Pierre Belon’s singularity: pilgrim fact in Renaissance natural history

Abstract

From the 1540s through the 1570s, some French travellers started to write in a distinctive cosmographical genre of singularités, a term that brought together the exotic and unusual with the factuality of first-person observation. Especially influential examples include the learned apothecary Pierre Belon du Mans’ Les observations de plusieurs singularités et choses mémorables trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Égypte, Arabie et autres pays estranges (1553). In the context of this special issue, the author offers Belon as a “hard” case for pushing the boundaries of “pilgrimage science”. The straightforward claim is that he depended on genres describing voyages to the Levant, extending back to fifteenth-century accounts by best-selling authors such as Hans Tucher, Felix Fabri, Bernhard von Breydenbach, and Arnold von Harff. More significantly, framed as a case in the formation of natural history as a discipline, Belon’s account of the balsam grove of Matarea lets us see how the practices of layering of observation into a fact could not separate science from pilgrimage. To make this point, Oosterhoff begins with the scholarship on Matarea and fact-making, before taking up the manner in which Matarea’s balsam was related in pilgrimage narratives from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He pauses briefly on the Renaissance topical theory that underpinned natural history, and examines Belon’s account itself as an archetypic case, one embedded in later natural histories – in much the same way that pilgrimage accounts drew upon one another.

Keywords:

• pilgrimage
• Pierre Belon
• natural history
• facts
• balsam
• Matarea / Matariyeh

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Tinguely, L’Écriture du Levant à la Renaissance, 34. My thanks to Sundar Henny and Marianne P. Ritsema van Eck for generously inviting me to their workshop, and for Sundar’s boundless bibliographical generosity and insightful suggestions, as well as to Zur Shalev. I also owe a special debt to Anthony Ossa-Richardson for the conversations out of which this paper emerged. I’m grateful to Stephen McDowall for getting those writing sessions going. Any virtues in this article are thanks to these friendships; the vices are mine.

2. For more on Belon’s life, see Barsi, L’énigme de la chronique de Pierre Belon, 15–70. Although Thevet’s account of Brazil, Les singularitez de la France Antarctique (1557) was often derided as fanciful, his equally sensationalist account of the Levant remained more popular and trusted, a conundrum explored by Van Den Abbeele, “Duplicity and Singularity in André Thevet’s ‘Cosmographie de Levant’.” For further context, see Frank Lestringant’s comments in his edition of Thevet, Cosmographie de Levant.

3. On the changing nature of natural history in this period, see Ogilvie, The Science of Describing, and Curry et al., eds., Worlds of Natural History. On Belon’s place in this culture, see e.g. Smith, “Deux recueils d’illustrations ornithologiques”.

4. The USTC identifies editions printed in Paris (1553, 1554, 1555, 1557, 1588) and Antwerp (two editions in 1555, 1589, 1605); beyond the Latin of Clusius noted, there were also several abridged versions and translations, such as those published by Samuel Purchas (English, 1625) and John Ray (English, 1693), and Paulus (German, 1755 and 1792). There are also modern editions edited by Serge Sauneron in the series Voyageurs occidentaux en Égypte (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1970). I have used a digital copy of the first edition, comparing to the second, in combination with Travels in the Levant: The Observations of Pierre Belon, ed. Alexandra Merle, trans. James Hogarth.

5. Clusius, ed., Exoticorum libri decem […] Item Petri Belloni Observationes.

6. E.g., Daston, “Baconian Facts”, and the next section.

7. I develop this below, but for similar assessments see also Tinguely, L’Écriture du Levant, and Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative, as well as his “‘Out of the Frying Pan …’”

8. Cit. Gomez-Géraud, Le Crépuscule du Grand Voyage, 328: “nullum prorsus Christiani affectus indicium reperies”.

9. An orientation to this literature might include: Gomez-Géraud, Le Crépuscule du Grand Voyage; Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem; Ritsema van Eck, The Holy Land in Observant Franciscan Texts; and Anthony Bale and Kathryne Beebe, “Pilgrimage and Textual Culture”. On relevant themes, e.g. Schröder, “Entertaining and Educating the Audience at Home.”

10. Tinguely, L’Écriture du Levant, 54–59, on Thevet as “un curieux pèlerin”.

11. Observations des singularitez, 141^r. Cf. Tinguely, L’Écriture du Levant, 34; Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative, 234.

12. In English usage, balm and balsam are equivalent; I follow the usage of Milwright, The Queen of Sheba’s Gift, which I discovered after the first draft of this article, though I gained much from his “Balsam of Maṭariyya: An Exploration of a Medieval Panacea”.

13. Observations des singularitez, 144 ^r and 145^v, respectively. For a survey of pilgrimage botany, see Wis, “Fructus in quo Adam peccavit”.

