearance, and qualities – and of their effects. These experiences enabled him to verify or question the affirmations not only of Dioscorides and other classical authors, but also of later and even contemporary ones. Every stage in the long career of the Spanish physician provided an opportunity to accumulate experience of the natural world that would later be used in his Dioscorides. Decisive among these were the experiences gained in the pharmacies and gardens of Rome, which are mentioned in dozens of passages.

In one of these Laguna mentions a sample of the colocasia that he had collected to preserve it. ⁶⁰ Two other passages confirm his ownership of a herbarium of dried plants. The first, in the long commentary to the Proem to Book I, indicates Laguna’s familiarity with the technique for preparing this peculiar object and appraising its epistemological and heuristic potential:

To aid the memory, it is very useful to preserve the herbs themselves glued to cardboard, as I have preserved an infinite number of exquisite and rare ones. In this way they retain their shape and colour for centuries as if they had been preserved in balsam. ⁶¹

The second can be found at the beginning of the chapter on clover in Book III:

There is an abundance of it near San Giovanni in Lateran in Rome, where I collected a plant that I still have pasted with others. ⁶²

These references to the possession of an infinite number of plants glued or pasted are fundamental for an understanding of the role that the creation of a personal herbarium played in the development of Laguna’s work and in his approach to the study of nature, as well as of the decisive role of his years in Rome. What is more, we are bound to see a direct relation between these references and the creation of the herbaria that have come down to us under the name of their owner, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, even more so if we take into account the evidence that at least a substantial proportion of them came from Rome.

The presence in Rome of Hurtado de Mendoza and his intellectual circle provided numerous occasions to practice direct observation of nature and to collect study materials by taking advantage of the many locations and resources that the city offered the student of nature. Some pages in the herbaria of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza contain explicit indications regarding specific Roman sites where the observation, collection, or study of certain plants took place. These indications refer to Rome and its environs and once again reveal the city to be a fundamental place for the creation of knowledge at the intersection between text and the material objects of study.

The first explicit mention of a location in Rome can be found at the beginning of the Hurtado de Mendoza herbaria in the first volume. It concerns the plant labeled Lazarolus (Aronia). The two annotations, each in a different hand, placed on the page facing the one containing the dried and pasted plant, discuss the identification of the plant (whether or not it is a spês assignable to the medlar genus – irrespective of whatever those terms may have meant to Diego at the time). The passage in question states that the sample was collected “from the vigna of Cardinal Colonna in S. Maria in Grottaferrata,” which is only a short distance from the city of Rome. ⁶³

Besides this valuable reference by the compilers of the herbaria of Hurtado de Mendoza to the practice of herborization in the Roman countryside – an activity we also find practiced by the naturalist Michele Mercati at the beginning of the 1570s to increase the number of species cultivated in the Vatican gardens ⁶⁴ – and the notice that the plant, already abundant in the Neapolitan countryside, ⁶⁵ is now being cultivated in Rome too, the annotations are important for yet another reason: the reference to a classical source.

In this case the classical source referred to is Book III of the De plantarum historia of Theophrastus. It is highly significant that the Theophrastus is the very text on which Páez de Castro was feverishly working in his Roman study from the spring of 1548 until January 1549:

My study is proceeding well, I shall soon finish the Aristotle, in which I have noted important things. I am also reading Theophrastus and comparing it with the translation by Theodore of Gaza and with Pliny. I am finding many slips of interpretation and many in Pliny. On the other hand, both Pliny and the interpretation are very useful. But now that in our day the history of plants has advanced so far, there are still good things. ⁶⁶

By the fall of 1549 he had continued the painstaking work on the De historia plantarum of Theophrastus and intended to continue with another treatise on plants, De causis plantarum. Once again he insists that he is not only emending the Greek text, but also comparing it with the Latin translation by Gaza and with Pliny:

I have spent these hot months reading Theophrastus’ De historia plantarum. I have noted important passages against Pliny and Theodore of Gaza. Later I shall compare De causis and after that what Gaza translated of Aristotle. I think something good will come of it. I have a manuscript of Theophrastus, which is not easy to find, even though it is very inaccurate, but it is of assistance when we least expect it. ⁶⁷

