Unexpected Modifications?

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Unexpected Modifications?
Perceptions of Animals and Their Visual Images
in the Hortus Sanitatis1
Gerhard Jaritz
The first edition of the natural history encyclopedia Hortus Sanitatis2 was
published in Latin by Jakob Meydenbach at Mainz in 1491. The publisher was
inspired by the very successful editions of an herbal in Latin and the vernacular
called Herbarius Moguntinus and Gart der gesuntheit a few years before.3 The
Hortus Sanitatis of 1491 became much bigger than the herbal. It consists of
1073 illustrations, 530 chapters on plants, 163 on animals living on land, 122 on
birds, 106 on fish, and 144 on stones and minerals. It was, thus, as Noel Hudson
already stated in 1954, “a vast compilation, a stupendous effort to collate
biological knowledge and medical science …”4 Jakob Meydenbach, the
publisher, himself saw it as an opus preclarissimum (ac) laudatissimum, although
it was not as successful as he might have expected.
Like the herbal, the Hortus Sanitatis also went through various editions
which became more successful than the first one; between 1497 and 1499 the
second, third, and fourth were issued at Strasbourg, and an edition in Venice in
1511. Five editions of the encyclopedia in German followed (Strasbourg: Beck)
between 1515 and 1530. Around 1500, a French edition was published in Paris.
1 This contribution is based on a paper presented at the conference “(Un)Expected Animals in
(Un)Expected Places” (University of Louisville, Kentucky, May 2014).
2 For the following general remarks in regard to the Hortus Sanitatis see Gundolf Keil,
“Hortus Sanitatis,” in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. 4
(Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1983), coll. 154-64; idem, “Gart der Gesundheit,” in
ibidem, vol. 2 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1980), coll. 1072-92.
3 See Brigitte and Helmut Baumann, Die Mainzer Kräuterbuch-Inkunabeln – „Herbarius
Moguntinus“ (1484) – „Gart der Gesundheit“ (1485) – „Hortus Sanitatis“ (1491). Wissenschaftshistorische
Untersuchung der drei Prototypen botanisch-medizinischer Literatur des
Spätmittelalters (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2010).
4 Noel Hudson, An Early English Version of Hortus Sanitatis: a Recent Bibliographical Discovery
(London: Bernard Quaritch, 1954), vii.
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In 1520/21 the animal part of the Hortus was used for a Dutch and an English
edition, both printed at Antwerp (Der dieren palleys and The Noble Lyfe …).5
The conception of the work follows a connection between the traditional
general encyclopedic interpretation of nature and practical medical knowledge.6
Each plant, animal, and stone is illustrated and described based on ancient and
Christian authorities, most often followed by a description of the medical
effects, that is, operations in the Latin editions, würckung in the German ones,
or operation in the English one.
What I would like to concentrate on here are mainly the illustrations of the
animals and any surviving traces of the reception of these illustrations that can
be recognized in textual and visual notes added by readers of the volumes. For
my analysis, I went through a sample of about thirty surviving Latin and German
volumes of the Hortus. Readers left comments in about one third of them.
The illustrations themselves followed more or less the example of
bestiaries and applied similar methods as in the visual representation of objects,
towns, nature, and so on in this period. While well-known objects are often
represented following their actual appearance in a rather recognizable way for
our modern understanding, those which were unknown or less known were
depicted in either a formulaic or stereotypical manner following a type based on
textual descriptions. However, I consider it dangerous or even illegitimate to
speak of ‘correct’ and ‘wrong’ visual representations or ‘realistic’ and fantastic’
ones; this would be too great an attempt to merge our twenty-first-century
understanding of reality and non-reality with the different understandings and
perceptions of the fifteenth and sixteenth century.7 Just recently this problem
was nicely referred to in the catalogue of a large exhibition on animals in the
past presented by the Swiss National Museum in Zurich:8 “The world of
5 Der Dieren Paleys (Antwerp: Jan van Doesborgh, 1520); The Noble Lyfe & Natures of Men
of Bestes Serpentys Fowles & Fisshes (Antwerp: Jan van Doesborgh, 1521). See Hudson,
An English Version; L.A.J.R. Houwen, “The Noble Lyfe: An Early English Version of the
Hortus Sanitatis,” in Schooling and Society: The Ordering and Reordering of Knowledge in
the Western Middle Ages, ed. Alasdair A. MacDonald and Michael W. Twomey (Leuven et
al.: Peeters, 2004), 62-71.
6 Christel Meier-Staubach, “Der ‘Hortus Sanitatis’ als enzyklopädisches Buch. Zur Pragmatisierung
traditionellen Wissens und ihrer Realisierung in der Illustration,” in Alles was
Recht war. Rechtsliteratur und literarisches Recht. Festschrift für Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand
zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Hans Höfinghoff et al. (Essen: Item-Verlag, 1996), 191-92.
7 Cf., e.g., the problematic discussion on “wrong” (“falsch”) and “realistic” (“wirklichkeitsnah”)
medieval visual representations of animals in Dominic Olariu, “Miniaturinsekten
und bunte Vögel. Naturbeobachtung und Tierdarstellungen in Manuskripten des 13. Jahrhunderts,”
in Similitudo. Konzepte der Ähnlichkeit in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed.
