Codicological description

In transcribing the text from Chantilly notebook, one respects the following principles : the punctuation of the text was maintained, even though the custom would impose to add commas or dots, or, in the contrary case, would prohibit the use of the comma (for instance, before a coordinating conjunction). The same spelling was maintained, except for the differentiation between u and v and i and j : we modernised the form in restoring j in place of i for the initial of a French word. In the same way, v replaces u, except when it deals with Latin words for which we kept the Latin spelling. The notes refering to prior botanists or to such and such of their works, are not given in extenso within Boccone’s text : in this case, we systematically developed the abbreviation.

Botanical aspects

The first part of Manuscript 2039 is a small notebook containing the report of botanizing in the castle gardens of Chantilly in 1671 ; it may have been written by the hand of Paolo Boccone himself. The paper that is used contains watermarks which can also be found in the herbarium : therefore, one can conclude that either Paolo Boccone kept a quantity of leaves of Italian origin in 1671, or that the attempts of printing plants from dried specimens had expanded between 1665, highest date confirmed by the use of letters, and 1671, lowest one shown on the notebook. The keeping of the two documents as a whole does not allow to choose between these two hypothesis.

The herbarium offers a double interest : the history of techniques and the history of sciences ; the Chantilly notebook must be interpreted in the light of information given by the history of botany in the 17^th century. The text is a series of plant names often given in older nomenclatures than the ones used at the time the Sicilian botanist worked. The reference to C. Bauhin’s herbarium was expected : the Swiss botanist’s " Pinax " is really one of the most essential texts on plants. It looks like a nomenclature, offering exact equivalences to the reader and to the scientist, of the names of plants refered to by Renaissance botanists. The " Pinax " does not make up a herbarium by itself : it offers neither description nor drawing of the considered plants. However, it must be read as one of the biggest efforts during the Renaissance time to standardize and classify the field of phytonymia.

The use of Historia Plantarum from Jean Bauhin, published in 1650, by his son-in-law Cherler, does not present a particularly astonishing aspect. Although this work largely depends from the botanical state of knowledge during the years 1580, it had been published only a little time before Boccone collected his plants. To have recourse to the commentary of Matthiole on Dioscorides belongs to quite a different logic. This commentary, the first Italian edition of which, was published in 1544, has been re-edited many times as well as translated during the 16^th century. The content of this commentary has constantly been enriched with the course of the different editions : it shows the evolution of scientific thought fed both by the meditation of ancient sources as well as by the progresses of new knowledge. A careful study of the refererences mentioned by P. Boccone in the Chantilly notebook seems to indicate the use of a late Latin edition subsequent at least to 1554. It could concern the Latin edition of 1564 or the following one published in 1571. The texts vary from one edition to the other and the same for the illustrations . The example of the note on hedera helix seems to show that the Sicilian botanist had an Italian translation at hand uniquely in which one can find a picture of this plant.

The other botanists are only mentioned occasionally. Matthias de Lobel , who is two or three times mentionned, was a botanist from the North of France, a friend from the printer Christophe Plantin d’Anvers. Trained in Montpellier, he had botanized in the countryside of the Provence, with one of his friends, Pierre Pena. The two scholars must have made a book from those gatherings of plants, the stirpium icones, which systematically links the names of the plants with a standardized illustration.However, the woodcuts used for the publishing of this plant-album were not new : Christophe Plantin had already used them for the edition of Dodoens and Charles de l’Ecluse herbaria, a few years before.