AUTHORSHIP OF THE ‘‘ AGGREGATOR ”’ 807 
Yringus, is represented by a thistle * (probably Scolymus) ; the 
Aggregator presents still a different plant, a combination instead 
of any single plant, as its Eryngium-Aster figure. 
The figures in the Latin Aggregator Practicus as published in 
Italy are often highly expressive of the characteristic habit while 
not correct in any exact detail. Many of them had many copy- 
ings between them and the plant in nature. The tendency of the 
more schematic figures to exact balancing suggests an origin for 
many in the exactly symmetrical figures of the Pavian Zrdarto 
(see Salernitan writers, p. 228) ; and singularly enough, the first 
printed edition in Italy (Vicenza, 1591) was the work of a printer 
who in that year called in a Pavian printer as his partner, and who 
may have been the link between the Aggregator figures and their 
evidently Salernitan origin. 
Who was the author of the Aggregator remains a mystery ; 
only one thing is evident, that he worked on Salernitan models. 
Once-current beliefs that he was Arnold de Villanova or Hierony- 
mus Brunsvicensis may be said to be proved untrue, and the sug- 
gestion that he was Giacomo de Dondi, is proved improbable. 
* One of the 17 Dioscoridean synonyms for Eryngium (3, 24) was Capitulum 
Cardui, in Italy. He ascribed its name centum capita to Spain ; Pliny uses that as its 
+ That the unknown author of the Aggregator was a German was claimed by Chou- 
lant and in 1857 maintained by Meyer (3:183) 5 that he was a Salernitan in Italy 
was held by Meyer (3: 182) in 1855, but in 1857 he concluded that he was probably 
a German writing under Salernitan influence. But Meyer’s reasons (3183) for ne 
many. 
the Lactantius of 1465, was six years later than the famed Gutenberg Bible of 1459, and 
s, of 1500 A. D 
an older associate 
though he might 
Zt. 
That the author was the Salernitan Hieronymus Brunsvicens! 
Was the theory of Trew and Sprengel, but as this Hieronymus was 
of Brunfels he was quite too young to have written the Aggregator, 
have been its translator into German. a 
_ That the author was Giacomo de Dondi, of Padua, of about 1340, was suggeste 
in 1552 by Gesner, has been widely believed and was accepted by Pritzel (P- sgt 
But the synopsis of Dondi’s writings in 1560 by Bernardinus Scardeonius, canon 
Padua, gives no confirmation to the suggestion. 