Martin Gaier et al. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2012), 59-76.
8 Luca Tori and Aline Steinbrecher, “Zwischen Fiktion und Realität. Zu Tieren und
Fabelwesen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit,“ in Animali: Tiere und Fabelwesen von der
Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Eine Ausstellung des Schweizerischen Nationalmuseums im
Landesmuseum Zürich, ed. iidem (Geneva and Milan: Skira, 2012), 14 (my translation).
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imagination of the pre-modern period merged and mixed the differently
conceptualized levels of being of the modern world so that animals, humans and
composite beings were equally thinkable and presentable as living species.”
The depictions of the Onocenthaurus and Orasius (fig. 1),9 here taken
from a German edition of the Hortus Sanitatis from 1529, follow the verbal
description, based, in the case of the Onocenthaurus, on the ‘Book of Nature’ of
Thomas of Cantimpré: “it is a strange and wondrous animal of twofold shape,
the head like an ass and the body like a human.” The Orasius or Orafflus,
following Albert the Great, has “a long neck, a horse’s head, is twenty ells high
in the front, multi-colored, with more red and white.” This is clearly the
description of a giraffe, which the depiction follows only to some extent.
Fig. 1: Onocenthaurus and Orasius
9 Gart der Gesuntheit zů Latin Ortus Sanitatis von allerley Tieren, Vöglen, Vischen oder
Mörwundern und edlem Gstein … (Strasbourg: Balthasar Beck, 1529), Universitäts- und
Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf:
http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/download/pdf/1402363?name=Gart der gesuntheit (last
access December 2015), Von den Thieren, chapter 107.
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The picture shows some signs of sixteenth- or seventeenth-century
reception of the image – two kinds of crosses – which, however, do not suggest
any particular meaning. This is not true for other kinds of scribbles or notes that
one can find in the surviving volumes, which originate mainly from monastic
space. In the Latin editions one sometimes comes across translations into the
vernacular as, for instance, in a volume of the 1499 edition of the Hortus from
the Lower Austrian Benedictine monastery of Göttweig; for ciconia, for
instance, the stork, the reader added the German translation: ein storch (fig. 2).10
A similar example also shows that volumes printed in Germany found their way
to the British Isles. One of them, kept today in Glasgow, contains a number of
translations in a seventeenth-century hand, like the bistrix receiving the caption
the porkopyne (fig. 3).11
Fig. 2: Ciconia – Ein storch
10 Hortus Sanitatis (Strasbourg: Johannes Prüss, 1499), Krems (Lower Austria), Institut für
Realienkunde of the University of Salzburg (from the Benedictine house of Göttweig), De
animalibus, chapter 27.
11 Hortus Sanitatis (Strasbourg: Johannes Prüss, 1497) Glasgow, University Library, Sp Coll
Bm4-e.2: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/7655465804/in/photostream/
(last access December 2015), De animalibus, chapter 73.
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Fig. 3: Bistrix – the porkopyne
Sometimes, one comes across explicit evaluations of the images and their
quality, as in a volume of the 1536 edition with a note dated 1618 saying ein
schens roß ist daß (‘This is a beautiful horse’) (fig. 4).12 In a number of cases,
however, there are already questions concerning the correctness of the visual
representations of an animal, as, for instance, in the same volume and by the
same reader, concerning the Duran, about which, as the text says, the ‘Book of
Nature’ states, based on Aristotle, that it is a strong and quick animal, which,
when no longer able to flee from hunters, throws its excrement against their
dogs, who will not be able to stand the stench. The reader had problems with the
image and noted: Ist das ein ox oder waß ist daß anzuschaun (‘Is this an ox or
what is it?’) (fig. 5).13 The same reader also had problems with another image.
The description of the badger (dax) is illustrated in a rather surprising way,
12 Gart der Gesuntheit zů Latein Hortus Sanitatis (Strasbourg: Mathias Apiarius, 1536)
Vienna, University Library, II-249973:
https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:12682/bdef:Asset/view
(last access December 2015), Von den thieren, chapter 54.
13 Ibidem, chapter 53.
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which motivated the reader to write on the image: ein sau ist daß an zu sehen
(‘this looks like a sow’) (fig. 6).14
Fig. 4: “This is a beautiful horse”
Fig. 5: The duran – “Is this an ox, or what is it?”
