Viennese Dioscurides

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Dedication picture ( sheet  6  verso ): Princess Anicia Juliana flanked by the allegorical figures generosity and cleverness

The Wiener Dioskurides (also Anicia-Codex or Anicia-Codex , Anicia-Juliana- Codex or Codex Juliana Anicia ) is a late antique , illustrated composite manuscript in the Greek language .

The codex was used as a pharmacological manual and mainly contains texts by the doctor Pedanios Dioskurides (De Materia medica) . The text, which has botanical and zoological as well as pharmaceutical and pharmacological content, is provided with numerous pictures of plants , figurative paintings and zoological illustrations. The manuscript was made around the year 512 for Anicia Juliana , a distinguished Roman woman of imperial descent. Today it is a valuable source work for ancient natural sciences and early Byzantine art and cultural history.

The Codex, which has been in Vienna since the 16th century, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997 . The place of storage is the Austrian National Library in Vienna, where the collective manuscript has the signature Codex (Vindobonensis) medicus Graecus 1 . Today it comprises 485 large-format parchment sheets (about 30 × 37 cm).

The main part is an extensive herbal book , called the Dioscurides Herbarium, with 383 descriptions and miniatures of medicinal plants . Most of the texts are taken from the Materia Medica by Pedanios Dioscurides, written around AD 78 , but texts by Krateuas and Galenos were also used. This is followed by five more natural history works: the Carmen de viribus herbarum (a poem about medicinal plants) and four paraphrases (adaptations of texts by other authors): the paraphrase of Euteknios to the " Theriacs " of Nicandros von Kolophon , the paraphrase of Euteknios to the " Alexipharmaka "by Nikandros von Kolophon , the paraphrase of the" Halieutika "of Oppianos and the paraphrase of the" Ornithiaka "(" Ixeutica ") of Dionysius . A liturgical text from the 11th century forms the appendix with a fragment of a menaeon .

Content and origin of the code

  • Sheet of paper with mandrake drawing (sheet 289 recto)

  • Mandragora pictures in Dioscurides Neapolitanus (sheet 90)

The pharmacological collection of Pedanios Dioscurides (1st century AD) is based on the older works of Krateuas (around 100 BC) and Sextius Niger (1st century BC). From the Middle Ages to modern times , it had great authority not only in the Greek-speaking world, but also in the West, where it was translated into Latin. The actual text of the Dioscurides, the materia medica , is arranged according to subject areas, but in the Vienna Dioscurides Codex it has an older alphabetical structure. The Codex is a collective manuscript with six pharmacological and scientific writings (485 sheets), whereby the "Dioscurides  Herbarium " ( sheets 12–387) with 383 pictures of medicinal plants takes up most of the space.

Texts not only by Dioscurides, but also by Krateuas (Herbarium, beginning of the 1st century BC) and Galenos ( 6 books on the power of remedies , end of the 2nd century), as well as various variants of the plant names, are added to the plant pictures. The foreword to the Materia Medica and drugs of animal and mineral origin are missing. The accompanying writings deal mainly with poisons and fish and birds. They are preceded by an anonymous didactic poem about the forces (including coral, which was considered a plant in ancient times) of 16 divinely consecrated medicinal plants ( Carmen de viribus herbarum , sheet 388  recto to 392 recto).

A lost antique template from the 3rd or 4th century can be traced. It was probably not a code, but a scroll. The plant pictures copied from it give a good impression of the level of Hellenistic book art in Alexandria . Originally the codex consisted of 546 pages; some of them, including the pictures of mandrake on sheet 26, were lost before the Middle Ages. Today there are three smaller sheets elsewhere (sheets 287 to 289) that contain a copy of the missing text perì mandragóra (About the mandrake ) in Greek script from the 13th century and a drawing of a mandrake. In the Dioscurides Neapolitanus of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli from around 700, however, the images of the mandragora have been preserved. Their counterparts in the Vienna Dioscurides are likely to have looked similar.

