Other languages

• Dutch: kruidenboek, herbarius 
• French: herbier 
• German: Kräuterbuch, Herbarius 
• Italian: herbario (early modern), erbario (modern)
  
• Polish: zielnik
• Spanish: herbario 

Material form

Subject

Description

A herbal describes (and in several cases also depicts) plants with a focus on their medicinal qualities and application. It can therefore be considered a type of medical literature. The genre already existed in Antiquity and appeared in many vernacular printed editions already from the fifteenth century onward.  

Herbals cannot be self-evidently considered ‘popular’ literature. Many of them were heavy volumes that circulated primarily in learned circles of physicians, botanists and other experts of natural history. These editions have attracted most scholarly attention so far. However, early modern authors as well as publishers also took evident trouble to market more accessible versions, for example in smaller formats, with shortened texts, and with paratexts that addressed the ‘unlearned’ or the ‘common man’. 

Herbals were produced as independent works or incorporated in other works, such as distillation manuals, medical compendia, books of secrets, or household manuals. Like other recipe books, herbals and herbal recipes also continued to circulate in manuscript throughout the early modern era, with users creating their own, personalised collections from different sources including printed herbals. 

The books typically consist of short chapters, each discussing a single plant. The texts may provide some information on the plant’s appearance, habitat, varieties, while the accent usually lies on how and when to use different parts of the plant for medicinal purposes. Before Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) developed a standardised nomenclature, herbals often provided names in different languages to facilitate identification. The entries were arranged alphabetically or thematically. Many herbals include indexes with alternative orderings. 

Related terms

medical literature, book of secrets, how-to book, household manual, materia medica

Sources

L. Knight, Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).

A. van Leerdam, ‘Popularising and Personalising an Illustrated Herbal in Dutch’, Nuncius 36:2 (2021), special issue ‘Printing Medical Knowledge: Vernacular Genres, Reception and Dissemination’, 356-393. https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-03602006

E. Leong, ‘”Herbals she peruseth”: Reading Medicine in Early Modern England’, Renaissance Studies 28:4 (2014), 556-578.

S. Minuzzi, ‘15th-Century Practical Medicine in Print. Beyond the Profession, Towards the miscere utile dulci’, Nuncius 36:2 (2021), special issue ‘Printing Medical Knowledge: Vernacular Genres, Reception and Dissemination’, 199-263.

S. Neville, Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade. English Stationers and the Commodification of Botany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

P. Rudolph, Im Garten der Gesundheit: Pflanzenbilder zwischen Natur, Kunst und Wissen in gedruckten Kräuterbüchern des 15. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2020).