Couleurs des urines et plantes tinctoriales dans le De Urinis Theophili: À propos du terme χυμένη

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this article is to draw the attention of scholars of ancient medicine to the need to consider the works of humanists in interpreting and editing medical treatises. Because humanists, especially those who had studied medicine and botany in the Italian universities, had acquired both a theoretical knowledge of ancient writings on medicine and a practical expertise in botany that allowed them to identify the plants mentioned in the major ancient sources such as Dioscorides, Theophrastus, Pliny and to understand their lexical uses in the Byzantine treatises on uroscopy. Such is the case for the word chyménè, which is nowadays completely misunderstood, as our examination of Theophilus Protospatharius’ De urinis (ca. seventh-ninth century) will show. That word, while obscure to the first translators of this treatise, such as Ambrogio Leone (1519), was correctly interpreted by the humanists Onorio Belli (1593), Claude Saumaise (1629) and Bodaeus de Stapel (1644), who were also the first to show us that the Latin version of Theophilus’ treatise on Urines had become corrupted in the course of the centuries.