The origin of the plant pictures is partly unclear, some probably go back to Krateuas. They can be roughly divided into two groups: The pictures from sheet 12  verso to 42 verso, for example of mugwort , easter lumbar and plantain , are spatially balanced and natural. The other group appears flat and rather schematic, as if their models were pressed or dried preparations . The illustrations show predominantly high artistic quality, but are not always correct in terms of being true to nature; sometimes the description and illustration differ. Apparently the copyists were not always aware of what the (sometimes unreachable) originals were like in reality. Leaf losses and the numerous new bindings also played a role; around 1406, the Byzantine scholar Johannes Chortasmenos provided the picture of a peacock, which originally appeared at the beginning of the paraphrase of Dionysius's "ornithiacs" , as a decorative leaf at the beginning of the codex. The paraphrase of the "ornithiacs" is a prose version of the didactic poem about birds by an otherwise unknown Dionysius. It is, however, only partially handed down in the code; a total of ten sheets are missing, including the description of the peacock.

Pictures of doctors and authors

Large-scale compositions such as the pictures of doctors and authors can only be realized in a codex and not on papyrus rolls. It is unclear whether they were created specifically for the Dioscurides in Vienna or taken from a template of the Codex. The two medical pictures show mythical and historical figures (Romans and Greeks) from different centuries. These dispute in a transcendent remote from the earth . According to Otto Mazal, the Cheiron group can be a copy of an ancient floor mosaic and the Galenos group a counterpart created later.

The Cheiron group is named after the centaur Cheiron shown in the center above . Further clockwise: Sextius Niger , Herakleides of Taranto, Mantias (a teacher of Herakleides), Xenocrates, the grammarian Pamphilos (whose lexicon synonymorum probably contributed to the creation of the Dioscurides herbarium) and finally to the left of Cheiron Machaon, son of Asclepius. The Galenos group is named after the doctor Galenos shown in the middle above . Further clockwise: Pedanios Dioscurides , Nicandros (with snake), Ruphos (Rufus) of Ephesus, Andreas of Karystos (the personal physician of the Egyptian king Ptolemy IV , murdered in 217 BC , whose work Narynx was used by Dioscurides), an Apollonios (either Apollonios of Pergamon or Apollonios of Kiton or Apollonios Mys) and Krateuas.

The mandragora is shown on both author pictures, probably because its root (mandrake) was considered to be obviously humanly signed . In the first picture, Dioscurides receives a mandrake root from Heuresis . At the feet of the heuresis lies a dog that has previously torn the roots out of the earth and then perished at their scream, as a mandrake legend tells. The second picture by the author shows another allegorical scene in which Epinoia (the personified power of thought) holds a mandragora, a painter (left) creates an image and Dioscurides (right) describes the plant.

  • Cheiron group

  • Galenos group

  • First author picture

  • Second author picture

Old and new index and old title

The decorative title

The manuscript has two registers (indices). The "old index" (sheet 8 recto to 10 verso) shows only 264 names, although the later total number is 435. This old listing may only contain the core of a lost template that was later expanded. In a “new index” from 1406, the original blank front pages 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the inventory missing from the old register are therefore entered. However, this list is not complete. The “old index” is followed by the “old title” in black and red decorative font. Like the text of the decorative title on sheet 7, it reads in German translation: What is preserved here is the work of Pedanios Dioscurides from Anazarbos on plants, roots, juices and seeds, as well as leaves and medicines. So let's start sequentially with the letter alpha.

Table of Contents

  • The peacock picture (decorative leaf), sheet 1 on the reverse
  • Cheiron group (first doctor's picture), sheet 2 verso
  • Galenos group (second medical picture), sheet 3 verso
  • New index of Chortasmenos, sheet 4 recto, 5 recto, 6 recto, 7 recto
  • Heuresis and Dioscurides (first author's picture), sheet 4 verso
  • Atelier of Dioscurides (second author's picture), sheet 5 on the reverse
  • Dedication image for Anicia Juliana, sheet 6 verso
  • Ziertitel, sheet 7 verso
  • Old index, sheet 8 recto to 10 verso
  • Old title, sheet 10 verso to 11 recto
  • Dioskurides-Herbarium, sheet 12 verso to 387 recto
  • Carmen de viribus herbarum (anonymous poem about medicinal plants), sheet 388 recto to 392 recto
  • Paraphrase of Euteknios to the Theriacs of Nikandros von Kolophon ( prose adaptation of a didactic poem), sheet 393 recto to 437 verso
  • Paraphrase of Euteknios to the Alexipharmaka of Nikandros von Kolophon, sheet 438 verso to 459 verso
  • Paraphrase of the Halieutika des Oppianos, sheet 460 recto to 473 recto
  • Paraphrase of the ornithiacs of Dionysius, sheet 474 recto to 485 verso
  • Fragment of a Menaeon (liturgical text from the 11th century), attached to the codex by Chortasmenus in 1406, presumably to protect the badly damaged last pages. Parts of the menaeon were also used for the old binding.