Thus the project of revising the classical texts of natural history had begun with Aristotle before moving on to the Greek manuscripts of Theophrastus’s two treatises on plants. The objective was to criticize and correct both the Latin translation of Theophrastus by Theodore of Gaza that was most commonly consulted by scholars, and Pliny’s Historia naturalis. The work that Páez undertook on the Plinian text in Rome seems to have formed part of a Spanish project to establish the text and comment on that work that had already been launched by Hernán Núñez (as we have seen, while he was in Trent in 1546, Páez had asked Zurita to send him a copy of Núñez’s annotations on Pliny). They wanted to continue the work of their teacher, one from Spain (Zurita) and the other from Rome (Páez). So once the critical work on Theophrastus, the translation by Gaza and the location of errors in Pliny (including Núñez’s commentary) had been completed, in January 1549 Páez felt that the moment had come to collate the critical work carried out on the text of Pliny. This is how he put the matter to Zurita, since he knew that the latter had also annotated the text. He thus envisaged a collective effort that would include other scholars in Rome, as can be deduced from the following passage:

I think I told you how I was reading Theophrastus. I have concluded and discovered serious errors in Gaza and Pliny. The Comendador Griego picked out a few, but there are many more. I am resolved to translate it anew, using the opportunity to include all the other opuscula that are waiting to be translated. So with this diligence and the assistance of the Comendador Griego and with your own annotations, I believe that we shall produce a very cleaned up Pliny. So please send all you have on Pliny so that we can share it here. ⁶⁸

The work on Pliny occupied much of the time that Páez devoted to his studies in Rome. The exemplar of Pliny on which he was working is now, like the herbaria of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, in the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. The many manuscript annotations in that codex are the fruit of Páez de Castro’s labors, and a note in the manuscript states clearly: Romae XII April MDXLIX. ⁶⁹

The second explicit mention of a Roman location as a source for a plant contained in the herbaria of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza occurs in the annotation written between two complete rhubarb leaves glued to the page. This time the reference is to a “seed from Judea planted in Rome in 1538 in the home of Cardinal Cesarini.” ⁷⁰ Once again we find an indication of the role played by the possessions of cardinals and other clergy in the production of scientific knowledge in mid-sixteenth-century Rome. ⁷¹ In this case the garden in question is the famous one of the pro-Spanish Cardinal Alessandro Cesarini (?–1542) in San Pietro in Vincoli. ⁷² Rhubarb was highly valued on the market for exotic spices and was used by both European apothecaries and cooks. Moreover, in these very same years Francisco de Mendoza y Vargas (1523–63), son of the Viceroy of New Spain Antonio de Mendoza (1494–1552) and thus a nephew of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the proud possessor of the herbaria under discussion, was trying to introduce ginger, rhubarb, and other Asian spices in what is now Mexico. ⁷³

The third precise indication of a location in the city of Rome is the hospital of Santa Maria della Consolazione on the south side of the Roman Forum. Hospitals played a crucial role in the cultural practices connected with the renewal of medical and natural knowledge in Rome. ⁷⁴ The first of these explicit references accompanies an exemplar of Seltis, the second an exemplar of Degalta. ⁷⁵ In both cases, the indication is brief but sufficient to identify the hospital that was created in 1505–6 through a merger of three hospitals and their respective Marian confraternities: Santa Maria della Consolazione, Santa Maria delle Grazie, and Santa Maria in Portico. Managed by the first two of these, its main care activities were directed to those men and women (in separate wards) who had been hospitalized as a result of a wound or accident, common as such incidents were in a district full of artisanal workshops. This specialization no doubt accounts for the excellent reputation of the hospital among Roman anatomists of the mid-sixteenth century, since it could provide corpses for dissection that were young and in a good condition. ⁷⁶ The hospital also had its own apothecary in which prescriptions were prepared and medicinal potions were distilled, ⁷⁷ while a gardener tended the hospital garden in which local and exotic plants were cultivated. ⁷⁸

In the period that concerns us, the physician of Santa Maria della Consolazione was the Dutchman Gisbert Horst (1492–1556), the “Doctor Gilbertus” whose name appears in various annotations in the herbaria, always as an expert authority for identification of and information about the pressed and dried plant exemplar on the relevant page of the herbaria. ⁷⁹ Although virtually unknown to historians, Gisbert Horst had a distinguished reputation among his contemporaries. He was one of the teachers of Pieter van Foreest (1521–1597), who praises him several times in his Observationes. ⁸⁰ In 1544 Horst published a small treatise, De Turpeto et Thapsia, on the efficacy of these two plants of the classical arsenal as medicinal simples and as ingredients of various remedies used to heal wounds, and therefore of obvious relevance given the specialization of the hospital in which he worked. Two exemplars of these plants can be found in the herbaria of Hurtado de Mendoza. ⁸¹