14. Dioscorides, De materia medica, 19–20; Pliny, Historia naturalis, 12:111–123. On the wider influence of this account, see Milwright, Queen of Sheba’s Gift, 53–86 and “The Balsam of Maṭariyya”; Truitt, “The Virtues of Balm in Late Medieval Literature”; Jones, “The Survival of the Frater Medicus?”, 242–245. Strabo’s account, though it mentions balsam in Jericho, was not read in the West until the fifteenth century.

15. E.g., Galandra Cooper, “Investigating the ‘Case’ of the Agnus Dei”, 227; for embalming, see Truitt, Medieval Robots, 108–112. Balsam’s place in trade networks is a dominant theme of Milwright, Queen of Sheba’s Gift, a history which intersects with many other substances; cf. Dannenfeldt, “Egyptian Mumia”.

16. Avicenna (Canon of Medicine, 2.81; 105–106 in the English Hamdard translation) calls the place where Balsam grows in Egypt the oculus solis: “Balsan is an Egyptian tree which grows only at one place called ‘Ain al-Shams’.” This is now the name of the suburb around Matariyya, and means “Eye of the Sun” in Arabic, built atop the ancient city of Heliopolis. Cf. Fabri, Evagatorium, vol. 3, who notes this name for Matariyya (9), adding a little later that “Gentiles call this the fount of the sun, Christians the fount of the Virgin Mary, and Jews the Fount of Joseph” (“Gentiles nominant eum fontem solis; Christiani fontem Virginis Mariae; Judaei fontem Joseph”, 10).

17. Possibly sixth century. Syriac and Arabic sources are explored by Zanetti, “Matarieh, la Sainte Famille et les baumiers”. Cleopatra is often claimed to have urged Mark Antony to transplant the bushes from Engedi to Egypt (Milwright, The Queen of Sheba’s Gift, 37).

18. Giamberardini, Il Culto Mariano in Egitto; Moussa, “Voyageurs occidentaux à Héliopolis et à Matarieh”; Saletti, “La Sacra Famiglia in Egitto.”

19. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 270–271. See further: Barrera[-Osorio], “Local Herbs, Global Medicines”, 166; Smith, “Meanings behind Myths”; Truitt, “The Virtues of Balm in Late Medieval Literature”; David Iluz et al., “Medicinal Properties of Commiphora Gileadensis”; Shimshon Ben‐Yehoshua, Carole Borowitz, and Lumír Ondřej Hanuš, “Frankincense, Myrrh, and Balm of Gilead”; Jones, “The Survival of the Frater Medicus?”.

20. Ritsema van Eck, “Encounters with the Levant.” One might compare the aims of Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative, and Tinguely, L’Écriture du Levant.

21. Daston, “Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence”. See also Daston, “The Factual Sensibility”; Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature; Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact.

22. Mandeville, The Travels, 33–35.

23. Ritsema van Eck’s “Encounters with the Levant” to some extent answers Joan-Pau Rubiés, who argued that “it is also during this period [late fifteenth century] that one finds a secularized subject as central to travel literature – that is, an individual who can have recourse to scepticism about all experience and therefore devotes his attention to the formulation and criticism of common-sense knowledge.” Rubiés, “Travel Writing as a Genre”, 20; see also Elsner and Rubiés, “Introduction”, to Voyages and Visions, 39–41; and Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 136–47.

24. Fabri, Evagatorium, 3: 9–10. For context, see Beebe, Felix Fabri.

25. “Singularitatem ergo illam habet locus iste a beata Virgine, ut pie credimus, a cuius tempore useque ad hunc diem mansit ibi hortus balsami,” Fabri, Evagatorium, 3:15. Guglingen also notes that it is the Sarracenei who say that the balsam cannot be grown elsewhere. See von Guglingen, Itinerarium in Terram Sanctam, 220.

26. Staatliche Bibliothek Neuburg an der Donau, Sign: 04/Hs. INR 10 (Eigentümer: Studienseminar Neuburg an der Donau), 100, cit. Ritsema van Eck, “Encounters with the Levant”, 162.

27. Von Harff, The Pilgrimage, 104–105. A little later he notes the harvesting practices needed for the absent balsam, and the Sultan’s annual gift “to the four great lords of the earth, to the great Emperor of Turkey, the great Khan of Cathay, the great Usay Kassan, lord of Tartary, and the great lord Loblin, lord of India, whom we call Prester John” (127–128).

28. Martyr d’Anghiera, De rebus oceanicis & orbe novo decades tres, Eiusdem præterea legationis Babylonicæ libri tres, 89^v–90^r. See Beaver, “A Holy Land,” 38–40.

29. Martyr d’Anghiera, De rebus oceanicis & orbe novo decades tres, Eiusdem præterea legationis Babylonicæ libri tres, 90^r. “Sed nullam praeter eius fontis aquam, transplantatis balsami arbustis ad hoc ut nascerentur, aut adultis ut coalescerent, profuisse unquam longo experiment conprobatum est.”

