24 Fifteenth-Century Herbals [ch. 



The German Herbarius was much copied and translated 

 into other languages, the original set of figures being, 

 as a rule, reproduced on a smaller scale. According to 

 Dr Payne, the earliest French edition called 'Arbolayre' 

 (derived from the Latin, herbolariunt) is now an exceed- 

 ingly rare book. It is said to differ little from the original 

 except in the fact that the French translator declined to 

 believe the myth that the Mandrake root has human 

 form. 



Another early French herbal, very similar to the 

 Arbolayre, was published under the name of ' Le Grant 

 Herbier.' The origin of the text of this book has been 

 the subject of some discussion. Choulant regarded it as 

 derived from the Ortus Sanitatis, but an Italian authority, 

 Signor Giulio Camus, has discovered two fifteenth-century 

 manuscripts in the Biblioteca Estense at Modena, which 

 have thrown a different light on the subject. One of these 

 is the work commonly called 'Circa instans,' while the 

 other is a version of the Grant Herbier; on comparing 

 the two, Signor Camus concluded that the French manu- 

 script was obviously derived from Circa instans. A 

 version of the latter, differing somewhat from the Modena 

 manuscript, was printed at Ferrara in 1488, and other 

 editions appeared later. 



The figures which illustrate the Grant Herbier seem 

 to have been derived from those of the Ortus Sanitatis 

 rather than those of the Herbarius. The work is of 

 special interest to British botanists, since it was translated 

 into English and published, in 1526, as the ' Grete Herball,' 

 a book which will be discussed at length in the following 

 chapter. 



Another work, which appeared with reduced copies of 

 the familiar illustrations from the German Herbarius, was 

 the 'Liber de arte distillandi de Simplicibus' of Hieronymus 

 Braunschweig (1500). In this book, the method of dis- 

 tilling herbs, in order to make use of their virtues, was 

 described in considerable detail, with drawings of the 

 apparatus employed. 



