Vienna Dioscurides

The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century AD work, De materia medica (Ancient Greek: Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς, romanized: Perì hylēs iatrikēs) by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial script.

In addition to the text by Dioscorides, the manuscript has appended to it, the Carmen de herbis attributed to Rufus, a paraphrase of an ornithological treatise by a certain Dionysius, usually identified with Dionysius of Philadelphia, and a paraphrase of Nicander's treatise on the treatment of snake bites.

[1] Although it was created as a luxury copy, in later centuries it was used daily as a textbook in the imperial hospital of Constantinople, and a medieval note records that a Greek nurse there, named Nathanael, had it rebound in 1406.

[2] Throughout the Byzantine period the manuscript was used as the original for copies of the work that were given to foreign leaders, including the Arabic edition of Abd al-Rahman III of Spain for the creation of which the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII sent a Greek copy and a translator.

[2] The manuscript was restored and a table of contents and extensive scholia added in Byzantine Greek minuscule, by the patriarchal notary John Chortasmenos in 1406.

[4] In the mid-15th century, it was used to create the Pope Alexander VII Dioscorides, now in the Vatican Library, by the monks of St. John the Baptist Greek orthodox monastery in Constantinople.

[4][5] The manuscript, still in Istanbul a century after the fall of the city, was purchased from Moses Hamon, the Arabic-speaking, Jewish physician to sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, by the Flemish diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, who was in the employ of Emperor Ferdinand I of the Austrian Habsburgs.

The manuscript was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme Register in 1997 in recognition of its historical significance.

In addition to the illustrations of the text, the manuscript contains several frontispieces in the form of a series of full-page miniatures.

This miniature is an altogether original creation and, with the inclusion of the personifications and the putti, shows the endurance of the classical tradition in Constantinople, despite the fact that Anicia herself was a pious Christian.The series of frontispieces in the manuscript begins with two full-page miniatures, each having a group of seven noted pharmacologists.

In front of Dioscurides is an artist, seated at a lower level, painting an illustration of the mandrake root.

The birds portrayed throughout the treatise are of high artistic merit and are faithful to nature in form and color.