# Historia plantarum. Earum imagines, nomenclaturae, qualitates, & natale solum. Quibus accessere simplicium medicamentorum facultates, secundum locos & genera, ex Dioscoride **Autore:** Du Pinet de Noroy Antoine (Antonius Pinaeus or Pignetus) **Dati editoriali:** Lyon, Gabriel Cotier, 1561 **Codice archivio:** 162 **Prezzo:** 3500.00 USD **Stato commerciale:** Disponibile **Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/du-pinet-historia-plantarum-1561 --- ## Descrizione accademica e analisi Two parts in one volume, 16mo (112x70 mm). 640, 229, [27] pp. Collation: a-z8 A-R8 aa-qq8. Title page printed within a woodcut border. With 636 woodcut illustrations of plants in text. Roman, italic, and Greek types. The second parts contains Simplicium medicamentorum facultates secundum locos ex Dioscoride. Contemporary blind-stamped pigskin over wooden boards, spine with three raised bands and lettering piece, colored edges (traces of metal clasps, slightly worn and darkened). Bound with 14 blank leaves at the beginning and 16 at the end. On the title page ownership entry “Ex libris Casparis Garbae” (in Jakob Horst’s Epistolae philosophicae et medicinales, Leipzig, 1596 at pp. 177-178 there is a reference to a young student named Casparus Garba who studied medicine in Hungary but died prematurely). On title-page verso long manuscript note in a contemporary hand and stamp of the “Bibliothek der K. Kreislandwirtschaftsschule Lichtenthof” (Nuremberg). Margins cut short, occasionally slightly affecting the printed marginalia, small hole to the lower blank margin of l. c1, some pale staining and browning, overall a very good, genuine copy. Rare first edition of this early pocket herbal. Remarkably, Du Pinet compressed the monumental illustrated botanical tradition of Fuchs and Mattioli into a portable handbook. The work is divided into two parts: the first contains descriptions and illustrations of plants; the second is devoted to the medicinal properties of simples. The author, Antoine du Pinet de Noroy, was a French humanist, translator, compiler, and Protestant writer active in Lyon. Following in the footsteps of Leonhard Fuchs, whose De historia stirpium was published in small-format editions in Basel in 1545 and in Lyon in 1549, Du Pinet condensed all the botanical knowledge of his time. In particular, he drew on Mattioli’s commentaries on Dioscorides and used the latter’s iconography, reducing the size of each illustration by almost a third. Pocket herbals were intended for individuals interested in botany, allowing them to carry the book with them in sinu (in their pocket) while walking or travelling and compare it directly with living plants. The layout of the pages is also designed to provide the botanical traveller with all the necessary information (multilingual nomenclature, authority, locus or habitat, and qualities and properties) at a glance. By identifying the sources of his information as ex Matthiolo, or Fuchs, Galen, Aegineta, and other authorities, Du Pinet produced a synoptic digest of Renaissance botanical learning. Dioscorides provided the classical framework, while recent sixteenth-century botanists acted as intermediaries and correctors. This is historically significant because sixteenth-century botany existed within a productive tension between two modes of knowledge. One approach was philological: to recover the true identity of plants named by Greek and Roman authors, particularly Dioscorides and Pliny. The other was an increasingly empirical and visual approach: distinguishing plants by their observed morphology and representing them in a way that allowed readers to recognise them. Works by Brunfels, Fuchs, Mattioli, Dodoens and others progressively shifted authority towards the observed plant. Du Pinet’s book belongs exactly at that intersection. Although its title still defines plants in terms of qualitates and medical virtues, the prominence of imagines, nomenclature, and geographical habitat shows that identification itself had become central. The nomenclature is particularly informative. Entries typically provide a Latin or scholarly name alongside names used in vernacular languages. This is not just for show. Renaissance materia medica was plagued by a persistent practical problem: a plant described under one ancient Greek or Latin name might be known by very different local names in France, Italy, Germany, and so on. Physicians, apothecaries and educated readers needed to map ancient terminology onto contemporary plants. Therefore, a multilingual nomenclature functioned almost like an early botanical concordance. The Historia plantarum was part of the much broader sixteenth-century project of establishing a stable relationship between words, images, plants and medical uses. Gabriel Cotier (Latinised as Gabriel Coterius) was a prolific Lyon bookseller and publisher whose business was continued by his widow after his death. Significantly, the Historia plantarum was reissued in 1567 by Cotier’s widow. M. Lazard, Un Franc-Comtois à Lyon: Antoine du Pinet, sieur de Noroy, pasteur humaniste, in: “Il Rinascimento a Lione”, A. Possenti and G Mastrangelo, eds., Rome, 1988, pp. 589-606; R.C. Tomlinson, ‘Plusieurs choses qu’il n’avoit veuës’: Antoine Du Pinet’s Translation of Pliny the Elder (1562),, in: “Translation and Literature”, 21, 2012, pp. 145-161; G. Grente, ed., Du Pinet (Antoine), in: “Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: Le XVIe siècle”, Paris, 2001, pp. 436-437. --- ## Bibliografia di riferimento Pritzel, 2539; Hunt, I, 85; Nissen, 565. --- *Documento generato automaticamente dall'Archivio Govi Rare Books per finalità di ricerca e catalogazione.*