In the early sixteenth century, Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Flemish and German academics led the revival of the study of botany. In Germany, Otho Brunfels, Jerome Bock, Leonhart Fuchs, Adam Lonicerus, and Valerius Cordus published herbals dealing with European medicinal plants, but notes on Asian products remain invaluable. The Portuguese doctor Garcia de Orta sailed to Goa in 1534. There, he published his Coloquios dos Simples e Drogas da India in 1563. It is precisely in the context of Indian materia medica that Garcia de Orta’s path intersects with that of the German academics. The aim of this paper is to analyze the influence of Valerius Cordus’ and Leonhart Fuchs’ works on Orta’s Coloquios . To this end, the original Latin descriptions of Asian medicinal products made by Cordus and Fuchs were compared with Orta’s interpretations. It was observed that Garcia de Orta makes good use of Cordus’s descriptions of cardamom, cassia lignea, cinnamon, lignum aloes (agarwood) and tamarind fruits. His attitude towards Fuchs, however, was less accommodating because he was, in Orta’s words, “a heretic condemned for being a Lutheran” and he distorted the words of the German master about ivory. It was concluded that neither Garcia de Orta’s Renaissance humanism nor his scientific view of Indian natural history was any match for the influence of his religious beliefs. Orta did not escape the profound doctrinal and theological division that was raging Europe after the emergence of the Reformation movement.
KeywordsBotanyGarcia de OrtaValerius CordusLeonhart FuchsGerman Botanists
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