14 Ibidem, chapter 50.
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Fig. 6: The badger – “it looks like a sow”
Sometimes the scientific interest of the reader can be demonstrated as
when he added notes to the description of the animal or to the medical effects
connected with it that do not refer to the animal’s image but to the textual
information. Less reference to scientific interest is shown in remarks or
additions that lead into the field of scatology. In all the editions describing the
lumbricus, that is, the roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), the image shows a
man defecating and the worms coming out of his excrement. In a volume of the
1536 edition that was used in Bohemia, the Czech reader was led to note on the
man’s naked backside the term representing the result of the activity depicted,
kakay – shitting (fig. 7).15 Another reader of the volume of the 1499 edition from
the Lower Austrian Benedictine house of Göttweig (mentioned above) also
clearly had problems with this scene, as he scribbled on the face of the man
doing his business (fig. 8).16
15 Hortus Sanitatis (Strasbourg: Mathias Apiarius, 1536), Vienna, Austrian National Library,
70 P. 13, De animalibus, chapter 90 (from Czech ownership):
http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ175148702 (last access
December 2015), Photo: Austrian National Library, Vienna.
16 Hortus Sanitatis (see note 10), De animalibus, chapter 90.
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Fig. 7: The round worm I: kakay
Fig. 8: The round worm II: Scribbling on the face of the person defecating
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A similar scribble on the face, this time of an animal, appears in a volume
of the 1536 edition, again representing the reader’s negative appreciation. The
animal is the draconcopes, the snake with the face of a virgin, which authorities
supposed that it was the one in whose mask the devil had seduced Eve in
Paradise (fig. 9). 17
Fig. 9: Scribbling on the face of the draconcopes
I found some of the most unexpected additions drawn by readers of the
Hortus Sanitatis in the volume of the 1499 Strasbourg edition from the
Benedictine monastery of Göttweig in Lower Austria. There, a reader added to
the images of a large number of animals in a relatively consistent way. An
unmodified sample illustration from another volume (fig. 10)18 shows the
camelopardus, an animal about which Isidore of Seville stated that it lived in
Ethiopia and had white dots, a neck like a horse, feet like cattle, and the head
like a lion. According to Pliny, it had a horse’s neck, cattle’s legs and feet, and
the head of a camel, with white dots on red. Again, as in the case of the orasius
17 Gart der Gesuntheit, 1536 (see note 12), Von den Thieren, chapter 49. Concerning the
draconcopes see Gerhard Jaritz, “Draconcopedes, or, the Faces of Devilish Virgins,” in
Animals and Otherness in the Middle Ages: Perspectives across Disciplines, ed. Francisco
de Asís García García et al. (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013), 86-93.
18 Hortus Sanitatis (Strasbourg: Reinhard Beck, 1517), De animalibus, chapter 29. Nanterre,
Bibliothèque André-Desguine, B 01242:
http://bibliotheque-desguine.hauts-de-seine.net/desguine/Expositions/Images-de-Science/
Inventorier?lang=fr#p7-sciinvent_6 (last access December 2015).
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(mentioned above), this is the description of a giraffe. One can certainly discuss
how close the illustration is to the description, but this is of less relevance here.
Comparing the animal in figure 10 with the camelopardus in the volume from
Göttweig, one finds an explicit different detail which is rather interesting and
perhaps surprising for a sixteenth-century reception of the images and the
volume as a whole. The addition does not depict one of the readers’ interests
recognized above, but goes in a different direction (fig. 11).19 The reader added
genitals to the camelopardus (fig. 12).
Fig. 10: The camelopardus without any modification
19 Hortus Sanitatis, 1499 (see note 10), De animalibus, chapter 29.
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Fig. 11: The modified camelopardus
Fig. 12: Detail: The penis added to the camelopardus
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In the Göttweig volume of the Hortus Sanitatis the camelopardus was not
the only animal to receive genitals; a number of other mammals did also.
Moreover, the reader did not always create the same type of genitals in his
gendering of the animals. Sometimes, one can recognize his attempt to add
udders, as in the example of caprea, that is, the goat (figs. 13 and 14).20 Other
additions of genitals make the situation less clear, as when the drawing is just a
kind of unidentifiable scribbling on the image of the bull by the industrious
inhabitant of the monastery cattle (figs. 15 and 16).21 Maybe he intended to
construct an ox by adding such type of not identifiable scribbling.
Fig. 13: Udders added to the goat (caprea)
20 Ibidem, chapter 33.
21 Ibidem, chapter 14.
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Fig. 14: The gendered caprea
Fig. 15: Undefined genitals of a bull (or an ox?)
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Fig.16: The modified bull
* * *
This small selection of the traces of the reception of mainly visual
information on animals by late medieval and early modern readers and
beholders of the Hortus Sanitatis shows variety and differences of interests.
These interests, mainly from inhabitants of monastic space, might sometimes be
rather unexpected for the modern reader.
One general component can be found: In the recognizable reactions
(which left visible evidence), the images of the animals played the decisive role,
much more than the textual parts of their descriptions and the medical aspects
connected with them. This phenomenon can be seen as probably confirming
Luuk Houwen’s statement that the Hortus Sanitatis22 “… was certainly not a
medical handbook, but an encyclopedic work, albeit one that shares affinities
with such works as Mandeville’s Travels or the romances of the east, and which
22 In Houwen’s case the Noble Lyfe. See idem, “The Noble Lyfe,” 71.
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would be read for what it had to offer in the realm of the unusual, the
marvelous.” This “realm of the unusual” was much more represented by the
visual than by the textual information, which, at least partly, led to the visible
reactions.