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Visitors in a Renaissance Garden. Valens Acidalius Ianus Quadrifrons in Hortum Laurentii Scholtzii
Abstract
The botanical garden founded in the second half of the 16th century by physician Lawrence Scholtz, the first botanical garden in Breslau and the whole of Silesia, was of great interest to humanists. Visitors were attracted not only by the arrangements of Italian gardens of the time or the collection of exotic plants, but above all by the feasts, which were modelled on the ancient ones, the so-called Floralia Wratislaviensia, which brought together the city's intellectual elite to discuss natural, medical, literary and philosophical issues. Among the garden's regulars was the New Netherlandish poet Valens Acidalius (1567-1595), who dedicated the work Ianus quadrifrons in hortum Laurentii Scholtzii, discussed in this article, to that place. Acidalius’ work contains a kind of etiquette – a set of rules on how to behave in the garden and how to behave at a garden feast. The first part, in verse, is a speech by Janus, the guardian of the garden, to potential guests, while the second part (Leges hortenses) and the third part (Leges convivales) are prose rules of conduct in imperative forms, which were not written by Acidalius, but by the owner of the garden, which was not signaled in the oldprint. It is likely that the leges composed by Scholtz had been written earlier, and Acidalius – perhaps at the request of his host – added a poetic framework to them, creating a compositionally homogeneous work, though not free of repetitions. This is because he attempted to present the rules written in prose in a rhymed and comedyform, using some of the solutions of the Roman palliata.
Keywords:
Valens Acidalius, Laurentius Scholtzius (Scholtz), botanical garden in the 16th century, Floralia Wratislaviensia, New Latin poetryDetails
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