De Plantis Libri Xvi

[Maureen Quartaro]

Cesalpinowas born in Arezzo, Tuscany. As it is reported by Giuseppe Lais and Ugo Viviani with a series of important documents, and recently confirmed in a scholarly volume devoted to Cesalpino, he was likely born in the Autumn of 1524 in the outskirt of Arezzo.[3][4][5]

All of Cesalpino's writings show the man of genius and the profound thinker. His style, it is true, is often heavy, yet in spite of the scholastic form in which his works are cast, passages of great beauty often occur. Modern botanists and physiologists who are not acquainted with the writings of Aristotle find Cesalpino's books obscure; their failure to comprehend them has frequently misled them in their judgment of his achievement.

No comprehensive summing up of the results of Cesalpino's investigations, founded on a critical study of all his works has appeared, neither has there been a complete edition of his writings. Seven of these are positively known, and most of the seven have been printed several times, although none have appeared since the 17th century. In the following list the date of publication given is that of the first edition.

His most important philosophical work is Quaestionum peripateticarum libri V (1571). Cesalpino proves himself in this to be one of the most eminent and original students of Aristotle in the 16th century. His writings, however, show traces of the influence of Averroes, hence he is an Averroistic Aristotelian; apparently he was also inclined to pantheism, consequently he was included, later, in the Spinozists before Spinoza. A Protestant opponent of Aristotelian views, Nicolaus Taurellus wrote several times against Cesalpino. The work of Taurellus entitled Alpes csae, etc. (1597), is entirely devoted to combating the opinions of Cesalpino, as the play on the name Csalpinus shows. Nearly one hundred years later Cesalpino's views were again attacked by Samuel Parker, in a work entitled Disputationes de Deo et providentia divina (1678).

Cesalpino repeatedly asserted the steadfastness of his Catholic principles and his readiness to acknowledge the falsity of any philosophical opinions expounded by him as Aristotelian doctrine, which should be contrary to revelation.

Cesalpino's physiological investigations concerning the circulation of the blood are well known, but even up to the present time they have been as often overestimated as undervalued. An examination of the various passages in his writings which bear upon the question shows that although it must be said that Cesalpino had penetrated further into the secret of circulation of the blood than any other physiologist before William Harvey, still he had not attained a thorough knowledge, founded on anatomical research, of the entire course of the blood. Besides the work Qustionum peripateticarum already mentioned, reference should be made to Quaestionum medicarum libri duo (1593).

His most important publication was De plantis libri XVI (1583). The work is dedicated to the Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici. Unlike the "herbals" of that period, it contains no illustrations. The first section, including thirty pages of the work, is the part of most importance for botany in general. From the beginning of the 17th century up to the present day botanists have agreed in the opinion that Cesalpino in this work, in which he took Aristotle for his guide, laid the foundation of the morphology and physiology of plants and produced the first scientific classification of flowering plants. Three things, above all, give the book the stamp of individuality: the large number of original, acute observations, especially on flowers, fruits, and seeds, made, moreover, before the invention of the microscope, the selection of the organs of fructification for the foundation of his botanical system; finally, the ingenious and at the same time strictly philosophical handling of the rich material gathered by observation. Cesalpino's selection of seeds and seed-receptacles as the primary criteria for plant classification heavily influenced the classificatory work of John Ray, a major seventeenth-century British naturalist.[6] After his death, an incomplete supplementary to this work, entitled Appendix ad libros de plantis et quaestiones peripateticas (1603), was published.

Cesalpino is also famous in the history of botany as one of the first botanists to make an herbarium; one of the oldest herbaria still in existence is that which he arranged in 1563 for Bishop Alfonso Tornabuoni.[7] After many changes of fortune the herbarium is now in the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze at Florence. It consists of 260 folio pages arranged in three volumes bound in red leather, and contains 768 species of plants. A work of some value for chemistry, mineralogy, and geology was issued by him under the title De metallicis libri tres (Rome, 1596). This mostly relies on the Vatican Methalloteca, and it was prepared by Mercati, who was unable to complete it due to his early death. Some of its matter recalls the discoveries made at the end of the eighteenth century, as those of Antoine Lavoisier and Ren Just Hay, it also shows a correct understanding of fossils.

The Franciscan friar Charles Plumier gave the name of Csalpinia to a plant genus and Linnaeus retained it in his system. At the present day this genus includes approximately 10 species and belongs family Fabaceae, subfamily Csalpinioideae, which contains a large number of useful plants. Linnaeus in his writings often quotes his great predecessor in the science of botany and praises Cesalpino in the following lines:

But in the 1660s, John Ray re-discovered Cesalpino and his natural system, and made it the basis for his own. Cesalpino in his book had defined a species as a collection of organisms that are mutually self-reproducing, and Ray adopted that as well. Carl von Linn (Linnaeus) in the 1730s also followed Cesalpino, calling him the father of botany, and agreed that the fructifying parts should be the basis for any system of plant taxonomy, including his own. De plantis ended up being one of the most important and influential natural history books of the late Renaissance. We have a lovely copy, in limp wrinkled vellum, in our History of Science Collection (third image).

There is an oil portrait of Cesalpino at the Museo Galileo in Florence, but it looks suspiciously 19th century to me. The Wellcome Collecton in London has an engraving that appears to be more authentic, even if it is not contemporary, which we use for our portrait (second image). There is also a statue of Cesalpino in the loggia that underlies the Uffizi in Florence, where he properly joins Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, and Francesco Redi as one of the most significant figures of early modern science (fourth image).

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashw...@umkc.edu.

4to (220x154 mm). [40], 621, [11] pp. Woodcut printer's device on title and at end, woodcut initials, some historiated. Variant title page with "Duce" in 9th line. Contemporary vellum (old remboitage binding), spine hand-lettered, faded blue edges. A few leaves with faint stains or mostly marginal spotting, fore edge with small ink stain affecting a few leaves to the end, title-page with small ink corrosion hole inside signature. Provenance: Savgiano(?) (early signature in ink on title); "B.M." (manuscript note on title); "M no. 2J" (early note in ink on title); Warren H. Corning, Library of the Holden Arboretum (bookplate to front pastedown). Very good copy, collated complete. ---- Dibner 20; PMM 97; Sparrow 34; Norman 432; Pritzel 1640; Adams C-20; BM/STC Italian p. 134; Cleveland Collections 122, Holden Arboretum Copy 2 (this copy). - THE VERY RARE FIRST EDITION OF "THE FIRST TRUE TEXTBOOK OF BOTANY" (DSB). The first book of this text is of outstanding historical importance. Here, in thirty pages of admirably clear Latin, Cesalpino presented the principles of botany, grouping a wealth of careful observations under broad categories, on the model of Aristotle and Theophrastus. "Caesalpinus's philosophy is Aristotelian: plants have a vegetable soul which is responsible for nutrition and for the reproduction of organisms. Nutrition was believed to come from the roots in the soil and to be carried up the stems to produce the fruit. Hence, the roots, stems and fruit are the main characteristics selected by Caesalpinus as the basis for his classification" (PMM). Cesalpino was the first to elaborate a system of the plants based on a unified and coherent group of notions. By paying little attention to the medicinal uses of plants he raised botany to the level of an independent science. Our copy is an interesting example for an early re-used binding, recased in the 17th or 18th century, upside-down with the hand lettering of the former work still present at foot of the spine. - Visit our website to see more images!. Codice articolo 001852

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