The Morgan Dioscurides (Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 652) is a 10th-century Byzantine illuminated copy of the De Materia Medica by the Greek physician Dioscurides, which covers the medical use of herbs and other natural resources and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive collection of naturally occurring resources (plants, animals etc.) and their medical uses. Today, it is regarded as an early, fairly accurate, form of pharmacological text, [1] in herbal form.
The Morgan Dioscurides was written in Greek and illustrated in Constantinople, the capital of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, around the tenth century AD. [2] Constantinople, often called the “New Rome”, had a culture that was heavily inspired by Greco-Roman art and architecture. This adherence to classical Greco-Roman law and religion made for a peaceable, organized political structure. As such, as Oswei Tempkin states in his journal article "Byzantine Medicine: Tradition and Empiricism", "Medicine of the period of Constantinople was Christian. It accepted rather than shaped a tradition". Medical thinking during this time reflected religious philosophy, seeking to utilize God's creation. [3] This is evident in works like De Materia Medica. Within this religious and classical structure, the elite could easily utilize Roman law to establish and maintain power dynamics. The most powerful were those in charge of urban centers of heightened economic activity. As an essential port of trade between east and west, the nation also had the capability to borrow from multiple cultures and utilized this access to create gilded, masterful, artistic pieces. This period was followed by a shift from prevalence of sculpture in the round to low relief sculpture and two-dimensional art. During this time, Byzantium’s standing as a wealthy trading nation factored into their art production as imported mosaics were crafted into mosaic artworks. [4]
Bound in lozenge-patterned dark brown leather over heavy boards around the 14th century, the manuscript includes about 769 illustrations on 385 leaves (or pages). It contains an alphabetical, five book version of De Materia Medica, with sections on “Roots and Herbs”, “Animals, Parts of Animals and Products from Living Creatures”, “Trees”, “Wines and Minerals, etc.” “On the Power of Strong Drugs to Help or Harm”, “On Poisons and their Effect” “On the Cure of Efficacious Poisons”, “A Mithridatic Antidote”, “Anonymous Poem on the Powers of Herbs”, Eutecnius’ “Paraphrase of the Theriaca or Nicander, and an incomplete paraphrase of the Haliutica of Oppianos. Its owners have added their own content to its pages - most notably by an Arabic-speaking individual who, in the 15th century, added inscriptions in Arabic and genitalia to some animals.Its pages are gouache on vellum, it is written in one column with about 30 lines per page, and it is 15 1/2 x 11 13/16 inches in height and width (395 x 300 mm). [5] About 50 illustrations are missing from the original text. [6]
The illustrations closely reflect those in the Vienna Dioscurides. Many of the illustrations in the Morgan Dioscurides resemble those in the Juliana Anicia Codex, produced in the year 512. The 6th century text Codex Neapolitanus may have been a source in the production of the Morgan Dioscurides as it contains several images that appear in the Morgan Dioscurides that are not present in other works like the Julianna Anicia Codex. [7]
After its creation in Byzantine Constantinople the Morgan Dioscurides changed hands many times. Following a stint in the 15th century with an Arabic-speaking owner, who made marginal comments, the work was moved back to Constantinople in the 16th century and was listed in the library of the Greek scholar Manuel Eugenicos. It was then owned by Domenico Sestini in Italy c.1820. It was in the collection of Marchese C. Rinucchi of Florence from 1820-1849 after which it most probably circulated around England with the booksellers John Thomas Payne and Henry Floss from 1849-1857. On April 30, 1857, it was sold at the Payne Sale to Charles Phillips for Sir Thomas Phillipps. In 1920, it was purchase by J.P. Morgan Jr. from the Phillips’ estate.
Constantinople became the capital of the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine the Great in 330. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922). Following the Turkish War of Independence, the Turkish capital then moved to Ankara. Officially renamed Istanbul in 1930, the city is today the largest city in Europe, straddling the Bosporus strait and lying in both Europe and Asia, and the financial centre of Turkey.
Pedanius Dioscorides, "the father of pharmacognosy", was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of De materia medica, a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances, that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. For almost two millennia Dioscorides was regarded as the most prominent writer on plants and plant drugs.
Materia medica is a Latin term from the history of pharmacy for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing. The term derives from the title of a work by the Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD, De materia medica, 'On medical material'.
Byzantine art comprises the body of artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of western Rome and lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the start date of the Byzantine period is rather clearer in art history than in political history, if still imprecise. Many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern Europe, as well as to some degree the Islamic states of the eastern Mediterranean, preserved many aspects of the empire's culture and art for centuries afterward.
The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century AD work, De materia medica by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial script. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text. After residing in Constantinople for just over a thousand years, the text passed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna in the 16th century, a century after the city fell to the Ottoman Empire.
Chludov Psalter is an illuminated marginal Psalter made in the middle of the 9th Century. It is a unique monument of Byzantine art at the time of the Iconoclasm, one of only three illuminated Byzantine Psalters to survive from the 9th century.
