C O N T R I B U T I O N S Commentary A History of the Ecological Sciences, phasizing science. This cultural revival was interrupted when the Black Death ravaged Europe, beginning in 1347, Part 10: Botany during the Italian and universities closed when plague struck their town. It Renaissance and Beginnings of the took a century for Europe to recover (Cantor 2001), and Scientific Revolution with the loss of continuity, some knowledge was lost to later scholars (Thorndike 1941, 6:261–264). The Turkish conquest of Byzantium in the early-to-mid Modern science consists of more than scientific litera- 1400s coincided with Italy’s recovery from the plague, and ture. Besides ephemeral botanic gardens or zoos, there was Greek scholars immigrated to Italy, bringing manuscripts little more to the natural history sciences of plants and ani- with them. Theodoros Gazes reached Italy about 1435, where mals in ancient and medieval times than the literature. That he taught Greek and eventually translated the works of situation began to change during the 1500s, when profes- Aristotle and Theophrastos from Greek into Latin (Egerton sors of botany, institutional botanic gardens, and herbaria 2002:91). About the same time, Johann Gutenberg (c.1398– appeared. These developments were essential for the pre- 1468) was inventing his printing press with moveable type, cise identification of species during a century in which Eu- and he began printing the Bible at Mainz, Germany, in 1454. ropeans sailed the seven seas and the number of known Although Bibles and other religious works were the most species jumped from about 500 known to Dioscorides to common printed books in 1454–1499, college texts were the about 5000. Whether or not ecologists are interested in tax- second most common books, and science books were fore- onomy, they need to identify the species they study. Ecolo- most among them (Quimby 1958:5–15). The Greek texts of gists know about Linnaeus’ systematics, but his work was Aristotle and Theophrastos, and also Gazes’ Latin transla- based upon knowledge gained in previous centuries. Along tions of them, were published before 1500, and Dioscorides’ with an increasing precision about species, botanists dur- Materia medica was also published in Greek and Latin be- ing the 1500s also gained some understanding of the envi- fore 1500 (Sarton 1955:53–70). There was much more in- ronmental needs of particular species. terest in Dioscorides’ Materia medica than in the works of The Italian Renaissance is commonly dated from the Theophrastos during the 1500s (Wightman 1962, 1:186), but early 1300s; it was a cultural expression of the wealth that a century after Gazes’ translation of Theophrastos’ works flowed into Italy with the revival of commerce that began was published, Julius Caesar Scaliger severely criticized it in Venice in the mid-900s and gradually spread throughout in Commentarii et animadversiones in sex libros de causis Italy (Durant 1953, Zophy 1997). Wealthy merchants wanted plantarum Theophrasti (1584) (Rose 1975, Reeds 1976:523). to go to heaven and also enjoy the good life their wealth By then, precision was very important in botany; how had could bring. They were willing to support artists, architects, that happened? and scholars who could help them achieve both. These Not only did Byzantine scholars publish Greek science protégés convinced their patrons that the ancient Greeks classics in Italy in both Greek and Latin, but they also re- and Romans knew how to live the good life, and that this cruited there a community of humanists committed to Greek could be done safely within a Christian context. Scholars learning. One member was Niccolò Leoniceno (1428–1524), concentrated on the recovery of ancient texts, without em- the son of a physician, who studied Latin and Greek in his 130 Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America native Vicenza and then studied medicine and philosophy at accurate scientific drawings and took careful notes, but the University of Padua, receiving his doctorate about 1453. lacked the academic training that might have enabled him to He may have taught there for a while, but in 1464 he joined publish his findings (Leonardo da Vinci 1952, Keele et al. the faculty at the University of Ferrara, where he taught first 1973). The Italian example influenced others, including mathematics, then philosophy, and finally medicine (Bylebyl Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), who visited Italy twice to study 1973). In 1490 he wrote a letter to a colleague in Florence, art. His “The large piece of turf” (1503; reproduced in Brion Angiolo Poliziani (Politianus), criticizing Ibn Sina, and also 1960:92 and Koreny 1985:180–181) was the first ecologi- mentioned that Pliny had in one instance misread the Greek cal drawing, and it inspired other artists to make similar name of rockrose, cistus, for the Greek name of ivy, cissus. studies (Koreny 1985:180–187). Although Egyptians, Ro- Because he read both Greek and Latin, Leoniceno was able mans, and others had drawn landscapes with