Vienna Dioscurides
| Vienna Dioscurides | |
|---|---|
| Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna | |
Folio 83r Rubus fruticosus (bramble) | |
| Also known as | Juliana Anicia Codex; Codex Vindobonensis med. gr. 1 |
| Type | Illustrated manuscript (medical) |
| Date | c. 512–515 |
| Place of origin | Constantinople, Byzantine Empire |
| Language(s) | Greek (uncial; later minuscule additions) |
| Scribe | Unrecorded |
| Author(s) | Pedanius Dioscorides (original text, 1st century AD) |
| Patron | Anicia Juliana |
| Material | Parchment (vellum), ink, pigments |
| Size | 37 × 30 cm |
| Format | Codex |
| Condition | Largely preserved; restored and rebound in 1406 |
| Script | Greek uncial (main text); Greek minuscule (later scholia) |
| Contents | De materia medica; Carmen de viribus herbarum; paraphrases of Nicander's Theriaca and Alexipharmaca; Dionysius of Philadelphia's Ornithiaca; Oppian's Halieutica |
| Illumination(s) | Plants, animals, physicians, and allegorical figures |
| Additions | Multilingual plant names (Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Old French); scholia and table of contents added in 1406 |
| Exemplar(s) | Classical herbals and painted panel models |
| Previously kept | Constantinople (c. 6th–16th centuries) |
| Other | Oldest surviving illustrated copy of De materia medica; UNESCO Memory of the World Register (1997) |
The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century AD work, De materia medica (Ancient Greek: Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς, romanized: Perì hylēs iatrikēs) by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial script. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text. After residing in Constantinople for just over a thousand years, the text passed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna in the 16th century, a century after the city fell to the Ottoman Empire.
The 491 vellum folios measure 37 cm (15 in) by 30 cm (12 in) and contain more than 400 pictures of animals and plants, most done in a naturalistic style. In addition to the text by Dioscorides, the manuscript has appended to it, the Carmen de herbis attributed to Rufus, a paraphrase of an ornithological treatise by a certain Dionysius, usually identified with Dionysius of Philadelphia, and a paraphrase of Nicander's treatise on the treatment of snake bites.