Mandrake and Monarchy in Early Modern Spain

Abstract

I n 1673 T o m á s d e m u r I l l o y V e l a r d e , a personal physician to the Spanish royal family, published a treatise on medicinal plants entitled Tratado de raras, y peregrinas yervas (Treaty on rare and migrating herbs). His ostensible purpose was to demonstrate the differences between the medicinal plant abrotano (Artemisia abrotanum), a species in the Asteracaea family, and its lesser variant bupthalmo (another species of Asteracaea) with, as the full title announces, “some annotations” on the subject of mandrake, a plant associated with love magic and fertility.1 Murillo’s “annotations” are not an afterthought to his main text, as the title insists, but instead compose roughly half his narrative. Forty-five of his 126 pages address the uses of mandrake, which he claims cures infertility, and sections on mandrake and fertility-related topics appear in other portions of the treatise, particularly in the final chapters. Murillo promises the reader that “this plant has the virtue and effect . . . of making fecund and fertilizing what is sterile” (50r). This bold declaration departs from contemporary botanical treatises, such as vernacular translations and commentary on Dioscorides, whose descriptions of mandrake are generally short and mention its use as an aphrodisiac or fertility aid as one element among many uses; these treatises do not give fertility the prominence that Murillo does. This article explores Murillo’s fascination with mandrake’s potential as a fertility drug, a subject that he returns to repeatedly throughout the text, even in sections not ostensibly on mandrake. Fertility was a subject of paramount consequence to the Habsburg court in which Murillo served. In 1665 King Philip IV of Spain died, leaving a sole legitimate son and heir, Charles II, who suffered a number of physical infirmities that would now be attributed to inbreeding.2 Following Philip’s