30. On the early modern view of menstrual blood as poisonous, see Nummedal, Anna Zieglerin and the Lion’s Blood, 112–115.

31. Martyr d’Anghiera, De rebus oceanicis & orbe novo decades tres, Eiusdem præterea legationis Babylonicæ libri tres, 90^r. “Utcunque sit, omnia illa arbusta radicitus interiere, nec ullum ex eis extat vestigium.”

32. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma MS V.E. 953, 412r, in Africanus, Cosmographia de l’Affrica, 549, translation from Africanus, The Cosmography and Geography of Africa, 409.

33. Williams, “‘Out of the Frying Pan …’,” 29–30.

34. Castela, Le sainct voyage, 411–415.

35. Amico da Gallipoli, Trattato delle piante & immagini de sacri edifizi, 18–20; this is the second edition, and I have not found the chapter on Matarea in examples of the first edition.

36. Shalev, Sacred Words and Worlds, 104–139; Henny and Shalev, “Jerusalem Reformed”. See also Beaver, “From Jerusalem to Toledo”, 55–59.

37. Boucher, Le Bouquet sacré, 88.

38. The sixteenth-century emergence of natural history as a discipline is described by Ogilvie, The Science of Describing.

39. Searching for counter-examples, one can find titles with the word singulier, e.g. Charles de Bovelles, Livre singulier et utile, touchant l’art et practique de Geometrie, composé nouvellement en Francoys (Paris: Simon Colines, 1542); or Oronce Fine, Liber singularis de Alchemiae praxis (Paris, 1542), BnF MS lat. 7169. Both of these collect “singularities” relatable to natural history, but do not describe them in this fashion.

40. Lestringant, “Fortunes de la singularité à la Renaissance”; Conley, “Virtual Reality and the ‘Isolario’”; Conley, The Self-Made Map, chap. 5; Tolias, “Isolarii, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Century”.

41. Wonder and curiosity lie at the centre of historiographical microcosms: e.g., Evans and Marr, eds., Curiosity and Wonder; Kenny, The Uses of Curiosity.

42. Rubiés, “Travel Writing and Humanistic Culture: A Blunted Impact?”, 26.

43. Thevet, Cosmographie, 13, quoting Aristotle, Metaphysics I.

44. On generational change in natural history, see Ogilvie, The Science of Describing, 28-49.

45. Garrod, Cosmographical Novelties. On pilgrimage topoi as a play on literary commonplacing, see Tingueley, L’Écriture du Levant à la Renaissance, 113–124.

46. Garrod, Cosmographical Novelties, 48–49.

47. A bibliography can be compiled from, e.g., Ann Blair et al., eds., Information: A Historical Companion, esp. 61–127.

48. There’s a big bibliography to navigate: e.g., Nauta, “The Order of Knowing”. Essential background – though with little to say of cosmography and other travel writing – is Pomata and Siraisi, eds., Historia: Empiricism and Erudition.

49. Goclenius, Lexicon philosophicum, 627: “historia significat singulorum notitiam vel expositionem seu descriptionem tou hoti rei”.

50. See e.g., Jardine, “Epistemology of the Sciences”.

51. Goclenius, Lexicon philosophicum, 627.

52. Buffon, Histoire naturelle: générale et particulière, 1:4. “[…] l’amour de l’étude de la Nature suppose dans l’esprit deux qualités qui paroissent opposés, les grandes vûes d’un génie ardent qui embrasse tout d’coup d’œil, et les petites attention d’un instinct laborieux qui ne s’attach qu’à un seul point.”

53. Observations, 111^v: “Les opinions des autheurs qui ont escript du baume, sont si diverses, que si je ne l’eusse veu moy mesme, je n’en eusse ose escrire un seul mot apres eulx…”

54. Observations, 111^{r: “}J’ay trouvé par experience que le bois vulgairement nommé Xyllobalsamum, qui est vendu par les marchands apporté de l’Arabie heureuse, convient avec celuy d’Egypte qui est cultivé en Egypte au jardin de la Materée.”

55. Specifically, from Mecca; I take it that Belon sees the balsam sold in Mecca as sourced from the greener tip of the peninsula Arabia Felix (now Yemen).

56. Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, 2: col. 2002 (IV.27). Cf. Thevet, La Cosmographie universelle, 1:39, who only relays commonplaces about the political value of balsam for Mediterranean rulers through the ages.

57. Alpini, De balsamo dialogus.

58. Duret, Histoire admirable, 90–112.

59. Ibid., 111.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard J. Oosterhoff

Richard J. Oosterhoff is senior lecturer in early modern history at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely on early modern intellectual history, notably on the history of science and craft skill. He recently translated, with Anthony Ossa-Richardson, Johannes Leo Africanus (aka Hasan al-Wazzan), The Cosmography and Geography of Africa (Penguin Classics, 2023).