Pubblicato il 28 January 2025
Botanical gardens: from medieval monasteries to biodiversity conservation
Modern botanical gardens are among the most valuable legacies of the Italian Renaissance to the entire world. From the medieval hortus conclusus, the walled garden where monks cultivated plants and trees for food and medicinal purposes, to the rise of secular universities and the establishment of the scientific method, botanical gardens have evolved over centuries, adapting to the times while remaining a formidable tool for studying the plant kingdom and preserving its biodiversity.
The legacy of the ancient world
Even in ancient times, there were places to collect and preserve plants, such as the botanical garden of Karnak, established by the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BCE), and the plant collection created in Athens in the 4th century BCE by the philosopher Theophrastus, a disciple of Aristotle. Theophrastus began describing and classifying plants, earning him the title of the father of botany and taxonomy. His work, "Historia Plantarum", was translated into Persian and Arabic but was largely overshadowed in Europe after the fall of the classical age by other texts, like Pliny the Elder’s "Naturalis Historia" and Dioscorides’ "De Materia Medica"; it was only rediscovered by Renaissance humanists.
The Medieval Revival and Religious Institutions
In the early Middle Ages, monks were the heirs of the classical tradition. With the spread of Benedictine monasteries as centers of cultural conservation and economic reorganization, specific spaces within them began to be defined and cultivated with plants, primarily for food and medicinal purposes, since monasteries often had places to tend the sick (“infirmarium” or infirmary). In the famous Carolingian Plan of Saint Gall gardens were differentiated into three fundamental types: the "hortus" or kitchen garden for edible plants, the "pomarius" or orchard, and the "herbolarius" or medicinal herb garden. Both practical and symbolic criteria guided the selection of plants, as the monastic garden was considered a prefiguration of Eden, or Paradise.
Monastic herbalists combined their study of classical texts with direct observation of plants and the preparation of remedies (called "simples") primarily made from medicinal herbs but also from animal or mineral sources, in special facilities called "officina." This term is still used in Italian, as in the expression "erbe officinali."
They also enriched the notions inherited from the classics with the compilation of reasoned catalogs (“hortuli”), which also had a didactic purpose, to aid the oral transmission of knowledge from master to disciple.
Finally, on the threshold of the modern age, two initiatives by the Roman popes should be mentioned: the establishment at the University of Rome, in 1513, of the Chair for Lectures on the Simples (“Ad declarationem simplicium medicinae”, a sort of course between today’s botany, pharmacognosy and pharmacology), by Pope Leo X de' Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and a man of vast culture; physicians used to hold their practical lessons at the Vatican Medical Garden, created as early as 1447 by Pope Nicholas V Parentucelli (himself the son of a physician), for the study and teaching of botany, which can rightly be considered the first botanical garden in Rome and the reason why the Eternal City probably did not need an academic botanical garden until the 17th century.
Secular Knowledge and Universities
Parallel to the development of monastic gardens, there was also the creation of gardens of simples at the service of secular institutions, such as the “Giardino della Minerva”, where, already in the 14th century, students at the Salerno Medical School could attend live botany lessons (“ostensio simplicium”).
The turning point came in 1543, when Luca Ghini of Imola, a medical graduate from Bologna, was called by Cosimo de' Medici to teach medicinal botany at the University of Pisa, where he founded the world's first university botanical garden. Luca Ghini, thanks to the foresight of the Medici, fine collectors of plants and great patrons, was thus able to continue his studies, introducing the technique of drying plants to allow them to be observed even in adverse weather conditions or to be examined elsewhere. In medical teaching, the study of classical texts was flanked by the study of herbals of dried plants - the “hortus siccus”, while figurative herbals - the “hortus pictus” - began to be accompanied by realistic images, quite different from the fanciful medieval illustrations, often steeped in magic.
In 1545, new botanical gardens were founded: Florence and Padua. Today, the botanical garden of Padua is the world's oldest academic botanical garden that is still in its original location; its structure recalls that of the medieval hortus conclusus: a large circular wall with a square inside, divided into four smaller squares by two perpendicular paths; each square contains several flower beds. Walking along those paths means retracing the steps of Galileo, Torquato Tasso, or Goethe; an old palm tree, mentioned by the German poet during his visit in 1786 and still alive today, is named after him.
The botanical gardens of Pisa, Florence and Padua were the model for the foundation of other similar institutions all over Europe: Leipzig (1580), Jena (1586) and Heidelberg (1597) in Germany, Leiden in the Netherlands (1590) and Montpellier in France (1593), and in the following century also in Denmark (Copenhagen, 1600), England (Oxford, 1621) and Sweden (Uppsala, 1655). The great geographical discoveries and the opening of new trade routes, scientific progress, the Wunderkammer occurrence, and the desire of nobles and rich merchants to possess exotic plants and trees as a sign of prestige, encouraged the spread of botanical gardens. An important contribution of art is also worth mentioning, due to the success of painters of flowers and fruits, from Arcimboldo to Pierre-Joseph Redouté, “the Raphael of flowers”.
Botanical gardens thus became acclimatization gardens for allochthonous flora, from which new seeds could also be obtained for commercial purposes, and research on plants expanded from their therapeutic uses: botany became an autonomous science.
The Modern Era
The 17th and 18th centuries were the time of the great botanical gardens of the capital cities, especially those of the colonial empires: the coeval Jardin des Plantes in Paris (1635) and the Botanical Garden of Amsterdam (1638), the latter financed by the city's doctors and pharmacists; in the following century also the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew (1759), the Botanical Garden of Coimbra (1772) and that of Calcutta (1786), founded by the British East India Company.
In the Baroque Rome of Bernini and Borromini, Pope Alexander VII Chigi wanted the university to have its academic botanical garden, donating, in 1660, the plots of the Convent of San Pietro in Montorio, on the Janiculum Hill; however, it was only after the Unification of Italy that the garden was extended to the ancient park of Villa Corsini, still the seat of the institution today, an authentic garden of wonders with enchanting views of Rome.
In Naples, on the other hand, Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's older brother, established the Royal Botanical Garden in 1807, for the “education of the public” and for the benefit of spreading “spices useful to health, agriculture and industry”; despite the enlightened and modern criteria at the origin of the Neapolitan botanical garden, its history is emblematic of the troubles that some botanical gardens had to face in the last two centuries: at the end of the 19th century, it miraculously escaped an attempt at building allotment, while during the Second World War it was bombed and its flowerbeds turned into vegetable gardens to feed the population, who took shelter in the garden once again during the earthquake of November 1980. Despite this, the Royal Botanical Garden flourished again and is still a reference point for the scientific and cultural life of the city.
Botanical gardens today
Following the environmental changes of the last century and the increasing anthropization of natural spaces, it has become necessary to redefine the functions of botanical gardens, in particular concerning the study and conservation of biodiversity, a primary aim today; according to the definition of the BGCI (Botanic Gardens Conservation International) the botanical garden, as an institution, must promote not only scientific research, but also the safeguarding of plant biodiversity, the display of the collections and educational activities. Botanical gardens are recognized as having an important cultural vocation, as true open-air museums with historical structures of great architectural value, such as glasshouses and ponds, that attract millions of tourists all over the world, thus contributing to national economies; their benefit to health and mind, however, is aimed at all citizens, as they are green lungs often located in urban centers, while educational activities are now addressed to all school levels, particularly the new generations, future custodians of the beauty of our Planet.
