Francisco Hernández’s Latin Poetical Epistle to Benito Arias Montano (Madrid, Central Library of the Ministerio de Hacienda, ms. FA 931)

Abstract

This paper offers a critical edition, Spanish translation and commentary of the Latin epistle of 137 hexameters that Francisco Hernández wrote to Benito Arias Montano. Dr Francisco Hernández (1515-1587) was sent to Mexico as chief physician for the Western domains of the Spanish Empire by King Philip II to catalogue the flora of those countries, in the earliest systematic study on Botany and Pharmacopoeia of the New World. However, when he returned to Spain after seven years of hazardous research, his handwritten notebooks and drawings were not published and later an important part of them was lost. In that crucial moment these Latin verses were written to Benito Arias Montano (1527-1598), who appears to have ignored this request for help. Even so, this epistle was included with some revisions in the eighteenth century edition of the rest of Francisco Hernández’s works by Casimiro Gómez Ortega, who was the royal botanist and, therefore, a good latinist. The commentary offered here is centred on textual criticism of this Latin epistle based on the autograph manuscript, which is held at Madrid, in the Central Library of the Ministerio de Hacienda, and deals with its literary context and some socio-cultural aspects of Spanish scientific Humanism.