Travniki, Travniki and Travniki: Herbals, Herbalists and Herbaria in Seventeenth-Century and Eighteenth-Century Russia

Rachel Koroloff

doi:10.21900/j.vivliofika.v6.543

Abstract

This essay provides a sustained investigation of the term travnik, a capacious word that came to mean herbalist, herbal and herbarium over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Though different in physical form, all three were united during this period by the body of knowledge they contained about the botanical world. Taken togetherthey reveal the ways in which knowledge of plants, from folk collecting traditions, to medical botany, to binomial nomenclature, was generated in the productive tension between foreign expertise and local knowledge. The focus here on translation highlights the diverse array of influences that contributed to the early modern Russian conception of the natural world. The travnik as herbal is explored through two centuries of secondary sources, while the travnik as herbalist relies heavily on published primary documents. The third section on the travnik as herbarium focuses on eighteenth century herbaria and the transposition of new scientific methods onto older forms of knowledge making.

Highlights

The word travnik was a capacious one in Muscovy, and it needed to be
Meaning at one and the same time herbal, herbalist and somewhat later, herbarium, the shifting boundaries of the travnik’s various definitions reveal how the early modern Russian understanding of nature, health, and disease was characterized by the repeated conceptual slippage between magic, medicine, and poison in the botanical world
It has been suggested that Russian herbalists constitute an entirely “original system” of plant collection and preparation in Russia, that is, a system which arose of its own accord without overriding influence from the outside.[37]

Summary

Introduction

The word travnik was a capacious one in Muscovy, and it needed to be. Meaning at one and the same time herbal, herbalist and somewhat later, herbarium, the shifting boundaries of the travnik’s various definitions reveal how the early modern Russian understanding of nature, health, and disease was characterized by the repeated conceptual slippage between magic, medicine, and poison in the botanical world.

Results

Conclusion