PLATEARIO'S ‘‘ CircA INSTANS”’ 253 
remedy seems to have inserted ‘“ Joannis Platearit”’ after mater in 
alluding to that incident, and seems to have been the author of the 
Ferrarese redaction of the Circa instans, of perhaps about 1190 
A. D., in which he may have ascribed the work to “ Joannes 
Platearius,’’ because he was its last redactor in the family, which 
would explain that authorship claimed in its edttio princeps, Ferrara, 
1488, and onward. 
10. Matthaeus Platearius junior, Pisanus,* or Crisostomo Pla- 
teario,t a Pisan writer of the 15th century, but of whose existence 
modern history is uncertain ; perhaps meant for no. 6. 
“Crrca INSTANS”’ 
The dictionary of medical plants by Matteo Plateario which is 
known { from its first words as the Circa instans,§ marked an im- 
portant point on the highway from the ancient to the modern 
botany. It is the center into which the botanical knowledge of 
the earlier middle ages was focused, and from which much of the 
botanical work of the next 300 years was an outgrowth. Meyer 
Says of it “One must see the book itself; it is the richest and 
most botanically valuable of the works on plant-remedies which 
the west had yet produced since Pliny and Dioscorides.” || 
Its exact form as it left the hands of its author, Matteo 
Plateario II, cannot be stated with entire verbal accuracy, as in 
that form it has never been printed and it is probable that 
no unaltered manuscript exists. But assuming with Professor 
Camus that the Modena MS. 993 in the Bibl. Estense known as 
Ti vactatus Herbarum represents Plateario’s original text supple- 
mented by certain additions, we arrive at the original by deduct- 
ing plant-figures, verbal changes and citations introduced by 
Bartolomeo Mino, c. 1330, and additions and citations made by the 
omian reviser, c, 1180, also a few others by Giovanni Plateario 
III, C. ITSO. 
a 
Sprengel, Geschichte, 1: 276. : ’ 
Camus, 8 ; quoting Haller, Bibl. Bot. 2: 658, as saying: ‘* Liber Plateari 
“uysostomi, opus pro quo fuit intoxicatus ab invidis. Is liber tractat de varits simpli- 
Cibus Presertim de herbis. J B. Coll, Caj. Gonvil. Cantad. n. 990. 
: tT Also called ** Liber de simplici medicina,’’ and cited in Salernitan codices as 
De virtutious herbarum’? and as ‘‘ De virtutibus simplicium.” 
With the force of «in the beginning.” 
I| Meyer, a; 523. 
