Meanings behind myths: the multiple manifestations of the Tree of the Virgin at Matarea

Abstract

Matarea – five ‘Lombard’ miles north of Old Cairo – was one of the most popular stops on what Wade Labarge has called the ‘longer, complete circuit’ of medieval Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The garden there was purported to have sheltered the Holy Family on its flight from Egypt, but also occupied a strategic location on international thoroughfares and, via its famed balsam grove, offered visitors a glimpse at the source of production of one of the rarest and most valuable spices known in the West.

Over the early modern period, the mythical history of Matarea was forced to alter its contents. The Tree of the Virgin there was, for example, variously presented as a sycamore, a fig and a palm. The purpose of this article is to trace the shifts in the metrics of the myth, explain them and their impact on the myth's credibility, at the same time as attempting to gauge the importance of other circumstantial changes such as the dislocations to the balsam trade wreaked by the emergence of New World suppliers.

Keywords:

• Matarea
• mythology
• Tree of the Virgin
• long-distance balsam trade
• sycamore fig

Acknowledgements

My thanks are to Joy Harvey, Professor Thomas Schneider and Dr John Law for reading and improving on earlier drafts of this article, and to Professor Linda Newson for supplying last-minute leads on the sixteenth-century debate as to the validity of New World balsams.

Notes

  1. Hassler, Die Reisen des Samuel Kiechel, 364.

  2. Frankfurter, Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt. Around 25 travellers’ accounts of Matarea have been published in a series Voyages en Égypte des années 1597 –1601 by the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, Cairo. See: http://www.ifao.egnet.net/archives-scientifiques/inventaire/archives-voyageurs/; Wade Labarge, Medieval Travellers. The shorter circuit was one such as taken by the founder of the Jesuit order Ignatius Loyola in 1523 (Barcelona – Gaeta – Rome – Venice – Cyprus – Jaffa – Jerusalem) – see Ignatius, The Autobiography of Saint Ignatius Loyola.

  3. Jullien, L'Arbre de la Vierge; Zanetti, ‘Matarieh, la Sainte Famille et les baumiers’.

  4. Frankfurter, Pilgrimage and Holy Space.

  5. French historiography has long attributed explicit importance to the symbolic, oneiric, legendary and mythical orders of reality within given societies as evident, for example, in the work of Jacques Le Goff. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the notion of different orders of reality has had to wait for postmodern theory and the linguistic turn for the: ‘successful assertion of the reality and autonomy of [meaning's] object’ (Toews, ‘Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn’). For a more cautious assessment of methodological developments, see Spiegel's interpretation of postmodernity's ‘flight from reality to language’, ‘History, Historicism and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages’, and, for a more hostile one, Himmelfarb's condemnation of the ‘flight from fact’, ‘Telling It as You Like It’.

  6. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture.

  7. Platearius, Il libro delle erbe medecinali. For a discussion of Platearius's true identity, first questioned by Salvatore de Renzi in 1852, see the introduction to Dorveaux, Le livre des simples medicines.

  8. See, for example, Ciggaar, ‘Manuscripts as Intermediaries’ and Baraz, ‘Copto-Arabic Collections of Western Marian Legends’.

  9. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopia Church, vol. III, 924.

 10. The Other Bible , 395–97 399–402, 407–08. See also James, The Apocryphal New Testament.

 11. The Lost Books of the Bible, 38; for a French-language version, see Peeters, Evangiles apocryphes, II, 18–21, 28. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, 81; Albert, Odeurs de Sainteté, 139.

 12. Doresse, Des hieroglyphes à la croix, 28, n. 76. Also Wipszycka, ‘La Christianization de l'Égypte’, 142.

 13. Kamil, Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs. For the Menouthis cult, see Montserrat, ‘Pilgrimage to the Shrine of SS Cyrus and John at Menouthis in Late Antiquity’, in Frankfurter, Pilgrimage and Holy Space, 257–79.

 14. For Heliopolis, see Strabo, Geographica, XVII, 803ff.; Herodotus, The Histories, II, 3, etc.; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, III, 21; Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, I, 84; V, 57; Pliny, Historia Naturalis, V, 49.