Horst’s many contacts with naturalists active in Rome or elsewhere have been reconstructed in detail by Florike Egmond and Sachiko Kusukawa, who have shown that it was Horst who sent Conrad Gessner thirty-seven fish images. Moreover, they have demonstrated the close connection between Horst and Ippolito Salviani, author of a treatise on fish published in 1557–8. ⁸² The “Maestro Ippolito medico-chirurgico” mentioned in the administrative documentation of the hospital besides Gilbertus may have been Ippolito Salviani himself. ⁸³ In that case, the hospital, its garden and apothecary would be a shared place of work in which their relations and their common interest in the practice of natural history would have been confirmed.

Horst’s intense sociability and his role in the various networks of naturalists are confirmed by Andrés Laguna. When he refers to “maestro Gilberto,” it is to underline his skill as a naturalist and expert in simples, especially though not exclusively in the field of poisons and antidotes. Horst is the “keen-sighted scrutiniser of medicinal matters” who gave Andrés precious specimens, such as a piece of aspálato, ⁸⁴ or a sample of a highly sought type of cinnamon that the Spanish physician jealousy kept in his private collection of natural curiosities:

I can without doubt boast not only to have seen it, but also to have now in Rome that second type of cinnamon that tends to red and is called Montana, which was presented to me as a special treasure by Doctor Master Gilberto, a most excellent physician and most honest friend of mine. ⁸⁵

The two physicians also jointly carried out various experiments in tasting dangerous venoms, like that of the viper, which they found “white as milk and sweet as honey.” ⁸⁶ This recognition of the epistemological value of sensory experience confirms the idea that the intellectual project of which the herbaria formed a part is the ideal sum of empirical and erudite activity, deploying both artisanal techniques and materials and philological and textual techniques. Although few in number, the clues contained in the herbaria of Hurtado de Mendoza are eloquent in this sense. However, the first conclusion that we would like to draw from this first analysis of the source and its contextualization is the importance of stressing that, besides the interaction between both fields of activity, it is essential to take into account the complexity of each of them, since they both imply plural practices developed in distinct areas. These are more or less recent practices, more or less borrowed from other fields of knowledge or of manual work, in spaces that, in turn, are under construction; it is the type of work conducted in them that plays an essential part in their shaping as spaces of knowledge. The library, the garden, the apothecary, the cabinet were assuming the shape of lieux de savoir in those years in the first half of the sixteenth century. Following the clues that the herbaria give us about the location of their producers, we have moved from Diego Hurtado de Mendoza to Juan Páez de Castro, from Andrés Laguna to Gisbert Horst, from Marcello Cervini to Ippolito Salviani; from Trent to Venice, Padua and Verona to Rome, with its libraries, cardinals’ residences, gardens and hospitals. In those urban or suburban locations manuscripts were sought, texts were scrutinized, samples were collected, herbaria were made, and identifications were conducted through conversation and the exchange of sensory experiences (especially visual ones, but taste, scent, and touch also played a part). Most of the time the orality in the construction of knowledge about the plants in the herbaria escapes us, but it has left its trace in small clues. ⁸⁷

Second, most of these knowledge practices were not conducted in isolation, but together with other scholars: it was a collective affair, with regard to both the process of construction of determinate spaces and the material elaboration of the pages of the herbaria down to their binding in the four volumes of the library of Hurtado de Mendoza. The botanical knowledge about these hundreds of plants is thus the result of collective synergies between persons who had communicated or learned a series of techniques of different material and intellectual forms of knowledge. This dialectic is at work in the herbaria themselves, the result of the work of many hands.

Third, it is therefore important to emphasize that everything points to Rome as the place where such a pluridimensional and polysemic object as these herbaria was physically produced. These spatiotemporal coordinates are important because they oblige us to question the geography of the production of the first herbaria of dried plants for study purposes, which seemed to be firmly established in the traditional historiographical narrative. ⁸⁸ The herbaria of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza oblige us to change this fixed image to some extent and to turn our gaze on other contexts. It is not a question of claiming chronological primacy or entering into one of those sterile debates on who was the first or who taught whom; simply, it entails questioning a unilinear account based on a simplistic conception of creation and diffusion that, almost always, loses sight of the complexity of the process of creation and communication of knowledge.

