In 1552 Jacobo de Grado, the
friar in charge of the Convent of Tlatelolco and the
College of Santa Cruz, had the herbal created and translated for Don Francisco de Mendoza, son of Don
Antonio de Mendoza, the
viceroy of
New Spain. Mendoza sent the Latin manuscript to Spain, where it was deposited into the royal library. There it presumably remained until the early 17th century, when it somehow came into the possession of Diego de Cortavila y Sanabria,
pharmacist to
King Philip IV. From Cortavila it travelled to the Italian Cardinal
Francesco Barberini, possibly via intermediate owners. The manuscript remained in the
Barberini library until 1902, when the Barberini library became part of the
Vatican Library, and the manuscript along with it. Finally, in 1990 — over four centuries after it was sent to Spain —
Pope John Paul II returned the
Libellus to Mexico, and it is now in the library of the
National Institute of Anthropology and History in
Mexico City. A copy was made in the 17th century by
Cassiano dal Pozzo, the secretary of Cardinal Barberini. Dal Pozzo's collection, called his
Museo Cartaceo ("Papers Museum"), was sold by his heirs to
Pope Clement XI, who sold it to his nephew, Cardinal
Alessandro Albani, who himself sold it to
King George III in 1762. Dal Pozzo's copy is now part of the
Royal Library, Windsor. Another copy may have been made by Francesco de' Stelluti, but is now lost. Dal Pozzo and de' Stelluti were both members of the
Accademia dei Lincei. There are several published editions of the manuscript, beginning with the one by
William E. Gates in 1939, now reissued in an inexpensive edition by Dover Books. In 1964, an edition of the manuscript was published in full-color facsimile, with a translation of the Latin to Spanish. The manuscript has been mainly studied by scholars interested in
history of medicine and
history of botany. In history of medicine, there has been some focus on the extent to which the manuscript might be incorporating aspects of European humoral theories of medicine or whether text is purely from the
Nahua viewpoint. According to a study by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, the Badianus herbal was prepared for the king of Spain to demonstrate the intellectual sophistication of the Nahuas which might have skewed the manuscript to emulating aspects of European culture. The botanical aspects of the manuscript are significant, showing that the Nahuas had a classification system that was indeed highly sophisticated. As with Book 11, "The Earthly Things" of the
Florentine Codex by Franciscan
Bernardino de Sahagún, the Badianus manuscript gives the Nahuatl names of plants, an illustration of the example, and the uses for the plant. However, unlike the Florentine Codex, there is little emphasis on supernatural healing characteristics of the plants. The examples in the Badianus manuscript deal solely with the medical conditions and curative aspects of the plants. For example, in the Gates translation, subject headings for plants' curative powers include "Against stupidity of the mind," [against] "Goaty armpits of sick people," "Against lassitude," "Medicine to take away foul and fetid breath." For scholars interested in
women's health, the Badianus manuscript has a whole chapter on "remedies for recent parturition, the menses, lotion of the internal parts, childbirth, tubercules of the breasts, [and] medicine for increasing milk flow." == Modern editions ==