Material and fonts

The codex sheets measure approximately 30 × 37 cm. The parchment was obtained from the skin of goats and calves, the latter also from unborn ones. Such virgin parchment is very delicate, and so some of the pages are Badly damaged or mutilated by ink damage and moisture. The font is an archaic (based on an ancient model) Greek majuscule , the so-called biblical majuscule ; later transcriptions are made in more modern minuscule letters. Most of the sheets are written with an average of 32 lines, but there are clear deviations; Thus sheet 269 has 50 lines on the reverse.

  • Sheet 114 recto: in good condition

  • Sheet 468 recto: minor damage

  • Sheet 485 recto: mutilated

  • Sheet 446 verso: translucent ink (difficult to read)

Lore history

Front of the first sheet of notes
Signature of the Vienna Court Library on sheet 2 recto (Peter Lambeck, 17th century)

The manuscript was originally a gift from the citizens of Honoratae, a suburb of Constantinople, to Princess Anicia Juliana, who had donated a St. Mary's Church there. After the conquest of Constantinople in the fourth crusade (1204), the code fell to the conquerors called Latin . This can be seen from the transcriptions of the plant names in Latin script (sheet 13 recto to 27 verso); In addition, the old French word genestre (gorse) can be found on verso of page 327 . In 1261 the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople, and the codex came back into Greek possession. He ended up in the Johannes monastery of Old Petra , where a monk named Neophythos made a copy in 1350, which is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France . A colored copy of this copy is kept in the library of the Episcopal Seminary in Padua . In the 14th century the work probably still had 500 sheets; among other things, the entries of a monk named Sisinios suggest this.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the then owner, the monk Nathanael of the Petra monastery, commissioned Johannes Chortasmenos with the repair of the already badly damaged codex. From Chortasmenos transcriptions of the then difficult to read Bible major in more modern minuscule come ; he numbered the sheets, repaired the damaged ones, rearranged them and made a new cover. He also added a “new index” to the front pages 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the incomplete old index from the 6th century. This work was completed in 1406. On the front of sheet 1 he noted above: The present book, the Dioscurides, who had become damaged through old age and was in danger of perishing completely, was commissioned by Johannes Chortasmenos and at the expense of the honored monk, Mr. Nathanael, at that time Nosokomos in the Royal Hospital, rebound in the year 6914 (meaning: the year 6914 after the creation of the world) in the 14th indiction . After the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the herbarium came into the possession of Turkish sultans . Arabic, Persian and Turkish transcriptions date from this period. Jewish doctors had owned the work since the 16th century, including Moses Hamon , Suleyman's personal physician I. The humanist Augerius von Busbeck , who specifically collected manuscripts in Constantinople, acquired Dioscurides from the doctor Hamon's son for 100 gold ducats in 1569. It was through him that the code found its way into the Vienna Court Library, today's Austrian National Library ; hence he is called the Viennese Dioscurides . The signature changed several times over the years: Hugo Blotius's first signature was FF 7380. On sheet 1 recto, the signature Cod MS Med. Grae N. 5, later assigned by Peter Lambeck , is noted. On the front of sheet 2, Lambeck wrote it again in greater detail with the ownership note Augustissimae Bibliothecae / Caesareae Vindobonensis Codex manuscriptus / Medicus graecus N. 5 . Today's signature Cod. Med. gr. 1 goes back to Daniel Nessel, who was prefect of the court library from 1680 to 1701.