Finally, the herbaria of Hurtado de Mendoza are evidence of the inseparable bond between artisanal production, the practice of herborization, and the deployment of sensory experience, on the one hand, and the philological labors of the humanists, on the other. In the central decennia of the sixteenth century, certain cultural circles in Rome in which prominent imperial servants operated played a crucial role in the development of a form of knowledge of nature that implied the wedding of philological and textual practices with empirical inquiry and the use of material techniques derived from artisanal culture.

Thus the various operations that underlie the production of the complex instrument of knowledge constituted by these herbaria and the collective endeavor that they imply are also the fruit of the relations between four geographical settings, which formed four distinct geopolitical spaces that were going through very important cultural phases in those central decades of the sixteenth century. First, the particular religious and political conjuncture of the Council of Trent brought important representatives of the Catholic cultural élite to the region. Second, the Veneto cities of Venice, Padua, and Verona were involved in those years in a process of institutionalization of various practices connected with the teaching of medicine, especially anatomy and materia medica, that attracted both Catholic and Protestant students – sheltered by the relative autonomy of the Serenissima in matters of religious politics – from all over Europe to the Studium Patavinum. Third, the group of Spanish humanists and Hellenists trained in Alcalá with Hernán Núñez, including Zurita and Páez, took advantage of the more tolerant irenical tendency as long as they could. Fourth, the Rome of Pope Paul III (1534–49) and his successor Julius III (1550–5) was characterized by the presence of a multiplicity of courts – of the Pope, the cardinals, diplomats and nobility – and a plurality of institutions offering medical and other forms of assistance. These formed spaces of intense cultural exchange both in the field of philological study and in that of the knowledge deriving from empirical observation of the natural world.

Epilogue. Twenty years after, in El Escorial

The four volumes of the herbaria of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza entered the collections of El Escorial in 1576. The heterogeneous legacy of Hurtado de Mendoza acquired by the monarch who had ordered the construction of this new royal palace, mausoleum, and monastery in 1563 consisted of numerous manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew, numerous printed works, and a rich collection of medals, coins, inscriptions, and other antiquities and works of art. ⁸⁹

The integration of the Mendoza collections in those of El Escorial was linked to two aspirations. On the one hand, during the last years of his life Hurtado de Mendoza had given thought to the future of his collections and considered that El Escorial was, if not the ideal place, at least one of the most suitable to confer due luster on the cultural capital that he had accumulated in the course of his life. On the other hand, Philip II and his circle of scholars, functionaries, and artists were working seriously on the creation of a library in the monastery that would be the center of the accumulation and production of universal knowledge, capable of competing with the big libraries of its day such as the Vatican, Marciana, or Fontainebleau libraries. ⁹⁰ The new royal library could count on the important collection of books of the dynasty, as well as the collection that Philip had been building up since his youth, with the assistance of the humanists who had been his mentors. ⁹¹ However, Philip’s appetite was so great that from the late 1570s he launched a veritable book hunt. It involved ambassadors, secretaries, and informal agents in the service of the Crown, above all in Venice and Rome. Understandably, the prime targets became the collections of books accumulated by the Spaniards who had served in Italy in the final years of the reign of Charles V. ⁹² These included the libraries of Juan Páez de Castro (1570), Francisco de Mendoza y Bobadilla (although in the end the acquisition failed to materialize), and Antonio Agustín (1586), but – at least from 1572 – that of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza was the most coveted of all. It was not until 1575 that the royal secretary Antonio Gracián managed to procure the death-bed cession of the collections of Hurtado de Mendoza in exchange for the cancellation of the debt of 8,000 ducats that Diego had contracted with the Crown. With the arrival of these collections, which made an impression on the members of the royal circle, the holdings of the library of El Escorial took a great leap forward in both quantitative and qualitative terms. ⁹³ Behind the operations on the part of Philip II and the narrow circle of prominent cultural figures involved in them aimed at making this library a place where universal knowledge was concentrated, thus, lay an attempt – hitherto insufficiently explored, we believe – to appropriate the cultural and symbolic capital accumulated by the Spanish élite in Italy during the last years of the reign of Charles V.

Thus the herbaria of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza now in El Escorial came to be incorporated in a new policy of nature that included projects of very diverse importance in the 1570s and 1580s, ones that connected the two shores of the Atlantic, as exemplified in the natural histories (with their reflections of a natural theological nature) of authors like Francisco Hernández and Benito Arias Montano. ⁹⁴