 15. Hall, Handbook for Egypt and the Sudan.

 16. Dietrich Raue, personal communication of 15 August 2008; Thomas Schneider, personal communication of 12 February 2006.

 17. Raymond, Cairo; ‘The Pilgrimage of Symon Semeonis’, 86.

 18. Langener, Isis lactans – Maria lactans; Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 208–9; see also Schneider, ‘Die Geburt des Horuskindes’.

 19. Sigal, L'homme et le miracle.

 20. Historia Monachorum in Aegypto , I.II, 11, 28.

 21. Von Harff, The Pilgrimage of Arnold von Harff.

 22. Sigismund, Die Aromata in ihrer Bedeutung für Religion.

 23. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 8, chapter 6, 6.16.

 24. Voragine, Mariale Aureum, 1876, vol. II, p. 53.

 25. Kötting, Peregrinatio Religiosa.

 26. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane.

 27. Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimages in the Medieval West, chapter 2.

 28. See, for example, Jurkovich et al., ‘Medjugorje’.

 29. ‘The Pilgrimage of Symon Semeonis’, 85. The sole surviving manuscript of his Itinerarium remains with the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

 30. al-Baghdādi, The Eastern Key, 41–5.

 31. Petry, Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. I, 304.

 32. d'Anglure, ‘Saint voyage de Jherusalem’, 418–19.

 33. Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, 137ff.

 34. Meinardus, Two Thousand Years of Coptic Christianity, 19.

 35. See, for example, Mandeville, Travels; Text and Translations, 255, and Voyages en Égypte des années 1597 –1601, 165. Barbed comments included the assertion that ‘the flow of balsam is more abundant when the incision is made by a Christian than a Saracen’, ‘The Pilgrimage of Symon Semeonis’, 85.

 36. ‘Judeaumque uxorem suam quam intromisit, parvulum utriusque filium, linteaque infantuli, in opprobrium loti Christi in ipso fonte immersisse, ac lintea ibidem siccanda protendisse, volunt. Quare terram, cuius virtute arbuste germinabant, fontemque cuius vigore rigata nutriebantur, illico post contumeliam vim suam amisisse, inhaesitanter inquiunt’, Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, Opera: Legatio Babylonica, 29.

 37. Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes, 3.

 38. Sigaux, History of Tourism; otherwise see Cohen, ‘Pilgrimage and Tourism’.

 39. Housley, in ‘Pilgrimage in the Later Middle Ages’, would concede that by the later Middle Ages ‘pilgrimage to some extent became an easier, more enjoyable, and more secular experience’, 656.

 40. Prescott, Le voyage de Jérusalem au XVe siècle, 275–82.

 41. Ross, ‘Nectanebanus in his Palace’, 77.

 42. The myth of the Zamzam complex at Mecca is recounted in Godinho, Relação do novo caminho que fêz por terra e mar, 175. For an example of springs mythicized in different ways, see Castanhoso, Historia das cousas, chapter XIX.

 43. ‘The Pilgrimage of Symon Semeonis’, 85.

 44. See, for example, Smith, ‘Splendor in the Grass’. For work on the iconography of the trees of paradise, see also Delumeau, Une histoire du Paradis, and Prest, The Garden of Eden.

 45. Others, such as the dragon's blood tree (Draecaena Cinnabari, D. draco and D. omber), which Schedel incorporated as one of the three trees of Paradise ‘for its strength … for it gave him who eats of it immortality and protects against sickness and weakness’, do not appear in texts on Matarea, although the resins it exuded might find their parallel in the milk of the balsam. See Koch, ‘Martin Schongauer's Dragon Tree’.

 46. Atchley, A History of the Use of Incense in Divine Worship, 141; see also the comments of Al-Maqrizi in de Sacy, Notice de l'ouvrage entitulé Abdallatiphi historiae Aegypti, 89.