During the most recent restoration between 1960 and 1965, the extensive work was divided into three volumes for conservation reasons. A facsimile edition was made on this extremely rare occasion .

expenditure

  • The Viennese Dioscurides. Codex Vindobonensis medicus graecus 1 of the Austrian National Library. Edited by Hans Gerstinger , Graz 1965–1970 (= Codices selecti phototypice impressi. Volume 12). Complete facsimile edition of the Vienna Dioscurides in five partial fragments.
  • The Viennese Dioscurides. Codex medicus graecus 1 of the Austrian National Library (= highlights of book art , volume 8), 2 volumes (volume I: facsimile, volume II: commentary). Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt , Graz 1998 and 1999, ISBN 3-201-01699-3 and ISBN 3-201-01725-6 (with commentary by Otto Mazal)

Older edition:

  • Dioscorides. Codex Aniciae Julianae, nunc Vindob. med. gr. 1. phototypice editus. Praefati sunt A. de Premerstein, C. Wesseley, J. Mantuani. Leiden 1906 (= Codices graeci et latini phototypice depicti. Volume 10).

literature

  • Hans Biedermann : Medicina Magica. Metaphysical healing methods in late antique and medieval manuscripts. Graz 1972; 2nd edition, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1978, ISBN 3-201-01077-4 , pp. 35–39.
  • Otto Mazal : Plants, Roots, Juices, Seeds. Ancient healing art in miniatures by the Viennese Dioscurides. Academic Printing and Publishing Company, Graz 1981, ISBN 3-201-01169-X . (with partial facsimile).
  • Hartmut Böhme : Coral and peacock, writing and image in the Vienna Dioscurides , in: Helas, Philine; Polte, Maren; Uppenkamp, ​​Bettina: PICTURE / HISTORY. Festschrift for Horst Bredekamp, ​​De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-050-04261-3 , pp. 57-72

Web links

Commons : Wiener Dioskurides  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Wiener Dioskurides  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c Pedanios Dioskurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 3.
  2. ↑ What is meant is a collection of painted plant pictures and not dried and pressed preparations.
  3. ^ A sophist of unknown time.
  4. ↑ Dionysius is a poet who has not been identified with certainty. Cf. Otto Mazal: Plants, Roots, Saps, Seeds. Ancient healing art in miniatures by the Viennese Dioscurides. Akademische Druck- und Verlags-Anstalt, Graz 1981, ISBN 3-201-01169-X , p. 22: The paraphrase of the ornithiacs (ixeutics) of Dionysius.
  5. ↑ Pedanios Dioskurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 2, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 45 ff.
  6. ↑ Hans Biedermann: Medicina Magica , 1978, p. 35.
  7. ↑ Werner E. Gerabek et al. (Ed.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte , Berlin 2005, p. 311.
  8. ^ A b Hans Biedermann: Medicina Magica , 1978, p. 36.
  9. ↑ Hans Biedermann: Medicina Magica , 1978, p. 38.
  10. ↑ Hans Biedermann: Medicina Magica , 1978, p. 29.
  11. ↑ Encyclopedia Medical History , De Gruyter, Berlin 2005, p. 311.
  12. ↑ Pedanios Dioscurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 16.
  13. ↑ Pedanios Dioskurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 2, 1999, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 67.
  14. ↑ a b Pedanios Dioskurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 17 ff.
  15. ↑ Otto Mazal: Plants, Roots, Juices, Seeds. Ancient healing art in miniatures by the Viennese Dioscurides. Akademische Druck- und Verlags-Anstalt, Graz 1981, ISBN 3-201-01169-X , p. 19.
  16. ^ Wolfgang Wegner: Andreas von Karystos. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 62.
  17. ^ A b Hans Biedermann: Medicina Magica , 1978, p. 96.
  18. ↑ Pedanios Dioskurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, pp. 22 and 28 (German translation by Otto Mazal).
  19. ↑ Pedanios Dioskurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 2, 1999, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 75.
  20. ↑ Pedanios Dioskurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 6 ff.
  21. ^ Vienna, Austrian National Library, Cod. Med. gr. 1.
  22. ^ Friedrich Kluge , Elmar Seebold : Etymological Dictionary of the German Language , 24th edition, Berlin 2002, p. 358.
  23. ↑ a b Pedanios Dioscurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 10.
  24. ^ Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. gr. 2286.
  25. ↑ Padua, Episcopal Seminar, Codex graecus 194; see Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, Commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 10.
  26. ↑ Pedanios Dioscurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 10 f.
  27. ^ German translation by Otto Mazal. Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal on sheet 1 recto, p. 15 f.
  28. ↑ Pedanios Dioskurides: Der Wiener Dioskurides , Volume 1, 1998, commentary by Otto Mazal, p. 10 ff. (History of tradition, signatures).
  29. ↑ Pedanios Dioskurides: Codex Vindobonensis med. Size 1 of the Austrian National Library , 1965–1970.
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