Las dedicatorias del Dioscórides en la Italia renacentista

Abstract

Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus (1^st Century) was a physician, botanist, and military surgeon of the Roman army during the rule of Nero. He wrote De Materia Medica, mostly known as the Dioscorides, a work constituted of five books that includes the description of more than 600 of medical plants and dozens of minerals and animals, also with medical properties. This book is considered the precursor of the modern pharmacopoeia and had a massive diffusion during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in the original Greek and the many translations to Arabic, first, and Latin, and to vernacular languages afterword. The vernacularisation of the Dioscorides began during the second half of the 16^th Century through its translations to Italian, first by Fausto da Longiano and then by Andrea Mattioli, the author that contributed the most to the diffusion of the printed editions of this work through the Renaissance Italy. In this paper we study the importance that this book achieved in Italy by studying the dedications of these Italian editions.