 47. Cowley, Plantarum, 248–9.

 48. Monardes, Joyfull Newes out of the Newe Found Worlde, fol. 7. On the basis of the English botanist Gerarde's list of ‘vertues’, with other notable authorities’ opinions added, balsam was good for: asthma and bad breath; consumption (tuberculosis of the lungs); barren wombs (to flush out the miscarried child), but also to provoke menstruation and childbirth; digestion and stomach pains; all manners of aches and fevers – what Italian medical handbooks termed febbri quartani e quotidiani – and general fatigue; as an analgesic – for example, at Marie Thérèse of Austria's funerary oration of 1683, Bossuet spoke of balsam as ‘that which calms, and softens pain’. Balsam was also accredited with ‘refreshing the brain’ (‘palsie, convulsions and griefs of the sinews’); and helping wounds to heal. Platearius adds further uses: against difficulties urinating, and against stones in the bladder; against ills of the ear and toothache. Dioscorides would add the cure of vision problems and as an antidote to poison; see Laguna, Pedacio Dioscórides Anazarbeo, 26 and 27. See, more generally, Milwright, ‘The Balsam of Matariyya’, 193–209.

 49. From the video-documentary by Teresa Perdigão and Afonso Alves, Florípes na Ilha de Principe.

 50. Hughes, ‘Europe as Consumer of Exotic Biodiversity’.

 51. Bracci, ‘Alexandri Braccii descriptio Horti Laurentii Medicis’, 280–1.

 52. Cortuso, L'orto dei semplici di Padova. Padua's fame can be gauged from the comments by Evelyn, Elysium Britannicum, part. II, chapter VII.

 53. Swan, The Clutius Botanical Watercolors, 109. Balsam is missing from countless other herbals and garden manuals of the period.

 54. Collins, Medieval Herbals.

 55. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft, II, lxiv. For the process of manufacture many of the Arabic herbals such as that of Mashhad are to the point and worth contrasting with the tall stories concerning the fabrication of the ‘holy oil’ that circulated in medieval Europe, see Slessarev, The Letter and the Legend, 75. Hence a lot of Renaissance European herbalists’ scorn for Arabic botanical knowledge (as voiced, say, in Leonhart Fuchs’ New Kreüterbuch… of Basel, 1543) should be cast aside.

 56. Collins, Medieval Herbals, 253.

 57. Borgehammar, How the Holy Cross was Found.

 58. ‘Vita S. Willibaldi’, c. 23 (28), in Itinera Hierosolymitana. Cf. the other edition published by O. Holder-Egger in 1887, 86–106.

 59. Latin, Li Livres dou Trésor, 155; The Tractatus's position is reiterated in Platearius, Il libro delle erbe medecinali.

 60. Von Harff, The Pilgrimage of Arnold von Harff, 127.

 61. d'Anglure, ‘Saint voyage de Jherusalem’, 419.

 62. Dandamaev and Lukonin, The Culture of Institutions of Ancient Iran, 143. For an immured terrestrial paradise, see Ludelphus of Saxonia, Leven Jhesu Christi.

 63. Fra Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d'Oltramare, chapter CLXXXV, 1990.

 64. ‘The Pilgrimage of Symon Semeonis’, 80.

 65. Note that by India, von Harff (The Pilgrimage, 127) means ‘Upper India’ up the Nile (‘70 long days’ journey, as is said by Simeonis). Brygg, ‘Voyage en terre Sainte d'un Maire de Bordeaux’, 387–8. For Prester John, see Oppert, Der Prebyter Johannes in Sage und Geschichte.

 66. Al-Maqrizi is cited by de Sacy, Notice de l'ouvrage, 89; Wüstenfeld, Die Geographie und Verwaltung von Agypten, 14.

 67. There was also Silobalsamum, a medicinal syrup of balsam produced by mixing sugar with the sap, and Lachobalsamus, prepared from the plant's bark. See, more generally, Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen-âge, vol. 2, 578ff.

 68. Gerarde, ‘The Third Booke of the Historie of Plants’, vol. II, chapter 139, 1343.

 69. Brunello, Cosmetici i profumi del passato; Genesis 2:11–12.

 70. Platearius, Il libro delle erbe medecinali, 222.

 71. For descriptions of how balm was to be collected, see Hamelius, Mandeville's Travels, I, 32, lines 3–16; also Tafur, Travels and Adventures, 1435–39, 70–80. Tips for recognition of ‘bon basme’ in Thenaud, Le voyage d'outremer de Jean Thenaud, 54–6.

