Historia Plantarum
The codex known as Historia Plantarum was created at the end of the 14th century at the court of Gian Galeazzo Visconti in Milan. It is an exhaustive medical encyclopedia dealing with plant, animal, and mineral agents. The work is decorated with numerous high-quality botanical illustrations as well as miniatures of animals, minerals, and everyday objects numbering more than 500 in total. The Duke of Milan gifted the splendid manuscript to Wenceslaus IV, King of Bohemia and Germany to help cement their alliance. It can thus be accurately said that this is a manuscript worthy of a king.
Historia Plantarum
In the 11th century, the doctor Ibn Butlan composed the medical work Taqwim es-sihha. The Latin book series Tacuinum Sanitatis was based on the foundation of this work. Included among them are exquisite illuminated codices, which are found today in Vienna, Rome, London, and Paris. Rome’s Historia Plantarum, a work from this series, represents an exhaustive encyclopedia of the natural sciences with descriptions of plants, minerals, and animals. Special interest was shown to the specific medicinal and therapeutic effects of floral and faunal substances. The codex contains more than 500 beautiful and illustrative depictions of plans and over 80 depictions of animals.
Medicine in the Middle Ages
The Historia Plantarum is an interesting and historically significant source about medicine and also about the everyday life of the Middle Ages. According to medieval doctors, various elements were needed for a healthy lifestyle: proper diet, exercise and enough sleep, and a balanced emotional state. A life in harmony with nature was recommended. This guaranteed people health and well-being. The illuminated manuscript is illustrated with over five hundred illustrations of plants in alphabetical order. The depictions convey an astoundingly detailed and imposing overview of the thorough knowledge about plant life, which one possessed in late medieval Italy. In addition to these botanical pictures come more than eighty illustrations of animals, from which one obtained healing remedies, as well as over 30 depictions of mineral derivatives.
Prominent Previous Owners
The manuscript was made at the end of the 14th century at the court of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The ruler was the most powerful and glorious scion of the great Visconti family and created during his reign one of the most impressive collections of unbelievably valuable book treasures. Gian Galeazzo presented the splendid Historia Plantarum to Wenceslas IV, King of Bohemia and Germany, with whom he forged a good political relationship. Today the medical encyclopedia is found in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome.
Codicology
- Alternative Titles
- Medizinische Enzyklopädie Kaiser Wenzels
Tacuinum sanitatis - Size / Format
- 590 pages / 46.0 × 32.0 cm
- Origin
- Italy
- Date
- End of the 14th century
- Epochs
- Style
- Language
- Illustrations
- More than 500 illustrations of plants and 80 illustration of animals
- Content
- Exhaustive encyclopedia of the natural sciences with descriptions of plants, minerals, and animals based on texts by Ibn Butlan
- Patron
- Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1351–1402)
- Previous Owners
- Wenceslas IV, King of Bohemia and Germany (1361–1419)
Historia Plantarum
Portrait of Wenceslaus IV
On folio 1r, a rather large portrait depicts Wenceslas surrounded the six electors of the Holy Roman Empire before a mosaic background of blue, red, and gold. Dressed in armor and carrying swords, the secular prince-electors stand on the right dressed in their respective coats of arms while the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne stand to the left. Wenceslaus is shown confidently enthroned with the imperial regalia but will be disposed within a few years of when this miniature was made.

Historia Plantarum
Elephant
Despite its name, this manuscript also depicts dozens of animals including creatures of fantasy like dragons and real animals like elephants that were just as strange and exotic to medieval Europeans. The elephant is nearly as tall as a tree with the bushes grazing its stomach. It is depicted with a stern expression and its ears have a splendid fall of folds.
The margins of the page are filled with rich tendrils of red and blue that also incorporate some Gothic architectural elements. Although the identity of the three figures is unclear, there are some clues. In the historiated initial, the man’s garments and gestures suggest that he is a scholar, while the figures in the medallions resemble members of the nobility, possibly his students.

#1 Historia Plantarum
Language: Italian
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