The Naples Dioscurides, in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples, is an early 7th-century secular illuminated manuscript Greek herbal. The book has 172 folios and a page size of 29.7 x 14 cm and the text is a redaction of De Materia Medica by the 1st century Greek military physician Dioscorides, with descriptions of plants and their medicinal uses. Unlike De Materia Medica, the text is arranged alphabetically by plant.
The Little Hagia Sophia mosque, formerly the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, is a former Greek Orthodox church dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople, built between 532 and 536, and converted into a mosque during the Ottoman Empire.
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Anicia Juliana was a Late Antique Roman imperial princess, wife of the magister militum of the eastern Roman empire, Areobindus Dagalaiphus Areobindus, patron of the great Church of St Polyeuctus in Constantinople, and owner of the Vienna Dioscurides. She was the daughter of the Roman emperor Olybrius and his wife Placidia, herself the daughter of the emperor Valentinian III and Licinia Eudoxia, through whom Anicia Juliana was also great-granddaughter of the emperor Theodosius II and the sainted empress Aelia Eudocia. During the rule of the Leonid dynasty and the rise of the later Justinian dynasty, Anicia Juliana was thus the most prominent member of both the preceding imperial dynasties, the Valentinianic dynasty established by Valentinian the Great and the related Theodosian dynasty established by Theodosius the Great.
Botanical illustration is the art of depicting the form, color, and details of plant species. They are generally meant to be scientifically descriptive about subjects depicted and are often found printed alongside a botanical description in books, magazines, and other media. Some are sold as artworks. Often composed by a botanical illustrator in consultation with a scientific author, their creation requires an understanding of plant morphology and access to specimens and references.
The Menologion, Menologium, or Menology of Basil II is an illuminated manuscript designed as a church calendar or Eastern Orthodox Church service book (menologion) that was compiled c. 1000 AD for the Byzantine Emperor Basil II. It contains a synaxarion, a short collection of saints' lives, compiled at Constantinople for liturgical use and around 430 miniature paintings by eight different artists. It was unusual for a menologion from that era to be so richly painted. It currently resides in the Vatican Library . A full facsimile was produced in 1907.
John Chortasmenos was a Byzantine monk and bishop of Selymbria, who was a distinguished bibliophile, writer, and teacher.
The Baghdad School, also known as the Arab school, was a relatively short-lived yet influential school of Islamic art developed during the late 12th century in the capital Baghdad of the ruling Abbasid Caliphate. The movement had largely died out by the early 14th century, five decades following the invasion of the Mongols in 1258 and the downfall of the Abbasids' rule, and would eventually be replaced by stylistic movements from the Mongol tradition. The Baghdad School is particularly noted for its distinctive approach to manuscript illustration. The faces depicted in illustrations were individualized and expressive, with the scenes often highlighting realistic features of everyday life from the period. This stylistic movement used strong, bright colors, and employed a balanced sense of design and a decorative quality, with illustrations often lacking traditional frames and appearing between lines of text on manuscript pages.
The Physician Preparing an Elixir is a miniature on a folio from an illustrated manuscript copy, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of De Materia Medica, a large herbal or work on the (mostly) medical uses of plants originally written by the ancient Greco-Roman physician, Pedanius Dioscorides, in the first century AD. This page of the manuscript, dated 1224 AD, is made from paper, sized 24.8 cm wide and 33.2 cm long, and is decorated by opaque watercolor, ink, and gold detailing. It is visually split into three horizontal portions from the top of the page to the bottom; the top of the page is dominated by two lines of Arabic script, followed by the image and then five more lines of text in Arabic. The writing below the image is predominantly black with the exception of one line, which is written in red ink and is therefore highlighted to the viewer. The page is usually not on display.
Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum was, along with his mentor Aristotle's History of Animals, Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Dioscorides's De materia medica, one of the most important books of natural history written in ancient times, and like them it was influential in the Renaissance. Theophrastus looks at plant structure, reproduction and growth; the varieties of plant around the world; wood; wild and cultivated plants; and their uses. Book 9 in particular, on the medicinal uses of plants, is one of the first herbals, describing juices, gums and resins extracted from plants, and how to gather them.
De materia medica is a pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants and the medicines that can be obtained from them. The five-volume work was written between 50 and 70 CE by Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the Roman army. It was widely read for more than 1,500 years until supplanted by revised herbals in the Renaissance, making it one of the longest-lasting of all natural history and pharmacology books.
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Crateuas, also known as Cratevas (Latin), Krateuas, or Kratevas, was a Greek doctor and pharmacologist. He was distinguished from others of the same name by the epithet "Rootpicker" or "Rhizotomist" after the Greek name of his principle work, the Herbology.
The Kokkinobaphos Master is the conventional name by which modern historians call a master miniaturist active in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, during the 12th century.