 72. Gerarde, ‘The Third Booke of the Historie of Plants’, vol. II, chapter 139, 1343.

 73. Laguna, Pedacio Dioscórides Anazarbeo; Dioscorides, Materia medica, 1, 19 (in the note/18).

 74. Isidore, Etymologies, book 17, chapter 8: 14. ‘Balsami arbor in Iudaea intra terminus tantum viginti iugerum erat. Posteaquam eandem regionum Romani potiti sunt, etiam latissimis collibus propagatuest, stripe similes vitis, foliis similes rutae, sed albidioribus semperque manentibus’. On the Judean balsam, see Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, IX, 6: 1, and Strabo, Geographica, XVI, 2: 41.

 75. Orta, Coloquíos dos simples. Poggio Bracciolini has been edited in English in Hammond, Travelers in Disguise.

 76. Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, book II, chapter 4, 141.

 77. ‘A Description of the Yeerely Voyage or Pilgrimage of the Mahumitan, Turkes and Moores unto Mecca in Arabia’. In Hakluytus Posthumus, vol. V, 338.

 78. Sigismund, Die Aromata in Ihrer Bedeutung für Religion, 17; Fürer von Haimendorf, Itinerarium Aegypti, 20–2.

 79. Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, 65; Alpini's work De balsamo dialogus is most accessible in French translation, Histoire du baulme. See also Bertioli and Bertioli, Breve avviso del vero balsamo.

 80. Bertioli and Bertioli, Breve avviso del vero balsamo.

 81. Salmon, Synopsis medicinæ, vol. III, xxix.

 82. See, for example, Ross, ‘Nectanebanus in his Palace’.

 83. Tafur, Andanças e viajes de Pero Tafur. A popular English edition of Pero's trip is Tafur, Travels and Adventures, 1435–39.

 84. The relevant extracts from Peter Martyr's Legationis Babylonicae libri tres are quoted in de Sacy , Relation de l'Égypte par Abd-Allatif, Appendix VI, 525–6.

 85. For example, the insurgent QānsŪh Khamsmi'a, was driven from his abortive siege of the citadel of Cairo by Qāytbāy's son Muhammad in c. 1496; see von Harff, The Pilgrimage, 127; for the political context, see , ‘Protectors or Praetorians’, and its companion volume Twilight of Majesty.

 86. De Salignac, Itinerarii terrae sanctae, t. X, chapter 6, fol. Liiij; John Leo, in Hakluytus Posthumus, VI, 19; Fürer von Haimendorf, Itinerarium Aegypti, 20–2.

 87. Sauneron, Voyages en Égypte , 148; Hassler, Die Reisen des Samuel Kiechel, 364.

 88. Crawford, Crawford, and Farren, Letters on Egypt, vol. 1, 332.

 89. Barrera, ‘Local Herbs, Global Medicines’; cf. Schäfer, ‘Antonio de Villasante’, 13–15.

 90. I thank my student Bill Dilworth of Brown University for his research paper of December 2002, ‘From China Root to Root Beer: Smilax China and Sarsaparilla in the Treatment of Syphilis’; otherwise, the best history of China root is provided in Griffith , Medical Botany, 204. Other examples of successful New World import substitution include Caracas indigo and Santo Domingo ginger; see, for example, the evidence constituted in the Hamburg commodity price index of 1592. António de Oliveira Marques, ‘Um Preçario de Mercadorias’, 216.

 91. Archivo General de Indias, ‘Relación de Antonio de Villasante’, 857.

 92. Oviedo y Valdés, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, vol. 2, 11; Carta del licenciado Barreda al rey Carlos V, 26 October 1528, Archivo General de Indias, Patronato, 174, R. 43. Barreda's opinion was confirmed ultimately by Laguna, Pedacio Dioscórides Anazarbeo, 9ff.; Gesner, Evonymus sive de remediis secretis; and Benavides, Secretos de chirurgia, 30v–31r.

