The Badianus Manuscript is a small, intensely practical book of healing—an illustrated Latin herbal produced in Mexico in 1552, at a moment when Indigenous knowledge, Franciscan education, and imperial networks were being stitched together on the page. Its very premise is bold: to present New Spain’s medicinal expertise in a learned European language, without stripping it of its local authority.
Colonial Mexico and the College of Santa Cruz
The manuscript identifies its author as Martinus de la Cruz—a native and physician of the College of Santa Cruz—and anchors its origin in the intellectual world of Tlatelolco, where Nahua elites were trained in Latin and Christian learning. It is explicitly dedicated to Don Francisco de Mendoza, son of the first viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza—a signal that this knowledge was intended to circulate at the highest levels of colonial patronage.
Scribal Collaboration and Visual Identification
A rare note of process survives: the text was first written in Aztec (Nahuatl) on loose sheets by Martinus and translated into Latin by Juannes Badianus, a native “Reader” at the same college. The book’s care and beauty lie not in gilded splendour but in its disciplined clarity—illustrations serve identification, pairing plants with recipes and directions for preparation and use.
Medicine, Materia Medica, and Accepted “Magic”
Often called America’s earliest medical book, the manuscript preserves remedies rooted in botanical practice, but also in stones and animal substances—charms as much as medicines—shaped for a Christian readership that tolerated certain kinds of healing wonder while omitting spoken incantations.
Color as Material Memory
A final clue to the manuscript’s world lies in its colour range and its striking survival. The palette is broad and still vivid, pointing to a context in which dyes and pigments could be produced, handled, and stabilized with confidence.
Specific colours are enumerated—red, blue, green, black, white, yellow, orange, brown, and purple—suggesting an intention to record botanical forms not only by outline but by chromatic identity. In that light, the illustrations operate on two levels at once: they support recognition of plants for use in remedies, and they preserve a record of materials and craft practice embedded in 16th century Mexico.
We have 2 facsimiles of the manuscript "Badianus Manuscript":
- Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis facsimile edition published by Libros FacMed UNAM, 2022
- Badianus Manuscript facsimile edition published by The John Hopkins Press, 1940