appropriate to criticize Pliny, whose enormously popular Naturalis plants and animals for the location, those organisms were part historia was first printed at Venice in 1469 (Sarton 1955:78– of the scenery. Dürer’s drawing explores the relationships 86). Poliziani accepted the criticisms of Ibn Sina, but not of between different kinds of plants, but this was only a pass- Pliny. In 1492 Leoniceno, who realized that ancient Greek ing interest. He drew many excellent pictures of animals, science was superior to Roman science, responded by pub- but the wild animals were drawn without backgrounds, and lishing Plinii ac plurium aliorum auctorum qui de simplicibus the domestic animals were part of human scenes (Eisler medicaminibus scripserunt errores notati (“Errors in Pliny 1991). His drawings of landscapes and rock formations show and in several other authors writing on medicinal simples”), in an appreciation of nature (Koschatzky 1973, Leber 1988), but which he explained 22 errors by Pliny due to his mistransla- cannot be called ecological drawings. Otherwise, Dürer’s sci- tion or misunderstanding and 17 errors by Arabic authors and entific interests tended toward the implications of geometry their Latin commentators. His pamphlet elicited a sharp re- and optics for art (Steck 1971). However, the German artist buke from the lawyer-diplomat Pandolfo Collenuccio (1444– Hans Hoffmann painted three pictures of hares similar to 1504) entitled Pliniana defensio…adversus Nicolai Leoniceni Dürer’s, but in natural settings with vegetation (Koreny acusationem (c.1493). One historian of botany found much 1985:144–149). to praise in Leoniceno and little to praise in Collenuccio’s Despite such breaths of fresh air, most authors on response (Greene 1983:Chapters 11–12), but a historian of natural history during the late 1400s and early 1500s early science reached the opposite conclusion, that Collenuccio were still in the grip of tradition (Wightman 1962, 1:185– knew more about the actual plants than Leoniceno and that 186). They wrote commentaries on classical or medieval some of Leoniceno’s complaints were due to a faulty text texts and compiled encyclopedias that were comparable to of Pliny’s Naturalis historia (Thorndike 1934: Chapter 66). those by Albertus Magnus (c.1220–1280) (see Egerton Meanwhile, Venetian scholar-diplomat Ermolao Barbaro [2003] A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 9 ), with the (1454–1493) studied copyists and printers’ errors in Pliny’s added advantage that theirs were usually published when Naturalis historia and claimed to find 5000 in two pub- written. Otto Brunfels (c.1489–1534), a German Protestant lished editions. Previously, Niccolò Perotto had published Commentariolus in prooemium Plinii (c.1480) to complain about printer’s errors in Giovanni Andrea de’ Bussi’s edi- tion of Pliny (Nauert 1979:77), and Marc’ Antonio Sabellico had also published about a hundred corrections in his Emen- dationes in Plinium (1488) (Branca 1973:223). Barbaro’s more ambitious Castigationes Plinianae appeared in two parts in 1492–1493. Both Leoniceno and Collenuccio claimed to find support for their case in Barbaro’s work, but Barbaro’s own sympathy was clearly with Collenuccio, since he criticized Leoniceno without naming him (Greene 1983: Chapter 13, French 1986). Other scholars weighed into this debate on one side or the other, and it might have been considered a draw except that in one sense Leoniceno won, because he continued attacking Pliny in print after both Barbaro and Collenuccio had died (Castiglioni 1953, 274– 275). He also was vindicated by being succeeded at Ferrara by one of his pupils, Manardo, an outstanding physician whose botanical expertise is discussed below. During this time in Italy, professionals began testing classical and medieval authorities against nature. Physicians and artists led the way. Medical schools had been dissect- ing executed criminals since the late 1300s, and artists be- gan studying animal and human anatomy. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is the most famous example. He made Fig. 1. Otto Brunfels. July 2003 131 that occur within a single species growing in differing loca- tions” (Cotton 1974:75). The other student was a German scholar, Euricius Cordus (1486–1535), who received his doctorate under Leoniceno in 1522, when the latter was 94 years old; it seems likely that Manardo was already de facto professor by then. Perhaps Cordus learned, or at least polished, his Greek under Leoniceno, for in 1532 he published a Latin translation of two ancient Greek pharma- ceutical poems. However, Cordus is remembered for his colloquy, Botanologicon (1534), which attempted to cor- rect the mismatch between the names of plants used by Dioscorides and Galen and the actual plants of Germany. Brunfels, for example, while rendering valuable service by publishing his illustrated herbal, had nevertheless mis- matched some classical names with his illustrations, one being a picture of Corydalis to illustrate a classical ac- count of Aristolochia (Cordus 1534:96).