 93. Carta de Barreda, Archivo General de Indias, Patronato, 174.

 94. See Barrera, ‘Local Herbs, Global Medicines’, 173.

 95. I have found no literature either on this enigmatic physician, or his work, published in Seville in 1530 and which is extremely rare. Moralez Pérez goes unmentioned by Barrera and does not figure in Felipe Pitacoste y Rodriguez's tour of Spanish scientific literature of the sixteenth century, Apuntes para una Biblioteca Científica Española del Siglo XVI.

 96. Monardes, trans. as Joyfull Newes out of the Newe Founde Worlde, fol. 7 ‘Of the Bálsamo’; José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, cap. XXVIII, 286.

 97. Laguna, Pedacio Dioscórides Anazarbeo.

 98. ‘Facultas Episcopis Indiarum’, 302.

 99. Monardes, Joyfull Newes, fol. 8. The New World balsam's full price trajectory is fleshed out in fuller Spanish editions; see López Piñero, ‘Las ‘nuevas medicinas’ americanas’, 34.

100. Nardi, Due lettere sopra il balsamo, A2r–A3v. Panuzzi, Nardi, and Vesling, Eccovi… la traduttione di latino.

101. Chaunu and Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique, vol. 6, pt. II, Table 761.

102. See the discussion in Griffith, Medical Botany, 248.

103. Smith, ‘Of Such Things which are Naturall in Virginia’, vol. I, 153. Hariot mentions ‘Turpentine’ but as only one of a group of commodities and without abundant interest, in A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. In my estimation, it was probably the Abies Balsamea (L.) Mill. and of thus a completely different natural order than the balsam we are concerned with.

104. Worth Estes, Dictionary of Protopharmacology. Canada balsam acquired a usage as a glue for mounting objects for the microscope; see Brewster, A Treatise on Optics, xxi, 19.

105. Nummedal, ‘Alchemical Reproduction and the Career of Anna Maria Zieglerin’, 58.

106. Taylor, Eniautos, Sermon 1 ‘Of the Spirit of Grace’, 7; Crabb, Universal Technological Dictionary, entry: ‘Balsam’.

107. See, for example, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, v. XVIII, 200 (1694); Chambers, Cyclopaedia, 4th ed., entry: ‘Balsam of Saturn’.

108. Priorato, The History of Her Majesty Christina Alessandra, Queen of Sweden, 428–31. Arnau de Villanova's elixir of life consisted of dried grapes, liquorice, mirabolans, sugars, lemons, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, galangal, aniseed, and ‘Indian nuts’, Il libro di Arnaldo di Villanova, § ‘Elettuario della vita’.

109. Thénard, An Essay on Chemical Analysis, 296.

110. Tafur, Travels and Adventures, 78; Fabri, Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Egypti peregrinationem.

111. Della Valle, Viaggi di Pietro Della Valle il Pellegrino, part 1, 178–9.

112. Lane-Poole, The Story of Cairo.

113. Saint-Martin, Nouveau dictionnaire de géographie universelle.

114. The legend is also reported by Jean Palerne, in Voyages en Égypte, 1581, 141, Note 465, and by Jean Coppin, Voyages en Égypte, 280.

115. ‘S. Siluiae Peregrinatio’, viii, §3–4, 48–9.

116. Thenaud, Le voyage d'outremer de Jean Thenaud, 55.

117. Emboden, Bizarre Plants.

118. Leila Johnston, ‘Holy Tourism Launch’, The Middle East Times, 8 June 2000.

119. Gallipoli, Trattato delle Piante.

120. Möhle, Lucas Cranach der Älter; for the plants, see Behling, Die Pflanze in der mittelalterlichen Tafelmalerei, 120–1.

121. Williams, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought.

122. Milwright, ‘Balsam in the Mediaeval Mediterranean’; Milwright, ‘The Balsam of Matariyya’.

123. Behrens-Abouseif, ‘The North-eastern Extension of Cairo under the Mamluks’; Behrens-Abouseif, ‘Gardens in Islamic Egypt’.